“I need to hire you,” the boy said, his voice weak behind an oxygen mask. “All of you.”
He pointed at our group of twelve bikers, his arm tethered to an IV. “For my funeral. It’s next week.”
I’d seen sick kids before, but nothing like this one. Barely sixty pounds, bald from chemo, and somehow he’d driven himself here in his mom’s car, his little legs barely long enough to touch the pedals. He admitted he’d stolen it from the hospital parking lot and figured he had about an hour before someone realized he was gone.
“They’re going to come,” he said, his eyes wide in his sunken face. “The kids from school. They’ll pretend they were my friends. Take selfies with my casket. Post fake sad messages online.” His fist clenched tight.
“They called me ‘Cancer Boy.’ They barked at me when my hair fell out. Said I looked like a mole rat. And now they’ll use my death for Instagram likes.” He held out the twenty again. “Please. Just rev your engines when they try to talk. Scare them off. Make them feel what it’s like to be afraid.”
My name’s Jackson “Jax” Mitchell. Sixty-six years old. Been on a bike for forty years. Thought I’d seen it all. I hadn’t—not until ten-year-old Timothy Chen pulled into our gas station.
We were riding home from a memorial—twelve of us, all veterans, all old enough to be grandfathers. Another brother gone to lung cancer. These days, it seemed like all we did was ride to funerals.
The car pulled in crooked, engine running. The door opened, and a tiny boy practically collapsed out, dragging an IV pole. Hospital gown flapping over dinosaur pajamas.
“Holy sh—” Big Mike started.
“Help him!” I shouted.
But the boy raised a hand. “I’m not here for help. I’m here for business.”
Up close, he looked even worse—hollow cheeks, gray skin, dark rings under his eyes. But his gaze burned with something fierce. A mission.
“Son, you need to be back at the hospital.”
“After we make a deal.” He held out the twenty. “I earned this doing online homework for older kids. It’s all I’ve got. But I need you to do something for me.”
“What’s your name, kid?”
“Timothy. Tim. And I’m dying. Neuroblastoma. Doctor says ten days. Maybe less.”
One of the brothers, Tommy, already had 911 on the line.
“Don’t,” Tim said quickly. “Please. I’ll go back. But first—listen.”
Something in his voice stopped us. We listened.
“There are these kids at school. Madison. Kayden. Brick. Yes, Brick is really his name.” He tried to laugh, but it dissolved into coughing, blood flecking his hand. “They’ve made my life hell for two years. Since the day I was diagnosed.”
“Kids can be cruel,” Big Mike muttered.
“No. They’re evil. They filmed me having seizures. Put music over it. Posted it online. Called me ‘Tim the Tumor.’ They even started a betting pool on when I’d die. Madison won fifty bucks when I made it past Christmas.”
My fists clenched. I’d seen cruelty in war, but this—this was worse.
“Last week, when I was still going to school, they cornered me. Said they’d be at my funeral. Madison said she’d wear the same dress she wore to her dog’s birthday party, because that’s all I was worth.”
“Where are your parents?” I asked.
“Mom’s at the hospital, probably freaking out. Dad left when I got sick—said he couldn’t handle it. But that’s not important. What matters is my funeral.”
“Tim—”
“I know exactly when I’m going to die,” he said firmly. “Sunday. This Sunday. I’m refusing treatment Saturday. Mom already bought the plot. Picked the casket. I heard her on the phone.”
“You can’t know—”
“I can. I’ve been saving my pain meds. Just enough. Sunday morning, I’ll take them. It won’t hurt. I’ll just sleep.”
We froze. A ten-year-old was calmly explaining his suicide plan like it was homework.
“Tim, no. There’s always hope—”
“There’s no hope. The cancer’s everywhere. Brain. Bones. Lungs. I heard the doctors. ‘Comfortable measures only.’ That means dying.”
He held out the twenty again.
“I want to hire you. Come to my funeral. When Madison, Kayden, and Brick show up, scare them. Rev your engines. Look mean. Make them run. Make them feel small and helpless, the way I’ve felt every day.”
“Tim, revenge isn’t the answer—”
“It’s not revenge. It’s justice. They’ll stand by my casket crying fake tears. Post photos. Pretend they cared. They tortured me while I was alive, and now they’ll use my death for sympathy.” His voice cracked. For the first time, the boy who had fought so hard finally cried.
“They won. They broke me. They made school hell. Treatment worse. But I don’t want them at my funeral. I don’t want them near my mom. I don’t want them taking selfies with my body.”
Big Mike knelt down, massive and tattooed, looking Tim straight in the eye.
“What’s your mom’s name?”
“Jennifer Chen.”
“And the bullies. Full names?”
“Madison Fuller. Kayden Brooks. Richard ‘Brick’ Thompson.”
Mike looked at me. At all of us. We all knew.
“Keep your twenty, Tim,” I said. “We don’t take money from kids.”
“But—”
“We’ll be there.”
“Really?”
“Really. But not to scare them. That’s not what we do.”
Tim’s face fell.
“We’ll do something better,” I said. “We’ll honor you. The real you. Not the victim. Not the sick kid. The warrior who fought two years. The kid who drove himself here to ask strangers for help. That takes guts.”
“I don’t want honor. I want them gone.”
“Trust me, kid. What we’ll do is better.”
The ambulance came. As they loaded him up, Tim grabbed my hand.
“Promise you’ll come?”
“Promise.”
“Even if I die before Sunday?”
“Whenever you die, we’ll be there.”
As the ambulance pulled away, Tommy said what we all thought.
“We can’t let him kill himself.”
“No,” I said. “We can’t.”
Over the next days, I researched. Found his mom on Facebook. Single mom. Pediatric nurse. Hundreds of posts about Tim’s battle. Early comments were supportive—until the TikTok videos showed up. Clips of Tim seizing, vomiting, crying. Posted by @MadisonTheQueen and @KaydenSkates. The comments made me sick—laughing emojis, memes.
But then I found his YouTube channel. TimBuilds. Forty-seven subscribers. Videos of him building Lego sets, rockets, Minecraft worlds. Hooked to IVs, still creating. His last video, three days before he came to us:
“Hey guys. Tim here. Probably my last video. The cancer’s everywhere now. Can’t build much with shaky hands. But thanks—to the forty-seven people who watched. You made me feel like I mattered. Like I wasn’t just Cancer Boy. Build something cool for me, okay?”
I called the brothers. We had work to do.
We visited him at the hospital. Met his mom. Told her our plan. She cried but agreed.
I showed Tim his YouTube video reposted on our biker page. 100,000 views. Thousands of likes. Ten thousand new subscribers.
His eyes widened. “What… how?”
“Turns out bikers love smart kids. And they hate bullies.”
Within a week, his channel blew up—half a million, then a million subscribers. We bikers took shifts helping him film small builds from bed.
Madison, Kayden, and Brick tried to visit. Claimed they were friends. We blocked them.
Tim didn’t die Sunday. The channel gave him strength. He lasted two more weeks. Built, laughed, created, until his body couldn’t anymore. He passed on a Tuesday at 3 PM. His mom on one side. Me on the other. His last words:
“Tell them to build something cool for me.”
The funeral was Thursday. We expected fifty people. Eight hundred came. Bikers, teachers, doctors, families, kids—subscribers who drove hours to honor him.
The bullies showed up. Phones ready. We didn’t scare them with engines. We showed the truth. Played their cruel videos on the church screen. Exposed them. The crowd turned on them. They ran, humiliated.
Tim was buried with honor. Motorcycle escort. Casket covered in Lego flowers, rockets by the grave, Minecraft figures standing watch.
His mom spoke: “My son gave twelve bikers twenty dollars to scare bullies. Instead, they gave him two more weeks of life. Two weeks of purpose. Two weeks of knowing he mattered. That’s not a transaction. That’s a miracle.”
We gave her the twenty dollars back, framed, with a photo of Tim that day. Fierce. Determined. Alive.
A GoFundMe raised half a million for his mom, for other kids, for anti-bullying work. His YouTube—now millions of subscribers—still inspires. Kids building through pain. Fighting with creativity.
We still ride to funerals. But now we ride to hospitals too. To sick kids. To builders. To dreamers. To remind them they matter.
Tim didn’t get revenge. He got something greater. He was remembered for who he was, not what cancer took. He found justice through truth, not fear. And he left a legacy bigger than all of us.
Timothy Chen died at ten. But TimBuilds lives forever.
And his message lives with us:
Build something cool.
That’s all he ever wanted. That’s everything.