What I definitely don’t miss is Jacob Rizer. Every time he sees me in the hallway, he asks me if I miss him, and the other day he called out: “You’ll be back.” No, I won’t. After I quit, Ms. Hawkins told me that I had until the middle of October to choose a different club, and that it would have to be approved by her. She also let me know how disappointed she was, and how much she’d miss my “spunky personality.” She actually said those words, which confirmed that Ms. Hawkins doesn’t really know me at all, and made me feel way better about quitting. That is, until I realized I had nothing to do after school. So I’ve mostly been hanging out at Word Up and writing in my journal. It’s like my thoughts and ideas have nowhere to go, and no one to listen to them.
“Just lean forward and pretend you’re stretching your hamstrings,” Nadine whispers back, actually stretching her impossibly long limbs toward me. She is wearing workout clothes, the kind that make you look both athletic and cute, and she definitely looks both.
“Gym is the worst,” I say.
“Get ready for the best afternoon of your lives,” Coach Williams shouts. He’s always speaking in exclamation marks. “We are becoming road warriors this afternoon and turning our cross-country running into cross-city running. We’re gonna be taking over Washington Heights today! So I need you all to get laced up and get ready to take to the streets.”
“What? No!” I say, a little too loud. A few people look over in my direction.
“Spencer, you can do this! Here’s the plan. You each have a partner and a route you’ll need to take. This is part workout and part exploration. You will go on an easy two-mile run—each of you will have different paths, some with hills, some with parks, some around the block. It’s your job to run fifteen-minute miles and take note of the things you see and hear. It’s about creating a relationship with your city and using it as a place to make your body healthy and strong. Are you all with me?” Coach Williams asks.
A few people mumble yes, and a couple of kids on the track team high-five each other. I’m mostly panicked about the concept of running, and especially with some jock who believes that running on city concrete is the best idea on the planet.
“I’ve partnered you all up, and the list is right here.” He unfolds a giant piece of chart paper. “Check to see who you’ll be running with and where, and I expect to see you all back here at 3:05 p.m. so we can debrief and pack up for the day. All good?” He gives a thumbs-up and posts the chart paper. I find my name near the top and see “James B.” next to mine.
“Who’s James B.?” I ask Nadine, looking around the room. I’m sure I’m paired with a freshman who will likely run circles around me.
“James Bradford,” Nadine says, looking at me wide-eyed. “Your lover.” She smiles. We both look in his direction. He’s stretching and hasn’t looked up at the paper yet. Maybe I can still change it.
“Shut up. I don’t even like him.”
“Yeah, keep telling yourself that,” Nadine says.
“I can’t run with James Bradford. I’ll puke before we even get out the door.”
“Chelsea, you’ll be fine. It’s no big deal,” Nadine says, trying to soothe my panic.
“That’s easy for you to say. You’re on the soccer team. You actually go running for pleasure. I only wanna run if I’m auditioning for a horror film,” I say, trying to do a self-check of how I look. I’m wearing my old, beat-up tennis shoes and a T-shirt that says: Virginia is for Lovers. I thought it was really cool when I got it at the Goodwill, but now I’m not so sure.
“You’ll be fine. Just keep a steady pace and don’t say anything weird,” Nadine says, patting my back like I’m a toddler.
“Are you serious? All I ever say is weird stuff. Crap, he’s coming over.”
“Good luck. Break a leg,” Nadine says.
“What? You only say that in the theater . . . before a show . . . not before a run. If you say break a leg before a run, then someone could actually . . . oh hi,” I say, looking up toward James.
“Let’s do it,” he says, holding up the route Coach Williams handed out.
Do you know how many times I have dreamed of James Bradford saying let’s do it to me? Or even how many times I have imagined doing it with James Bradford? Not that I have any real context, since I’ve only ever been to third base with a boy, and it was on summer vacation with a dude I met at a teen dance party. We made out on the beach. This is totally not the same thing, and in that case, I never saw the guy again.
“These will be your partners and your routes for the next month, so get used to them,” Coach Williams says as if he’s reading my mind. Great, I think.
“So look,” James says, leaning down toward me. “We gotta head down Broadway to get to Columbia Presbyterian, and then cross over to Amsterdam and take that up past Highbridge and Quisqueya Park.” He looks at the route closer. “There’s a dude that sells coco helado right outside the park. That should prolly be our last stop.”
“A coco helado after a two-mile run.” I’m liking the fact we’ll be running partners more and more.
“It’s about balance, you know? Also, go easy on me, ’cause I sprained my ankle this summer, and I gotta take it slow before basketball starts. Hope that’s cool.”
Did he just ask me if I was okay with us running slow? Amazing. “Yeah, yeah, that’s no problem. I mean, I’ll have to slow way down, but I can do it.” I smile.
We head out the front door and start to jog toward Broadway. We pass the Bon Bon bakery that smells like pastelitos and fresh juice and then the dollar store, loaded with baby clothes, kitchen utensils, and home furniture in the windows. The fruit stand on the corner is overflowing with avocados and papayas, most of them sliced straight through the middle to show their freshness. We pass the Mister Softee truck and little kids already out of school or daycare. They’re holding cones piled high with chocolate sprinkles and SpongeBob ice cream bars with bubble gum eyes. I take it all in. We run past the Hot Looks store, where all the mannequins have hourglass figures and massive breasts, and I unknowingly let out a huge sigh.
“You okay?” James asks.
“Yeah, it’s just so annoying every time I pass Hot Looks. Also, why is it called Hot Looks? It’s so weird.” He looks up, and we both pause to catch our breath, eye to eye with the super-curvy mannequins.
“They’re hot,” James says, and starts to laugh. I punch him in the arm. “What?”
“Okay, fine. They are stereotypically hot. They’re like the male fantasy.”
“Which is hot,” he replies.
“Which is manufactured,” I say. “It’s absurd to think that all women should look or even want to look like that. It’s fake. It’s like some bottled, plastic version of women, and it’s all on display. It’s like this constant message telling us how we should look and dress and be in the world.”
“But no one expects y’all to look like that. It’s just . . . it’s . . .”
“It’s just wrong,” I say, looking around for more examples. I see them right away when I glance at the magazine stand. “Look at this.” He follows behind me, and I can smell him, a mix of cologne and sweat. Why does he have to smell so good? How does his sweat even smell good? “Cosmopolitan magazine. This is a magazine for women. For women,” I stress, “and look at what the cover says: ‘10 Things Guys Crave in Bed,’ and ‘Inhaled the Whole Pizza?—How to Not Gain Pounds After a Pig-Out.’ I mean, what is that? And all these magazines are supposed to be created FOR WOMEN.”