Be Not Far from Me(24)
My brain gives me a break, a much-needed reprieve from reality. It must know that I’m safe here because it’s the first time I’ve slept deep enough to dream, and it must also know what I need, because I dream about running.
Laney Uncapher went to a school better than mine, had higher cheekbones than me and longer legs to go with them. Her cross-country team had extra trainers, expensive uniforms, and one of those tents that has rooms in it that they used when they traveled. I hated her on principle, and she hated me because I kept beating her.
It started in junior high, our county small enough that we knew the faces on the other teams by then, some of them friendly, some of them not. We found out quick that we were the front-runners, breaking out of the starting line and keeping our lead on the sorry sacks behind us the whole time. High school came, and we traded in two miles for 5Ks every weekend, and a few scattered into the week for good measure. Always we were neck and neck, me and Laney, hers cleaner than mine, I’ll admit.
When she pops up in my dream I’m almost glad to see her just because it’s another human face. She gives me the side-eye she always did as I paced her, both of us spitting when it would hit the other, even blowing out a snot rocket for good measure if we knew the wind was just right. I let her have the lead on a hill, because I know the burst of energy she uses on the climb will cost her later, and I’ve got enough in the tank to turn it on at the end. We take a curve, and I’m not at my old course anymore, the way a dream takes you, I’m back at the state qualifiers junior year and we’re headed for the woods.
Those woods caused me some trouble, same as the one I’m in now is doing. The papers had been talking up this rivalry, setting us up as country mouse and city mouse, and doesn’t everybody love an underdog (or mouse)? I was that exactly, and I’d been under for so much of my life in everything but running that I was taking this and no questions asked.
But Laney started in right at the line, all of us girls hopping in place, jogging, or leaning on each other’s shoulders as we pulled our heels back to our asses. I had ahold of Kavita and was stretching out my quads when Laney got close enough to make sure I’d hear her.
“Pretty windy,” she said to one of her teammates as they stretched, her blond fishtail braid lying alongside her in the grass.
“Lean into it,” her friend said, pulling her toes back toward her shoulders to give her calf muscle a tweak.
“Not worried about me,” Laney said, making sure to catch my eye. “I’m thinking it might be enough to blow all the trash away.”
“Too bad it can’t gust enough to pick up a whore,” I said, and Kavita put her forehead on mine, pulling my gaze to her.
“You stop that, Ashley Hawkins,” she said, dark eyes intent on mine. “You’re better than her on the course. Be better than her off it.”
It took me by surprise, as Kavita wasn’t one to correct me; she usually left that to Meredith. But she expected more of me when I had my uniform on, I guess, and I know I let her down because Laney had me on that curve, and I was a few strides behind her going into the woods.
That course has always been a tough one, and the woods was a nice breather of flat ground, speckled in shade. Coaches didn’t worry about their runners needing them on that leg, so they never followed us in, and the course was too skinny for spectators there. We were alone, me and Laney Uncapher, way ahead of everybody else, when she glanced over her shoulder and gave me a smile.
It was a bitch-ass smile, and a poor choice on her part, because it fired quicker than tinder in my gut and I shot off after her, not thinking about winning, or college, or anything other than hurting her, bad.
I came out of the woods first.
I heard steps behind me and recognized them as Kavita’s. She caught up to me and, without a word, reached down her front and pulled out the handkerchief she always carried with her when she ran because she was too classy to blow it all over the course. I held it to my split lip and pressed until it stopped bleeding, wiped off the runnels of blood that had slipped down my neck and into my cleavage, and gave it back to Kavita. She fell back and I went ahead, glancing over my shoulder once to see her doing the same thing for Laney, whose left eye was swollen shut.
I won that race, but damn if I felt good about it.
Kavita never said a thing to me, which was worse than the reaming Coach gave me afterward. Laney got it too. They put us shoulder to shoulder and chewed us out until they had even less air than we did, but neither one of us opened our mouths. We settled it our own way, and we both knew it wasn’t over yet.
Except it was, because she got pregnant and now I’m lost in the woods and the last time I saw Laney Uncapher she had one eye shut and the other staring me down begging my fist to close the other.
She doesn’t look that way in my dream. Laney’s healthy and strong, and farther ahead of me than she ever was in any race. She looks back over her shoulder as she heads into the shadows, but there’s no smile this time, only worry, and when I get into the trees she’s nowhere to be found. Laney’s not in front of me, and Kavita isn’t behind. I’m alone in the woods.
Even in my dreams.
Day Five
The pill bottles aren’t labeled, but I’ve been to enough parties to know what oxy looks like. I count out four and set them next to the bottle of whiskey I found under the mattress. I chew my way through another granola bar, so starved that I can feel the energy it gives me right away.