The alley was never the place you’d expect magic to happen. People avoided it. It was narrow, dirty, and somehow always colder than it should’ve been, even on days when the sun made a half-hearted attempt to warm the concrete. It was the kind of place where things weren’t quite right—flickers of light from the streetlamps, too much shadow in corners that shouldn’t exist, the occasional low hum of something mechanical, like a forgotten engine deep within the building. The alley seemed to know something the rest of the world didn’t, like it had been around long enough to see the patterns, the failed attempts, the slow decay of promises. And today, on this Sunday, it had a particular kind of gravity to it.
Manny stood there beside his son, the bike gleaming in a fitful sun that threatened to collapse under its own weight. One hand on the handlebars, one hand on the seat. He’d taken the training wheels off. Of course, that was the plan, wasn’t it? Get him on the bike, get him to move. But this wasn’t just a simple bike ride. This was some sort of strange, quiet microcosm of the world—a little black hole in the corner of the universe where all of Manny's doubts and fears collided, where past and future merged, where everything could either fall into place or go terribly wrong. And yet—nothing. There were no bystanders, no cheers from the sidelines, just the distant clatter of metal against stone and the smell of trash from behind a rotting dumpster.
"Alright," Manny said, his voice carrying a tremor. "We’ll give it a shot, but if it doesn’t happen today, we’ll try again another time." A moment of preemptive defeat, but a kind of protective shield, a way of navigating the inevitable disappointment that always seemed to linger just beyond the horizon. Maybe it was genetic. His father had always been the same way: soft-spoken, hopeful, but with an ever-present awareness that things didn’t always work out as planned.
And so it began: the attempt, the wobbling, the doubts creeping in from the edges of Manny's mind. His hands were steady but unsure, holding on to the seat and the handlebars as if by some strange alchemy he could will the world into submission. But no. This wasn’t about control, was it? Because what happened next was something completely out of his hands.
There was a moment—a fleeting moment, more of a sensation than a thing—that passed between them, between the bike and the boy. And suddenly, his son was flying. There was no other way to describe it. Manny didn’t have a word for it, not in that instant. But the boy was on his way, moving, gliding past the detritus of a city that had long since lost its sense of purpose. And Manny stood there, hands empty, knowing that for reasons he couldn’t even begin to comprehend, the universe had simply decided to give them both a break.
The air in the alley, still thick with the dust of a hundred failed attempts, had shifted in some inexplicable way. The boy was gone—past the garbage bins, past the edges of reality itself. And Manny, with his hands still tingling as if they had held something precious, let the alley collapse back into its usual quiet, unsure whether anything had really changed, or whether this would all vanish, like a forgotten dream. The boy, for his part, didn’t look back.
