One elderly woman on the corner pressed her hand firmly over her heart as we passed. Another wiped tears from her eyes with her apron. Everywhere I looked, people were smiling. Everybody was waving.
And for the first time since the doctor uttered the word cancer, nobody was looking at me with suffocating pity.
They weren’t looking at a tragic, sick child fading away in a hospital bed. They were looking at a survivor. They were looking at someone who was incredibly strong. They were looking at someone who belonged to something much larger than herself.
The ride was not an epic, cross-country journey. It was just a slow, deliberate circuit around our sprawling suburban neighborhood. But as the autumn wind whipped past my visor and the rumble of a hundred engines vibrated through my bones, I desperately wished that single, perfect ride could stretch into eternity.
When we finally circled back and parked in front of our house, the motorcycles lined both sides of the street, boxing us in with protective steel. Dad killed the engine and carefully lifted me off the seat.
As my feet hit the pavement, a wave of applause erupted. The bikers clapped, hitting their gloved hands against their gas tanks. The neighbors joined in from their manicured lawns. A voice from across the street pierced the noise, shouting, “Keep fighting, Emily!”
