When we were kids, Ruby loved to pedal at the back of our flock, blasting music from an iPod in a cup attached to her handlebars, always screaming the lyrics louder than the singer. Between choruses, she’d beg us to ride all the way to the southeastern edge of Cadence, where the train tracks disappeared into weeds and a handmade sign read THE POINT OF NO RETURN. Rumor had it, there was quicksand beyond the sign. We never went far enough to know for sure. Ruby always asked anyway. It was enough for her to get us onto our bikes for a long ride.

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.