Walking to mail a package, I hear pebbles grinding under bike tires and step back to let a girl on a bicycle pass by. She’s about ten or so, and she shakes her head and slows. I step back on the grass and tell her to go ahead. She swoops around me, wordlessly, then cuts out from the sidewalk to the road.

We’re along a busy road, but for this moment, there’s no traffic. She heads down the center of the road, crossing back and forth over those the double yellow lines. She doesn’t wear a helmet on her dark curls, and she’s riding a beat up old bicycle. She pedals quickly down the hill, the wind lifting her hair.

In a world so burdened by fear, encumbered by care, this girl flies down the pavement, heads into the parking lot of a storage facility, and disappears.