It was exhausting, paying attention. I never used to, not really, and I missed floating through it all, oblivious.
Still, it was occasionally interesting what you could learn simply by watching people.
For example, Lauren pretends the reason she weighs nothing is because she has an amped-up metabolism. That’s not true. In reality, she weighs nothing because she doesn’t eat. At lunch, she moves her food around and then talks about how full she is. The rest of her friends joke about how they should watch what they eat, but they do eat, while she throws all her food away. I’d initially thought her insistence on using the changing room was about modesty, same as me, but now I thought it was more about concealing the razor sharpness of her collarbone, the starkness of her ribs.
Brian and Charlie are practically attached at the hip, although they don’t seem to be able to decide whether they’re best friends or worst enemies. Sometimes they seem relaxed around each other, joking and laughing—leaning against Charlie’s car in the parking lot, passing a flask between them, hiding it when a teacher strolls by—other times they look like they’re ready to fight to the death. When I mentioned this to Sarah, she said it made sense—that their dads were best friends from way back, so Charlie and Brian basically grew up together, were practically siblings. Which didn’t follow for me, because Anna and I were never like that. Maybe brothers are different, though.
A kid in my English class, Tom, spends the whole period making elaborate and extremely violent drawings: samurai beheading each other, men with machine guns, guys being strangled with their own intestines—the last one seeming like overkill because once your intestines are outside your body, I’m pretty sure your time is limited. The drawings were pretty good, although his shading skills needed work. If I had to guess, he was on track to become either a video game designer or a serial killer. Every class, I debated whether I should sit close to him so I could watch him draw or stay as far away as possible.
Too close or too far. Maybe there was no middle distance, no safety zone. Once you begin watching people, you can end up seeing stuff you don’t want to see, stuff you don’t know how to handle.
AN UNEXPECTED BENEFIT OF BEING on the track team was that it gave me an easy excuse to get out of the house. All I had to do was put on my sweatpants and gym shoes and announce that I was going out for a run and I had a free pass. I didn’t have to explain to my parents how hard it was to be at home sometimes, how without Anna it felt like the house had grown smaller and the walls were in danger of closing in.
Usually, the running ruse only lasted for a couple of blocks, until I was safely out of sight of the house. After that, I’d just walk around, carefully navigating Birdton’s poorly maintained sidewalks, or sit in the park for a while, wishing I’d figured out a way to bring a book along with me without ruining the pretense. But on Sunday I found myself still running well past my usual stopping points. It was something about the weather, I thought, something about how it was bright and not too cold, with a slight breeze. It was the first day that really felt like spring was on the horizon, and instead of being simply a chore, an excuse, running felt like a reasonable thing to do. Something I might get good at. There was still a heaviness in my limbs, yet it felt more solid, more like strength than before.
I was on one of the few stretches of decent sidewalk when Nick rounded the corner and came running in my direction, head down, legs churning. I considered lowering my head as well and barreling on past. Then I thought of him in the hallway, talking about Anna.
I cleared my throat nosily.
He jerked his head up and came to a halt a few feet away.
“Hey,” I said. I wasn’t sure what to do with my hands suddenly, so I wrapped my arms tightly around my rib cage.
“Hey,” he said. “So you’re a runner, huh?”
“Technically, I suppose,” I said. I was proud of how evenly my words came out. “You?”
He shrugged modestly. “I try to do a couple miles every day, more on the weekends. It helps for basketball—you know, conditioning.”
“That makes sense,” I said. Basketball wasn’t exactly my thing—still, running seemed like a good preparation for most sports. Well, other than archery. Or golf.
We stood in silence, both shifting from leg to leg. The ease we’d briefly shared in the hallway was gone, and neither of us seemed to know what to say.
Then he smiled. “So, you want to race?”
Did I? I hadn’t really thought about it.
“I guess,” I said. “As long as you don’t get upset if you lose.”
He laughed. “Wow. Someone had their Wheaties this morning.”
I shook my head. “No, raisin bran.”
He opened his mouth and then closed it again.
I belatedly realized he’d been making a joke. And suddenly, all I wanted to do was get moving again. “Let’s go,” I said, and then I sprinted past him, hoping to get a good lead.
For a while, I wasn’t even sure if he had followed me or if I was speeding through the park on my own. Then I glanced over my shoulder and found that he was close behind me.
Soon we ran out of the park, following an old trail that ran beside the river, snaking along a series of fields and pastures. In time, we stopped racing and instead ended up running side by side, one of us inching
