know I’m not breaking a record. No one’s ever kept track of how long it takes to run the overpass. But it feels like I’m flying.
I’m not tired. I’m barely winded, but I collapse in the grass along the sidewalk and stare up at the cloudless sky. I remember a day like this once. It was last summer. I’d been mowing the lawn, and halfway through, I stopped and just lay down in the grass in our backyard. I was watching a plane flying so high it seemed motionless against the clear blue, and then Connor’s face was looking down at me.
“Come run with me,” he said.
“I’m mowing,” I said back to him.
“Yeah, it looks like it.” Connor kicked my foot. “Come on.
You’ll like it. Hell, you’ll love it. Just come with me.”
“I’m too out of shape.”
Connor scoffed. “If you get too tired to make it back, I’ll carry you, okay? But you won’t get tired. Come on.” He grabbed my hand and tried to pull me up.
“I hate running,” I said, and a little voice wanted me to add, and I hate you. God, I came so close to saying it. Really close. I mean, he wanted me to go running with him? Seriously? Yeah, right, take me out in public and show everyone how much 9 3
Copyright © 2015 by Debra Dockter.
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better you are than me. Let them see me struggling to keep up with you.
“You’ve never tried,” he said. “I’m telling you, you’ll love it.”
I jumped up then. I was hot from mowing, pissed that he seriously wanted to humiliate me in front of the whole town.
Pissed that he was telling me what I’d love. Who was he to tell me anything? Mr. Perfect. Mr. Mascot for the whole fucking town. “You want to run, go run. Have a blast. But leave me the fuck alone.” I pushed him away, literally. I put my hands on him, and I pushed him.
Connor didn’t push me back. He looked at me. His eyes, those fucking blue eyes, trying to say what words couldn’t. But I didn’t listen. Why didn’t I listen?
I stare up at the sky, the same blue sky. Connor knew I’d love running. He knew because he saw something in me that I couldn’t see in myself. He saw that I was like him. And I pushed him away.
I feel tears slipping from my eyes, sliding down my temples.
Then I hear a voice.
“Need an ambulance?” someone hollers from the window of a car that’s pulled up to the curb. Teddy Eskew, school bully and X-Man wannabe, is getting out. “You in training or something?” he asks as I get back onto my feet.
“Leave me alone, Teddy,” I warn.
“Leave you alone?” Teddy’s wearing a T-shirt with the arms cut off to show off his steroid-enhanced muscles. He looks like he’s been hitting the weights and the ’roids pretty hard. Large veins run along his inflated biceps. God, he’s such an idiot.
9 4
Copyright © 2015 by Debra Dockter.
FOR REVIEWING PURPOSES ONLY--NOT FOR SALE
He’s going to have big muscles, testicles like raisins, and a liver more effed up than an alcoholic’s.
“Come on, Teddy,” a guy says. I recognize the voice. It’s Byron Holt. He’s a scrawny little math geek. He and Teddy had an arrangement. Byron would do Teddy’s geometry homework, and Teddy would quit giving him bloody noses. Now it’s summer, and they’re hanging out? Maybe they bonded over isosceles triangles and bloody tissues.
“Teddy,” he hollers from the window, “you’ll mess up your probation.”
“So what are you training for?” Teddy asks, ignoring him.
“Are you trying out to be the next Connor McAdams?”
“I’m not telling you again, Teddy. Leave. Me. Alone.”
He smiles, like I knew he would. And I ram my head as hard as I can into his gut. Unlucky for me, there’s a stop sign a few feet behind Teddy, and between my head ramming into his stomach and the metal post of the sign ramming against his back, the contents of his stomach are cannoned right out of him and onto my back. I strip my T-shirt off and, without giving him time to recover, punch Teddy as hard as I can in the face. He staggers, avoiding the stop sign this time. He raises his fists like he’s going to punch me back, but I nail him again in the chin.
“Stop!” It’s a girl’s voice. I hear it gradually drawing closer, but I don’t care. It feels so good to hit