“Hey! Mary!”

Someone shouted a faraway greeting from the highway behind her. Donna looked back and saw a teenage boy about Mary’s age, hurtling down the sharp hill on a bicycle. He waved madly at them, his face cracked into a grin, his black hair twisting in the currents of air. She recognized him, a neighbor boy from her years in Gary, who lived two blocks away from their old house. He was an adopted Korean child, squat and strong. He loved Mary and had played with her growing up. As they got older, he was one of the few boys who didn’t make fun of her retardation.

Mary saw him, too. “Charlie! Charlie!”

Charlie veered across the highway. His wide backside hung over the bike’s banana seat. He yanked back on the handlebars, hiking the front wheel off the road, showing off the way boys do. Mary squealed with delight. Donna heard the skid of rubber as Charlie braked hard. The bike slowed, and tread burned off onto the highway in a black streak.

Through the screech of the tire, she also heard rocks scraping on the ground. Loose gravel.

Her breath caught in her chest before she could shout a warning. The bike’s front tire rose higher, like a whale breaching, and the back tire spilled out underneath it. In the next instant, it was airborne. Charlie flew, too. The bike bounced, clanged, and made circles as it crashed on the pavement, its spokes spinning like tops. Charlie’s hands and legs stretched out in an X in midair. He soared and snapped down headfirst, bone on asphalt, and even fifty yards away, the sound popped through the brittle air like a firecracker.

He lay still in the middle of the highway.

“Charlie!” Mary wailed.

Donna bolted upright. She stood, paralyzed, her face swinging back and forth between Charlie and Mary. Her instinct was to run and help, but her instinct was also never to leave her daughter alone. She bent down and grabbed Mary’s face between her hands and spoke softly but firmly. “Mary, you sit right here. Do not move, okay? Do not move. Sit right here. Please, baby, I need you to understand. Show me you understand.”

Mary’s eyes were filled with confusion and glassy tears. She didn’t move.

“That’s good, baby, you sit right there, you don’t move.”

Donna sprinted for the highway, fumbling with her cell phone and punching the numbers 911 as she ran. Her work clothes felt clumsy. Her blouse came untucked from her skirt. She lost her balance as her high heels tripped her up, and she swore and kicked them off. Rocks chewed at her nylons and cut her feet. When she reached Charlie, she murmured a prayer as she watched the bloodstain spreading like a cancer under the boy’s head. She craned her neck to stare up and down the highway, which was dark now in the deepening twilight. There were no cars approaching from either direction. She spotted a silver RAV4 parked on the shoulder a quarter mile to the north, but she didn’t see anyone inside. She was alone.