Wind Therapy - A.J. Downey Page 0,72

down the hall to our room, shutting the door firmly and leaning against it, feeling like I was caught up on this runaway train.

Something was being done… so why was I so resistant suddenly?

I didn’t know. I was scared to analyze it too deeply. All I knew was that as awful as I was feeling, there was a part of me, deep down in the darkest pits, that was like yessss.

It was confusing, but I couldn’t think about it. I needed to get dressed. We were going, and maybe if I was there, he wouldn’t have to hurt Fernando who was angry with me. Who believed I was a liar and whose loyalty, understandably, remained with his father?

The ride took us north, through the underground tunnel, which was big, well-lit, white, and still so incredibly scary for some reason. There was this old movie with Sylvester Stallone about some kind of disaster in a tunnel like this, where the lights went out and people were trapped in their cars in the dark.

I vaguely remember watching it with my papa when I was small, before Mateo. It had been a weekend and he had been drinking his michelada which was cerveza mixed with clamato. I thought it was disgusting, the smell was just blech… but I missed that smell now because it reminded me of him before my world was plunged into chaos and darkness.

I was relieved when we burst out from the big tunnel, back under the wide blue skies with its faint brush strokes of high wispy white cloud. The sun was bright and a little punishing but the wind washing over us helped some with cooling us.

The ride was beautiful, regardless of the close tunnel and the high and somewhat muggy heat. I mean, it was quite a bit more humid than I was used to here, but it wasn’t an oppressive humidity. Rather, where the moisture hung in the air and the wind blew over the water, it was just a little bit cooler. Nice, and it got nicer still as we made the approach to the Aurora Bridge. Trees shaded the roadway from the worst of the sun, their broad green leaves rustling in the summer wind, making it several degrees cooler. The short reprieve from the punishing rays of the sun welcome and utterly refreshing until we hit the narrow lanes of the bridge and the world opened exponentially to either side.

The bridge took us over the Fremont Cut, a narrow body of water that was almost a roadway for boats and ships to come from the Puget Sound through the Ballard Locks to pass under the Aurora Bridge into Lake Union. I focused on our right, and the view through the suicide prevention bars of Lake Union, Gasworks Park was on the north end of the lake far down below with its rusting hulk of old machinery surrounded by manicured lawns. It looked particularly inviting and I wished we could go there, just me and Maverick, and sit on the big mound of grass built up there looking south across the lake at the Space Needle as the sun went down.

It seemed much preferable to where we were heading and what we were doing now.

In some ways, I hoped my cousin wasn’t there and this trip ended up being all for naught. Then maybe I could suggest going to the park and pretend none of this was even happening.

Alas, it didn’t pan out that way. Nothing ever really did in my favor, so why I thought this would be any different was beyond me.

We pulled into the left-hand turn lane in front of the used tire place somewhere past Green Lake but before 85th Street. The building was bright, obnoxiously, so. The main body of the building almost a traffic cone orange, the trim a blinding yellow around the windows, the door to the office and the single big garage bay door that was open on both ends, front and back, to have the ability to pull cars straight through.

The garage bay with its lift was empty and Maverick pulled right in, my heart sinking when Fernando stood up from a dirty red machine in the corner where he was putting a tire onto a rim.

Maverick cut the motor on the bike and leaned it, heeling down the kickstand while I jumped off.

“We don’t got no motorcycle tires, mister. You should have called first,” Fernando called out to us and I pulled the glasses