No rigorous exercise. Maisie 2.0 is a girl who cannot run. And not just races. Maybe I’ll never even be able to run to catch a train or to get inside when it suddenly starts to rain or just for the sheer joy of it, just a short way—running into someone’s arms for a hug.
Suddenly, I hear myself saying, “Try landing on the balls of your feet.”
Ellen doesn’t hear, so I repeat it, louder this time. When she still doesn’t stop, I walk toward the middle of the track and wait until she’s about to run headlong into me. Then I grab her arm, expecting her to stop the instant she feels my touch. But I underestimated the momentum she’d built up and our legs get twisted and we both fall onto the track.
“What the—?” Ellen begins angrily. Then she sees that it’s me on the ground beside her. “Oh my god, Maisie, are you okay?”
I’m on my hands and knees. My right wrist is aching—I threw out my hands to keep my face from hitting the ground. I’m panting as though I was the one who’d been running. Because what if my face had hit the ground? What if I’d broken this nose, this chin? What then?
My stomach lurches with a familiar rush of adrenaline.
“I’m fine,” I say finally, nodding.
“But your—” Ellen hesitates, biting her sweaty upper lip.
“My face? It’s fine.” I shake my head, trying to look calmer than I feel.
“What were you thinking?”
I sit back on my heels and shake my wrist out. It’s muddy from the damp track.
“I guess I thought I could help.”
“What?”
Ellen is drenched with rain and sweat and fog, her bangs sticking up from her forehead in all directions. Her fair skin is covered in red patches from the effort of her run. It doesn’t look bad: It’s a mark of the work she’s put in. I swear my freckles used to change color from brown to magenta when I ran. She’s wearing shorts and a tank top and her arms and legs are so white that they practically glow in the fog. No wonder she hated me for cutting off her tanning time back in September.
“I thought I could help,” I repeat, pushing myself up to stand. I offer her my hand—my left hand; my right hurts too much—and help her stand. Her fingertips brush against my scars. She drops my hand like it’s hot. But she doesn’t seem disgusted, just embarrassed.
“I don’t need any help.”
“Yes, you do.”
Ellen presses the heel of her hand against her forehead. She’s still panting. “I guess I deserve that.”
“Deserve what?”
“You being nasty to me. After how I acted last semester.”
“I’m not—I wasn’t trying to be mean.”
“Then what are you doing here?”
I shrug. “I’m early,” I say finally. “And your car was in the parking lot. I was just watching you run.”
“Why?”
“Because I love running.” The words I don’t say hang in the air: And I can’t run anymore.
“Oh.” Ellen rubs her nose with the back of her hand, brushing away some lingering sweat.
“I was just trying to tell you that you should try landing on the balls of your feet.”
“What?”
“You were coming down hard on your ankles. The impact is bad for your knees, and it slows you down—it forces your body to come to a sort-of stop in between each step.” My explanation isn’t nearly as scientific as Chirag’s was, when he explained it to me. “If you land on the balls of your feet, you can build up more momentum. It’s kind of like ice skating—you just flow from one step into the next.”
“Okay,” Ellen says. “Well … I wanted to get in another mile before homeroom.” Ellen was never like me when it came to running. I always thought that she’d only joined the team because it would look good on her college applications, alongside her perfect grades and AP classes. But now—with me gone—she’s the best runner on the team. I’m sure Coach is piling the pressure on.
Guess I’m not the only one my accident changed. I mean, I know it changed things for my parents, for Chirag, for my doctors. But this is a kind of change I never could have predicted, a change in someone I’m not even friends with anymore.
Maybe Ellen is trying to find out how it feels to be someone who really cares about running. Ellen 2.0, just like me.
“You should try it,” I say. “Running on the balls of your feet. For your last mile.”
Ellen looks surprised. She probably thought I was going to walk away and leave her alone. Instead, I climb onto the bleachers and watch. It takes her a couple of laps to get it right: Her body is so used to landing on her heels that it tries to keep doing it even when her brain wants to land on the balls of her feet. I can see her struggle. I probably look the same way in PT, when my body is screaming out not to do the very thing that Marnie orders me to do.
But after two laps, Ellen catches her stride. Her footfalls are softer now, and she leaps from one step to the next buoyantly. I’m not sure if she’s actually going faster than she was before, but her head is held up higher now.
When she’s finished, she walks over to me. “Thanks,” she says.
“No problem.”
“Can I ask you something?”
I nod, bracing myself for a question about Chirag or my face. But instead she says, “Why’d you help me?”
“What do you mean?”
“I thought you hated me now.”
I shake my head. “I don’t hate you. And I helped you … I don’t know. Because I could, I guess. Because I know how to run.” I think of Michael; he doesn’t have legs, but surely he remembers how to walk. Of Maureen, who can’t see out of one eye, but certainly remembers what the world looked like when she could.
“I never told Chirag, you know. About Halloween. I didn’t even tell Samantha, and I tell her everything.”
“I know. Thank you.”
“I just wanted you to know that.”
Our conversation is awkward, as though our friendship is another skill that I remember but can’t use anymore. Like we both can recall what it was like to be friends, but neither of us can actually feel it now.
“I bet if you asked, Coach would let you come back to the team, as, like, a student coach or something. I’d tell her how much you helped me. And she wouldn’t say no to you, you know, because …”
“Because no one wants to say no to the class freak?”
Ellen looks away.
“It was a joke, Ellen. It’s okay.”
“It wasn’t funny.”
They would have laughed in Group. “Guess it was kind of an inside joke.”
Ellen shakes her head, confused.
“That’s a really nice idea, though, student coaching.” I pause, looking down at my dark clothes. The old Maisie received ribbons and medals; crowds cheered for her, other teams booed her. But now, Maisie 2.0 receives applause from Marnie just for catching a ball with her left hand. For driving to Group all by herself. “I’m not sure I’d want to be on the team like that, you know? A part of it but also outside of it. Feels like it would be a kind of … denying that things have changed.”
Ellen nods. “I get that. It sucks, though.”
“Yeah,” I agree. “It does. There are a lot of things I don’t get to have anymore.” It comes out sounding sadder than I mean it to. Ellen looks so devastated that I want to reach out and comfort her. “I just meant—I have to find new things to look forward to.”
I got into Berkeley!” Serena practically tackles me with the news. Before I can respond, she says, “Wait, shouldn’t we go sit in the shade?”
It’s lunchtime and I’m sitting on the bench where we sat for just a few minutes on the first day of school, my face tilted toward the sky. It’s not raining today—the rainy season is almost over—and right now, I can actually feel the heat from the sun on my skin. I’m like a vampire who’s just discovered she can walk in the sunlight after all. I don’t even care that people are staring at me, don’t care that the group who usually
sits on this bench is tossing me dirty looks.
I don’t have a migraine. For six months, I woke up nearly every morning with a throbbing at the base of my neck that radiated up until it reached my temples. But for now, the ache has vanished. And yesterday, I made it through the whole day without taking a nap. Today, only my socks and sneakers are black. Still, nothing like Serena’s peach-flowered top.
“Congratulations!”
“Thanks!” Serena twists her long dark hair around her fingers. “Have you gotten yours yet?”
I don’t answer, and Serena says, “They’re probably just doing them alphabetically. Marcus comes way before Winters, you know?”
I nod, but the truth is I got my acceptance letter from Berkeley two days ago. But if I have to lie to Serena about something, I’d rather it be whether I got my acceptance letter than pretending to be excited that we’re going to go to school together in the fall. Besides, it’s not totally a lie: I am still waiting for an acceptance letter. Just from Barnard, not Cal.
“Seriously, though, shouldn’t you get out of the sun?”
Serena looks so solemn that I laugh.
“You sure latched on to that particular side effect.”
Serena folds her arms across her chest defensively. “It’s the only one your mother told me about.”
“Yeah, but it’s not like you haven’t gotten to see the other side effects up close and personal.” Serena blushes. “Anyway,” I add, “I don’t think ten minutes of sunshine will kill me.”
“Yeah, but the seniors who usually sit here might.” She nods in the direction of the group that’s scowling at us.
“Come on, can’t they give a poor disabled girl like me a break?”
Serena laughs. She’s this beautiful, almost dainty kind of girl, but when she really gets going, she has the most absurd, nasal, honking laugh I’ve ever heard.
“Hey, can I ask you a random question?”
“Sure.”
“You know that when I got out of the hospital, Chirag took me to Bay Leaf?”
“He hates that restaurant,” Serena says, wrinkling her pretty nose. I can’t wrinkle my nose yet. I tried, looking in the mirror last night.
“I know!” I agree. “Which is why, when he took me there after I got out of the hospital, I said, What do I get if I lose a limb next time?”
Serena plops onto the bench beside me. “That’s funny.”
“Chirag didn’t think so.”
She shrugs. “He never really laughed at your jokes.”
“He didn’t?” I ask, genuinely surprised.
“It drove you crazy how serious he was!” Serena almost shouts, standing up and taking my arm—my right arm—to pull me into the shade. The sunny bench we left behind is quickly taken over by its usual inhabitants.
“Oh my god, speaking of Bay Leaf,” she continues, “remember that night last year when a huge group of us were there and Chirag complained about it the entire time?”
I nod. “Yeah.”
Serena tries to make her voice as deep as Chirag’s: “My mother’s food is so much better than this … real sag paneer isn’t this creamy. Traditional naan does not look like this.”
“That’s the worst impression I’ve ever heard.”
“Who else have you ever heard do a Chirag impression?”
“No, I mean, it’s the worst impression I’ve ever heard anyone try to do of anyone.”
Serena scowls, but she’s trying not to laugh. “And remember halfway through dinner he practically sat on your lap and ate all the food off your plate? I thought you were going to break up with him then and there.”
“Seriously?”
“Dude, you were fuming! ’Course, you never said anything to him about it. You’d have rather gone hungry than have an actual fight with the guy.”
“What are you talking about? Chirag and I never fought.”
“Exactly!” Serena nods, her hair falling across her face. She exhales, blowing strands away from her eyes. “You’d just come to me and moan about the things he did that pissed you off. How he was scientific about everything, all those movies he made you watch—”
“I liked some of those movies!”
“Yeah, but he always refused to watch any of the movies you loved. I was the one who had to come over to watch When Harry Met Sally … and Two for the Road and The Philadelphia Story.”
I shake my head. “I guess I forgot about that.” I forgot that there was anything about Chirag I disliked before my accident.
“Well, I remember,” Serena says, pulling an almond butter sandwich out of her bag and sitting cross-legged on our usual shady bench. “I think you were just scared to fight with him. Scared of being anything like your parents.”
“Guess I got over that fear. You should have heard the way we fought the night I broke up with him.”
In between bites, Serena says, “Breaking up with him doesn’t mean you’re like your parents. I mean, it kind of means you’re the opposite, right? Because their relationship stopped working a long time ago and they still haven’t broken up. It’d be way more like them to stay in a bad relationship.”
I smile. “When did you get so wise?”
“I’ve always been wise,” Serena answers with a flip of her hair. “I just don’t like to show off.”
I lean over and kiss her cheek. It’s the first time I’ve put my face this close to anyone else’s, and Serena doesn’t flinch when my nose rubs against her cheekbone.
When I pull away, she says softly, “Listen … did you hear about him?”
“About Chirag? What?” I ask quickly. Does he have a new girlfriend? Is he okay? Should I feel bad because I thought about the girlfriend question before I thought about the is-he-okay question?
“He got into Stanford.”
“Oh.” I nod. “Good for him.” He always wanted to go there. Before my accident, we used to talk about how easy it would be—me at Berkeley, him at Stanford. We thought we wouldn’t have to break up the way other high school couples do when they go to different colleges. Berkeley and Stanford are less than ninety minutes away from each other.
“We’d be rivals,” I said once. I tried to imagine what it would be like to show up at a track meet and root against Chirag. I didn’t think I’d have been able to do it.
“Like the Capulets and the Montagues. Or the Sharks and the Jets,” Chirag answered.
“Didn’t end well for those folks,” I said. A joke that Chirag didn’t, I remember now, laugh at. Instead he leaned in and kissed me for a long time until my knees literally felt weak.
What did I think would happen when I went to Barnard? Did I know—even back in September, when I decided to apply there—that I’d break up with him?
Serena says, “Maybe you should congratulate him.”
I shake my head. “I’m not sure. We haven’t exactly been talking since our breakup.” The last conversation we had was when he asked if I needed a lift to PT. Since then, we kind of just nodded in each other’s direction when we passed each other in the halls. Lately, I’ve just avoided making eye contact with him entirely. When I see him coming, I pretend I’m totally engrossed in a conversation, or a book, or a text message. Once, last week, I just turned around and walked the other way.
“But you know how much getting into Stanford means to him.”
“Getting into college means a lot to everyone.” I press my feet into the ground, still muddy from a season of rain.
“Don’t pretend you don’t care, May-Day.”
“I’m not,” I insist. “But we didn’t exactly have the most friendly breakup in the history of Highlands High. I said terrible things.”
“I’m sure you didn’t really say anything that bad.”
“I did,” I say firmly.
“But you could still try to be friends—”
“I didn’t want to be his friend.” I interrupt. “I didn’t want to be with him if I couldn’t, you know, be with him.”
“I ge
t that,” Serena says. “I do. But maybe you won’t always feel that way. Maybe you’ll want to be friends someday. And you could, I don’t know, keep that option open by doing the right thing now. Go. Congratulate him. Throw in an apology while you’re at it.”
“For what?” I say, and I’m not being sarcastic. I have so much to apologize to him for that I wouldn’t know where to start.
“I don’t know. For everything.”
“I’m not sure a blanket apology will be enough in this case.”
Serena shrugs. “It’s a place to start.”
I glance at my watch. It’s time for my midday dose. “I gotta go.” I get up and head for the nurse’s office.
I’m on my third pill when I realize that Serena’s right. I know how much this meant to Chirag. The truth is, I want to congratulate him.
I take my remaining pills two at a time, eager to get to Chirag before the bell rings for sixth period. Before I lose my nerve.
I have to find him first. I still know his schedule by heart, so I know where to look. But he’s not on the benches out front. And he’s not near his locker. He’s not sitting in a classroom, early for his sixth-period class. I’m about to give up when I think of the one place I haven’t looked. Out on the bleachers by the track, where we sat together on our second date. I turn on my heel and head in that direction.
There are plenty of people spending lunch period out here. It’s nothing like that January day last year when we sat out here alone.
As I climb up the stairs in the center of the bleachers, only about half of my classmates are staring, averting their eyes, or whispering to the person sitting beside them. I’m not sure if they’re used to me or if they’re all just too engrossed in their own lives to pay attention to the freak walking amongst them, the one whose pulse is pounding because she’s looking for the boy who broke her heart, whether he meant to or not.
I hear his voice, deep and solemn, before I see him. Just the sound of it tightens that string around my rib cage, the one up by my heart.
I spin around, looking for him. He’s just a few feet in front of me, a couple of steps higher than where I’m standing. Smiling and handsome in the sunshine, pushing his hair back from his forehead.
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