Flash! Fiction by Peter McMillan - HTML preview

70

The Presence

I didn't know much about them. We'd only met three weeks before, a couple of miles north of campus on 147. One of the girls, Beth —

the cutest one — had a flat front tire and was steering her bike away from the road's edge. Her roommates had already topped the hill and were out of sight — a scene that was to be repeated over and over again on our four-day trip to D.C. along the canal.

I was no expert on bicycles. After all, I had a 10-speed racer to do a trail that was meant for mountain bikes. But I did know how to do minor repairs and got fast quickly.

Beth and Griff often rode ahead, leaving Abby, Lee and me to ride together. On the first day, after a two-day drive to get to the trail-head, I, myself, had taken off and left everyone behind. I was the odd man out and the drive had been suffocating. They all knew each other from some on-campus fellowship I'd never heard of.

Around the campfire that night and again during the Bible reading in the tent, my sense of 'not belonging' was exacerbated. It wasn't unfamiliar. I'd been in the Charismatic Movement in high school and knew what it felt like to belong, but not anymore. Now, enlightened, I was a skeptic. I was also alone.

After embarrassing myself the first day, I picked up the rear from then on, assisting whoever fell behind, and I got to where I could fix a flat or a broken spoke or a broken chain in under five minutes.

The rest of the time though, it was like an after-dinner bicycle ride through the park. In my arrogance, I'd kind of predicted this from the beginning, packing Woodward's new book on the Supreme Court, which, in addition to the identity I tried to project, I'd wanted to ready anyway before taking Con Law in the fall. I finished the book easily by Harper's Ferry.