Chapter 7 - The Display Window
At nine o'clock on Saturday morning, the doors of Henson’s Sporting Goods swung open.
The morning air was crisp, and the street was relatively quiet as Evan and I walked up to the large glass display window. There it sat, mounted on a raised metal stand under a bright spotlight: the matte black frame, the vivid orange lettering, the high-performance disc brakes, and the reinforced mountain trail tires.
The exact bicycle Evan had stared at for over two hundred days.
Evan stood in front of the glass, his hands tucked deep into his hoodie pockets. He didn't step forward. He just looked at it, almost as if he were afraid that touching it would make it vanish like a dream.
"Go on inside," I smiled, nudging his shoulder gently.
The store manager, a silver-haired man named Mr. Henson who had seen Evan staring through the window for months, smiled warmly as we walked in.
"Well, if it isn't my most patient customer," Mr. Henson said, coming out from behind the counter. "I was starting to think somebody else was going to buy that black bike before you made up your mind."
"Is it... still available?" Evan asked softly.
"I kept it in the window just for you, kid," Mr. Henson said with a wink. "I knew one day you’d come through that door."
Mr. Henson wheeled the bicycle off the display stand and brought it to the center of the showroom floor. The matte finish caught the indoor light perfectly.
Evan approached it slowly. He reached out a hand—his palm still slightly rough from weeks of dish soap—and touched the handlebars. He squeezed the brake levers, feeling the crisp, immediate tension of the hydraulic lines.
"Try it out," I encouraged, tears threatening to spill over my eyelashes.
May you like
Evan swung his leg over the frame. It was a perfect fit. His knees had plenty of clearance, his back was straight, and for the first time in six months, his shoulders were completely relaxed.
He looked at me over the handlebars, a smile breaking across his face that was so bright, so unburdened, so full of pure thirteen-year-old wonder, that it felt as though the dark shadow of the last three years had finally dissolved forever.
