Fierce as the Wind

by Tara Wilson Redd

“But you can put freedom in a bank,” she says. “You can put a million dollars in a bank and then say, well, no matter what happens, I’ll be okay.”

  “Do you honestly think it works that way, though?”

  “Yes.”

  “Trinity, what’s up?”

  She sighs.

  “Nothing. I’m just worried about college.”

  “You’re not paying for it, though. Financial aid.”

  “Yeah, but I still have to live.”

  “You got room and board. You got a free ride. You’ll be fine.”

  “Do you think so? I don’t know. I mean, yeah, I’ll have enough money to eat and study. Even my textbooks are paid for. But do you know how much a plane ticket from Boston to Hawai’i is?”

  I shake my head.

  “It’s a lot. It’s a lot a lot around the holidays.”

  “Are you worried that you’ll miss your family?”

  “Yeah. My family, and…other things. Is that why you didn’t apply for college?”

  “No,” I say. “I just…didn’t. I’m going to. I needed time to wrap my head around it.”

  “I get that,” she says. “I kind of wish I’d wrapped my head around it before I had to do it.”

  We ride in silence. The uneven sound of my feet pushing the pedals is bad form, I know, but going up a hill with Trinity on the back, I can barely move the bike even on my lowest gear. I stand to get more leverage. Trinity is right. This is almost impossible.

  “It’s only four years,” I say at last, though I know that doesn’t make it any better.

  “But I keep thinking if I had a million dollars, I could go to college and not feel like I’m a) representing the entirety of my lineage as a sainted first-generation college student and b) marooned halfway across the world from everything I know and love. Like, do they have shave ice in Boston? I’ve never been homesick. I’ve never been away from home.”

  “I mean, it’s Boston, not Mars. I knew what poke was before I came to Hawai’i.”

  “But it’s not the same.”

  “I know.”

  And all of a sudden, it hits me: after this summer, after my race, we’re all going our separate ways.

  It’ll never be the same.

  “I guess that’s what social media is for,” Trinity says at last. “Will you get Instagram so we don’t lose each other?”

  “We won’t lose each other even without Instagram,” I say. “Besides, Instagram is for showing off your perfect life. My life isn’t ever going to be Instagrammable.”

  “Mine is. Everyone likes pictures of E. coli in zero G conditions right?”

  “Uh, no.”

  “How about artsy black-and-white posts of article citations with fifteen authors, where I’m the fourteenth author?”

  “That’ll get some likes.”

  “It’d get one more if you would get Instagram. Put pictures of Achilles up. He’s an internet gold mine. Everyone loves a tripod dog.”

  “I’ll agree to lurk once you’re in your dorm.”

  “I’m holding you to that.”

  We pull up to the bike store, and I want to say how everything will be okay and she’s going on to this brilliant future and how much I admire her and how awesome I think she is and all this other stuff. But instead, she gets off the bike, we look at each other, and she does the most Trinity thing ever. She punches me in the shoulder.

  “What was that for? I just biked you across half this island!” I say, punching her back and missing.

  “Don’t leave an opening next time.”

  “Thanks, Cato.”

  “Who is Cato?”

  “Have you never seen The Pink Panther?”

  “Is it some stupid X movie?”

  I’m going to tell her, but she swipes at me again. My fists are up, and I have no idea why we’re boxing, but we are, because that’s what Trin does when things get emotional. Given how much we wrestle, I am starting to think Trinity isn’t as hard as she seems. She gets me in a choke hold and I’m about to tap out, but then we hear a door open and a guy wearing a half apron and a bright yellow T-shirt that says “Tour de France” on the front is staring down at us.

  Before he can say anything, Trinity lets me go.

  “Kyle?” she asks.

  “Yeah,” he says. “What are you—”

  “Cross-training. Don’t you box? It keeps the athlete nimble,” Trinity says, slapping me hard on the back.

  “The athlete?” he asks.

  “The athlete,” she says, pointing to me. “Gotta keep her on her toes. Anyway, I called earlier about time trial bikes?”

  “You?”

  Trinity has turned off her accent, because this guy doesn’t have one, but even speaking right does you limited good when someone has moments ago watched you brawling in the street.

  “We’re mostly interested in looking today, and purchasing a few smaller items, but I had some questions about bike fitting and possible upgrades on an existing frame,” Trinity says, pushing her hair back and staring him down. He looks at her hard. Then his eyes move to me. Finally, he spots my bike lying in the dirt and recoils.

  “That’s not the frame, is it?”

  “We’re working with a generous definition of the word ‘possible’ these days,” Trinity says. “Let’s talk shop.”

  * * *

  “Girls, I don’t know what to tell you,” Kyle says, running his hand over my bike. “There’s not much we can do for this bike to get you closer to what you want.”

  “It’s what I expected,” Trinity says. “And you’re saying we could get a new one for…”

  “In your price range, there’s not a lot. There’s basically nothing. Is three hundred dollars the absolute highest you can go?”

  Trinity and I look at each other, then back at him. We nod.

  Kyle isn’t fazed. Once he got over the shock of us, he got super into finding me a bike. Thank god for nerds. Getting a bike fitted is like hundreds of dollars, but Kyle was bored and we were amusing, so he spent most of the afternoon explaining it to us and letting us try out stuff in the completely dead store. When I tried to stop wasting his time, he kept coming up with new toys for us to play with, including some bikes I could never afford but definitely wanted to ride around the block. There’s a big flat stretch outside, and Kyle let me take a Corneille road bike out of the shop. I guess he thought I wouldn’t leave Trin to take the fall if I decided to steal it? But I might love this bike more than I love Trinity. Not really. I think.

  “Okay, well, let’s dream a little,” he says. “Do you want a tri bike?”

  Trin and I shake our heads.

  “I still have to ride it everywhere,” I say. “I can’t deliver pizzas on a Cervélo P5.”

  “Understood,” he says. “So we want versatile.”

  “We want Corneille. We’ll settle for anything better than my frankenbike.”

  He looks over his shoulder at a poster hanging on the corkboard. He takes it down. “You know, though, there’s this local triathlon club that’s giving away a Corneille tri bike with all these sweet integrated components—”

  “I don’t need charity,” I say.

  “I beg to differ,” Trinity says.

  “It’s a contest,” Kyle says. “These ladies are cool. I know their president, Aaliyah. She’d love this race you guys are doing. You might win it, with your great story. Look, this is the third year they’ve run it. This girl won last year, and now she’s on a college tri team in Arizona. Got a scholarship and everything.”

  He points to a picture hanging on the wall. A girl a little older than me is standing with a beautiful Corneille triathlon bike, smiling like she’s trying to break her face. Judging by the matching uniforms, I’m guessing it’s the Pipeline Tri Club gathered around he
r. They’re so different than the triathletes I saw on TV. First and foremost, they’re all women. And some of them have curly hair or braids or even shaved heads, and some of them are athletic and some are fat and some have big biker thighs, and they all have different skin colors. They look like normal people. Awesome people.

  Maybe I should enter. I would give anything for that bike.

  But when I look at the picture again, I notice that the girl with the bike is also holding a sign. It says second annual recipient of the corneille charity triathlon bike. Charity. Recipient. Not contest winner. I can practically see myself in that picture, saying, “I never would have gotten here without the kind charity of others. I am so grateful for the opportunities I have been given, and will do my best to live up to the gifts I have received.” But I want to say, “I am so proud of this thing I did all on my own, because I’m awesome.”

  Charity erases all the work you put in.

  My race is not a gift. It’s something I am working harder on than anything I’ve ever done.

  If I take this charity bike, that will ruin it.

  I want to earn the things I have.

  “I’d rather work with what we can afford,” I say.

  “Okay,” Kyle says, putting the poster back up. I’m so grateful he doesn’t make a big deal out of it. Trinity looks at me and nods. She may not like it, but she gets it.

  “So we want a Corneille road bike that costs three hundred dollars. That’s not going to happen. So how can we get close?”

  “Could we rent a bike for a single day?”

  “Our store doesn’t do that, and I’d recommend against it. You need something you can train on.” He turns to me. “Never debut your gear in a race setting. Never.”

  “Well, we’re screwed,” Trinity says.

  “Tell you what. Give me your email and I’ll ask around about used bikes. I can’t promise anything. But, I mean, literally anything would be better than this.”

  “Gee, thanks,” I say.

  “Miho, it’s an awesome bike. It’s your awesome bike. But you don’t bring a knife to a gunfight, no matter how kickass your knife is.”

  “I don’t think we’re going to have a choice,” Trinity says. “Thanks for everything, Kyle. Like, you’re the man. Or the gender-neutral entity of your choice.”

  “Man’s fine. I do have a few treats I can help you out with here in the store.” He looks at me. “Not charity. Damaged stuff I can give you with a steep discount and samples.”

  “We can pay.”

  “It’s not charity between friends,” he insists.

  He retreats behind the counter and into a back room and returns with an armful of open boxes and bags a few minutes later.

  “So already we got you the pedals, and the cleats, and we got you the shoes off the sale rack. Sorry about the color,” Kyle says, pointing to the stuff Trinity’s got in her shopping bag. The shoes are a sunny, golden yellow. There’s a reason they were on the sale shelf. I kind of like them, though. They remind me of my Van Gogh sneakers. My face falls as I remember them on fire in that oil drum. I remember how—

  “Miho, check this out. This is gonna be sweet,” Trinity says. I peer at what she’s holding in her hand. It’s a silver cartridge, kind of like a tiny blimp.

  “Whippets?” I ask.

  “CO2,” Kyle says. “I hope kids don’t do whippets anymore. You’re shooting holes in your brain.”

  “So what is it?” I ask.

  “You can use it to change a tire lightning-quick without a pump,” Trinity says.

  “You wanna try it?” he asks Trinity.

  “Absolutely. Time me, bike man.”

  * * *

  We leave the store with a giant shopping bag full of open store samples, lightly scuffed gear, and Kyle’s phone number for bike questions. All at the low, low price of my last paycheck, which is all we had for accessories. The stuff we’re carrying is worth about three times that.

  When we get into Trinity’s garage, she hoists my bike onto her table again.

  “I think I could do it on my own bike. It would just be slow,” I say.

  “I know,” Trinity says. “But we wanted this race to be as real as possible. We’re going to time you and everything. And I don’t want the bike to be the reason you were slower than you could have been. I want to make sure I did everything I could.”

  “Even if the bike falls apart, it wouldn’t be your fault.”

  “When I’m in space, I want to know that all the work that went into me getting there was the best work possible, not only because it makes me faster, but because of what it means for the world, and for science and…stuff. Like, if I build a rocket to send someone into space, I want to be proud of it. If I am on a rocket, I want it to be something someone is proud of. Our best work makes us better. Our best work makes the world better.”

  “Lame.”

  “So lame. Such nerd.”

  “Look, I know you want me to have a great bike, but don’t let it get you down.”

  Trinity has put her jumpsuit back on. She grabs one of her fire-spewing torch things and hands me a mask and fireproof jacket.

  “You know what JFK said about trying to get to the moon?” she asks.

  “No, what?”

  “He said we do these things ‘not because they are easy, but because they are hard.’ Everything that makes you you goes into the hardest things you meet head-on: your humor, your creativity, your whole heart. That’s why I think, as JFK put it, ‘we choose to go to the moon.’ ”

  She says that last line in a weird voice, and it takes me a second to realize she’s doing her best JFK impersonation. I laugh.

  “Trinity, if anyone will be an astronaut, it’s you.”

  “But even if I never am one, I couldn’t go my whole life and not try. Yeah, reality is reality. But, this is the effort that organizes me, you know? Like, as a person,” she says. “It’s what I have to do. And maybe in our lifetime we’ll go to Mars. Maybe I’ll walk on another planet. Maybe I’ll fix one piece of shielding on one satellite no one but space nerds cares about, and right then I’ll know that every sacrifice I made was worth it, just to be the person whose best was brought out by getting someone else there. I have to try, Miho. It’s pointless to be sad because I know there’s no other choice for me. I wish it didn’t feel like such a risk.”

  Maybe I’m not the only person in my crew who is scared.

  “Nothing is ever certain,” I say. “For anyone.”

  “I know,” she replies. “But for some more than others.”

  “I get it. You feel like you’re standing on one rug, and you know if it gets ripped out from under you, there’s nowhere to go but down.”

  “Yeah,” Trinity says.

  “You can always come hang out on my rug, for what it’s worth. Or Lani’s. Or X’s. Or Rei’s. Or Wyatt’s.”

  Trinity smiles. She flips down the front of her welding mask. Heart-to-heart over.

  “Are you sure about this?” She leans over my bike like a surgeon.

  “Unequivocally,” I say. “I choose to go to the moon.”

  chapter twenty

  X and I go to his house after my four-and-a-half-hour bike ride on my imperfect but very tricked-out bike. We sit in his room and binge-watch The Avengers. His mom and dad make us keep the door open, but they also make his brothers vacate their own bedroom, so it’s kind of half-and-half on the trust thing.

  It’s a sleepy afternoon, and I fade in and out of the show. I’m more tired than I expected after my morning ride. I must have been going harder than I thought. Trinity did wonders. I can tell how much of a difference it makes, these little changes. An angle. A few ounces. Even if it can’t be perfect, it makes a difference. I can tell how much more powerful I am with my yellow bike shoes and new clip-in pedals. And the
best part: she made the pizza rack removable with one hex key instead of a whole toolbox. #aero #stillemployed

  I biked almost a hundred miles today, harder and farther than I thought was possible, on legs exhausted from the day before. Not to mention the day before that, and the day before that. I feel awesome.

  “You watching, or are you sleeping?” X asks as he switches to the next DVD.

  “Watching,” I say, even though the last thing I remember was the opening credits.

  “I know you were sleeping.”

  “Was it the snoring or closed eyes that gave it away?”

  “You slept through like half this season.”

  “I have never been this tired in my entire life.”

  “It’s still not too late to drop out,” X says. “Instead of all this work, we could phone in the rest of the summer on the couch. The Avengers was on forever.”

  “Why would I want to do that? I did awesome today.”

  “Because tomorrow’s your long run.”

  I groan until I literally run out of breath and have to gasp and start groaning all over again.

  “How long is long?” I whine.

  “Twenty-one miles. Easy pace.”

  “I’m pretty sure ‘twenty-one-mile easy run’ is an oxymoron.”

  “So quit.”

  “Why are you trying to get me to quit after we’ve put in so much work? Do you think I’m not working hard enough?”

  “I’m not, and you are,” X says, wrapping his arms around me. “Sometimes I miss…us. The people we used to be.”

  “Me too.”

  “Like, it’s great that we hang out and do sports stuff all the time. But is this who we are now?”

  “We’re all of it. You know what? Next rest day, we should go to your birthday restaurant. For no reason. We can dress up fancy.”

  “Really?”

  “Or whatever you want to do,” I offer. “Anything you want.”

  “I want—”

  “Except break into the Disney resort.” We used to do that all the time when we were younger. You need a special wristband to get into the pool, but if you’re small, it’s not difficult to sneak around.