“Freedom. You’re in control. You decide where to go. Nobody owns you.”
She understood that metaphor. “Can you teach me to ride?”
On her nineteenth birthday, Macy called me. “I’m ready.”
I taught her on a small Honda. She was terrified at first. Then determined. Then joyful.
“I’m flying,” she said after her first solo ride. “I’m actually flying.”
She got her license. Bought her own bike with money from her part-time job. Started riding to campus. To therapy. To the safe house where she now volunteered, helping other girls like her.
“I’m going to be a social worker,” she told me. “The right kind. The kind who actually protects kids.”
“You’ll be good at it.”
“Because I know what it’s like to need saving and have everyone look away?”
“Because you know what it’s like to be saved by someone who didn’t look away.”
She still rides. Has her own Harley now. Sportster. Purple. Covered in stickers about trafficking awareness.
We ride together sometimes. Her and me and a few other club members. Sometimes other survivors join us. Women who’ve escaped. Who’ve healed. Who ride to remember they’re free.
Last month, we organized a ride. “Macy’s Run for Freedom.” Two hundred bikers. Raised fifty thousand dollars for trafficking victim services.
At the end, Macy gave a speech.
“Seven years ago, I was being sold in a gas station bathroom. Three men were bidding on me like I was property. I’d given up. Accepted that this was my life now. That I’d die young in some hotel room somewhere and nobody would care.”
She looked at me.
“Then a biker overheard. He could have ignored it. Could have walked away. Could have called police and let them handle it. Instead, he stepped in. Put himself at risk. Bought me from those men so he could set me free.”
“He saw a sixteen-year-old girl mouthing ‘help me’ and he helped.”
The crowd was crying. Two hundred bikers. All crying.
“So when people tell me bikers are dangerous, I tell them they’re right. Bikers are dangerous. Dangerous to traffickers. Dangerous to abusers. Dangerous to anyone who hurts the innocent.”
“Because bikers don’t look away.”
She’s right. We don’t.
That night changed me. Made me pay more attention. Made our whole club pay attention.
We started training. Learning signs of trafficking. How to spot victims. Who to call. What to do.
We’ve helped four more girls since Macy. Four more times we noticed something wrong and acted instead of looking away.
Each one is alive. Free. Healing.
Because a biker paid attention.
The ten thousand dollars? I never asked for it back. Used it to help Macy. First month’s rent. Security deposit. Books. Whatever she needed.
“I’ll pay you back,” she said.
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