by Ali Dean
I hesitate. Once it’s on, I can’t take it off without cutting it. And I’m not sure how I feel about having a reminder of Jace attached to me at the moment. “Not yet.”
Jace’s smile fades and he stands up. Dave jumps off the bed, apparently displeased that his buddy isn’t joining the snuggle session on the couch.
“Hey Jace, the cheerleaders you sent yesterday were awesome. Thanks.” It’s an effort to smooth over my harsh words, but Jace doesn’t want it.
“Later, Pep. Good luck at State,” he says as he heads out the door. He must not plan on seeing me again before the State meet if he’s wishing me luck now.
I take the bracelet and place it in my sock drawer. I don’t know how long it will stay there.
Chapter 14
I’m a wreck the week leading up to State. It’d be nice to have Jace’s soothing and reassuring presence around, but I’m not sure if his presence still has that effect on me.
Everyone’s heard about Brockton’s amazing wins at Districts, and the news stations are talking about our chances at winning the State team titles. They think it’s a forgone conclusion that Ryan and I will win the individual titles. Kids in school are actually paying attention to cross and all my teachers have congratulated me on Districts and wished me luck for State.
It was flattering for about two seconds. Now, every mention of State just makes me want to throw up. I’ve never felt this much anxiety in my life.
My muscles are tight all week at practice, and I know that Coach can tell. It’s not fatigue or injury, like he was worried about, but the weight of people’s expectations that have made running less than enjoyable. For once, I’m actually not looking forward to the meet.
The morning of the big day, Gran is dressed in her fan attire, looking like a giant blueberry. She’s bouncing around the kitchen before she’s even had her cup of coffee, listing off everything that I need.
“Gran, I’ve done this before. Calm down. You’re making me nervous.” I hate to rain on her parade, but I am so not feeling it right now.
“Sorry, hun. Here’s your tea.” She hands me a to-go mug of steaming hot Earl Grey. I know she’s added a drop of milk and excessive amounts of honey. I don’t usually drink caffeine, but I started drinking tea before races when some of them required getting up at the crack of dawn, and now it’s become a ritual.
Gran blasts a pump-up mix CD, courtesy of Zoe Burton, on our way to the meet. It’s only a forty-five minute drive, and everyone’s parents go to State, so we don’t have to ride the bus as a team.
The familiar nervousness rumbles through me when we pull up into the large field to park. The butterflies in my stomach are actually kind of comforting, because I always get them before I race. I breathe in deeply, trying to tell myself that this is just like any other meet. But I know it’s a lie. If I don’t place in the top seven, my season is over. I won’t go on to Regionals, and definitely not Nationals. Not to mention that the team is counting on me to win for a chance at the team title.
Gran turns up the volume, moving her head up and down to the beat of Eminem. I smile to myself, knowing that she’s sensed my anxiety and is trying to distract me with her ridiculousness. After we park, I kiss Gran goodbye while she pulls her camping chair and a huge blanket out of the trunk.
“Go get ‘em!” She raises her fist in the air and I laugh, shaking my head.
We’re quieter than usual during warm up, and I know we’re feeling the pressure of winning a State championship. There’s not much to say to ease the tension.
When we jog by other teams, I get that prickly feeling when you know people are starting at you. It doesn’t help my queasy stomach. This local celebrity status thing isn’t for me.
The State course is fast. There are hardly any hills, and most of the fastest times in the high school record books are recorded on the course. If I ran a 16:48 at Districts, who knows how fast I can run at State this year? Maybe I’ll even break the twenty-year old State record. That’s what everyone else has been talking about at least. But my time doesn’t matter. First place does.
When the gun goes off, I sprint towards the front of the pack, just like I did at Districts. I can tell immediately that this isn’t going to my best race. Getting to the front of the pack shouldn’t be a huge undertaking, but my heart is racing and my legs feel tight.
I settle in with the front group, recognizing most of the girls from other races. Just stick with them, I tell myself. Easy peasy, right? Usually I have to hold back in order to stick with the lead pack. Today, my legs feel like bricks, and it’s all I can do to hang on.
The crowd shouts over the steady breathing of the girls around me. I recognize our royal blue uniform from the corner of my eye and I’m surprised to see Jenny running beside me.
Shaking out my hands, I struggle to find a rhythm. I regulate my breathing, but the tension in my body won’t dissipate. When we pass the first mile marker, it’s hard to believe there are still two more miles to go. It’s already the longest race of my life and I’m not even halfway done.
Suddenly, it’s not just my legs that feel heavy and tight. My head starts to spin, and the moving bodies around me fade in and out. I blink in confusion, but it only causes black dots to dance around me. I feel bodies brush past me as I stumble, and the next thing I know, I’m lying on my back on the trail, looking up at a cloudy sky.
Footsteps pound all around me. “Pepper!” It’s Coach Tom.
I sit up and look around. People on the sidelines are shouting, but girls continue to run past.
“Keep racing, girls. Keep going,” an official shouts from the sideline.
A stranger is at my side, explaining she’s a doctor, and asking me questions. I start to stand, and stumble. Coach tries to take my arm to lead me off the course.
My head is in a frenzy. I don’t know what happened to me, but every instinct tells me I need to run. Fast. No holding back.
“Coach, I’m going to keep going,” I announce.
Coach looks at the doctor, who immediately says that’s a bad idea. I can see she’s just a spectator, and she can’t make me sit out the rest of the race. But Coach agrees with her. “Pepper, you don’t have to. What happened? Are you okay?”
“I’m going Coach. I can’t lose any more time.” And with that, I take off.
Coach runs along the side of the course, following me. He doesn’t say anything. He probably expects me to collapse and wants to be ready to pick up the pieces.
My legs no longer feel like bricks, and my head is clear. Falling to the ground must have broken the tension in my body because the sensation of running is familiar again.
Most of the field passed me when I fell, but I start to pick them off again as I move through the second mile. I have no idea what I expect to accomplish at this point, but I’m not giving up.
I pass Dorothy, who actually shouts encouragements when I run by her. Seeing Zoe’s familiar strawberry blond hair ahead, I will myself to close in the gap. I might not make it back to the top seven, but I’ll at least score points for the team.
I don’t have the breath to say anything to Zoe when I pass her, but I hear Coach tell her to pick it up and try to catch the group ahead of us. “Follow Pepper!” He yells.
She tags on to my pace, and Coach continues to run along the sideline. The race directors wouldn’t normally allow him to run the course with us like this, but he’s out of the way, and I’m sure a passing out is a good enough reason for him to stay by me.
We catch the next group of girls, and I recognize Claire in the front of the pack.
“Work together girls!” Coach yells. He disappears from my peripheral vision.
Claire does a double take when I run up beside her. She must not have seen me on the ground when she passed me. I’m sure she’s totally confused as to why I’m coming up from behind. I flash her a smile but I don’t slow the pace. I’m running hard, and I continue right on past the pack.
Zoe’s heavy bre
athing tells me she’s still with me. I glance behind me and give Claire what I hope is an encouraging look. She picks up her pace and settles in by Zoe as we surge ahead.
I can’t see far enough ahead on the windy trial to know how many people are still in front of us. We pass one girl after another. The sound of Zoe and Claire breathing behind me helps with the forward momentum. It’s three of us now, and we charge ahead like an unstoppable force. People on the sidelines cheer louder when they see our matching uniforms.
We round the last corner before the final stretch. The last 400 meters are downhill. There’s another familiar royal blue uniform ahead, and I recognize Jenny’s tiny frame sprinting towards the finish.
The throbbing in my legs doesn’t stop me as a pump my arms and propel myself forward. I’m not getting enough oxygen and it hurts to breath, but I’m getting closer to the finish line, and closing the gap to Jenny. I can’t hear Zoe and Claire behind me anymore. The only sound that reaches me is screaming fans.
I watch Jenny push through the finish line and I’m seconds behind her. I stumble again, and the blurred vision from earlier returns. I feel arms wrap around me, and instead of collapsing to the ground, I’m knocked over by Zoe, followed by Claire and Jenny. We’re a pile of limbs, hugging each other in what I assume is celebration.
An official gently asks us to move away from the finish line.
“What happened to you?” Jenny asks. “You were right there one second and gone the next!”
“I saw you lying on the ground and I was about to stop but Coach yelled for me to keep going!” Zoe exclaims.
My legs are weak when I stand, and I keep my arms around Zoe and Claire to steady myself.
“I think I fainted,” I tell them. “I didn’t really feel like myself for the first mile and then all of a sudden things got all blurry and boom! I was lying on the ground.”
“I didn’t even see you!” Claire says. “You just came running by me, and I looked up because your speed startled me. I didn’t know what was going on but when I saw Zoe with you, I just figured I had to stick with you guys.”
Coach jogs up to us when we get through the crowds. He can hardly believe that all four of us placed in the top twenty-five, earning all-state individual honors. “I can’t imagine you didn’t win the team title.” I’m afraid to ask what place I got. “We don’t know exactly where you all placed yet, but the unofficial results will be out in a minute.”
Coach can’t make eye contact with me, and I know he’s worried that I wasn’t in the top seven. My season might be over. But I can’t be too disappointed if I helped us win a team State championship. And I helped in a way that matters even more than my individual point contribution – I helped pull along my teammates.
Claire, Zoe, Jenny, and now the three other varsity runners who’ve joined us, are bursting with excitement. It’s hard not to join them, but I know that later, when I’m alone, I’ll be crushed by my individual failure.
Coach returns from the officials’ tent a few minutes later. He looks elated, for the most part, but he still can’t make eye contact with me.
“Congratulations to the Brockton High State Champions!” he booms. Before we can rejoice, he continues, “unofficially, Jenny placed seventh, Pepper eighth, Zoe eleventh, Claire twelth, Dorothy forty-second…” Coach continues to speak but I can’t hear anything except the buzzing in my ears.
Eighth?
Eighth.
Eighth!
Not top seven. No Regionals. No Nationals. It’s over.
Instead of celebrating, everyone on the team wraps me in a sympathy hug. Great. My ambitions have ruined the moment.
I’m amazed I haven’t burst into tears. Instead, I feel numb with shock. All the patience, the waiting, the holding back, was for nothing.
“Coach, isn’t it true that if one of the top seven doesn’t go to Regionals, they offer the spot to the next place?” Jenny asks.
“Yes. Last year Pepper didn’t go, and I believe another girl who placed in the top seven couldn’t go either, and the eighth and ninth place finishers went to Regionals instead.”
“I’m not going,” Jenny says.
“No way, Jenny,” I protest. “You are not doing that so I can go. Besides, at least wait to see if anyone else drops out from the top seven before you give up your spot.”
“Pepper, I didn’t train for it. I’m not going to make Nationals. I’m ready for the season to be over, like you were last year. I really want you to go. You deserve it way more than me.”
Nobody speaks. I want to take her offer, and her rationale makes some sense. She had an awesome State meet, but her chances of qualifying her Nationals are low.
“She does have three more years,” Zoe says quietly.
“Pepper, it doesn’t matter if you accept it or not. I’m going to give up my spot,” Jenny tells me. And with that, she marches off the officials’ tent.
Chapter 15
There are YouTube videos of me collapsing at State. I’ve watched it several times already. I’m jogging along in the middle of a pack of girls when I start to weave back and forth. I continue trying to run, but I stumble, sway from side to side, and wham! I’m down. I lie there for a good thirty seconds or so before sitting up. In total, I probably lost a minute before I started running again. That’s pretty hard to come back from in a race where the winning time was 17:45.
I cut myself off from reading the YouTube comments and other runner discussion forums, and instead focus on getting my homework done and staying healthy for Regionals in less than two weeks. I spoke with the school physician and he said I probably just fainted. Just fainted? Who does that! I’d never fainted before.
Coach thinks I put too much pressure on myself and that the collapse was mentally induced. He doesn’t think anything is wrong with me physically, and I agree. This week, it’s only been me and Ryan at practice, and, while I can’t exactly keep up with him, I feel pretty good. I feel myself again.
I’m lying on my bed doing physics homework one night the week after State, when my cell phone rings. It’s not a number I recognize, but it’s local. “Hello?”
“Pepper. Hi.” It’s Wesley.
“How’d you get my number? I got this cell phone after we were friends.”
Wes sighs. “Look, Pepper, it sucks that we stopped being friends. I don’t want to get into the reasons for it now. Maybe someday. I really want to talk to you. Can we meet up?”
“Tonight? It’s 9:30.” Wes might go out on weeknights, but I don’t. It’s almost my self-imposed bedtime. “What’s this about?”
I ask skeptically.
“Jace.” That’s all he says.
Aside from a short text on Saturday after the race, I haven’t heard from Jace since he came by after Districts and dropped off the bracelet.
“I’ll borrow Bunny’s car and meet you at your house.” I tell Gran I’m heading over to Wes’s house. She looks like she wants to ask questions, because this is out of character for me, but she doesn’t.
I pull the car into Wes’s driveway. The house is mostly dark. The front door opens before I’ve reached it and Wes stands there in sweatpants and a tight fitting cotton tee shirt. I’m wearing the same outfit and I’m glad I grabbed a zip up hoodie on the way out because I forgot that I’m not wearing a bra.
“Thanks for coming, Pepper.” He holds open the door. “Do you want anything to drink?”
“No, thanks.”
“Let’s go up to my room.” I follow him up the stairs. I haven’t been in his room in years. It’s huge, and he has his own walk-in closet and attached bathroom. A flat screen TV is on the wall across from his bed and it’s playing a college football game. Wes picks up a bottle of beer from his desk and takes a sip.
“So?” I cross my arms over my chest.
He gestures to an armchair and I take a seat. Wes hops onto his desk and puts his feet on the desk chair. “I’m worried about Jace.”
My eyes widen. “You’re
worried about Jace. Isn’t that ironic?”
Wes studies me. His jaw works back and forth. “At first, I thought maybe something was happening with you two,” he says. “You looked cozy at my house a month or two ago. I thought maybe it ended and that’s why he was acting crazy.” Wes glances at my expression and amends, “Well, crazier than usual. But then I saw you and Ryan together. So maybe it’s Ryan that has Jace all worked up.” Wes shakes his head. “But now, now I wonder if it’s something else altogether.”
Wes pierces me with his blue eyes, studying my reaction. “Either way, it has to do with you. You’re the only one that gets to him.”
I swallow hard. That actually might be true. But it’s not about me. It’s about control. It always is.
“Let’s not worry about the why for now.” I echo Wes’s comments from earlier about the abrupt end to our friendship. “I want to know what you mean that he’s acting crazier. Jace isn’t the kind of guy people worry about. So what’s going on?”
Wes runs a hand through his blonde hair. “Look, Jace’ll kill me if I get into it. Just, he’s not himself. And it’s not healthy. I want to know what’s going on so I can try to fix it. Or help.”
“Boy, this is ironic.” I roll my eyes. “You two are something else. Your ideas about ‘helping’ each other,” I air quote, “seem to get you both into more trouble. Maybe you should just stay out of it. Jace can handle his own problems. He always has.”
Wes narrows his eyes and runs his finger along his bottom lip. It’s so weird that he still has the same familiar mannerisms. “What did Jace tell you, Pepper?”