None of the Above

None of the Above by I. W. Gregorio



DEDICATION


For Joe, because I know you would love me no matter what my chromosomes were.

And for O and G: I hope that you are never afraid to fall.




CHAPTER 1


Dawn is my favorite time of day. There’s something sacred about being awake when the rest of the world is sleeping, when the sky is just turning toward the light, and you can still hear the sounds of night before the engines and conversations of the day drown them out. When I start out on an early-morning run, there’s a clarity to the world, a sense that it belongs to me.

The morning before Homecoming, I met Sam at the bottom of my driveway as usual. He had started to warm up, his breath coming out in puffs visible in the chilly late autumn air. He looked serious, almost solemn as he stretched, but when he saw me his face lit up and he leaned in for a kiss. For a moment everything felt perfectly still.

Then we were off. Over hundreds of runs, Sam and I had established a rhythm, a pace that we no longer had to think about, as if we were running to the same internal song. Sam pulled back his stride a little to match mine, and I stretched out just a bit to match his. On some days, it seemed like we even breathed in sync.

We didn’t talk much at first, not until we got to our one-mile mark—the entrance to Gordon Park. Normally, Sam’s as much of a stickler about routine as I am. So it surprised me when he kept on the paved trail instead of running through the uneven paths in the woods.

“Last thing you need is to bust your ankle, too.”

“Tell me about it,” I said. It had been a week since my best friend Vee’s injury, and every day I had to talk her off the ledge. She was convinced that her Homecoming was ruined. Plus, her mom had been telling all her friends that Vee was a shoo-in for Queen, so now she was worried about losing face. “I told her she’ll still get enough votes, but she doesn’t believe me.”

“More drama that way.”

“That’s why we love her, right? Never a dull moment.”

“Something like that.” Sam had never been Vee’s biggest fan, but he tolerated her because he knew we were like sisters. “One way or another, it’ll all be settled tonight. We’re meeting at six, right?”

“Five thirty,” I corrected him. “Faith wants to get pictures of us in our dresses and tuxes while the sun is still up.”

“Shit!” Sam exclaimed.

I nearly tripped over a crack in the road. “Oh my God, what?”

He looked over at me, hands held over his mouth in horror. “I was supposed to get a tux?”

I almost choked on my laughter and lunged to my right to side-check him. We ran pressed up against each other for a few seconds before settling back into our run, grins on our faces. Over the months that we’d been dating, there wasn’t much Sam and I hadn’t shared. We’d debated the merits of State versus the Big U ad nauseam, and we knew each other’s workout playlists by heart. He knew about my family’s dogged obsession with the New York Rangers, and had come with me the last time we’d made our annual visit to my mother’s grave. But sometimes I felt closest to him when we weren’t saying anything, when we were both just concentrating on the soft percussion of our footsteps, the rhythm of our breathing, and the road in front of us.

By the time we got to my neighborhood and could see the oak tree that we’d measured to be fifty yards from my house, my legs felt like molten lead and my lungs were screaming.

Time to run faster.

When we passed the oak tree, Sam and I didn’t even look at each other. As if a starter gun had gone off in our heads, we accelerated into a sprint. My body became a blur of straining muscles, and for the umpteenth time, I repeated my team’s mantra: “Pain is weakness leaving the body.”

Nine times out of ten, Sam beat me to my house, but that morning one of my neighbors’ kids had left their bike standing in the middle of the sidewalk. While Sam swerved to avoid it, breaking his stride, I sized the bike up and hurdled instinctively. Takeoff. Transition. Touchdown. Coach Auerbach would’ve been proud.

I slapped my mailbox two seconds before Sam caught up to me, and shimmied a victory dance in my driveway. Sam dropped his hands to his thighs and bent over, wincing.

“Nice finish,” he panted.

“You could’ve won if you’d just jumped the bike,” I said as we jogged a cooldown lap around my block.

“Maybe. Or I could’ve wiped out.” Sam looked over at me and grinned. “I don’t have your form.”

The wind had picked up, and now that we weren’t running I had started to feel the cold, but Sam’s praise warmed me down to my toes. I grabbed at his T-shirt and pulled him into a kiss, my heart still pounding, my skin flushed from the adrenaline.

We had stopped running, but the rest of the world was just getting started. A car door slammed. My neighbor’s cocker spaniel barked. A boy on a bike sped past us, yelling, “Get a room!”

“Get a life,” Sam shouted back.

Reluctantly, I pulled away, the salty taste of his kiss lingering on my lips, but before I could head back to my house Sam bent over to whisper in my ear.

“To be continued.”

I shivered with anticipation.

Ten hours later, I stood in front of the full-length mirror in Vee’s room, thinking that I’d rather be running.