The Day of.
When I hear that she’s dead, I run.
I hear it from the girls in the locker room. It threads through their conversation so carelessly, did you hear a girl from Leesboro died weaving through talk of which girl gave a blow job to Jack Morris behind the bleachers and who’s going to Matt’s party this weekend.
The thread of it snags in my gut, because Leesboro was Maggie’s school.
It’s not her, I tell myself. It can’t be her or someone would have told me; her brother would have called me; someone—
But she didn’t answer her phone this morning.
And last night she didn’t text me good night, and I brushed it off because she’s tired from training, we’re seniors and we’re all so goddamn tired—
But I have to know.
“Which girl?”
I hear myself asking it and I hear how hoarse my voice is and I know I’m giving myself away but I have to know—
“Which girl?”
I push my way through everyone until I find Haley Russell, because she’s always the first to know any gossip.
“Jesus, Corinne, calm down,” she says, staring at me. “I mean yeah, it’s sad, but—”
Julia Recinos, our captain, steps between Haley and me because she knows how we are. “It was their captain,” she says.
Maggie.
Oh, God, it was Maggie. The girl I—
But Julia doesn’t know that. None of them can know that; none of them can know we were dating.
“Corinne, are you okay?” Julia asks, but I can barely hear her because all I can think is Maggie, my Maggie, is dead, and none of these girls will ever know what she meant to me.
I should be hiding how I’m feeling but I can’t, so I push through Julia and Haley and I fight my way out of the locker room and I do what I always do—
I run.
One Year Before.
I am going to lose this race.
I know I’m not the best runner. I’m not Julia or Haley or Valerie the freshman, faster than all of us. I am a middle-of-the-pack outsider who doesn’t know what she’s doing, only running because Julia convinced me to try out when I moved here almost a year and a half ago.
But this girl from Leesboro. She’s not a middle-of-the-pack outsider, you can tell by the way she runs. Her curly ponytail, secured by a lime-green scrunchie, has swung ahead of me for three meets, signaling how much faster she is than me.
I don’t know why, but it’s starting to be annoying.
I push myself. Just a little, just enough to catch up to her, still far behind JuliaHaleyValerie and the other girls who deserve to be here. She glances at me, sharing a conspiratorial smile before speeding up again, passing me, moving toward the front like she has the past few races.
She’s going to win. Again.
There are cheers as she crosses the finish line, cheers again as I know either Julia or Haley has crossed it.
And I’m in the middle, like always.
I’m breathing hard, so I turn away from my coach and the other girls running in and find a quiet place to stretch. Somewhere in the crowd is my dad, cheering me on loudly like it’ll make up for the fact Mom didn’t come.
I don’t know why I look for her anymore.
I bend down and grab the toes of my shoes, stretch, lean forward through the pain because it’ll be worse later if I don’t. Breathe in. Out.
And then there’s a shoe next to mine. Bright pink, muddy cross-country spikes. My eyes roam up a pair of pale, freckled legs, and then look up to see the girl from Leesboro, her face flushed.
“Hi,” she says, and her voice is a soft Southern lilt I’m still not used to. “Mind if I stretch here?”
I switch legs. “Sure.”
“Sure you mind?” she asks, and laughs. My face grows hot, and it isn’t because I just got done running.
“Sure you can stay. I don’t mind,” I say, and she smiles before leaning down to stretch.
“You ran good,” she says after a minute. “Almost caught me at one point. That’s what, two times now?”
“Three,” I say, and she laughs again.
“Three. Maybe next time it’ll be four.” She grins at me, and when she does, her whole face scrunches up. “Guess you should know my name, then, if you keep catching up to me. I’m Maggie.”
“Corinne,” I say, taking her hand as she pulls me up to stand. We’re left staring at each other.
Does she hold on for just a second too long? Or am I imagining that?
“I guess I’ll see you at the next meet, then?” she says.
Is there something hopeful in her voice?
“Guess you will,” I say.
There’s the same note of hope in mine.
The Day of.
She’s gone.
Those are the words going through my head as I run the trail behind our high school, branches and leaves whipping my arms and my hair, and I don’t even care if I’m getting scratched because I need to feel something because Maggie is gone—
A sob escapes my throat before I can stop it, and I hope I’m deep enough in the woods that no one can hear me.
She’s gone. It doesn’t feel real, and maybe it isn’t; maybe they meant another girl, a captain of another cross-country team named Maggie, because my Maggie can’t be dead.
But I know. Deep in the pit of my stomach, I know. She didn’t call me last night and she didn’t text me this morning and it is because she is dead. She’s dead and no one knows about us—God, no one knew we were dating or that we were even friends, and now, now they won’t know, now they can’t, because I can’t tell anyone without her here with me.
I stop running, panting, and I don’t know if it’s from grief or what and I bend over with my hands on my knees and that awful aching in my chest, waiting for something, some kind of release, but it’s not coming—
Maggie’s gone.
I just saw her. I just saw her and how can this girl I loved be—
I bite my lip so hard I taste blood.
This isn’t fair. This isn’t fucking fair it isn’t Maggie’s gone Maggie’s dead—
I press my hand to my mouth.
“Corinne?”
Leaves crunching, and I look up and it’s Julia, concern on her face, and then guilt stabs at me even more because Julia was my first friend here, my best friend, and she doesn’t know about me and Maggie and I want so desperately for her to comfort me but how can she? When she doesn’t know?
“Are you okay?” she asks.
What a ridiculous question. My girlfriend is dead. I don’t know if I’ll ever be okay again.
But Julia doesn’t know because I didn’t tell her, I didn’t want to tell anyone, and so I nod.
“I’m fine.”
“Did you know her?”
Did I know her?
What do I say?
Of course I know her, I know everything about her. I know that her curly hair turned frizzy in the summer from North Carolina humidity, know that ever since she was six she wanted to be Christine in Phantom of the Opera even though she couldn’t sing, know that she liked sprinkles in her hot chocolate but hated marshmallows. Know that she went to church every Sunday without fail.