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landed on her ass.
     
    He went to her first, squatting at her side. “Are you okay?”
     
    “Yeah,” she sighed. “I’m not hurt. Except my ego.”
     
    Standing, he held out his hands. She took them, and he helped her to her feet. “No sweat. I told you everybody drops their bike. Just pick it back up and we’ll try again.”
     
    She walked over to the bike, her arms crossed over her chest, and then just stood there, staring.
     
    “Analisa? Okay?”
     
    “I don’t think so. I can’t do this. FUCK!” She kicked the bike, taking a good swing at it and landing with a solid clang.
     
    “Hey!”
     
    “Sorry. Sorry.” Spinning on her heel, she stormed off to the side and plopped down on the brick wall next to Nolan’s helmet.
     
    He rocked the bike up to its wheels—half an hour ago he might have shown off and deadlifted it, but he was too sore for that game now—and walked it back to the curb. Checking it over, he saw that the damage wasn’t much. Just a little dent and a few scratches.
     
    He stood the bike and went over to the girl, who was about as curled up as she could be. She wasn’t crying or anything—just folded over, her head almost touching her knees.
     
    “You sure you’re okay?”
     
    She looked up, and her expression was sad. “That was so scary. It was the scariest thing I’ve ever done. I jumped out of a fucking plane and wasn’t as scared as I just was. How is that possible? It’s so stupid! I’m gonna die—like soon . What is there left to be afraid of?”
     
    He squatted on the sidewalk in front of her and, not thinking about it, put his hands on her knees. “You jumped out of a plane?”
     
    She smiled a little. “Yeah. Tandem, but yeah. It was on my list. It was pretty cool.”
     
    Nolan was beyond impressed. “Well, first, jumping out of a plane is about the most metal thing I can think of. I don’t have the balls for that shit, so it you already did that, then I don’t think you have to worry about anybody thinking you’re chicken. And second, if you ask me, dying isn’t the scary thing. Hurting is the scary thing. What happened just now wouldn’t have killed you, but it could have hurt you. I get why you’d be scared of that. It’s a lot easier to die than it is to hurt.”
     
    Now her eyes got a little glittery, but still she didn’t cry. “You’re right. I’m most afraid of the hurt. And you just made that sound like it wasn’t backwards.”
     
    “I don’t think it is backwards.” He squeezed her knees and then dropped his hands, letting them dangle between his thighs. “Look. There’s no shame in not wanting to ride on your own.”
     
    “But riding a Harley is on my list! I have to finish my list! I have to!”
     
    Nolan wondered what it was like to know your time was short. Would he do what she was doing, and try to live everything all at once? It seemed to him like it took a special strength to demand to have your whole life no matter what. And maybe there was a kind of blessing in knowing the end was coming, knowing that you had to get a move on and get shit done.
     
    He smiled a little. Havoc had been in his life only a short while, but he knew that the man he considered his only father had grabbed life by the balls every day. That was what this girl was doing, too. He guessed it was what you did when you really thought you could go at any time.
     
    “You did ride a Harley. You rode out here with me.”
     
    For a second, she gaped at him, as if that hadn’t occurred to her. “That’s not what I meant, though, when I made my list.”
     
    “I’m not big on rules. And anyway, it’s your list. Seems like it can mean whatever you want it to mean. You said you did a tandem jump—that means you were strapped to a more experienced skydiver, right?”
     
    “Yeah…”
     
    “Was it on your list to do a tandem jump or just to jump out of an airplane?”
     
    She blinked.
     
    “You rode with me. Tandem. Seems to me that’s