Being McKenzie Prince ✔

Dear Diary

I was eight years old when I got my first bicycle.

Okay.

To be honest when I borrowed my first bicycle without permission.

I was madly in love with that bicycle. It was electric blue and had a sticker of Goku from Dragon Ball Z on the seat. On the weekends I would spend hours riding my bicycle. Up and down, left and right, across the street. As I would ride the bicycle Skye would stand next to the house and watch me to make sure that I did not end up hurting myself.

Where most kids had their mother and father to watch over them, I had my brother. I did not care though, it made me feel kind of special.

He was always protective of me.

A few months after I got the bicycle my mother started to bring one of her boyfriends to the house. My mother had this habit of using men as if though they were pairs of shoes, depending on what was the latest fashion that season. One month it would be Nike and the other month it would be Puma.

This specific guy was called Kasper.

Skye and I would always sing the theme song to Casper the Friendly Ghost behind his back. He was anything but friendly though. He was a part of a local gang that specialized in smuggling and selling drugs. He had a bunch of tattoos and he was covered in muscles. Every time he was at our house him and my mother would lay down in the sitting room and smoke weed and drink beer. He always had money with him and his green eyes had this wild edge to them.

He scared people.

He scared us.

One day I was busy riding my bicycle while Kasper and my mother were in the house. Suddenly we heard my mother and Kasper yelling at each other. Kasper sounded furious. I almost fell off my bicycle when I heard something break in the house.

I clearly remember how Skye was smiling one second and the next he looked really scared. He looked at me and then he ran into the house. It became eerily quiet for a few seconds and then everything became immensely worse. As I heard everyone yelling at each other I just kept riding my bicycle up and down. I could feel my throat closing up.

Something bad was going to happen.

Even though my brother has proclaimed over and over again that he hates my mother, he is the first person who will stand up for her whenever one of her boyfriend's got out of hand. It is almost as if though it is something natural in him. He hates it when one person hurts another person. He hates violence.

After a few minutes Kasper walked out of the house holding tightly onto Skye's left upper arm. He was busy shaking and pulling Skye while he shouted at him. Skye pulled his face in pain.

A few of the neighbors peaked outside from their windows. A few random people stopped as they walked passed. They did nothing.

He yelled loud enough for the whole neighborhood to hear. He yelled obscenities and a string of swear words. In the middle of the pulling and shoving he started to hit my brother.

I lost it.

He was hurting my brother and I wanted him to stop.

By the time Kasper had pulled Skye out onto the driveway I began to peddle faster and faster. I went straight for Kasper. It would have been amazing and heroic to say that I saved my brother, by driving into Kasper like some hero on my small little bicycle, but sadly the opposite happened. My left foot got stuck and I lost control of the bicycle. It went flying out from underneath me and went straight towards both Skye and Kasper.

The bicycle did strike them, but it did not work the way I thought it would. Kasper walked away with only a few scratches. Skye on the other hand ended up breaking his arm.

My attempt at being a hero thus failed miserably.

It was one of the first times we ended up in the hospital but it was definitely not the last.

In the end Kasper got away with beating my brother because he and my mother made an excuse saying that Skye had gotten into a bicycle accident, which was why he had bruises. Even after my brother tried to rescue her, she still turned around and took Kasper's side and corroborated his lie.

That afternoon after we got back from the hospital I took my bicycle and I threw it on top of the trash heap. It was that day I realized that my mother could not care less about what happens to either my brother or I. It was that day that I realized that my only family is Skye and that we should protect each other, because that is all that matters.

Kasper left my mother a few weeks later and ran off with some flooze with the name Lola. My mother went into her usual fit of depression afterwards. She locked herself in her room. It took her a total of two weeks before she could function normally.

After the two weeks she pulled herself together and she pretended like nothing happened.

We packed our bags and went on a new adventure. At least that was her explanation. That is my mother for you. She has always been a natural at pretending like everything is fine, when things are anything but.

Till this day every time I see a bicycle I think of that day.

I made up my mind that day that I would never ride a bicycle again. Everyone always makes fun of me because I can't ride a bicycle, if they only knew the truth.