The Breakaway(75)
“You’re sure?” Kayla asked one last time.
“I’m sure,” Morgan said. She raised her hand to her mouth and swallowed the pill down.
Abby
11:06 a.m.
On a sunny day, the cinder-topped dirt path out of Syracuse would have been as flat and as hard-packed as pavement, a fine surface for riding. On a rainy day, the trail transformed from dirt to mud, which, that morning, seemed to be actively sucking at their tires, making the riding effortful, and keeping the pace extra slow.
Abby ground out the miles along the canal, hearing her tires squelching with each rotation, watching her shoes and her legs and the frame of her bike getting increasingly crusted with mud. She didn’t pass any other riders. Probably because they were all sensible enough to stay home.
All morning long, Abby plowed along, shivering, always keeping Sebastian’s flashing rear lights in her sights. In his lime-green rain jacket, he was easy enough to see, even with the rain pouring down. She pedaled, and breathed, and mentally cursed him, blinking water out of her eyes, doing her best to ignore her feet, which were turning numb, and the ominous rumble of thunder, which accompanied them for each slow mile they managed that morning. Abby told herself that there were cars and trucks nearby, and that those vehicles would provide bigger targets for the lightning than their bicycles did. She only hoped that, once they started riding on the road, they’d be small enough for the lightning to miss them, but not so small that the drivers and the long-haul truckers wouldn’t be able to see them.
After the first hour, she couldn’t feel her toes, and her hands were freezing. Abby flexed her fingers, shaking out one hand, then the other, switching her grip on the handlebars, trying to cheer herself up by telling herself that, as hard going as she found it, it was probably even worse for Sebastian, who was pushing through the mud on his skinny, road-bike tires. She thought about Morgan, imagining the teenager sitting in the waiting room with Kayla and Andy beside her, or in a generic exam room, talking to a sympathetic someone in a white coat. She pictured Morgan relieved and happy. She hoped that, unlike every other teenage girl Abby had ever known, Morgan would be able to keep a secret. And she wondered, again, if she’d done the right thing.
They’d been riding for close to two hours when they came to the trailhead at the eighteenth mile. Abby saw a single-story building on the side of the trail, with smoke coming out of its chimney and the scent of a wood-burning fire in the air. Abby wondered what the building was and if Sebastian would want to go in, take a break, and warm up. Maybe he’s come to his senses and he’s ready for the sag wagon, she thought, shivering, as she coasted to a stop. Maybe he’s already called Jasper. Maybe Jasper’s already on his way.
Wishful thinking. “Hey,” Sebastian shouted, struggling to make himself heard over the sounds of the storm. “I checked the map, and there’s a road we can take for the next five miles.” He held out his phone, pinching and enlarging the map so she could see what he’d found, as the wind whipped at their faces. “It’s a little longer, but at least it’ll get us out of the mud.”
Out of the mud sounded excellent. “Let’s do it.” Abby let him lead, following his blinking taillight off the path and onto a side street. As soon as his tire touched the pavement, Sebastian was off like a shot, pedaling, as Lizzie would have said, like his ass was on fire and his hair was catching. Like anything could be on fire today, Abby thought. Her teeth were chattering. She was soaked right down to her bra, and her shoes were so wet she imagined turning them upside down and watching water cascading out. Macho jerk, she thought. Selfish idiot. Stupid, stubborn…
It was only by chance that she’d looked up, mid-insult, and had her eyes on Sebastian, not on the road or her phone, in its waterproof case, at the exact instant that Sebastian went down. One minute he was pedaling, his feet moving so quickly that they were almost a blur. In the very next instant, his bike went skidding out from under him, and then he was airborne, flying headfirst over the handlebars, his body finally hitting the road with a sickening thud.
Abby swallowed a scream and rode to him as fast as she could. She reached him as he was getting dazedly to his feet. Shit, she thought. Shit shit shit. In all her years of riding, she’d seen only one bad injury: a woman who’d gotten her tire stuck in the ruts of train tracks, and had gone over her handlebars, just like Sebastian. She’d broken her collarbone. That had been bad. This looked worse.
“Are you okay?” she called. Sebastian had gotten to his feet but didn’t seem to have heard her. His bike was lying on the road behind him, the back wheel still spinning. Both of his knees were bleeding. His fancy rain jacket was torn, and he was covered in grit and shivering, with water dripping from his hair and his face.
Abby got off her bike and grabbed Sebastian’s shoulders, looking him over, standing on her tiptoes to inspect his helmet, running her fingers over its segments to see if any of them were cracked. “Does anything hurt? Did you hit your head?”
He gave her an annoyed scowl, but she saw his lips were blue and could hear his teeth chatter. “I’m fine. Let me get my bike.”
“I’ll get your bike. You sit.” She led him to the guardrail by the side of the road, quickly checking for poison ivy before she made him sit down, and trotted back onto the pavement, thanking God for an absence of traffic while she collected his handlebar bag and his pump and both water bottles, all scattered on the pavement, then his bike, which appeared undamaged. She wheeled it over to the guardrail, wincing as thunder boomed overhead.