A kid in my English class, Tom, spends the whole period making elaborate and extremely violent drawings: samurai beheading each other, men with machine guns, guys being strangled with their own intestines—the last one seeming like overkill because once your intestines are outside your body, I’m pretty sure your time is limited. The drawings were pretty good, although his shading skills needed work. If I had to guess, he was on track to become either a video game designer or a serial killer. Every class, I debated whether I should sit close to him so I could watch him draw or stay as far away as possible.
Too close or too far. Maybe there was no middle distance, no safety zone. Once you begin watching people, you can end up seeing stuff you don’t want to see, stuff you don’t know how to handle.
AN UNEXPECTED BENEFIT OF BEING on the track team was that it gave me an easy excuse to get out of the house. All I had to do was put on my sweatpants and gym shoes and announce that I was going out for a run and I had a free pass. I didn’t have to explain to my parents how hard it was to be at home sometimes, how without Anna it felt like the house had grown smaller and the walls were in danger of closing in.
Usually, the running ruse only lasted for a couple of blocks, until I was safely out of sight of the house. After that, I’d just walk around, carefully navigating Birdton’s poorly maintained sidewalks, or sit in the park for a while, wishing I’d figured out a way to bring a book along with me without ruining the pretense. But on Sunday I found myself still running well past my usual stopping points. It was something about the weather, I thought, something about how it was bright and not too cold, with a slight breeze. It was the first day that really felt like spring was on the horizon, and instead of being simply a chore, an excuse, running felt like a reasonable thing to do. Something I might get good at. There was still a heaviness in my limbs, yet it felt more solid, more like strength than before.
I was on one of the few stretches of decent sidewalk when Nick rounded the corner and came running in my direction, head down, legs churning. I considered lowering my head as well and barreling on past. Then I thought of him in the hallway, talking about Anna.
I cleared my throat nosily.
He jerked his head up and came to a halt a few feet away.
“Hey,” I said. I wasn’t sure what to do with my hands suddenly, so I wrapped my arms tightly around my rib cage.
“Hey,” he said. “So you’re a runner, huh?”
“Technically, I suppose,” I said. I was proud of how evenly my words came out. “You?”
He shrugged modestly. “I try to do a couple miles every day, more on the weekends. It helps for basketball—you know, conditioning.”
“That makes sense,” I said. Basketball wasn’t exactly my thing—still, running seemed like a good preparation for most sports. Well, other than archery. Or golf.
We stood in silence, both shifting from leg to leg. The ease we’d briefly shared in the hallway was gone, and neither of us seemed to know what to say.
Then he smiled. “So, you want to race?”
Did I? I hadn’t really thought about it.
“I guess,” I said. “As long as you don’t get upset if you lose.”
He laughed. “Wow. Someone had their Wheaties this morning.”
I shook my head. “No, raisin bran.”
He opened his mouth and then closed it again.
I belatedly realized he’d been making a joke. And suddenly, all I wanted to do was get moving again. “Let’s go,” I said, and then I sprinted past him, hoping to get a good lead.
For a while, I wasn’t even sure if he had followed me or if I was speeding through the park on my own. Then I glanced over my shoulder and found that he was close behind me.
Soon we ran out of the park, following an old trail that ran beside the river, snaking along a series of fields and pastures. In time, we stopped racing and instead ended up running side by side, one of us inching forward and then the other, neither of us getting too far ahead.
Running with Nick felt good—graceful, even. There was a rhythm to it, a pattern of movement between us. He had called me a runner, and I liked that. Liked the idea that maybe I was, or at least could be.
But eventually, my lungs, first politely and then insistently, indicated that a break was needed. I slowed to a jog and then stopped altogether, standing with my fists propped on my hips, trying to resist the urge to flop down onto the grass and heave in air like a drowning victim.
Nick stopped as well and stood with his head between his legs to catch his breath.
“You’re good at this,” he said between breaths.
“No, but I’m getting better,” I said. “Slowly.” Short sentences were all I could manage.
“Could’ve fooled me.”
Our exhaustion saved us from talking more for a while, but then our breathing normalized and it felt like we should begin again. And I was so tired and loose that talking didn’t feel as daunting as it usually might.
“We liked your mom’s casserole,” I said. “It was the best one we got.” It felt good to have gotten that out. A couple of months late, sure, but better late than never.
He looked puzzled for a second and then smiled. “Oh, that wasn’t my mom’s casserole. That was my dad’s super-secret-recipe casserole. He takes it very seriously.”
“Your dad cooks?” I knew, in theory, that men could cook, yet I’d seen little evidence in practice. Birdton was pretty far from progressive in that and many, many other ways.
“Only when he feels we’ve earned it,” he said.
“Do you guys bring stuff to people a lot?”
“Not really. Mom does the occasional bake sale stuff for church, but that’s it. And Dad’s cooking is usually just for family.”
“So how did we end up with the honor?”
He looked away from me, up toward the horizon. “Because I asked him to.”
It was a simple, straightforward answer with infinite layers. Looking at his profile, I wondered what would’ve happened if he’d told Anna how he felt. Maybe it wouldn’t have changed anything—maybe she’d already fallen for Mr. Matthews or whoever it was, and Nick never had a chance. Or maybe it would have changed everything.
I stood up carefully and started doing some stretching. After a moment, Nick followed suit.
We jogged back to the park. It hadn’t felt that far on the way out, but now that we were tired and going slower, it seemed the route had stretched itself during our break. When we reached the park, we paused.
“Well, I’m that way,” he said, pointing north.
“Yeah. And I’m that way.” I pointed south.
“Okay. So…same time next week?”
“All right,” I said, unsure whether it was a genuine suggestion or just an attempt to make our parting less awkward.
We stood there for a moment and then he jogged off.
Watching him grow smaller and smaller, I briefly found myself wanting to call out and ask him to come back, despite having no idea what I would say if he did.
I was amazed that I got away with as much as I did, disturbed by how easy it was to lie, to act like nothing had changed.
Yet it took me by surprise when one morning Mom said that I looked tired, asked if anything was wrong.
I told her I hadn’t slept well—that we’d had a fight.
I told myself that was the only thing I could think of, the only thing she’d believe.
That’s not true, though.
There were a million other things I could’ve come up with: a bad grade, a mean comment from someone in cross-country, a snub from a boy I liked.
I think what I was really doing was trying to punish you a little, because you should have noticed. You should have seen through the lies about where I was, who I was with. About all those runs I took.
O
N MONDAY, I WAS DISTRACTED, out of sync from the moment I woke up. Even the sound of my alarm clock seemed different—louder, more insistent than I remembered it—and when I got out of bed, I promptly smacked my shin against the bed frame, leaving a large welt that I could immediately feel hardening into a bruise.
So it was hardly surprising that as I hurried through the hall on the way to second period, my head down, I smashed into someone.
“Watch it!” an annoyed male voice said.
“Sorry,” I mumbled, looking up to see who I’d bumped into. It turned out to be Charlie. His face was tense, and his hands were raised as if to either brace himself or steady me. A few steps behind me, Nick and Brian had paused and were looking back at us.
“Jess.” Charlie blinked, and relaxed his face into a smile. “Well, I guess neither of us was paying attention.”
“I guess not.”
He nodded. I expected him to walk away at that point, to catch up with Nick and Brian. Instead, he remained standing there. “So did you end up getting ahold of Lily?” he asked. “Brian said something about you having a sweater of hers?”
“Yeah.” I paused. “It turned out the sweater wasn’t a priority for her.”
“Makes sense,” he said. “She’s probably enjoying being by a beach. Probably getting a tan—happy to not be stuck in this dump anymore.”
Brian took a step toward Charlie, looking impatient. “You coming?” he asked.
Charlie ignored him.
“She say anything else? Anything about me?” he asked.
“Of course she didn’t say anything about you,” Brian interjected. “Let’s go.”
Charlie frowned, and a note of anger entered his voice. “Look, just because you and your ex are a garbage fire doesn’t mean I can’t ask about mine.”
Brian tensed. “Watch it,” he said.
“No, you watch it. I’m tired of walking on damn eggshells. You’re the one who needs to move on already. She was just a giant time suck for you anyway—I barely saw you when you guys were together. You’re better off without her.”
Brian’s face went dark and he stepped forward. Nick shook his head and put his hand out to stop him. “Come on, guys,” he said. “Don’t do this.”
Brian glared at Nick. “I’m not doing anything,” he said.
I didn’t really seem to have a role in the conversation anymore, so I started to leave them to it.
Charlie noticed me moving away. “Sorry. Anyway, I’m glad you got ahold of Lily—if you talk to her again, tell her I say hi.”
“I don’t think that’s going to happen,” I said. “She wasn’t exactly happy to hear from me.”
All three boys stared at me when I said that. So I shrugged, with an effort. “She was Anna’s friend, not mine.”
“Right,” Charlie said. Then he paused, like people often did after I said her name—like I’d thrown it down like a gauntlet. “Hey, I’m sorry about Anna—she was a nice girl.”
A nice girl. I tried to push down the flare of frustration the phrase provoked, the idea that others would remember her that way. That they thought it meant anything.
“Sure,” I said stiffly. “Okay.”
Brian had started to turn away, but he paused when I said that and looked at me more carefully, like he was recalibrating. “Look, you really shouldn’t pay attention to that stuff that was written about her.”
“What stuff?”
“Oh, never mind,” Brian said. “Sorry. For a second, I thought you’d heard….Never mind.”
“What stuff?” I asked again.
“Nothing,” he said. “Really. Forget I said anything.”
I looked at Charlie and Nick. “What’s he talking about?” I asked them.
It was several beats before either of them spoke. And then Charlie shook his head. “Nothing,” he said. “He’s probably thinking about someone else.” I looked at him and then at Nick.
Nick nodded. “Yeah, he’s just being an idiot. Ignore him. Anyway, we should get going. But I’ll see you on Sunday, right? At the park?”
I nodded, watching his face, still trying to figure out if he actually meant it. Surely saying it twice had to mean something, though. Didn’t it?
Charlie’s sudden laugh jerked me back into the moment.
“Wow,” he said to Nick. “You certainly have a type, don’t you?”
Nick flushed, Brian shot Charlie another dark look, and then suddenly the three of them were headed down the hall again.
* * *
—
IT STARTED RAINING JUST BEFORE track practice. A pounding, ceaseless downpour that came down like the wrath of Norse gods. It was far too heavy for us to run in, yet it was so intense it seemed it might pass quickly, so Mr. Matthews made us all wait around in the gym to see if it would clear up.
I headed to the bleachers and pulled out my book. A few seconds later, I received a sharp smack in the arm. “Put that down,” Sarah said.
“Ow,” I said, rubbing the spot she’d hit.
Sarah pulled an apologetic face as she sprawled out beside me. “Sorry. Sometimes I don’t know my own strength. Still, no reading for you. I’m bored and need someone to entertain me.”
“And that’s my problem?”
“Of course it is. That’s the price of my friendship.”
“Why can’t you just play around on your phone? Quietly?”
“I’d love to, but it ran out of battery. It’s been glitchy recently—not holding a charge as long as it should. I’m thinking about getting my phone guy to take a look at it.”
“Fine,” I said, setting my book down on my lap. “What would you like to converse about?”
“Well, I’m going to have some fun with the fact that you just used the phrase ‘converse about.’ I think that’s going to keep me going for quite some time.” Sarah waggled her eyebrows at me.
I sighed. She sighed back, longer and louder.
* * *
—
ELEVEN MINUTES LATER, MR. MATTHEWS finally called uncle in the standoff between him and the rain and told us we could all go home.
Sarah borrowed my phone to call her parents.
“You want a ride?” she asked, before she started to dial. “You don’t want to walk back in this.” I hesitated for a moment. “Don’t worry,” she said. “It’s my dad’s turn to pick up.”
I’d gotten rides with Sarah a couple of times now. Usually her dad got us—but the last time it had been her mom, and the trip had been marked by long stretches of awkward silence, interrupted only by her mom’s occasional comments, which were somehow directed at neither me nor Sarah but instead at some invisible third girl interested in fashion tips and DIY pedicures.
I nodded, embarrassed at Sarah’s having understood the source of my hesitation.
“Cool,” she said. “I’ll let him know we’ll be dropping you off.”
* * *
—
WHEN SARAH’S DAD ARRIVED, HE honked twice and we sprinted from the door of the gym out through the rain and shoved ourselves breathlessly through the car doors.
Even with windshield wipers going double-time, the rain made it difficult to see, so he drove very slowly after giving Sarah an affectionate pat on the shoulder.
“So,” he said, glancing at me in the car mirror and smiling. “Sarah tells me you’re getting good at this whole running thing.”
“I’m getting better,” I said.
“That’s great. It’s about time someone started making Sarah work for her wins. I’m pretty sure she’s starting to think she’s all that and a really fast bag of chips.”
“Dad,” Sarah said. “That doesn’t even make sense.”
“No, her head has been getting too big, I tell you. She needs to know she has some competition out there.” He glanced b
ack at me again. “So at your first meet, you need to crush her, okay? Put her in her place.”
I felt myself turning pink.
Sarah laughed. “You’re embarrassing her. Besides, I don’t even remember talking to you about Jess’s running—you must have gotten that from Mr. Matthews in one of your little huddle sessions. You really should spend less time analyzing my competition and more time explaining to Mom that teenagers can’t survive on kale and crackers.”
“C’mon, you know why your mom’s like that,” he said, a slight edge to his voice.
“Yeah, I know, I know. She was overweight for like two days while she was growing up and it was the worst thing ever, and she just wants to protect me from the trauma.”
“Be nice, Sarah. People were horrible to her about it. Really cruel.” Then he took a deep breath and lightened his tone. “Anyway, you were definitely the one who told me about Jess’s running. I remember it distinctly.”
Sarah rolled her eyes at me. I smiled and then looked out at the field through the rain-smeared window. Mr. Matthews stood at the edge of the track, his clothes heavy with water. And while the rain fell too fast for me to be sure, and he began moving almost immediately after I saw him, it looked like he was staring at the car, watching me go.
He claims I was the one who started it. That I began smiling at him in a different way, moving closer and closer. That he tried to resist, but I made it too difficult.
It could be he’s right—that you can draw someone to you without realizing you’re doing it. I’m not sure, though, because looking back, I don’t think it even occurred to me that he was an option.
At least part of me was still good back then.
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