Jaden answered right away, buzzing me in without even calling down to see who it was. Who else was crazy enough to be out there? The wind was blowing a little harder now, I felt it pushing into my face, drawing my skin back just a bit. The cans of beer in my book bag jangled and sloshed together as I went through the double door and ran up the stairs.

The door to Jaden’s apartment was open partway when I got up to the third floor. I pushed it open farther and saw his bike hanging up from the hook in the front hallway. Jaden loves that bike, has had it since he was a kid and takes care of it like a baby. He learned how to fix it, he oils it and replaces parts himself. His first slag was as a bike messenger when he was just a teenager because he could ride faster and better than any of the people older than him. I walked by the bike then, pushing one of the pedals in a slow circle with my hand. Jaden was still a bike messenger, for this company in Manhattan that caters to rich people who can’t be bothered going somewhere to pick it up and can’t wait for things to be shipped. They do it from anywhere to anywhere, so he ends up delivering the craziest things sometimes. Once he delivered a kitten to a five-year-old who lived on Central Park West. Turned out the kid had just had a play date with a friend who had one, and couldn’t wait to get his own. So Jaden had ridden from a pet store to this kid’s house with this scared little kitten in a box in the basket attached to his bike. Other times, he didn’t know what he was carrying at all; there were simply locked boxes. Jaden didn’t ask too many questions about those.

Because of all that biking, Jaden’s in amazing shape. He’s got these legs that I bet could kick through a brick wall, like in those old kung fu movies. He’s always got girls around him and some of the guys on the block flirt with him, too. Even though Jaden’s straight, he flirts right back with everybody. He’s good-natured and dap, and a lot of people love him. Sometimes standing next to him I feel like an angry ogre from a fairy tale.

“Hello?” I called, walking past his bike. The hallway I was in had a room off to either side, and led out into a living room with another bedroom on the far side of it. That bedroom was Jaden’s. It had a big window that faced the street and a huge tree with speckled bark stood outside it.