When we’d get home after a long day of pedaling around the southeastern border, Aidy would say she thought Marley made the sign herself, “to keep things interesting.” I thought it didn’t matter who made it, because it was interesting, and interesting was the best way to entertain ourselves on hot summer days when we had nothing better to do. The sign was like the longest running adventure of all.

No one but Ruby had touched their bike in five years.

“I can’t believe it either,” I said to her as we watched the Campbells ride over to us.

The twins, officially Xander and Teniyah Campbell, had their nicknames written on baskets in front of their handlebars, a remnant from when they received the bikes for their tenth birthdays. Immediately after Marley’s accident, their parents enrolled them in a private school a few towns over. Their bikes were locked up against a fence along the side of their driveway. It was a reminder for the rest of us: Bigs and Teeny were not gone, but things were not to be as they once were. The rules had changed. No more pedaling across Cadence at all hours.

Bigs looked mighty on his small bike. He was a linebacker of a human, capable of tossing other players like discarded toys. I’d heard he was a great sportsman, but football wasn’t what put him in the local newspaper so frequently. He’d taken to making miniatures out of polymer clay. So far, he’d done a replica of Cadence that sat inside City Hall, as well as a rendering of an amusement park, complete with a Ferris wheel that actually spun. Last I read, his skills had earned him a full scholarship to an art school in one of the flyover states.

Teeny maintained the height that defined her, but puberty and years of dance had carved her shape into something impressive and hard-earned. Even the way she rode her bike looked powerful, her back arched as she lifted herself from her seat, braids cascading down her back, blowing with the wind, whipping around her face but never obscuring her view. She didn’t bother to pedal. She rode the momentum down the last part of the hill, lifting her hands off the bars because she could. She dismounted from her bike without breaking speed, a flawless leap that looked as impossible as it was. The bike’s wheels rolled until the ledge around the wood chips stopped them.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

Bigs propped her bike back up and placed his beside it.

“I’ll explain once everyone’s here,” I told them.

The twins climbed the ladder beside the swing, sitting side by side on the edge of the rattling plastic bridge.

Aidy arrived moments later. Harrison trailed behind her. Swap out his usual athletic wear for dressy casual, toss ten inches of height and a good sixty pounds of muscle onto him and it was the same well-worn sight we all knew. Harrison Shin, for as long as he’d lived in Cadence, had always been a clip behind my sister. As the two of them pedaled closer, I realized Harrison was riding my bike: a lemon-yellow Schwinn with a bumblebee sticker on the left handlebar.