Chapter Text
“Is there a park I can go to?” Ashley asked her father one day over dinner.
He paused mid-eating his soup, the spoon halfway to his mouth, as he just looked at her, confused. “Pardon?” he asked, setting his utensil down.
“Is there a park nearby that I can go to? By myself? Or with guards nearby, I guess. Just somewhere with a path. I wanna ride my bike,” she explained. Her father’s puzzled brow smoothed out.
“So that’s what this is about,” President Graham said, understanding.
Ashley Graham was an athletic kid. When she was really little she played on the jungle gym in the backyard and climbed the few trees they had. At elementary school she’d climb to the top of the playground, swinging her legs over bars that were meant for hands and burning skin on the metal during hot days. In middle school she joined the girl’s basketball team after learning she had a knack at keepaway and gifted hand-eye coordination. She continued playing in high school, until her father won the presidential election and she was plucked out of school and stuck in the White House. The boring, professional White House with no one to play with and nothing to do. Sure, there was a basketball court, tennis court, and pool, but there was barely anyone to play basketball or tennis with, and the last time she’d went for a dip in the pool, paparazzi had flashed photos of her in her swimsuit across various gossip magazines, so she wasn’t very fond of swimming there.
“There’s spin bikes in the workout room,” her father pointed out.
Ashley frowned. “That’s not the same.”
It wasn’t. Not by a long shot. Ashley didn’t want to ride her bike to work out her leg muscles, she wanted to ride because the wind in her face felt soothing and fun. She wanted to ride because there was a sense of accomplishment from getting somewhere when her feet struggled to push the pedals up a steep hill, not because she’d set a certain difficulty rating. She wanted to hear the sounds of the neighborhood, or the forest, or the city, or the park, because they all sounded so different. She wanted to listen to music in her iPod shuffle because it felt like she was in a music video, not because it was the only way to drown out the sounds of droning lightbulbs in the workout room.
“Lots of things are different now,” her father said. “I know it’s been hard letting go of some things this past year, but you’ve been so brave about it so far.”
“I wanna ride my bike,” Ashley said sharply. Her father frowned at her.
“I wasn’t aware you still had your bike here,” he muttered. In truth, she didn’t. But she was the president’s daughter, she could have a bike to call her own easily. It could be any color she liked. Purple, like the tricycle she started out on when she was a kid that had a cute hand basket and streamers. Blue, like the one she got when she was older, that her mother taught her how to ride. Green, like the one she started riding to school every day, one her dad insisting on her locking up with two bike locks “just in case.” Red like her mom’s bike, that made Ashley sad to look at now. They used to go for rides together before she…
“Isn’t there somewhere I could go?” Ashley asked, crossing her arms, a sign that she was going to be stubborn about this until she got what she wanted. Her parents had raised her to be a good little girl, but her father’s hard-headedness had rubbed off on her.
Her father rubbed his temples and sighed. “I suppose we could rent out a place if you-”
“No.” Ashley glared at him. “I just want to be able to ride my bike like a normal person.”
Graham sighed. “Well you’re not a normal person, Ashley. You’re my daughter. You can’t just do whatever you want anymore.”
Ashley glared, a reflexive move for whenever she felt sad. “You’re so unfair,” she growled at him.
“You’re excused,” the president of the United States commanded. Ashley just glared even harder. He was her dad, not her boss. He couldn’t order her around the same way he did everyone else. Still, not wanting to make too much of a scene, she huffed and got up from the table, stomping back to her room while two security agents followed in silence.
She slammed her door and collapsed on her bed. Crisp white linens, recently washed. White comforter on top of white sheets in the white walls of the White House. Too much fucking white in here. Not enough color. Ashley missed her old bedroom, walls painted bright pink and green like watermelon candy, comforter a softer green with a flower pattern. It was a little childish, but Ashley refused to let go of it after her mom died. They’d picked out the comforter and pillowcases together, her mom had painted the walls for her, Ashley wasn’t about to let it go so her dad could paint over them with white and pretend it had never been there.
If he owned a bike, it’d probably be white too, Ashley thought with a grimace.
Olivia Graham loved color. When Ashley scraped her knee while first learning to ride a bike without training wheels, her mother had a band-aid that was silver and shimmered like a rainbow in the sunlight to patch her up. She allowed Ashley to decorate her bike with whatever stickers she wanted. Ashley missed those stickers. Once after school Ashley had won an unofficial bike race against another kid by several seconds, earning her the nickname “Ash the Flash.” One of her friends gave her a sticker of The Flash’s lightning bolt logo which Ashley proudly stuck to her bike helmet until it fell off.
Ashley hugged her white pillow to her chest and shut her eyes. She transported herself back to her home street, peaceful suburbs on a hot summer’s day. She was wearing shorts and a t-shirt with a grass stain and well worn sneakers. Her hair was still brown and in a high ponytail her mom had done for her. It stuck out of the top of her bike helmet. Determined fingers gripped the rubber handles of her bicycle as her feet pumped, sending her forward faster than running ever could. There was a short downhill up ahead. Ashley kept herself steady on the sidewalk. That tree with the low-hanging branch. Ashley ducked under it to avoid another cut on her cheek from it. An uphill section. Ashley used the extra speed she’d gained until she was forced to pedal the rest of the way. Another downhill. The wind rushed past her face and cooled her warm cheeks. The wind sounded in her ears, covering up tweets of birds and cars driving by and people calling her name-
“Ashley!” her father said loudly. The girl’s eyes shot open, snapping her out of her daydream. She frowned, but answered the door obediently.
“Yes sir?” she asked, staring up at her father. He sighed and hunched down so they were more eye-to-eye, something he thought made her feel better but actually made her want to sock him in the nose.
“I’m sorry for being so harsh, sweetheart. You’re a kid, and you deserve to have fun.” Ashley folded her arms, closing herself off, but she didn’t scowl at him. “If you want, I can see if there’s any triathlons you could sign up for-”
“No,” Ashley said firmly. “No swimming.” Her father winced.
“You saw those magazines, then,” he sighed. “A duathlon, then?”
Ashley sighed too. He wasn’t getting it. “I don’t want to compete in anything. I don’t care about competition. I just want to ride my bike.” Her frustration with his obtuseness was starting to boil. “Why can’t you understand that?”
“Okay, okay.” Her father held his hands up in surrender. “If it really means that much to you, sweetheart, then I’ll find somewhere in a safe neighborhood that’s an open area where you can be monitored. I can get you a bike with a tracker on it for extra protection, if you’d like.”
Ashley wouldn’t like that at all, but they could talk about it later. “You mean it? You’ll let me ride my bike?” she asked hopefully.
“Safely,” her father emphasized, but she was already hugging him anyway.
“Thanks daddy,” she said gratefully. It would do for now.