Kylie Johnson My Brother’s Bike

My Brother’s Bike

Kylie Johnson

As someone who grew up watching shows such as Criminal Minds and Forensic Files instead of the usual Disney Channel entertainment most middle schoolers enjoyed, you would think I would be a little more prepared for nearly getting kidnapped than I was. It started off as any other day: getting out of bed long after the socially acceptable amount of time to sleep in was, becoming a total hermit and doing nothing but watching YouTube videos and drawing in my room all day, and lastly, sprinting down the stairs towards the front door once the familiar screech of the school bus’s brakes finally stopped at my street corner.

Being homeschooled basically my entire middle school career totally sucked. My mother worked eight-to-five, five days a week, and my brother and I were too young to legally drive anywhere (it’s not like we had a car at our disposal anyways), so pretty much every day of the week, we were confined inside the walls of our generic suburban house that looked exactly like every other in the neighborhood. The only thing I had to look forward to was when the school bus stopped at our street corner, where I impatiently waited for the girl who lived three houses down to step off the bus steps so we could walk together to her garage.

The sounds of laughter fluttered through the air, occasionally being interrupted by the rhythmic clinking of bike chains. We were on our way to meet our other friend, Zara, at the park because she found a Starbucks gift card she wanted to use, and Soyeon apparently knew a secret path into town we could travel on. We pulled into the grass and walked with our bikes towards the back of the playground at the edge of the woods.

“There’s a bridge that’s missing a few planks on the trail, we’ll have to leave the bikes,” Soyeon explained, so we stashed them in the shrubs and bushes at the edge of the forest. I rode my brother’s bike that day, so I didn’t mind leaving it behind one bit.

It was nothing out of the ordinary. Just your average dirt trail through the minimal amount of “woods” there could be in the middle of

suburbia, until some creepy high school guy started chasing us further into the trees of course. The second I heard his voice yell at us from behind, I booked it. Do I feel bad for ditching my friends in order to get a head start? Considering we all made it out fine and dandy, no, not particularly. It felt like we were sprinting for miles on end, which is definitely an over exaggeration. We couldn’t have been running for more than three minutes when we made it to the end of the trail. Our very own axe murderer refused to leave the woods, apparently. As payback for almost getting me killed, I made sure to wheeze as obnoxiously as possible and complain to my heart’s content while we crossed the street to finally make it to Starbucks.

Now we may have been dumb, but we were definitely not idiots. There was no way in hell we were going to walk through those woods again to get home after being chased by a total maniac. So, we chose the next best route. You would think strolling down the interstate would be more frightening than walking through the woods, but to be honest, it really wasn’t that bad. It was nice being able to observe, closer than usual, the nightmare inducing nine foot tall mouse statue they had out in the parking lot of the gay bar. And don’t forget the sketchiest adult video store you could possibly ever imagine, and that one guy whose entire lawn is filled with ratty cages holding exotic birds that probably weren’t legal to own. What a day to remember this had become.

Now of course, since we took a different route home, we ended up returning to our neighborhood through the front entrance rather than near the park. You can imagine my disappointment when I moved across the country the very next day, only to realize I never went back to retrieve my brother’s bike. Oh well, it’s not like he ever rode it anyways.