I WAS IN DEEP. IT had only been a week since the first night we’d kissed, and I was all in. We spent every day this week alternating between my bedroom and hers, depending on whether or not Isobel was home during the day. Maia even called in sick to work Tuesday and Wednesday so we could be together. She switched with someone, Thursday for Friday.
I hadn’t run in days, but now that I was on hormones, my body could hold on to its muscle, whereas before, I would’ve already felt my calves and quads and hamstrings breaking down. It was the little moments like this that kept surprising me—I was no longer constantly fighting a losing battle against my own body. Which meant I could take three days off to spend it in bed with my girlfriend—girlfriend—and not worry about immediately turning all soft and curvy.
I was in my running clothes, stretching, while I watched from my porch as Maia’s mother and father left for work, one and then the other. As soon as I could no longer see them on the road, I jumped up and jogged across the field just as Maia was closing her front door behind her. When she saw me coming, she waited on the top step, smiling.
“Morning,” she said, leaning down to kiss me, her hair falling over her shoulders and grazing my face.
“You heading to Bargain Mart?” I asked her.
“Unfortunately,” she groaned. “I’d rather be spending the day with you, though.”
“I thought I’d run while you bike?” I told her. “Keep you company on the way there.”
She nodded, and again, her smile lit up her eyes like there was a tiny white-hot star living somewhere deep inside her.
If there really were, I honestly wouldn’t have been surprised. Because every time I was near, I felt my body pulling closer to her, millimeter by millimeter, like she was magnetic north and I was just a rule of nature.
Out on the road I ran, and she pedaled.
“You can go faster, you know,” I told her. Maybe I wanted to show off a little. I was strong, I could handle it—I wanted her to know that.
“Okay,” she sang, standing up on her pedals and pumping her legs harder.
I ran faster. I could keep up. Even though there was a stitch needling through my side.
She slowed down again, and said, “I don’t want to get there sooner.”
We made it passed Bowman’s, and the school I’d only driven by. As I looked at the building—all brick and institutional-looking, I could almost imagine myself there, walking through the doors, holding Maia’s hand. I didn’t say anything, but I hadn’t run this far since I was still on the track team. She was like fuel for me.
When we reached Bargain Mart, she slowed to a stop and got off her bike. I was struggling to catch my breath, when she hooked her finger around the collar of my shirt, asking, “See you later?”
I wanted to tell her to please call in sick again. I didn’t know how I’d wait until later to see her. But I just said, “Absolutely.”
When we kissed good-bye, she pulled me closer to her, even though I was sweaty and panting. It felt amazing, being out in the open like this, telling the world—or at least Carson—that we belonged to each other.
No perfect grades or first-place medals had ever made me feel like I mattered as much as when she looked at me the way she was looking at me. I stood there and watched her wheel her bike through the parking lot, and then lock it up in the bike rack next to the building. She waved to me as she disappeared through the sliding glass doors.
I started jogging again—I’d take it easy the rest of the way.
A truck passed me after a while, but I didn’t pay much attention until a couple of minutes later when it circled back in the opposite direction.
My thoughts were a million miles away, reliving every intoxicating moment of this past week with Maia, when I heard the engine of that same truck, pulling alongside me. I turned to look, and when I saw who it was, I tried to increase my pace, just a little, even though I knew if this went bad, there would be no outrunning him.
“Hey, Chris,” Neil said as his truck crawled along next to me.
I didn’t answer him. I looked straight ahead.
“Hey, man,” he called out the open window. “Hey, sorry about that whole thing the other day.”
I just kept running.
“I was an asshole, okay?” he shouted. “I know that.”
Left, right, left right. I tried to concentrate. I would not break rhythm for him.
“Dude, I was wasted,” he said. “Come on, will you stop a minute?”
I slowed down. I told myself I was only slowing down so that I could tell him exactly what I thought of him.
“What?” I finally yelled back.
“Look, I got no problem with you, all right?” he yelled out the passenger side window.
“Can’t say the same,” I yelled back.
“I just wanted to warn you, okay?”
“Warn me?” I repeated.
“Maia,” he said, shaking his head—the sound of her name on his lips stirred something up inside me, this fire in my chest.
“She is one fucked-up girl, okay?” he said, eyes all wide, raising his eyebrows. He pointed a finger at me. “You watch your back with her, all right?”
I stood there, dumbfounded, silent, in disbelief. By the time my brain told my mouth to say “What?” he was already driving away.
“Hey!” I yelled. “Get back here!”
But he was long gone.
• • •
I ran the rest of the way home, took a shower, dressed, and ate sandwiches with Isobel in the kitchen before she had to go to work. I even went for a long drive, but none of those things helped to get Neil’s words out of my head.
I knew I shouldn’t let him get to me. This was the same guy I’d watched push Maia around at that party, the same guy who’d slashed her tires. Someone who does those kinds of things was not worth my mental energy. Yet he was in my head, under my skin.
I knew she wouldn’t be home until later in the afternoon—she said around four—but every little noise I heard outside made me jump up to the closest window or door.
As soon as the time changed from 3:29 to 3:30, I debated driving over to pick her up, but we hadn’t planned on that and I didn’t want to overstep. We’d never actually made a real plan.
Then four o’clock hit.
I stood on the porch.
No sign of her.
Around four, I repeated in my head. That could mean anywhere from three thirty to four thirty.
I went back inside and messed around on my phone—I could be patient a while longer.
I watched as 4:10 passed. Then 4:15, 4:20, 4:25, and 4:30 came and went.
I was driving myself crazy. I set my phone facedown on the coffee table, and sat on the couch. I closed my eyes and vowed to not look at my phone again until I’d completed five cycles of that slow deep breathing Isobel had taught me when I was rehabbing from my broken ribs.
Inhale. Exhale. One.
Inhale. Exhale. Two.
Inhale. Exhale. Three.
Inhale—
• • •
We’d been walking awhile off the path, and I can’t remember now if anyone was talking or not. Just as I became aware that I could no longer hear the sounds of the coaches’ whistles and yelling back at the school, we came to a clearing. Everyone stopped and stood there, looking at me.
“What?” I said when no one made a move. “So, who has the fireworks?”
They snickered and smirked at one another with these sideways glances.
“Why are you pretending to be a boy?” Ben asked, ignoring my question.
My heart started racing. Run, that voice said again, louder this time.
“I’m not,” I answered.
“You’re not pretending, or you’re not a boy? Which is it?” Ben countered, barely able to get through the words without laughing. He placed his hands on his hips and rocked back on his heels, waiting for an answer I couldn’t supply. “Can’t be both.”
“You know what? Fuck you,” I mumbled, knocking my shoulder into Ben’s as I started to walk away from them.
Run.
Fuck you, I told that voice in my head too. I wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction of running away. He grabbed my arm, though, and yanked me back so hard that I thought my shoulder dislocated. I went to push him away, but I was too slow, or he was too fast, and now he had both my arms. I thrashed around, convinced I could shake him off, but that only made him hold on tighter.
“Let go of me!” I yelled, hating myself for the way my voice was shaking.
“You don’t wanna fight me, Christina,” he said, his voice set at a tone that was both a warning and a dare. He twisted my wrist and shoved my hand against his jeans, rubbing against his penis so roughly that it felt like the zipper cut the skin of my palm open on its metal teeth. “You feel that?” he shouted over Tobey and Jake clapping and laughing and hooting—but what I remember the most was the way his breath felt on my face.
I got my arm free, but before I could do anything, Tobey jumped in and grabbed it. He got me in one of those wrestling moves from behind, looping his arms under mine and pressing down on the back of my neck so I couldn’t move. I’d seen this one before, some kind of nelson—half nelson, full nelson, I couldn’t remember. I knew there was a specific way to get out of it, but right then, I couldn’t remember that either.
Ben stepped in toward me and grabbed me between my legs, his fingers probing through the layers of sweatpants and boy shorts and girl underwear from my back-to-school shopping trip, harder and harder, until I had no choice but to wince, biting back the scream. “Feel the difference?” he yelled. “You got nothing there!”
I kicked him in the shin as hard as I could. I was aiming higher, but it was enough to make him take his hands off me, and when he bent over, I kneed him right in the face. Then I stomped on Tobey’s foot and he let go of my arms.
And, finally, I ran.
I didn’t even know if I was heading in the right direction, but I kept going. I could hear them trampling through the dry leaves, breaking branches off the trees as they ran behind me. “You’re dead!” one of them shouted, I couldn’t tell who. All I cared about was putting distance between us.
I was fast, the fastest—didn’t I have a whole wall of track-and-field ribbons at home to prove it? I knew I could beat them out of the woods. But my foot caught on a rock that was unearthed, and I tripped. I got up quick, but the second my left foot hit the ground, excruciating pain soared up my leg, through my spine, all the way to my brain. I kept moving, even though I was pretty sure I’d at least sprained my ankle. It slowed me down too much. I yelled “Help” as I tried to keep going, but my voice got swallowed up in the trees and leaves and stillness. They caught up. When I turned to face them, Ben’s nose was gushing blood.
He walked up to me slowly, like an animal. I held my arms up, ready to fight, wishing I had taken tae kwon do with Coleton over the summer instead of going to astronomy camp. But I hadn’t, and so I had very little idea of what the hell to do other than protect my face. Ben moved in closer and in one swift movement he punched me in the stomach so hard, it sucked all the air out of my lungs. I keeled over, but Tobey and Jake each grabbed one of my arms and pulled me upright. Ben punched me again. And again. Then he punched me in the face, once, twice, ten times, I don’t even know.
And when they realized they didn’t need to restrain me anymore, Tobey and Jake joined in. They didn’t hold back at all. They kicked my ass like I really was a guy. When I finally went down, I hit the ground hard. And they started kicking me in the stomach, the back, legs, everywhere. When they stopped, I opened my eyes and looked up at them. Except they weren’t looking at me like I was a guy. They were looking at me like I was a girl and they weren’t about to let me forget it.
Ben got on top of me, one knee on either side of my hips, and he ripped the zipper of my track jacket open, then jerked my T-shirt up, peeling it over my head. It got tangled with the jacket sleeves that were still clinging to my arms. I could feel the air and the ground against my bare skin. No. I counted the layers he would still have to get through: spandex tank top and two sports bras to go, each so tight that even I had trouble getting them on and off every day.
“What the fuck?” Ben spat the words. “All this just to hide your tits?” I felt his hands moving up my stomach, then reaching down, to the elastic band of my sweatpants.
“Get off her!” It was Coleton’s voice. They all looked up at the same time. I tipped my head back to try to see if it was really him. Everything looked blurry and fuzzy, but he was definitely there, standing a good twenty feet away from us, holding his phone up in the air. “I just called the police, you fucking scumbags!” he screamed, his voice cracking.
I let my eyes close.
When I opened them again, the boys were gone and Coleton was kneeling over me, pulling my shirt back down. “Can you sit up?”
I moaned—I hurt too much to talk. I could feel my body curling in on itself, and I wondered if I was actually going to die. Every inch of me felt like it was on fire, yet somehow I was so cold. Coleton took his track jacket off and folded it under my head, and then he stretched the end of his shirtsleeve down over his hand and wiped my mouth. When he pulled his hand back, there was blood all over it. The look on his face scared me, so I let my eyes drift shut again. I could hear sirens wailing in the distance; that was the last thing I remembered.
• • •
I heard the dog barking. My eyes flew open. I jumped up and ran to look from the kitchen window. Roxie was outside. Maia’s bike was there next to the porch where she always left it.