Breathe, Annie, Breathe
Page 22
“Oh gross,” Liza says, giving the gel pack a dirty look.
I lick a tiny bit off my thumb. “It doesn’t taste too bad. It’s kind of like super sugary honey.” Over the next mile, I finish eating the gel pack but with no trashcans in sight and not wanting to litter, I stick the gooey wrapper in my CamelBak. I groan at the mess it will make.
“Ugh, this is terrible,” I say, trying to lick the stickiness off my fingers. I pray that a water stop is coming up, so I can wash my hands. I would wipe my hands on my shorts but I don’t want an even bigger mess. Then my stomach starts churning.
I clutch my side. “Oh no.”
“Your stomach?” Andrew asks.
I nod. Thank the heavens there’s a porta-potty at mile marker five. I jog ahead of my friends and then I’m sprinting, totally out of breath, knee on fire. I need the bathroom. Need the bathroom now.
Gotta go, gotta go, gotta go.
I barely make it. Andrew and Liza are nice enough to wait for me while I go to the bathroom. Ever since I gave up ibuprofen for Tylenol, I haven’t had to go as often, but it still happens. Just my luck I need to go during a twenty-two-miler. I hate my weak stomach.
I hit an all-time low scraping the energy gel gunk off my fingers with toilet paper. Little bits get stuck to my hands. Sweat rolls down my face. Gross. It’s so damned hot in the porta-potty and my stomach hurts and I can’t tell if I need to vomit or use the bathroom. I’m a sweaty, disgusting mess. Ugh.
“Thanks, y’all,” I say when I’m done. “I don’t think I could finish without you.”
Andrew pats my back. “We couldn’t finish without you either, Annie.”
For the final five miles, we don’t talk at all. None of us has the energy. I can’t run fluidly anymore—I’m doing a sort of limp run. My knee throbs. Dr. Sander’s voice fills my head: “I have to tell you, I’m not sure if your knee will make it through the race.”
The 0 mile marker comes into view. I let out a sob.
“Thank God!” Andrew gasps.
Cheers erupt as we pass the mile marker. I walk it off for about thirty seconds but then I start to collapse. Matt grabs my elbows. Holds me up. Lowers me to a beach towel. It feels like a hundred bees are stinging my legs at once. Sweat streams down my face, burning my eyes.
I start crying. Liza sprawls out on the towel next to me. Andrew bends his head between his knees. I lean to my side and vomit all over the pavement. Not again.
Matt unsnaps my knee brace and Bridget hands him an ice pack. A peeled banana appears in my hand. Thank goodness. I don’t think I could’ve peeled it myself. I stuff it in my mouth, nearly choking on it. I just got sick but I could eat an entire grocery store. Matt lifts a cup of lemon Gatorade to my lips. I take a sip but end up spilling the rest all over my blue tank top. The yellow blends with the blue to make a gross-looking green spot on my chest.
He moves to help Liza stretch and Bridget is making Andrew take Tylenol. This is crazy. If I barely made it through twenty-two miles, how will I survive twenty-six?
Kyle never even made it to twenty-two miles. The furthest he ever ran was twenty. Just thinking of that makes the tears pour down my face even harder. He never made it here. I’m not sure I can make it again.
“Matt, I can’t,” I ramble. “I can’t do the race. How am I gonna run four more miles? It’s too much. It hurts. It hurts.”
“Annie, you got this,” Matt replies softly. “I won’t let you hurt yourself. Your knee’s barely swollen today. Our exercises are paying off—”
“I can’t,” I say through my tears. “My stomach. I can’t.”
Two hands grasp my ankles. Jeremiah kneels in front of me. “Annie. You are not quitting. You can do this, understand?”
Snot is pouring out of my nose.
“Annie,” Jeremiah says again. His voice sounds far away. “Drink this. Now.”
Another cup appears in front of me. “I can’t. I can’t. It hurts.” My stomach feels like it got turned inside out. I lean over and get sick again, right in front of him. I clutch my side. He suddenly stands up. I grossed him out.
But then I feel him sitting down behind me, stretching his legs to cradle mine. His arms circle my middle. “I’ve got you. Relax.” I lean against his chest, working to catch my breath. Matt glances away from examining Andrew’s ankle and smiles when he sees his brother with me.
Jeremiah whispers in my ear, “You are going to finish this for him. You will.”
That just makes me cry harder. I blink away my tears, staring at Jeremiah over my shoulder.
“Kyle’s counting on you, Annie.”
Marathon Training Schedule~Brown’s Race Co.
Name Annie Winters
Saturday
Distance
Notes
April 20
3 miles
I’m really doing this! Finish time 34:00
April 27
5 miles
Stupid Running Backwords Boy!!
May 4
6 miles
Blister from HELL
May 11
5 miles
Ran downtown Nashville
May 18
7 miles
Tripped on rock. Fell on my butt
May 25
8 miles
Came in 5 min. quicker than usual!
June 1
10 miles
Let’s just pretend this day never happened…
June 8
9 miles
Evil suicide sprint things. Ran w/ Liza. Got sick.
June 15
7 miles
Skipped Saturday’s run…had to make it up Sunday.
June 22
8 miles
Stomach hurt again. Matt said eat granola instead of oatmeal.
June 29
9 miles
Matt says it’s time for new tennis shoes.
July 6
10 miles
Jere got hurt.
July 13
12 miles
Finished in 2:14! Only had to use bathroom once
July 20
13 miles
Halfway there!
July 27
15 miles
Humidity just about finished me off. Time 3:06.
August 3
14 miles
Hurt knee. Overdosed on Pepto.
August 10
11 miles
Wore new knee brace—it messes with my gait.
August 17
16 miles
Didn’t get enough sleep in dorms.
August 24
20 miles
Need lifetime supply of Pepto & ice packs. Stat!
August 31
14 miles
Ran w/ Liza & Andrew
September 7
22 miles
Holy crap! Time 4:35. I ran for 1/2 a school day!
September 14
20 miles
September 21
The Bluegrass Half Marathon
September 28
12 miles
October 5
10 miles
October 12
Country Music Marathon in Nashville
THE BLUEGRASS HALF MARATHON
Three Weeks Until the Country Music Marathon
I bounce up and down on my toes.
Liza, Andrew, and I are in the corral for people aiming to finish the Bluegrass Half Marathon in two hours and thirty minutes. Excitement ripples through the crowd and people cheer for no reason at all. The race starts in less than ten minutes and I can’t wait.
Jeremiah slips into my corral and kisses me. “Good luck, Winters. I’ll meet you at the finish line.”
“You too,” I reply, and he smiles over his shoulder at me before disappearing toward the first corral where the best runners have gathered.
Liza and Andrew start making embarrassing “wooo!” noises at me.
“I hate y’all,” I grumble, and they laugh.
“Are you guys together yet?” Liza whispers to me.
I shake my head. Jeremiah and I have been making out and sleeping over with each other for a month—never going further than second base, but I’m still not ready for a relationship with a guy who lives on the edge. The space between us makes me feel safe…and a bit antsy. It would be nice to tell him how much he means to me—that maybe there is more than one person for everybody—but I feel that would cement us together. I don’t think my heart could survive losing another person so special to me…
“You need to get on that,” Liza adds, nodding in Jere’s direction.
“You’re one to talk,” I whisper back, throwing a glance at Andrew.
I’ve been at college for a month and a half. It’s only three weeks until the Country Music Marathon, and today is the last time I’ll run a long distance before then. Matt says it’s time to taper off, so we’ll be in good shape for race day.
I totally get why people run races. After months and months of hard work, the excitement is like nothing I’ve experienced before. It’s the night before Christmas.
A gun fires. Runners cheer. The crowd edges forward, and it’s so cramped, it takes a little while before we can start jogging. But then it’s hard to keep my pace in check—so much adrenaline floods my body, I want to take off like a bottle rocket. It’s a good thing Liza and Andrew are here with me to control my pace.
When I was a kid running laps around the playground in gym class, I thought running was the most boring thing ever. But running a race is not boring. Not boring at all.
“Oh. My. God,” Liza says, pointing at five Speedo-clad guys with American flags painted on their faces.
“How is running in those comfortable?” I blurt.
“I don’t know, but it’s plenty comfortable for me to look at. Not to mention patriotic.” She laughs naughtily. I make a gagging sound. I did not need to see that.
Crazy people are wearing crazy costumes. One guy is dressed as a fairy? Another is wearing a pink gorilla suit. A group of guys in Batman masks cut holes in their shorts so their butts are hanging out. They call themselves the Bare Butt Batmans.
Liza loves them, of course.
Three miles into the race, as beautiful vistas of the Great Smoky Mountains come into view, a man in front of me trips. “Pothole!” somebody yells, and I hop over it just in time. Other runners grab the man who tripped and help him to the side of the course. My heart doesn’t stop pounding hard for a few minutes. What if I had fallen in the hole two weeks before the full marathon? What if I’d twisted my knee? An icy chill rushes through me.
I love the bluegrass bands stationed along the course. We cross over creeks and the Watauga River, passing factories, barns, and cornfields. A pastry chef gives out cookies when we run past her restaurant on Main Street and the three of us have never been so excited to see dessert. The sun soars higher and higher in the sky as the race goes on, but I never feel truly tired. I only have to stop to use the bathroom once. All my training pays off.
I cross the finish line in 2:35 and do a silly pose for the automatic camera taking pictures of runners. Andrew high-fives Liza and me, and she and I hug. We scream “wooo!” together and bounce around like kids at recess, proud we finished. Compared to the twenty-two mile run we did two weeks ago, this race was a cinch.
It was a rest day.
A race volunteer hangs a medal around my neck and another drapes a crinkly silver cape around my shoulders. It looks like aluminum foil but feels soft and keeps me warm. My heart starts to slow down as I weave through the crowd to find what I need most: a snack.
Andrew, Liza, and I grab bananas off a table, then head to the tree where Matt’s large blue flag hangs from a branch. It lets our team know where to meet.
I walk up to Bridget. “Hey, have you seen Jeremiah? Or Matt?”
Her eyes are bloodshot. “They went to Vanderbilt hospital.”
“What?” I drop my banana on the ground. “Why?”
“Jeremiah got hurt during the race. He fell off a bridge—”
I don’t even stop to hear the rest. I grab my bag from the storage truck, pull out my car keys, and sprint to the parking lot.
•••
This race was supposed to be safe! How could he fall off a bridge? Was it the long stretch over the Watauga River at mile eight? Did the medics rescue him and take him by ambulance before I even reached that part of the race? I didn’t hear any sirens or see any police cars blazing by.
A memory flashes in my mind. Sirens blaring during a thunderstorm. The moment, an hour later, when Mr. Crocker knocked on my front door to tell me he was gone.
I drive to Nashville as fast as I can, speeding through yellow lights, barely stopping at stop signs.
I never got a chance to tell Kyle good-bye. That I loved him.
On his way home from my place our last night, after we made up and got back together, there was a torrential downpour. He saw a car veer off the road into a ditch, and when he rushed out of his car to help the elderly man who’d crashed, another car slipped off the road and hit my boyfriend. During his eulogy, his brother Connor said Kyle died just the way he would’ve wanted to: helping somebody.
•••
On the last night, Kyle and I stood in the doorway of my trailer.
Nick sat a few feet away watching the World Series on TV. The noisy game and noisy rain made it hard to hear what my boyfriend was saying.
“I’ll pick you up for school,” he said, kissing me for what must’ve been the hundredth time that night. I would never get tired of his kisses. His chocolate brown eyes were happy when he said he’d buy me a chai latte before he picked me up in the morning.
“How can you leave during the middle of the game?” Nick asked.
“No more baseball for me this year. I can’t believe we lost to Philly in the playoffs again,” Kyle replied.
“And you call yourself a baseball fan.”
I knew it wasn’t about the baseball at all. My brother liked having another guy around the house and it thrilled him I was getting back together with my boyfriend after a month apart.
“Maybe you should wait for the rain to clear out,” I said when the rain started pelting the roof. “Call your parents and tell them you’re staying here until the storm is over.”
He kissed me. “I’ll be fine.”
I handed
him a newspaper to cover his head and he dashed into the night. He honked, and I waved from the porch, not caring that I was getting all wet.
“Bye, Annie!” he yelled out the window.
I smiled, filled with hope. We were back together. Everything was going to be just fine.
•••
At the hospital, I park in an area that clearly says “no parking” but I don’t care if I get towed. I jet into the emergency room. The front desk lady tells me he’s in room five. Before she can even ask if I’m friend or family, I sprint down the hallway, my sneakers squeaking on the hospital floor. Can’t breathe. Can’t breathe. Can’t breathe.
Tears are gushing down my face when I find Matt and their father. Mr. Brown is pacing back and forth. I rush up to Matt and hug him. When I pull away, Mr. Brown gives me a weak smile and hands me a Kleenex. Thanking him, I take it and wipe my nose.
Matt rubs his thumb over the medal hanging from my neck and smiles. “You finished.”
Who cares about me right now? “How is he?” I start to open the door but Matt grabs my arm.
“I wouldn’t go in there if I were you.”
Ignoring him, I shove the door. I have to know. I can’t lose him. I can’t. The door swings open.
“I told you, I’m not wearing the gown!” Jeremiah shouts at a nurse. He’s cradling his arm. “You don’t need to take my shorts off for this procedure.”
“Sir, this is hospital policy. You will wear a gown!”
All the air rushes out of me when I see he’s okay. I charge him. Hug his neck. Plaster my lips to his. With one arm, he yanks me up against his chest and deepens the kiss.