The Thing About Parker

   "Lungs to breathe, a heart to beat"

   When Parker was younger — no more than eight years in age — he had this bike. It was red, with a single black stripe near the back wheel. I remember it well, for saying it was nothing more than an ordinary bike. He used to ride it in circles in the park near the identical house we lived in.

   We weren't neighbors; we lived on opposite sides of the road. When you stood in the bay window in his parents bedroom, you could see straight into the identical window in my parents bedroom. When you stood in the bay window in my parents bedroom you could not only see the bay window in Parker's house but also the small park where he used to ride his bike.

   That's where I was standing the day Parker's sister died — in the bay window. I watched her approach the park, wheeling the bike along slightly behind her. Her sparkly, pink helmet dangled from the handle bars rather than it sitting on her head; maybe if she had put the helmet on, everything would have been different. But she didn't put the helmet on.

   As she mounted the bike, I remember thinking how strange it was — that Parker would lend Alice his beloved bike — when she had only just learnt how to ride.

   I don't like remembering what happened next, so I choose not to. But the squeal of brakes trying desperately to find a grip in the road, and the pool of blood that ran down the street still haunts my dreams to this very day.

   Almost before the car swerved to miss the bike that lay abandoned in the road and instead made impact with Parker's sister, I began to scream. At the time, I didn't even realize that the noise was coming from my own mouth and when my parents came to see what was wrong, I couldn't stop. I didn't want to.

   So my mother grabbed me by the shoulders and dragged me away from the window. It was too late though. I had already seen what had happened. Parker had too, because he had been standing right beside me.

   He never rode his bike again — even though it had been damaged. His parents gave it to me, but I couldn't bring myself to ride it either. With no one knowing quite what to do with it, my father packed it under an old dust sheet in our garden shed.

   Parker's family moved away a few weeks after Alice's funeral. I still saw him at school but it wasn't the same, so when my parents thought I was playing in the garden, I would sneak into the shed and just sit, looking at Parker's small red bike.

   In the first three years of Secondary school, Parker changed a lot; everything about him changed. It was hard to notice it as it was happening, but I remember the day of Parker's first girlfriend — our entire year at school had been whispering about it in between lessons. The relationship barely lasted a week, but seeing him and Naomi in the hallway, I asked myself: was this really the same boy who used to climb trees in his swimming trunks and go swimming in a jumper?

   The answer was no. It wasn't the same boy. Somehow, somewhere, the little boy with the red bike had been left behind. Maybe he was still sitting in the bay window, waiting for the day where it felt like he was able to breathe again. Or perhaps he was running around the woods, trying to force his shattered heart to keep beating.

   Wherever this little boy was, he was not with the family that stood on my doorstep, the night my mother finally gained the courage to invite them around for dinner. Stood there, was a different Parker. Not just because he was older, but because everything else about him was different too: his once lopsided grin had retreated into a tight-lipped smile; the messy locks of dirty blonde hair that had once so often fallen in the way of his eyes had been chopped off in exchange for a neater style; his clothes had become more fashionable; he was at least a foot and a half taller and as he made his way into our house, he refused to make eye contact with me.