I don’t know why I’m asking. To make conversation, I guess.
She ducks her head and smiles. “No,” she says. “I don’t.”
There’s something to that but I don’t think about what.
We talk. About running, about moving, the difference between Colorado and North Carolina winters. About her brother, away in college. About how it’s almost like he has to live up to her expectations rather than the other way around, even though he’s older. I tell her about having divorced parents, spending weekends splitting yourself in two. Taking sides even when you shouldn’t, subconsciously.
We talk and I get to know her better and I think, we could be friends. Even though we’re competing against each other at every race. We could be actual friends.
She hugs me again when we leave, and electricity zings through me at her touch.
Do you have a boyfriend?
No. I don’t.
Why does that thought fill me with something I can’t explain?
I think about her the entire ride home.
Four Days G O N E.
Dad’s words echo in my head as I sit down at lunch.
He’s never made it a secret that he expects running is how I’m going to get out of North Carolina, go to a big college, and never look back. He’s counting on a scholarship, several scholarships, so I can escape student loans like the ones he’s still paying off.
He wants me to be better this year—at running. He’s said so a few times, because the better I am, the better my chances of getting out of here.
Sometimes I think about it—getting out of this town, this state, but I can’t picture it. Can’t picture any sort of future for myself outside of what’s immediately in front of me, even though I know I should.
Maggie could, though. She could picture this whole grand future for us, and it was easy to let her. She tried to get me to train with her this summer so that when the fall season started, we’d be on almost equal ground.
But she was always better than me. No amount of training was going to change that.
Still. I would try. Because that is what perfect girls do.
TrentandChrisandJulia are already sitting at our shared table, swapping food and stories, when I walk up. Julia scoots over to make room for me on the bench next to her.
Julia runs because she loves it; you can see it in how she performs. Chris is the same way. And Trent? Everything is easy for Trent. Football, classes, dating, doesn’t matter. Everything comes easy to him, and sometimes I hate him for it.
Trent was the first one to invite me to sit with them. I’d met Julia when she told me to try out for cross-country, but we didn’t become close friends until the season started. I’d entered the caf my second day with nowhere to sit, trying to figure it out because there wasn’t so much a hierarchy as pockets of people who’d known each other since kindergarten, and here I was, completely new and not understanding anything.
And I saw Julia, but her back was to me, and then Trent was waving me over with that gleaming golden-boy smile, and I thought, okay, here is what shining perfect girls do, they sit with hot boys who must be athletes.
It was more than that, though—Trent made me feel welcome. I sat down at the table and he asked what I’d brought, and he cracked a joke and made me laugh, and before I knew it lunch was over. Before we even started dating, he was like that. Going out of his way to make anyone feel welcome.
Without a word, Trent passes me a container filled with something, and as soon as I open the lid I can tell it’s his grandma’s homemade baklava.
“Thanks,” I say, and he nods. I set it next to my tray of cafeteria food, poke at a glob of mashed potatoes with my fork.
“They’re worse than normal,” Chris says, eyeing them and grinning at me. “You shouldn’t risk it.”
“Your plate is clean,” I say.
“I didn’t say anything about not risking my own life,” he says, and I laugh and pass my plate over to him. I like Chris. Like his wide smile, like how kindly he treats Julia.
“Take them. I’m not hungry.”
“Are you sick?” Julia asks.
“PMS,” I say, and it’s true but not really. “Sorry.”
Trent makes a face. “Can we not? We’re eating.”
Julia looks at him. “Really? It’s not like she mentioned, I dunno, actively bleeding—”
Trent covers his ears. Actually covers them like a child. “That’s fucking gross, Recinos.”
“Grosser than any of your locker room talk?” Julia asks, an edge to her voice. She looks at me, waiting for me to back her up.
I should say something.
Should.
Should.
But the moment passes and we go back to eating. I make eye contact with Chris, who, I notice, isn’t actually eating the mashed potatoes.
Trent is the first one to break the silence. “How is the season going for y’all?” he asks, looking eager to change the subject.
“It’s okay,” Julia says, shrugging. “Not as good as last year. We’ve got a few runners who might make it to Regionals, and maybe, like, one or two who’ll make it to State.”
She means herself and Haley. I’m not good enough for State; Coach Reynolds says I could be if my heart was in it more, but it never has been.
But I think back to what my dad said this morning, what Maggie wanted, and I wonder if my heart should be in it, if I should be trying harder this year, trying to run faster get a scholarship get out of here, rather than just being good enough. Rather than just keeping my head down and not making waves, one foot in front of the other.
“Y’all started getting recruiting calls yet?” Chris asks.
Julia’s cheeks turn pink. “A few. But you knew that.”
He grins at her and reaches across the table, twining his dark brown fingers with her lighter ones. There’s real pride in Chris’s face when Julia talks about how good she’s doing. She knows she’s a good athlete. He does, too. They’ve been together since freshman year and we all swear they’re going to be professional athletes and get married someday, though leaving North Carolina is not part of that future. No one ever leaves here unless it’s by a miracle, even if they probably could, because we all just feel stuck. Chris will play football for the Carolina Panthers or some college team, Duke maybe, and Julia will go to a local arts school if she doesn’t get a scholarship for running. They are the golden couple of our high school, and it’d be easy to hate them for it if they weren’t so damn supportive of each other.
“Has anyone called you yet, Corinne?” Trent asks, mouth full of fried chicken.
I shrug. “A few places,” I lie, because this is what I should say, this is how it should be happening.
No one has called me. If I were a different girl I would be worried about this, and maybe I should be, especially now that Maggie’s gone . . .
It’s hard to think of a future without her in it.
“Maybe Aldersgate will call,” I say, trying to sound casual.
“Aldersgate?” Trent says. “But they’re such a small school.”
I don’t say that Aldersgate is where my father went, where I’ll probably go, where I’d tried to convince Maggie to join me so we could be together even though we both knew she was destined for bigger things. I don’t say I’m looking at it because it’s a small private college and I could get a pretty substantial scholarship, and my mom’s mostly unemployed and my parents are divorced and Dad’s job as an IT guy doesn’t make much, that college wasn’t even on the table for me until I started running. But Trent doesn’t need to know that.