Chapter 8: Big Girls Don't Cry

ELLA

Ella woke up the next morning around eight-thirty and emerged from her bedroom just as Sebastian was doing the same down the hall. The tall boy was wearing a faded Dalton Academy lacrosse t-shirt and rubbing his eyes, still tired with sleep, as he opened his bedroom door and stepped out into the hallway. His hair was sticking up in every direction.

It still took Ella by surprise sometimes, seeing somebody go in and out of Artie's old bedroom regularly, even though Sebastian and Harrison had moved into the Abrams' house close to four months ago. The bedroom had just been vacant for so long that it was taking some getting used to.

As was having to share the upstairs bathroom with another person, after getting a taste of the luxury of having her own bathroom whenever Griffin was away at school over the last year or so. Ever since Sebastian had moved in back in early December, they fought like two cats in a bag where the bathroom was concerned– especially in the mornings before school. Ella, a typical teenage girl, liked the extra time to apply her mascara and curl her hair to look presentable, whereas Sebastian had a six-step skincare routine that took forever. On top of that, Ella was starting to grow concerned about the love affair he was having with his reflection in the mirror.

Weekends tended to be a bit more relaxed on that front, though, with neither Ella nor Sebastian being in too much of a hurry. That didn't mean that every morning was conflict-free, though.

When Sebastian finished rubbing his eyes and recognized Ella's presence, his eyebrows shot up in surprise before he quickly began scurrying down the hall.

"Oh, no you don't!" Ella shouted as she chased him, but his legs were longer, making his strides twice as big as hers. She slammed right into the wooden bathroom door as he closed it on her face. Hearing the click of the lock, she banged her fist on the door in defeat.

"Damn it!" She huffed, sinking down against the wall until she was sitting on the floor. "Don't take forever, Seb!"

Thankfully, he didn't, but that was probably just because the day would be spent only in the company of the siblings. They weren't important enough to warrant a meticulous hair coif. Ella stuck her tongue out at Sebastian as she pushed past him into the steamed-up bathroom and he exited, freshly showered with a smug expression on his face.

She showered too, and didn't even bother to blow dry her hair for the same reason why Sebastian hadn't put an extensive effort into his appearance that day: a day spent with the boys was as casual as it gets.

Ella came downstairs to find Sebastian standing alone in the kitchen, the door of the refrigerator wide open, looking uninspired as he peered inside.

Griffin's bedroom door had been open when she passed it to head downstairs, but there was no sign of him. This wasn't particularly surprising, since Ella knew he liked to spend his Saturday mornings at the gym. If he planned on lifting that day, sometimes Artie would tag along, but Ella knew he was still home, seeing that his bedroom door was still closed. He hadn't felt well upon returning to the house last night after night one of their sibling bonding weekend. The four of them had planned on watching a movie together in the living room, but Artie had gone to bed right when they got home. For him to sleep until nine o'clock was almost unheard of, but Ella knew that his rest was important, especially when he wasn't feeling his best.

"There is no food in this house," Seb lamented, closing the refrigerator door with a thud. "I'm having, like, flashbacks to when my dad and I lived on our own."

Ella knew all too well what it was like when fathers were in charge of doing the grocery shopping. Whenever she visited her dad in Akron, the food options were dismal. He almost exclusively ate takeout. She guessed that's what it had been like for Sebastian and Harrison before they'd moved in.

"We could go out?" Ella suggested with a shrug. "There's a breakfast place that isn't too far. It's just around the corner. We could take the bikes."

Sebastian looked at her like she was crazy, and she had a feeling it wasn't just because it was March and still a little chilly outside.

"Oh, don't look at me like that."

"I could just drive?"

"Come on, you've never biked anywhere before?" She challenged, not about to let her newest sibling take the easy way out by driving. She, however, was no stranger to the bike. You had to do what you had to do when you wanted to go somewhere on your own but were still two years out from getting your license. "Oh, yeah, I'm sorry, I forgot. You're too cool to ride a bicycle because you drive a freakin' Range Rover that cost your daddy seventy-five K."

She must have hit him where it hurt, pointing out his sense of entitlement like that, because after a quick self-check to ensure that his pride was still intact, Sebastian seemed to be considering her idea.

"I haven't ridden a bike since I was little," He said. "I don't have one to ride."

"Griffin's got one you can borrow," Ella informed him. "He's at the gym. He's not gonna be missing it. Come on."

She waved him over her shoulder and headed towards the garage, leaving Sebastian no choice but to follow, unless he wanted to assemble his own breakfast, making do with whatever scraps of food he could find in the kitchen.

Their house had a three-car garage, but one bay was used for storage, leaving only two spaces to be shared by the five drivers in the family. During the warmer months, it was always a fight for a spot in the garage, but in the winter, it was a spoken rule that one of the bays belonged to Artie, thereby saving him from the struggle of trying to transfer in and out of his car in the snow and freezing temps. Ella knew that the family's garage was a lot cleaner than many of her friends' garages, simply because Artie needed to have enough room to be able to get around.

The bicycles were in the storage bay, leaning up against the wall beside old baseball equipment, cheer mats, Artie's old chair he'd outgrown that sat beneath a protective tarp, and a tall toolbox (though Ella had never seen Harrison actually fix anything himself– he seemed to always call in professionals to do whatever job that needed to be done). Digging around in a box of soccer balls and basketballs, Ella uncovered two helmets and handed one to Sebastian. She could see the apprehension appear on his face again as he turned the helmet over in his hands.

"Come on, it's really not so bad," Ella told him. "There's that saying, 'It's just like riding a bike', for a reason. You don't just forget how to do it. Even Artie could probably describe to you how to ride, and he was the last kid on the block to figure out how to ride a two-wheeler."

The corner of Sebastian's mouth twitched up at that, and she heard the way he blew air out through his nostrils in a small laugh. Ella took it as a sign to keep going with hopes that it would ease her future step-brother's unexpected anxiety about going on a bike ride with her.

"I'm serious. It took him until he was, like, eight," Ella said, and now she was trying to suppress a smile too, as she put her helmet on and buckled it around her chin. "And as a reward for finally learning to ride, my parents took him to Walmart and let him choose whatever bike he wanted. He chose this cool blue and silver bike and he rode it all summer long, from dawn to dusk."

Sebastian followed her lead by strapping his helmet around his chin as well and taking the bike by the handlebars as he followed Ella out into the driveway. Ella mounted her bike and set off down the sidewalk, glancing briefly over her shoulder as Sebastian set off after her. He was wobbly at first, but once he straightened out and found his center of balance, his eyebrows shot up at how easy it was. Ella grinned, letting the satisfaction of knowing she had been right (yet again) set in.

When he'd caught up to her and they were biking side by side, she continued telling the story she'd started in the garage.

"One thing about me is that because I was the only sister growing up, I had a lot of girly things, of course, but I also got a lot of hand-me-downs from my brothers," Ella said. "So, naturally, when I outgrew my first bike, I moved onto the next size one we already owned, which happened to be Artie's. After he got hurt, his bike had sat in the garage, collecting dust, for the last few years. Needless to say, he was really upset about that at first…"

Akron, Ohio

July 2005

The day had come. Ella had officially outgrown her pink Barbie-themed bike with the multi-colored streamers hanging off of the handlebars. It was a sad day, because– aside from the dolls and dresses– this bike was one of the few things she had that was actually hers. It hadn't belonged to one of her brothers previously, and that's what she loved most about it. Ella had naïvely hoped that this bike would last her forever, but thanks to the first-grade growth spurt she'd just had, her knees were nearly hitting the handlebars as she pedaled now.

"Hey, El, I think that bike's getting a little small for you, Princess," Art Abrams observed as he watched his three kids play in the driveway of his new bachelor pad.

The divorce between him and Nancy had been finalized a few months earlier, and he'd relocated to Akron to be closer to his job in Cleveland. 14-year-old Griffin, 11-year-old Artie, and six-nearly-seven-year-old Ella had started spending the weekends at his place as soon as the renovations to make the house accessible were complete.

Ella pouted and looked down at her beloved bike. Sure, sometimes she felt like she was hunched over as she rode, or that her legs were coming closer to her chest than they had in the past, but that didn't mean that she wanted a new bike!

"I think we have another one around here somewhere that you can use…" Art said, disappearing into the garage to go look. Ella hopped off of her bike, abandoning it in the driveway to follow him.

"Aha!" Art said, beginning to lift a blue bike– that was a size bigger than the one Ella was currently using– off of the wall. "I'll have to get out my tools and take the training wheels off of your current one and attach them to this one before you can ride it, but this should do the trick. Here, take a seat, let's see how it looks."

Art held the bike steady as Ella climbed onto it. It was definitely bigger than her current one, but it wasn't nearly as girly. Just when she was about to voice these concerns, Griffin spoke up.

"But Dad… That's Artie's bike," Griffin– who had been playing basketball with his brother– pointed out in a hushed voice as the realization dawned on all of them at once.

Everyone grew quiet, and Ella was brave enough to steal a glance at Artie, whose attention was laser-focused on the blue bike. His lower lip began to tremble as he forcefully threw the ball that had been sitting in his lap in Griff's direction, before swiftly unlocking his brakes, pivoting hard, and pushing up the ramp and into the house without a word, leaving everyone else silent in his wake.

"Oof," Sebastian said with a shake of his head as he and Ella reached the coffee shop that Ella had led them to. "Poor Artie. I bet that was really hard for him, to watch your dad just give you his bike like that."

Ella nodded as they dismounted their bikes and left them by the bike rack outside. She was proud that Seb had managed to ride the whole mile or so from their house without much complaining or wiping out on the sidewalk. This was their first time hanging out just the two of them, and she had to admit, she kind of liked the guy. Their senses of humor aligned, and she thought he fit easily into their family dynamic.

Ella unbuckled her helmet and hung it off of the handlebar of her bike and opened the door, holding it open for Seb. The warmth of the café felt nice on her pink cheeks, and the aroma of freshly brewed coffee and tasty breakfast sandwiches filled her nose.

"There were an awful lot of hard days for him, emotionally, back then. A lot more than he has now, that's for sure," Ella acknowledged, continuing their conversation. "So, of course, the day his little sister was big enough to take claim over his beloved bike was one of those days. By the time this happened, he was, like… three years post-injury? Almost? I don't know."

They reached the front of the line just then, and Ella ordered herself a hot chocolate and a bagel from the barista, as Sebastian opted for a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich and a hot latte with a double-shot of espresso (Ella was always impressed-but-concerned as to how Sebastian could operate on so much caffeine). Sebastian pulled out his Amex Platinum card and covered their order. They found a table for two by the window, and Ella picked up the story right where she left off, without missing a beat.

"Anyway, by the time I was big enough to ride his bike, almost everything was 'back to normal'. Because, I mean, where there's a will, there's a way, and Artie adapted to his limitations. He figured out ways to do pretty much everything he wanted to do, with some modifications here and there. Today, there aren't a crazy amount of things that he could do before the accident that he can't do now. The list is small, but, of course, riding a bike is one of those things. I know he still misses it. He's talked about getting a hand cycle someday, but they're just so expensive and not covered by insurance…"

Sebastian's eyebrows were furrowed together in thought, and Ella could see the wheels in his mind turning. She knew he'd never had to think twice about money before, and truthfully, for the most part, she hadn't had to either. Her parents both worked full-time, high-paying jobs, and their family was well-off, but Ella also grew up aware that being disabled was expensive, and that the thing called 'insurance' didn't pay for everything Artie needed. She'd spent enough time in the waiting rooms of hospitals and specialists' offices to have picked up on that. When you've grown up overhearing your mother on the phone, arguing with the insurance company that Artie's physical therapy was, in fact, necessary for his health, it's not something you forget easily.

"That was the last of the big emotional breaks he had concerning the things he couldn't do. He was super upset and cried that night, and Dad had to bribe him with Chinese take-out to get him to come out of the bedroom and eat dinner with the family, but by the time the next day came around, he had turned a new leaf. It was actually his idea that I should learn how to ride his old bike without training wheels at all," Ella remembered, smiling at the memory. "He enlisted Griff to help him out, and my brothers dedicated the entire next day to teaching me."

"Ella! Today's the day you're going to learn to ride a two-wheeler!" Artie exclaimed, rolling down the collapsible metal ramp which covered the stairs that his father always set up whenever he came to visit.

Artie coasted to a stop when he reached where Ella was kneeling on the walkway, decorating it with sidewalk chalk, doodling rainbows and shooting stars.

"Huh?" She asked, glancing up at him.

Even Griffin, who was shooting baskets in the driveway, had turned around and flashed Artie a confused expression.

"Yup!" Artie said enthusiastically. He seemed to be overcompensating his excitement to make up for his meltdown the day before. "You'll be seven soon, it's about time you learned!"

"Hey, you were eight, remember?" Griffin teased. "She's still got a year and change before she surpasses your record as the oldest training wheels user in Ohio."

"Shut it, Griff," Artie grumbled getting momentarily annoyed with the antics of his older brother before turning back to Ella. "We're gonna teach you to ride! Me and Griff are!"

"Whoa, whoa. We are?" Griffin asked, holding up a hand and wondering when he agreed to be a part of this.

"Yes, we are," Artie replied calmly. "El's just got this awesome new bike that she needs to learn to ride, and who better to teach her than her big brothers?"

Ella felt a smile spread across her face as Artie said this. She'd been feeling a bit guilty, herself, since the bike fiasco. She didn't like seeing Artie sad and didn't want to take his bike if he didn't want her to. Hence, why she'd opted to chalk up the walkway this morning instead of riding. But the night of sleep had seemed to change Artie's outlook, and now, he was smiling and patting his lap, inviting her to come sit, the way he knew she loved to.

She didn't have to be told twice, so she shoved the yellow piece of chalk she was holding back into the bucket and wiped her dusty hands on her skirt before climbing into Artie's lap and resting her head on his shoulder. He held her close, and the feeling of his gloved hands on her back let her know that he wasn't upset anymore and that he really did want to help teach her to ride it.

"You're almost getting too big for this," Artie commented with a laugh as Ella wrapped her arms around his neck and he began to push them toward the garage where their dad had left the bike the day before. Ella's long legs were nearly getting in the way of Artie's ability to push his wheels.

Their dad hadn't mounted the bike back up on the wall yet, and it was left leaning up against the side, near Ella's current bike with the training wheels. Griffin had followed Ella and Artie into the garage and taken hold of the handlebars and steered it out into the driveway as Ella climbed off of Artie's lap and reached for her purple helmet (she was very happy that at least she got to keep her girly helmet, even though she was moving on to her brother's old bike).

"This may take a few tries before you get the hang of it, and you might fall down a few times," Artie warned Ella as he fastened her helmet around her chin, clicking the buckle into place. "But I don't want you to give up, okay? You can do it, I know you can."

Ella nodded vigorously. Just like with gymnastics, she was determined to succeed because she didn't want to let him down. Artie's belief in her lit a fire inside her belly that she couldn't describe.

"Okay, El, hop on," Griff said, gesturing to the seat of the bike as Ella gingerly sat, peeking warily at Artie as butterflies began to swarm inside of her. Artie gave her a thumbs up, which calmed them a little.

"I'm going to hold onto one of the handlebars and the back of the seat like this for the first couple of times," Griffin told her, standing to her left and demonstrating how he planned to spot her. "Just pretend like I'm not here, okay? Find your center of balance and keep pedaling. Okay, you ready?"

Ella nodded as she chewed on her lower lip. This was beginning to sound a lot harder than she'd anticipated it would be, but she was determined to try.

"Attempt number one in three, two, one…" Griffin counted down before Ella held her breath and lifted her feet off the driveway, beginning to pedal.

It went smoothly at first, and for a second, she thought that all of her worries may have been for naught. Then, Griffin– who had been running alongside her– let go. He'd been doing the majority of the work to keep her balanced, she'd quickly realized, as she felt herself leaning too far to one side and tumbled onto the driveway.

Artie and Griff both gasped and came hurrying over to her to see if she was alright, both probably silently willing her not to cry and alert their dad inside because then they would definitely be in some sort of trouble.

"Are you alright?" Griffin asked, immediately kneeling beside her and examining her knee as it began to bleed and quickly glancing over his shoulder toward the house.

Ella nodded, not fazed in the slightest by her bloody leg. It was instances exactly like these while growing up with two big brothers that had made her so tough. She always wanted to prove that she could hang out with them, and she never wanted to appear weak.

"I think I almost had it," Ella told the boys, as they were both still sighing with relief that she wasn't too hurt. "I want to try again."

Attempts two, three, and four went pretty similarly: things would be great at first, but right when she thought she might be getting the hang of it, Griffin would let go and she'd get all wobbly until she inevitably crash-landed on the grass or put her foot down to catch herself just in time. By the fifth attempt, her morale was getting low, but she'd promised Artie that she wouldn't give up. He seemed to sense her hesitancy, however.

"How about I stay alongside you on your right side, okay? Like a brother sandwich," He offered, before gently encouraging: "Pretend like you're on a balance beam and don't want to fall off. Squeeze your tummy. Just believe in yourself, Ella, you'll get it. You're so, so close."

Artie had a knack for using his words to verbally describe the way he wanted things done, since he couldn't physically demonstrate it himself. He was a natural teacher and was able to make difficult tasks easier using only his robust vocabulary.

Griffin set Ella's bike back up again and she climbed on. The determined look in her eye was complimented well by the pink shirt and skirt she was wearing. Her hair was usually left unruly when they were in Akron– as her father didn't know how to do hair as well as her mother does– but Artie had recently taught himself to fishtail braid from some instructions he'd found in one of their mom's magazines. That was the reason Ella's hair stayed put under her helmet and out of her eyes today. Her knees and palms were bloody and grass-stained, but she was hell-bent on succeeding.

The fifth time was the charm, as both brothers worked alongside their little sister. Griffin guided her until she felt steady, while Artie pushed on his wheels as fast as his arms would carry him, beside Ella the whole way.

She wobbled for only a second before tightening her belly as Artie had advised her. Pretending she was on a balance beam, she continued to ride the entire length of the driveway as if she'd been doing it her entire life.

When she reached the mailbox, she dropped one foot down, casually stopping before turning back to face her stunned brothers who erupted into cheers and gave each other high fives, for their teamwork had paid off. The hot July sun beat down on her face as she beamed back at their celebration.

Victory, Ella thought proudly.