AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Miles from a couple of days ago might have laughed at this, but either he’s too tired or he’s grown weary of humoring me. It was bound to happen sometime. He turns, yawning into his shoulder, and when he adjusts on the bench, his knee bumps my hip. It’s not the worst thing, jean-to-jean contact. It feels like some anchor to this strange earth. Even if it’s accidental.
“Are you okay?” he asks after a few minutes of silence. “You’re not usually this quiet. It’s unsettling.”
“I’m not sure.” One of the slackliners makes it to the middle before losing her balance. My eyes follow the rope stretched between the two trees, a knot of anxiety tightening in my stomach. “God, what if it’s never going to be fall?”
“It will be,” Miles says. “In some timeline.”
I groan, pulling my knees up onto the bench and resting my chin on them. “But I’m a basic autumn bitch, Miles. I’m at my most powerful in the fall. I need PSLs and boots and cable-knit sweaters to survive. I need to frolic in a pile of leaves.”
“I’d hate to see you even more powerful. You frolic?”
“Oh, I frolic,” I say, slathering it with as much emphasis as I can, and it’s only when it leaves my mouth that I realize it sounds dirty. “And I assume I’ll never be able to switch out of Physics 101, either. Hilarious. I love this journey for me.” And yet the joking around doesn’t loosen the tension in my chest the way it usually does, the way it did all summer when I pretended I wasn’t reeling from prom. I try to ignore the quickening of my heart rate, but the panic is stronger. It clenches a fist around my throat, a force so powerful it steals my breath. All the things I wanted to do in college—they’ve never been farther out of reach. “I wanted to go to a Hillel service, meet other Jews, but I guess it might never even be Shabbat! And write for the paper. And study abroad. And about a hundred other things. And I just—”
All of a sudden, I’m hopping off the bench, gasping out an exhale. Every cell in me is restless. Claustrophobic. Not just from being trapped in time, but on this campus. There’s every opportunity at our fingertips, and we’re just sitting here. Literally.
“Barrett?” Miles gets to his feet, a note of worry in his voice.
And I take off running.
I race through the quad, past the slackliners and clubs and students searching for their next class. Past old buildings and new buildings and buildings I don’t know the names of. I have no patience for crowds, and my footsteps on the concrete stairs echo with a satisfying thump. But it’s not enough. I need more.
Two weeks. Two weeks I’ve been stuck here. Barely moving.
I dart out of the way of a bus, speeding down the hill that’ll take me off campus, sucking in giant lungfuls of air, and that’s not enough either. More, my restless brain demands. I’m starting to understand why people do this, why they push their bodies beyond their limits—to fucking feel something. Something bigger than themselves and the comfort zones they’ve grown so cozy in.
Every so often, I hear Miles behind me, shouting my name, but I don’t stop running until I can see water. A shimmering Union Bay and a tiny park hugging the shore and Husky Stadium, that U-shaped building supposedly designed to keep the sun out of athletes’ eyes.
Running has always felt like a punishment. Today it feels like an escape. My lungs are burning and my legs are protesting and I love all of it. I love every ounce of discomfort, every ache when I bend my legs or when the wind slashes my cheeks as I turn my face up to the sky.
There’s music coming from the stadium, something bold and brassy, and the front entrance is wide open. I slow down, half because my thighs are starting to chafe and half because I’m curious. I follow the bright purple arrows tacked to the massive gray walls, follow the sound past concession stands into a seating section in the visitors’ end zone.
The full UW marching band is at the opposite end of the field, dressed in purple, white, and gold, the sun glinting off their instruments.
I don’t even bother biting back a grin as I hop the railing to get down on the field. They’re playing a version of “Seven Nation Army” by the White Stripes, and the whole thing is some kind of first-day celebration, groups of students running around the football field, eating and playing games and attempting to kick field goals.
There’s a rush of breath and a rustle of footsteps as Miles approaches, his cheeks flushed from exertion, dark hair a complete mess. Maybe the stadium can keep the sun out of football players’ eyes, but it’s not stopping the late morning light from catching the angles of Miles’s face.
“Are we training for a marathon now?” he asks, panting, and something about the word we lodges itself in my mind, though this is far from the first time he’s said it. “Wow. I had no idea all of this was here.”
In spite of everything, or maybe because I’ve fully lost it, I start laughing at the absurdity of his suggestion when—shit. A cramp slices through my side, yanking me down into the turf in a heap of sweaty exhaustion, across from a booth selling popcorn and cotton candy.
The stadium applauds when the song ends with a flourish. “Thank you, thank you!” the band leader says into the mic, voice reverberating. “Any other requests?” Someone near her calls out something I can’t hear. She clears her throat. “Any appropriate requests?”
“Lady Gaga!” a girl shouts, and the band launches into “Bad Romance.”
“We’ve been playing it so safe,” I say to Miles, still trying to catch my breath. “I’ve barely left campus. What if this whole thing is about living life to the fullest?”
I don’t want to go to class, I don’t want to interview for the paper, and I don’t want to decide whether to go to a frat party with my roommate. I want that magical, once-in-a-lifetime experience people are supposed to have in college. The experience my mom and Jocelyn talk about with a gleam in their eyes. And if the universe isn’t going to let me experience it the way I always thought I would, then I’m just going to have to make it for myself.
Miles pats the turf to see if it’s wet before dropping to his knees next to me. When his body sways, I feel a surge of something I can’t quite name. Poised and perfect Miles, unraveling because he chased after me. “You think the universe is upset with you because you didn’t carpe diem? I feel like whatever’s out there has bigger shit to deal with than whether Barrett Bloom is living it up.”
“Evidently not! Whoever Ella Devereux is or was, no one seems to be able to tell us anything useful. We’re stuck, and who knows for how long. And we’re not even having fun.”
“I’m having fun,” he says, defensive, dragging a hand through his hair. Much like mine, it refuses to be tamed. “Gladys and I have become great friends. She just doesn’t know it.”
“That’s the other thing. We’re never going to be able to spend time with anyone else, at least not in a meaningful way,” I say, thinking of my mom. Of Lucie. “Maybe you and Gladys find a new way to reorganize the physics library, and she’s so grateful she writes you into her will, and you stand to inherit a hefty sum of money. Maybe you join a knitting club together. Or maybe we rip every page from every book in that library, and the next version of Gladys will have no idea. And she never will.”
Miles makes an odd noise in the back of his throat. “Just to be clear,” he says, “there is nothing going on between me and Gladys.”
