This was a terrible idea.
The bicycle saddle pinched in places Ryan didn't want to think about. He shifted his weight to ease the pressure, but kept both feet where they belonged: on the ground. Lifting them up would mean having to pedal, having to steer, having to watch where he was going...having to think of a million different things at once.
And if he could ride a bike just by thinking about it, then this would be no big deal.
But to ride a bike, he had to actually ride a bike. That was why he was at the top of a windy hill on an overcast Tuesday afternoon. Like almost everything in his life, the practical was much tougher than the theory. That was just one of the many thousands of joys of having developmental dyspraxia.
Something like one in ten kids suffered from some form of the condition or another. Sure, for some of them, it was so mild that they didn't even notice.
But for others, it was debilitating. It was for those kids that he was here. To show them that this stupid disorder wouldn't hold any of them back. If Ryan Sinclair could, at 19 years old, learn to ride a bike, then so could kids a lot younger than him.
Okay. Pep talk done. Let's do this.
He twisted to look back at Grace, his nan. She held his phone in landscape, camera aimed at him. "Ready when you are, sweetheart," she said, the screen.
"Start recording." He licked his lips and plastered a wide grin on his face.
Nan gave a thumbs up.
"Hi, everyone!" Ryan waved at the camera. "Welcome back to 'Ryan's Life'. Today, I'm gonna do something that's terrified me since I was a kid: ice-skating." He paused, hoping his subscribers would be chuckling. "Seriously, though, riding a bike has scared me for years. I've never been able to get the hang of it, no matter how much my Nan tries. I wanted to make this video to show you how hard this is, even for grown-ups."
He looked away, eyeing his course down the steep path towards Graham, his nan's husband. Riding a bike wasn't the only difficult thing Ryan had to contend with today. But he wasn't going to explain Graham's weird desire to be his granddad to his subscribers. There were plenty of other videos online about dealing with strangers in the home.
Taking a deep breath, he turned back to Nan. "I've made plenty of videos about how I've managed to do something, but I've never shown the times I've failed. So..." He smiled, but worry weighed down the corners of his mouth. "So, today you get to see what happens when stuff doesn't work. Ready, Nan?"
Nan nodded over the top of his phone.
Ryan sat properly on the bike and adjusted his helmet. He licked his lips again. "Ready, Graham?" he called down the hill.
"Ready, son!" the reply echoed back.
Ryan ground his teeth and throttled the handlebars. "I'm not your son," he said under his breath so the camera and Nan wouldn't hear. Then, louder, he said, "Ready, Ryan? Ready, Ryan."
He pushed off. Legs splayed, he hurtled down the hill.
"Pedal, Ryan!" Nan shouted.
The pedals spun faster and faster. His feet couldn't find them. "C'mon!"
The tip of one trainer landed on a pedal. Yes! With one foot in position, getting the other would be easier.
At the bottom of the hill, Graham was waving his arms. "Steer, Ryan, steer!"
Ryan wrestled with the handlebars. The front wheel veered back toward the middle of the path. Still one leg trailed.
"Halfway, love!" Nan's voice was almost drowned by the rushing wind. "You're doing it!"
Ryan allowed himself a massive smile. He was doing it! He was actually riding a...
The wayward pedal slammed into the back of his leg. The entire bike jerked. The front wheel lifted, twisted and fell back to the path at an awkward angle. The bike pitched to the left, bucking Ryan to the right.
Eyes squeezed shut, he flew through the air. The path rushed to meet him. His helmet crashed against the rough ground, then his shoulder. He tumbled in a tangle of arms and legs until at last coming to a painful stop several yards away from his bike.
Footsteps ran toward him from either direction.
"You okay, son?"
Eyes still closed, Ryan counted back from ten to keep from saying something his nan wouldn't like. "Yeah, fine." He opened his eyes.
Nan and Graham stood over him. The phone was trained on him, recording every moment of his complete failure.
Nan pointed at the camera and motioned for him to say something.
He sighed and looked into the lens. "I reckon you all know how this feels." He groaned as he pushed himself up to a seated position. "But it's not just you. It's never just you. You're never alone. And if there's one thing I've learned, it's that you can't let this hold you back. You've got to get up, get back on the bike, and try again."
Wincing, he stood up, ignoring Graham's outstretched hand. "Let's go again." He limped toward the fallen bike.