Elowen

By evening, I had come to one very painful conclusion: every bike repair shop in this city was sharing a single, deeply unhelpful brain cell.

After calling shop number one, then three, then five, then ten, the response was a carbon copy across the board.

“Miss, honestly? Just buy a new one.”

I tightened my grip on my phone, pacing the length of the living room. “But you fix broken chains, right?”

“Yes.”

“And bent rims?”

“Sure.”

“Then why can’t you fix this one?”

The mechanic on the other end let out a heavy, long-suffering sigh. “Because whoever did that to your bike didn’t just break it, kid. They...