If Ayanna had been paying attention, she would have looked before rushing out of the coffee shop. This block was notorious for people breaking the law and riding their bikes on the sidewalk. Worse, many of them rode their bikes really quickly on the sidewalk because they were the kind of people who were very scared of riding in traffic, but who didn’t want to extend any courtesy to pedestrians. Enough people had gotten hit in the neighborhood that the city was threatening to send out additional police officers to ticket bicyclists who were disobeying the law. Even Ayanna’s most abolitionist-leaning friends were torn on this one: they were definitely unhappy with the idea of more police officers on the streets, but they were also tired of living in fear of some frat dude who insisted his name was Nico, not Nick, running them down on his rich-kid bike.

So Ayanna rushed out, she did not see the bike coming at her quickly, or somehow even hear the girl yelling at the bicyclist already. She was saved only by Matthias pulling her back quickly, and his hands were so hot, like they had been baking for thirty minutes on 425, and she yelped an unseemly and embarrassing little noise, and the too-fast bike rider turned with a surprised face filled with freckles, then ran into another person and fell off his bike. Everyone was yelling at one another, the bicyclist was trying to blame Ayanna for distracting him, Ayanna was talking to the poor guy on the ground who seemed dazed and was saying he was going to be late for class, and Matthias was trying to talk to Ayanna, and a white girl with her hair dyed half white, half black was saying, I am an EMT, but not doing anything other than announcing her status as a trained medical professional, and a random guy from the coffee shop was yelling at the bicyclist, saying that he better not run off, I’m watching you, bro, and so many people were stopping to gawk at the situation. A few people with phones out, but some stunned enough to just watch.