36
MORGAN
I find my lane on the track among the pack of other girls running the 3200. We’re the best of the best when it comes to distance running in the top division. I find my parents in the crowd of spectators and waste a few seconds scanning the rows around them, like Ruby will somehow just be there. But of course she’s not.
The starter tells us to get ready, and I sink down into my stance, my whole body taut and electric. I’m the only one from the team that even qualified for this heat, and I’m not going to let a little heartbreak slow me down.
The gun goes off and so do I, shoving everything I have into every single footstep. All of this heartbreak, all that I’ve been through and am still going through—it fuels me. I feel the other girls nipping at my heels as I hit my stride. They think they can catch me? They can try.
Out here on the track, there is nothing but me and the sound of my breath and the burn in my legs.
Out here, I meet my expectations and surpass them.
Out here, I don’t let anybody down with failed lawsuits or bad ideas.
Out here, I am free.
Out here.
Out.
When I cross the finish line, I collapse into Lydia’s arms, sobbing, wishing they were Ruby’s. My whole team rushes to hug me, patting me on the back and whooping that I took first place. And then my mother is there holding me up, holding me tight.
I let them all think the tears are from exertion. Boys puke, girls cry—that’s what the coaches always say.
Nobody needs to know the truth.
“Are you just going to sit in your room and mope forever?” my brother asks, leaning in the doorway.
“No,” I deadpan, “I have to go school in an hour.”
“Nice. So your plan is to just drag down everybody around you trying to learn? Excellent decision,” he says with a giant mocking smile and two big thumbs-up. I fight the urge to throw something at him.
It’s not his fault I’m miserable. He didn’t move his seat in class just to avoid looking at me. He didn’t blow off my state meet.
“I’m just tired,” I say, which is not a lie. Spending all day at school smiling and acting like I’m fine is exhausting.
Aaron knows the deal; I’ve cried to him more than once. And Anika and Drew keep sandwiching me in the hallway, trying to block my view of her. Even Allie and Lydia keep asking me if I’m okay. The answer is always “Yes, of course,” and then “I can’t believe we won states,” which inevitably distracts them.
But when I’m home, I curl into a little ball and watch stupid cartoons on my iPad and try not to breathe too much, because sometimes breathing hurts when you can’t be with the person you love.
“You sleep pretty much all the time,” Dylan says.
“Yes, because I’m tired,” I say through gritted teeth.
“Is this about the center? Because I’ll call and see if I can get you reinstated as a peer counselor. If it’s upsetting you this much, then maybe you shouldn’t still be spending so much time there.”
Dylan doesn’t know the reason I spend so much time there is because it’s the one place I can let myself well and truly fall apart. I’ve even started going to counseling. Izzie has been a godsend.
“Can we talk about something else?” I ask.
“Fine, how about the fact that I haven’t seen Ruby in like a week when she used to practically live here?”
“Seventeen days,” I say, “not a week.” I realize too late that knowing the exact last time she was in my apartment probably doesn’t help make my case for how well I’m doing.
“How has it been that long? The state meet was barely a week ago. If you stayed awake more, maybe you’d actually know what day it is.”
“What does Ruby have to do with states?”
“Uh, ’cause she was there,” Dylan says. “Oh, sorry, are we still not acknowledging she exists when we’re in public?”
I bolt up in bed. “Ruby was there?”
He suddenly looks very uncomfortable. “I thought you knew.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?!”
“I assumed you guys snuck off to make out under the bleachers whenever we weren’t looking.”
I stare at him, my head spinning out. Why was Ruby there? Why didn’t she say something to me? She’s been so cold, so good at keeping her distance. I thought she was happy. If she went all the way to—
“Morgan?” Dylan asks, but the buzz of my phone alarm saves me from any more conversation.
“I have to get ready,” I say, rushing to the bathroom.
I don’t know what I expected would happen when I got to school, or why I thought the sudden revelation that Ruby had gone to my competition a week ago would change anything. It doesn’t.
I watch her move through the building, searching hard for cracks in her calm exterior or evidence that she still cares. She sits with Marcus and Everly at lunch, smiling just the right amount and pointedly not looking in my direction. I sit with Anika under the guise of helping her inventory the last of the donations—she’s sorting clothing, I’m doing canned and dry goods—but the truth is, I’m just too tired to keep up the charade around Allie and Lydia anymore. Though, judging by their worried faces, I’m not sure I’m fooling anyone anyway.
“Maybe you should talk to her again,” Anika says after the tenth time I check to see if Ruby is looking. She is not.
“And say what? Nothing has changed.”
“I don’t know, but you seem way more miserable now than you did before.”
I pull out three cans of green beans and log them on the sheet in front of me. “What do you think? There’s probably enough for, what, six or seven more bags with all this?”
“I’m hoping for eight so we’ll have donated an even twenty . . . And don’t think I didn’t notice your little subject change.”
“Sorry.” I pull out the final item, a giant case of mac and cheese, and then drop into my chair. “I didn’t think being away from her would suck this bad. I mean, we weren’t even official!”
Anika shrugs. “It took me over a year to get over the first person I ever really loved.”
I log the mac and cheese on the form and sigh. “You’re telling me I have eleven-plus months left of this?”
“No, I’m telling you not to be like me,” Anika says. “Breaking up with them was the biggest mistake I ever made.”
“So why did you?”
“Because I thought they were cheating on me, but it turns out the person I saw them with was their cousin. I didn’t even give them a chance to explain, and when I finally found out the truth, they decided that they didn’t want to be with me anymore. I broke their trust by overreacting and not believing in them.”
“But that’s different.”
“Yeah,” Anika says, folding a pair of pajama pants. “But I think the regret part is going to be exactly the same.”
I peek again at Ruby, who is now engaged in what appears to be a lively conversation with Tyler. I wonder if they’re hooking up again. I wonder if that’s how she’s moving on so quickly. “Well, Ruby seems to be doing just fine.”
Anika looks over at her. “I don’t know. Maybe she’s just better at pretending than you are. She does have all that pageant experience. No one can possibly be that happy to be standing on a stage in a bikini.”
“Hey, I’m good at pretending too.”
“Clearly,” Anika says with a little laugh.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Anika lifts up my inventory sheet and holds it in front of me. “Look at the last thing you wrote.”
“Mac and cheese?” I say, scrunching up my shoulders.
Anika taps the sheet. “Try again.”
I wince when I read what’s really there. “Mac and Ruby. One case.”
“Yeah,” she says.
“It could be like an experimental flavor! I’m an innovator.”
“Mm-hmm, sure.”
“I’m hopeless.” I pull the log out of her hand and correct it.
“Kinda,” she says just as the bell rings.
Ruby gets up from her table, with Tyler following close behind. Our eyes meet when she walks by, and she gives me the tiniest smile. It only lasts a second, and I’m not even sure it was intentional, but I’ll take it.