I’m on the shore somewhere. It’s a long stretch of pebbly sand, and I dig my toes into the little rocks until it hurts. Until I start to bleed. I look down and wonder why I’m doing this. It occurs to me to look around to see if someone will help me, but the rest of the beach is empty. Miles to the left and right are silent. Still. There is no one to help me, and I am horribly alone.
Then I look in front of me. There is a boy standing on a sun-bleached dock. I guess that he’s about…I don’t know. Twelve? I can’t quite tell. He is wearing swim trunks and a sleeveless shirt. Deeply tanned, the wind in his hair. A beautiful child. Then I see that he is skipping stones. The water is rough, so I can’t see if his stones end up making rings. When I try to call to him to ask if he will help me stop digging my bleeding feet farther into what are now shards of rock, I can’t make a sound. Nonetheless he turns to me. As if he hears me despite the silence. The peaceful, content look on his face calms me, and I’m able to take a few steps forward and my pain eases. I am no longer alone.
Without warning, fire erupts around him, and the boy is engulfed in leaping flames. I start to choke. I can’t move now; I can only watch and scream. I’m confused because he doesn’t struggle, he doesn’t jump into the water, he doesn’t do anything. I watch as his figure fades and then the fire subsides. The dock is now empty, as though he was never there. As though it never happened.
But soon I’m smiling, and I throw my head back, laughing. The boy emerges from the water, unscathed by the fire, and climbs back onto the dock. He puts his hands on hips and looks at me, an unmistakably determined expression on his face.
The boy is a fighter.
He nods once at me, and I nod back with some sort of understanding that I can’t identify. I have no explanation for the clear connection between us because we are nothing alike.
He is a fighter. I am not.
And yet, we are unquestionably linked.
6
A LONG WAY TO RUN
THE WORKOUT PLAYLISTSthat other people listen to do not hold a whole lot of appeal, but I continue scrolling through the music app. It seems that the 1980s are a great source of adrenaline for many people—alas, the era of neon leg warmers and stretchy terry headbands doesn’t seem to rock my shit.
After settling on a song collection of remixed Top 40 hits that seems slightly less offensive, I start warming up. My neck cracks as I lean over my outstretched leg. Given that I haven’t done anything yet and my body is already producing audible noises, this is in all likelihood a very stupid idea. I am probably going to pass out about twenty feet from here. But I continue trying to coax my body into awareness by going through the handful of stretches that I can think to do. Because my calves already hurt after a handful of toe lifts, I do not feel confident.
My goal today is to exercise for forty-five minutes. It just can’t be that hard. People do it all the time. The sun is out, the air is cool and sharp, and it is perfect weather for running. When my earbuds are firmly in, I look at the time. It is 8:17 a.m. At two minutes after nine, this will be over and I will have accomplished something.
After only six minutes, I am miserable. Trying to match my pace to the rhythm of the songs has only resulted in a fierce burn ripping through my lungs. Everything about my existence feels uncomfortable. My baggy sweatpants are chafing my thighs and my breasts are jostling uncomfortably since I didn’t think to change out of my regular underwire. Clearly, a good sports bra is going to be in order if I plan on doing this again. Which at this point seems unlikely.
I slow down to a stride that feels more natural, even though it’s against the beat. The commitment to forty-five minutes has been made, and I am going to honor it, damn it. Even if my outfit sucks and the songs I chose aren’t right.
Minute eighteen is not good. I am breathing too hard.
Minute nineteen makes me near suicidal. A sharp cramp stabs continuously on the right side of my waist.
Minute twenty. I stop and drop my head down while I rest my hands on my legs. My breathing evens out quickly enough, and the cramp dissolves. I stand up and put my hands on my waist, assessing the route in front of me. The grass-lined path ahead will take me to the lake. A good destination? Maybe. But I’m feeling too indecisive to move. It’s then that I realize what’s stopping me in my tracks is not indecision. It’s heartache.It is fucking heartache.Nonsensical, yet distinct. Today, without Chris, it would just feel lonely to see that rocky shore.
Minute twenty-one. I decide to make a new path of my own. If I am not going to run, I am at least going to walk.
So I walk hard for the next eight minutes, mapping out a circular route in my head that will loop me back to the dorm. I’m breathing hard and wanting distraction when I remember that exercising is when people like to “think.” I try to relax and see what turns up.
As my legs churn and my heart thumps, I rack my brain, skimming through my life history. Images flash quickly through my mind. My mother chasing after me as I’m boarding the school bus, laughing and frantically waving my lunch box. My dad prepping me for the SATs by flashing index cards at me over breakfast. God, every memory is so tied to them, and it seems impossible to separate the memories from the grief.
My thoughts move to Annie, my mom’s best friend, who fought the life insurance company that tried to buy off me and James with a paltry settlement. I have no idea if another lawyer would have brawled the way that Annie did. She made sure my brother’s college education and expenses would be paid for. I told her at the time that I didn’t care what my fortune amounted to. But Annie got us more than enough.
Annie. Thinking about her is a sore subject for me because it’s just another way that I have failed. She is the one person who I can say unequivocally did not run from me and James when my parents died. Annie is the person who went to O’Hare Airport in a nightgown, flew from Chicago to Boston, and then drove over three hours to find us at the hospital in Maine. Annie is the person who drove James and me back to the house where we grew up in Massachusetts, although with our parents dead, the house no longer felt like home in the least. She made the service arrangements and probably dealt with more horrific details than I care to know. She got me dressed for the funeral, and she forced me to eat and even shower when I couldn’t handle basic life skills. For three weeks she kept James and me functioning in ways that no one else could have. Then we moved in with Lisa, my mother’s sister, and Annie went back to Chicago. After that, I couldn’t tolerate hearing her voice on the phone.
Everything about her shredded my heart because she reminded me too much of my mother, and so she reminded me too much of my mother’s death. I couldn’t handle it. I pushed her away, and even a loyalty like hers could only take so many unreturned phone calls and letters. But even while I was cutting her out of our lives, she continued to fight like hell so that we got the best possible financial result. Lisa eventually dropped her as our family attorney, solidifying the end of that tie. Our new attorney is perfectly good, but he’s not Annie.
I start running again as I shake my head, but last only until I catch sight of my dorm, when I slow to a walk. I tuck my phone into the band of my sweatpants and retie my ponytail. Now that the horrid run is over, I admit that I actually feel good. Although my muscles hurt, and I am overall embarrassingly fatigued, I am alert in a way that I love. In fact, as I near the steps to Reber Hall, I wish that I’d sucked it up and kept going for the full forty-five minutes.
The door opens before I reach it, and a stocky blond guy in shorts and a fitted shirt holds open the door for me. “Good day for a run, huh?”
“What?”
“Couldn’t ask for better weather.” He adjusts the armband that holds his small music player and smiles. “Cool, but not cold. I hate how the cold tightens you up when you run, you know?”
He thinks that I’m a runner, like he is, and I feel false even as I embrace the lie. “Oh. Yeah, I hate that. It’s really gorgeous out today.” I step through the threshold. “You’ll have a good run.”
“Sweet. Catch you later.”
