pt. 1
The girls head into the room one-by-one, tossing their paper cups into the trash. Tssh-wissh-pssh, it sounds like. Im watching them come in. They are worn and beat, sweated out- some stretching, swinging their arms just to get the blood flowing. Rolling the balls of my ankles back and forth, I am feeling out the contour of wear on my metatarsals. Thats something you wont get if you dont run, that pain has a shape and a depth, and sometimes it settles in places that you cant push, and sometimes it does. Vizcochie puts down her waterbottle next to mine, sits next to me and checks her watches times. 10:31 warmups, 5:55 and 5:40 splits, mile times that were good enough for next meet. Next meet but not regionals. “Hey ” I say. “Is it hot out?” “Oh I don't know, not too bad.” she replies, going at her socks, pulling them forwards, making them level.
“You want a fill up?” she gestures with her hand, before adding
“Jesus they had us cooking out there.”
Getting up, Vizcochie stretches catlike, feeling the pull in her hamstrings, lazy and graceful. She paws at my bottle but I wave her off. “Im good.” and then “Thanks.”. Then she heads off towards the coolers. I want to ask if Mr Bergman was having one of those days again. If the boys did something and he blew up over it. The other girls are leaving now, slipped into regular clothes, slipped into regular conversation, when they leave the late sun peaks into the locker rooms, and covers everything in orange. Even Cath, the one that lugs that pillbox speaker back and forth, stashed in her backpack, falls silent. Some of the girls say bye, some don't. I give a half hearted wave at most of them though, see them off. Some of the girls I like pat me on the shoulder as they go, we chat about the day, classes, teachers, whatever.
Theres the stone grinding sound of skateboard wheels on concrete, the lightning clap-clack of a trick landed. the exhalation of the boys viewing. And then the roar - the whooping cheers and high fives. It sounds nice. Viz yells across the room, theres no salt by the water station, and you know she needs her salt, shes done with gatorade after runs and all. I can hear her knock twice before slipping into Mr Bergman's office and the start of their conversation but the door cuts the rest out. Its four now. The hottest part of the day is past, and soon it will be downright pleasant in the shade. I head towards the back of the locker rooms, sort of dragging my left leg, sort of play limping my way along. Natalie's sitting in the back and I straighten out seeing the back of her head. Something about it just doesn't feel right. Finally, Viz pokes her head out of the office, scans the room until she finds me. “Coach wants to speak to you.” she smiles a quick good-bye before heading for the exit.
The coaches office is a funny setup. When they built the school, I guess they figured it would be efficient to put the office in between the boy's and girl's locker rooms. It ended up being a huge privacy issue for both sides, resulting in partition walls for the girls, blinds for the boys. Mr Bergman was usually pretty good about drawing blinds when the girls were in the office, but this time nobody was using it. It made the usually cramped office feel weirdly large now. Mr Bergman smiles this weary look before sitting me down on the portable seat next to his swivel chair. Hes got videos of baton relay playing on the computer - 2017 state meet footage of some girls trying to kill each other. Chasing each other with clubs I guess.
“How you doing today?” He asks me. Fifty-fifty I gesture at him. I don't mention the sore metatarsals, or the ankle sprain I've been nursing from two weeks ago. He wouldn't really get it, not unless he felt it. Today is good enough for a good session is all that matters. “Jeez you wouldn't believe how bad the boys have been.” he looks at the computer, adding “I think this year is gonna be a total wash.”. He cranes his neck out towards the door, “is Natalie in?” he asks me. “You know it.”
“Well, thats alright.” “just uh.. Try to go at your own pace though okay?” he pats me on the back. His hand lingers on it, a little too low to be comfortable.
“You got it coach.” I stand, brush it away. “Thank god I have you guys.” he tells me on my way out. “Without the girls team the program would be completely hosed.”
Why does he tell me these things?
What makes him think that I can save him? What, cause im grown?
I nod at natalie and we both head out to the track.
“At the store I got some sunflower seeds. You want some?”
Natalie rummages through her bag, pulling out the package. She dangles it around in the air for a bit before tearing into it.
“I think they're just great. They're cheap and yummy.”
“I bought them for… oh jeez I don't remember how much.”
“Oh!” she exclaims, pulling out a crumpled ball-was-receipt.
“2.19. For a whole pack.”
I nod.
“Its like a lot too.”
“I get why those baseball boys are always eating these things. “Its like gum.”
“Did you run this morning?” Nat was so damn perceptive at times. Always the trouble with her, that she would catch you out on an off day.
“Yeah.”
“Howd it go?”
“It was cool. Fine.”
“We didn't go nowhere, just out to the orchards and then back as the pickers came in.”
“How long was it?”
“Short. Three miles I think. It was crazy cold but then it got so hot.” “I saw a big black bird. I think it was a vulture maybe. It had its wings out all like this.”
I push my arms out left and right like christ the redeemer and shuffle towards her until she laughs. Lay off Nat.
I lay my bag down on the bleachers and get to stretching, Nat follows my routine. Mama duck, baby duck.
Nat watches me as I start my bounds, staying curled up on the steel bleachers above. It stings, driving my feet into the rubber floor, firing at it. It vibrates all the way from the balls of the feet up and into the leg. It rings the legs in a cadence of shock and awes the tendons into snapping to bone - vibrating guitar strings. Its a sprinters bound. Not the airy and minimal stride of a long distance runner, but the honest pounding of will onto the earth, will that makes distance traversed into some ugly contest where the ones who will-harder beat the ground into pushing them further faster than the other ground-beaters. All to say “I did it”. I killed them cause my will was bigger and more real and my pain was big and theirs wasn't. So wont you look at that.
Nat is judging me, and I know it, feeling the weight of her eyes on me. And I am looking at her knowing how she feel, watching this ugly bound that draws out of hers like it was one soul of an animal forced into wrong body.
Nat's bound was the blueprint. I remember seeing her legs in ten times slow-motion a hundred times over, five per second for the whole summer, trying to steal that.. That something. She had something that just stuck her in the air for the longest time, before her knees would drive, and crash the whole thing into the ground. I tried to figure it out - what made her float like she was filled with insulation foam instead of steel muscle 3 inches thick. She had been floating in the air for years until I got it in sophomore year. I pinned her down by the legs using needles and held her still as one does a bug until I got it and got a stride out of it. One that wins. A lot.
She is doing her laps now, out on the fourth lane. I'll watch her as I go down to the hamstrings. Her watch is sitting by her bag still. I think her wrist has a tan line from it but I cant make it out from this distance.
I wonder how she feels knowing that my bound is hers? Taken and caricatured to its extremes. Shaped until it gets ugly and sharp. 2021 and 22 were her years. And they were much better than mine. Back when the running in Tulare county was exciting and Division two schools were just under the tongues of coaches and students. Who both didn't dare say it but saw the numbers being put out, and knew we were on the brink. I remember when she ran her first 4:50 mile. I was in middle school going to all the meets. I remember seeing that time and wondering if a human being could go that fast and next month seeing her lose and knowing that that was a human being and not a god. Cause she let it show on her face.
I am taking her watch and putting it on my right arm. Its fat face shines in the low sun and tells me to read it in the shade. It feels heavy for its weight, and I remember that I must have gotten used to life 31 grams heavy on the left arm. Im am balanced. It looks ridiculous, someone with two watches on like a prisoner gets cuffed up. Getting on the track I want to wave her down, tell her what I got on - but she is fully on the other side by now. Either I lap her or she leaves me by.
The track is empty now, even as it approaches the sunset and throws the whole world in beautiful reds and then deep blues. This is what the girls miss, changing into normal clothes at 4PM and becoming normal people. This is what Mr. Bergman miss too, so buried in papers and race reports and budget meetings and videos, god- hundreds of videos from all angles for every year's meets. But they don't run races in the dark, and they don't film races run in the dark cause the cameras dont work. And they never could get the transcription just right on how the day was and what it really was like to run. You can get the worlds best microphone, and ask an athlete how it was and all they can do is lie cause the body dont speak english. It speaks something else that is DOA at the finish line. Nat and me run so late cause we know it. I am so close now that I can see the tongues of her shoes wagging, and the sides of her mouth curled up into a grimace. I flap my hands around like a bird to get her attention, and point at the watches.
“Check it out, I'm like a cyborg ”, my breath checkers each word with exhalation. She laughs. “Im a robot.” I say again. It's good that she laughs, If she really was going, she wouldn't be doing anything but suck in air. Her chest is dead still, not heaving and pounding like it used to. Mine is too. Can you get mad anymore Nat? When your chest is close to throwing out and your blood is all lactic and your in a PB timing it should be legal to kill somebody in your ear. You used to let hate wear you out like a sock. Pull on your skin so thin you'd be fraying and translucent red underneath.
“You want me to record your time?” I ask her.
“I don't know.. ” she sticks her neck out at the white lines ahead.
I realize that there must have been a reason why she didn't wear her watch no more. That I probably shouldn't have stepped in that.
I don't know how she can stomach this pace. The new Natalie pace. I don't think any human should be subjected to it.
She speaks through the pitter-patter of our feet:
“My uncle told me a funny story.”
“Yeah?”
“He got it from reading the obituaries, in the paper. I don't know why he reads that stuff but y'know”
“Anyways, Theres this guy, hes like a TV actor right?
“One day he meets his future wife.”
“Well he doesn't know it yet right. But he shakes her hand, and with his other hand he takes out a cigarette and lights it with a match.”
“The whole time hes like still shaking her hand.”
“Isnt that crazy?”
“She says thats how she fell in love with him”
“Anyways their like, gonna have sex right? So she takes off her dress and points at one of her boobs and tells him “this ones fake.”
“Cause she had cancer or something.”
She preempts the punchline by fishing for what my face looks like sober. Its so obvious, so her to give up the game like that.
“And he looks at it and takes off his whole set of teeth. And he says “I got you beat.”
She bends over halfway laughing at her own joke. She is looking at me with that stupid face all full of teeth and I cant help breaking out too. I don't know why but I just take off full sprint down the track. And then I am nothing. I just didn't wanna show her all my teeth I guess.
I am 800 meters down the track before my lungs turn against me. Trotting to a slow jog I can feel my heart pounding against my head through the temples. Nat isn't on the track no more. I scan for her across the length before finding her loitering at a vending machine just off field. She yells if I want a coke too. I brace my hands against my knees trying not to throw up and nod. Uuuuughh hwwaah, is the sound of breath leaving body, breath entering body. It comes in shrill and leaves hoarse, crossing firmament and getting fattened up on soul. It leaves wet and humid from spit and throat and lung mucus, fundamentally altered- It was O2. It is now CO2 and H2O and my Insides.
Nat presses the ice cold can against my forehead. I still cant speak so I grimace a look: what I think a jaguar snarls like. She laughs at this too. She lifts my arm off of my knee and looks at the watch, before switching to the other arm and unclasping her watch. She is slow and gentle with it, her hands coke-cold condensating against hot arm. She takes her watch back to her bag, and opens her soda too.
Where did the sun go? It must have just left while we were talking.
Nat is rotating her ankles in slow circles after our run. I can feel her wincing through the needles. It rubs in the socket wrong, bone grinding on bone. Oh. It is Chicharrón. Her flesh has turned to pork and the bones have been deep fried glass skin brittle.
This brown ambrosia is sickly sweet. Slightly-sour acid hops on my tongue while I think. It pops too with that god awful Nats leg crackle.
“I could ask Mr Bergman if you wanna be back on the team.” I offer.
“I mean, its not always about winning.”
Nat sticks her tongue out at me. You fuckup. But it is.
part two ->