Page 64 of All The Ways to Miss You

“He’s my friend. And minus the bribing part, he’s agreed to sell me the house.” I shoot him a smug expression.

“I’m happy for you, Cat.”

“Thanks.” I nudge him with my shoulder.

The race weaves through neighborhoods of cheering spectators, and at mile twenty, the buildings of the Northwalton Campus appear. At the mere sight of them, I find myself off-kilter as my muscles tense and my stride falters. I do my best to adjust, but my body seems heavier. Stiffer. Achy. Perhaps if I lock on mental blinders, I won’t even realize where I am?

“You okay?” Evan must sense the change.

“Just planning my win,” I say, delivering a little jab.

“That’s all it will ever be. A big fat plan.”

I allow his comment to ignite my competitiveness and distract my roaming thoughts. I quicken my pace, determined to run out the last six miles. We enter the canyon of the campus. I stare straight ahead, focusing blocks away to where the edge of the Chicago River divides the city. If I can make it there, I’ll be through it all.

The race route twists. They’re weaving us through every street to fill out the final miles, but it’s in the next bend that I see it. The park. My park. It’s beautiful and green, and exactly as it was in my dreams.

Awareness blooms. What’s here is too similar to my dreams for them not to be real. The images in my mind at night really are slivers of information coming back to me. This is proof. My heart leaps.

But then I see that spot, the exact location I was lying when it happened. It’s illuminated by a shaft of sunshine and framed by the building’s long shadows of jagged, graphite-colored formations. Fate is testing me by pointing it out.

I can be fearless, or I can fold. Determined to fight it, I clench my hands, but my feet slow, dragging my toes. My legs strain to lift my shoes. They’re suddenly the weight of bricks.

Then I hear it. Music.

My head jerks to the sound. It’s a guitar melody in the distance—the same song from my dream. Through the crowd of spectators and runners, I frantically scan, searching for the source. When I can’t find it, I stop in the middle of the street and turn to face the oncoming runners. I’m an unmovable rock splitting a river as they rush around me. Someone screams. Then another. I whip my head from side to side to find the source, but the runners morph into people scattering for their lives.

It’s pure chaos. No. Pure hell.

My legs weaken, and I collapse to the asphalt, scraping my knees. Blistering pain explodes from within my body. Arm. Stomach. Leg. Healed scars become open wounds, excruciating and burning. I roll from side to side as blood spreads. I’m remembering it, hot and sticky and pouring out of me, draining to the ground, taking my happiness with it.

In the mayhem, I use the air left in my lungs to scream. It’s shrill and agonizing. My chest constricts. I wheeze.

I grab my throat. I can’t breathe. I’m suffocating and straining to survive.

My surroundings blur. I tilt and fall, my cheek and shoulder crashing to the pavement before inky spots spread like feathering watercolors behind my eyes.

Then . . . darkness.

twenty-nine

“Cait. Look at me, Cait.”

I come to. Images flutter between reality and a painful blurred memory of before. My head and shoulders are cradled in Evan’s arms. His wide, worried eyes stare down at me.

I blink again. We’re on the ground, and there’s a white tent above us. It’s confusing. Someone’s pinching my wrist. Evan holds a cool towel over my forehead. There’s a chill under my armpit, between my legs? Ice?

I stir, trying to move.

“You need to drink some water.” A man offers a plastic cup but I push it away, and it spills across the back of my hand.

“Cait. Just do it. They need to get your body temperature down,” Evan says.

They think I have heatstroke. They don’t know. They don’t understand.

“I need to see. I need to see!” I fight Evan’s grasp to push myself up for a view over his shoulder. I need to see for myself that I’m safe, that everyone here is safe.

I blink several times, but there are only runners streaming past. The park, my park, is across the street, filled with cheering spectators. They’re smiling, waving signs, and blowing whistles. This is a far leap from what I saw, and very far from my horror-filled dreams.