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It was simultaneously too hard, too soft, too lumpy and too gelatinous. I rolled about for hours, trying to settle into a comfortable position, and found none. Sleep eventually came, but not before the wee hours.
Or… um… at least I choose to blame the bed. For the sleeping, that is.
Because I guess, if we’re being honest, I could’ve just as easily blamed Catya.
My head swam with her, and only her, and nothing but her. She was in both my waking and sleeping consciousness, and the strange lucid state in between.
What a horrible sign.
Despite my complete lack of sleep, I bounded out of bed that morning at six. There had to be, somewhere in this tiny town, refuge from the endless thoughts of her my brain kept supplying even though I begged it to stop. What might keep me preoccupied?
A run, I thought. Perfect, yes! A run! That would do the trick. A run would prevent me from going to that dark place the dreams went last night, the place where I took off her neon sports bra and—
“A run,” I said aloud with forced cheer. “That’s what you’re doing. Not thinking about anything you ought not to be thinking about.”
With speed fostered by years of practice, I strapped on my running shoes, threw on a pair of sweats and grabbed my headphones. Glancing at the weather app on my phone, I momentarily debated the decision to go shirtless, then shrugged. Better cold nipples than chafed ones.
I was out the door in less than five, bounding down the stairs of my building — I lived on the fifth floor, and though there was an elevator, it felt like admitting to defeat to take it — and emerging onto a cobblestone path. The thing about ULA was that everything seemed to be cobblestone. It was like the designers weren’t sure if any other substance properly constituted a road.
From the few walks I’d taken around the general area, a number of which were at night without any streetlights for guidance, I surmised that the whole town was built roughly on concentric circles, with the main campus quadrangle in the middle. But how could one go off this beaten, circular path? The cobblestones were tricky to run on, and my toes kept getting caught in the cracks.
Another feature of the collegiate town was that there were security guards next to emergency lights posts stationed every block or so. Frankly, even based on what little I knew about the area, I couldn’t possibly surmise what would constitute a necessity for these guards. It wasn’t like ULA was awash with high-level criminal activity. Don’t get me wrong, I’m from London, and have first-hand acquaintance with the military-industrial police state — thanks, CCTV! — but this seemed excessive. At least in London we had real terrorist threats. The biggest threat to ULA was a frat bro getting too drunk and passing out on a front lawn.
All that being said, I was momentarily grateful for the police officer. I veered to the nearest post and pulled to a stop.
“Hello, ma’am,” I said. “I was wondering if there were any nearby forest trails I might run on?”
I gestured at my running kit, and hoped she wouldn’t take it the wrong way that I was, essentially, treating her like a tour guide.
She replied, “No problem,” and began to indicate areas with two pointer fingers, like a flight attendant. “You’re gonna wanna go three blocks that way, turn right, keep going for a block. Then you’ll come upon a kind of leafy, like, entrance? You’ll see, there are usually other joggers out there ‘bout this time.”
I thanked her, and went on my merry way.
Soon enough, I found myself in front of the previously described ‘entrance.’ She was right, kind of, there were some trees arching to one another that seemed to suggest a gateway, though it was unclear if that was a conscious design. The foot falls of other runners had also left distinctive smooth patterns along the stones that led up to the theoretical arch, patterns like what you might see leading up to the Parthenon. It was obvious that, as opposed to the rest of the campus, which had undergone some heavy revamping, this section had remained untouched.
No one was around, at least not in my line of sight. Weird — hadn’t she said it was quite popular at this time? No matter. I tinkered with my phone, opening the workout playlist in my music app, which contained an eclectic — or unappealing — mixture of ‘90s hip hop, early 2000s R&B, and early ‘80s disco. Was that what they called it, disco? No, more like ballads. My taste — well, it wasn’t for everyone. It was barely even for me.
With the music blasting in my earbuds, I began to jog through the forest. Leaves were strewn across the ground, making the surface softer than the damned cobblestones, and the trees overhead grew so tightly together that they nearly formed a canopy, blotting out the early morning sunlight. The last green of the season was getting booted out by various shades of ocher. I wasn’t sure I could ever live somewhere truly devoid of seasons. The interim colors were too beautiful to miss. And the nippy air invigorated my lungs like pure oxygen, making me dizzy in all the right ways.
