Free Phoenix by Jeff Stone

“I see. You think by riding with me, we’ll become friends and I’ll help you go to college in the United States?”
    “I don’t know. Maybe. Even if you can’t help me or you decide that you don’t want to help me, so what? At least I’ll have a fun ride in the mountains and get to practice my English.”
    I shook my head. “You don’t understand. This is something that I have to do alone.”
    “Stop being so dramatic,” Hú Dié said. “You can’t do this alone. How are you supposed to accomplish anything if you barely even speak the language? I can be your interpreter. What have you got to lose?”
    “The answer is still no.”
    “What’s wrong?” she asked, growing feisty again. “Is it that you are afraid you won’t be able to keep up witha girl? Maybe you
should
be worried. I ride the mountains whenever I get the chance. I am good. Very good.”
    I took a deep breath and thought about what she was saying. Maybe I would be better off with her coming along. Beyond speaking the language and having knowledge of the roads and mountain terrain, she definitely seemed to know bikes. Equipment broke all the time on mountain trails. More than that, riding with a buddy was simply responsible mountain biking. Anything could happen out there. Just because she went along did not mean I had to tell her what I was up to.
    “Well?” Hú Dié pressed. “It’s getting late, and this is not a safe city after dark. I’ll tell you what—if you let me go with you tomorrow, you can sleep here in the shop tonight. I live upstairs with my father, and it will be easy enough for you and me to leave first thing in the morning from here. I will even throw in dinner tonight. You won’t find a better deal than that in this city. What do you say?”
    I closed my eyes and thought about the encounter I’d just had on the street. She was right. This city wasn’t safe, and I wouldn’t find a better deal anywhere.
    I decided to take a chance. After all, she was only a girl. I opened my eyes and nodded.
    And just like that, I had a new riding partner.
    The question was, how safe was
she
?

I spent the rest of the evening in the bike shop, toggling through screens on the GPS unit while Hú Dié cooked dinner upstairs. When she finally came down, I was so hungry I could have eaten scrap metal.
    Fortunately, I didn’t have to. She had made a huge bowl of pork wontons in chicken broth with fresh napa cabbage and sliced pickled ginger on the side. It was delicious. We ate with metal chopsticks while sitting side by side at a grease-streaked workbench strewn with bike parts. Pretty much an ideal dinner setting. When she wasn’t being feisty, Hú Dié was actually fun to be around. I even stopped getting that strange, nervous feeling when she was close to me.
    We talked some, and I learned that while she lived here with her father, her mother lived elsewhere. I didn’t ask why. Like me, she had no other family.
    Hú Dié’s father was out for the evening on business, and he didn’t make it home as she’d expected. We ended up eating the bowl of food she’d set aside for him, too. By the time we’d finished, my hunger was more than satisfied. I pushed our empty bowls aside and handed Hú Dié the GPS unit, showing her the route that PawPaw had laid out for me. Both kilometers and miles were displayed.
    “No problem,” she said after looking things over. “This route appears to be programmed primarily for travel by bus, but we will be riding bikes, so we can take some shortcuts.”
    “Really?” I asked.
    Hú Dié nodded. “I know roads through several small villages where buses don’t go. This route shows sixty miles to the trailhead, but I can cut it down to about forty-five. We should be able to make it to the trailhead in four or five hours at a moderate pace.”
    “What about the trail itself?”
    “It appears to be ten miles one way into the mountains. I have ridden out there several times, and we’re probably