Need

by Carrie Jones

  “If you pass out, I’ll put you in my lap and wheel you across the finish line,” he says, and it somehow isn’t sleazy because you can tell by his eyes how much he cares about Issie. I instantly like him.

  She blushes worse. Her face looks like she’s already sprinted a mile.

  I bounce on my feet, crazy happy for a chance to run, even if it is inside, even if the perfect, plastic, Megan Crowley is there, glaring at me. Ian stands next to her with a half smile on his face.

  “Think you’re a runner or something?” She flips her hair down and then back into a ponytail, which again accentuates her perfect cheekbones. “Nice shirt.”

  I shrug.

  Ian wiggles his eyebrows. “She looks like a runner to me.” His words don’t seem real. They seem flat, like he’s playing at flirting with me. This is probably a continuing side effect of my dad’s death: the feeling that nothing is real. I touch the thread on my finger.

  Megan arches a perfect eyebrow. “Maybe she ran in whatever little southern hole she crawled out of, but not up here. We’re a different breed of runner up here. Plus, how can anyone possibly run on such short little legs?”

  “Don’t be mean, Megan,” Issie says. “It’s so much cooler to be nice.”

  Megan lashes at her. “Like you know what it is to be cool.”

  My hands close into fists and I try to think of something to say but all my words seem to be stuck somewhere near my heart. Then another voice comes from behind us, a low growl type of voice, full of deepness. I recognize it right away and the little hairs on my arm arch up into the air.

  “Issie’s beyond cool,” Nick Colt says. He puts a hand on Issie’s shoulder. She smiles at him. She’s friends with the MINI Cooper guy? Are they dating? Please, God. Do not let them be dating.

  He turns to perfect Megan. “You worried, Megan? Think she could be faster than you?”

  Nick Colt smiles at her, but there’s no warmth in it and it makes me shudder. It’s the smile of a predator. Okay, it’s the smile of a really incredible-looking predator with a really nice jaw line. I shake my head to get that image out of it. No, he has the smile of a bad driver, someone who makes my body scream, “Danger! Stay away!”

  Wow. I am such a liar.

  He has the smile of gorgeous. He taunts her a little bit. “She might be faster . . .”

  “Yeah, right.” Megan arches down to touch her toes. She moves like a cat, graceful, like she’s thought about how each muscle will look as she moves. “Like she’d worry me.”

  Something like anger rises up from the pit inside me, dark and haughty. I am so not used to feeling that way. I’m not used to feeling anything except numb, but this Megan girl, she just does something to me. The air in the gym cools down, getting fierce, like it’s waiting for something to happen, like a fight. I am really not about to let something happen. I am not about to make the world more full of hate.

  My dad used to quote Booker T. Washington to me, along with some other cool people. But it is the Booker T. quote that sticks in my mind right now. Booker T. once said, “I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.”

  I fake smile, pretend I am a white-girl Booker T., and say in as nice a voice as I can manage, “I’m not trying to worry you, Megan.”

  She turns her face toward me, her eyes fierce and focused. “Good. You don’t.”

  Issie grabs my elbow and gives me worried eyes. Megan pretends we suddenly don’t exist and moves closer to a group of blond girls, the class cutie brigade, I figure. Nick and Ian eye each other, like dogs squaring off, measuring each other up. Ian looks away first, bending to tighten his laces.

  Nick smiles at me, a much nicer smile. A real smile? “You’ve already made friends.”

  “Good one,” I say, shifting my weight between my feet. “Ha-ha. Funny.”

  Issie perks up and locks her arm in mine. “That’s right, Nick. Zara’s doing fine. I’m her friend.”

  He nods. This time his smile seems even warmer, even more real. “Good, Issie. I should have known.”

  “Known what?” I ask, but nobody answers me. So I try a new tactic and whisper to Is, “Are you dating him?”

  Her head jerks up. “Devyn?”

  “No. Nick.”

  She starts laughing. “Nope. No interest there at all.”

  Devyn lifts his head to stare into Nick’s face. He drums his fingers against the armrests of the wheelchair. “You find out anything?”

  Nick shakes his head.

  The coach comes to the starting line and gives Devyn a stopwatch and clipboard. “You guys ready? This is serious stuff here. Run all-out. Do your best.”

  Nick leans toward me and whispers. His breath is warm against the side of my face. “He has a bet with all the other PE teachers in the county. If we don’t have the best average time, he has to buy everyone strudel.”

  “Strudel?”

  Nick raises his hands in the air. “I have no idea.”

  “The PE teachers are into strudel,” Issie says. “I’m not sure why. It’s so gooey.”

  “Gooey is good,” Nick says.

  “Seriously?” I ask him. “You like strudel.”

  “I like a lot of things that aren’t good for me.” He smiles slowly at me. My mouth must be hanging open because he starts laughing.

  “You made her blush!” Issie says. “Don’t blush, Zara. He’s just teasing.”

  Coach Walsh blows the whistle and we take off. A lot of the girls just jog, but Megan Crowley bolts, and I dash after her, hating how cute and long her legs look as she runs with a perfect stride, her feet swinging low and quick. Does Nick notice how perfect she is? Why do I even care? Megan turns her head and flashes a smile at me. It is not a friendly smile. What is wrong with that girl? What is wrong with me?

  “Go get her,” Issie huffs out. Her form is all off. She’s loping and too loose, her arms flapping everywhere. “Don’t wait for me.”

  “But . . .”

  “I’m not much of a distance runner, more of a sprinter.” She smiles apologetically. “More of a walker, really.”

  We haven’t even gone a quarter of a mile and Issie’s face is already red.

  “Go. Catch her.”

  She smiles and waves me away.

  Then she adds, “You know you want to.”

  I pick up my pace, easily catching up to Megan. I flash her my own version of the evil-Megan, super-unfriendly smile and pass her at the quarter-mile mark.

  Let me just say that there’s nothing better than running fast. There’s nothing better than the way your legs feel when you stretch out to sprinting speed and you know that your lungs and heart can sustain it.

  My running shoes pound over the red track and I start to catch up to the leading boys.

  The gym teacher switches on some really ultra-urban hip-hop music, which almost breaks my stride because it has to be the strangest thing in the world listening to ultra-urban hip-hop in a gym in northern Maine. I swear, Maine is the whitest state in the nation.

  We went running the day my dad died, in Charleston. My breath hiccups out of my mouth and I lose my breathing rhythm. Crap.

  “Don’t think about it. Go faster.” I am mumbling to myself. What is wrong with me? Running never makes me nervous. I lap the jogging girls. They’re singing, “Whassup. Whassup with you . . . ”

  I lap sweet Issie. Her arms are still all loosey-goosey and she waves at me before she yells, “Watch out. She’s catching up.”

  I just run faster and hit the slowest of the lead boys. I wink and race by him. He smells like onions and he has big, wet circles in the pits of his shirt. He speeds up, but can only stay with me for a tenth of a mile before he drops back. Then it’s Nick.

  I cruise next to him. He’s some sort of running god, because he isn’t close to being winded. His stride is long, powerful, and quick.

  “Hi.”

  Why I said this, I do not know. He’s cute. Okay. I am a sucker for cute boys and he was
nice to Issie. Plus, he has good hair and he isn’t as pale as most Maine males. He looks like he works in the sun, or at least has seen the sun once, maybe many weeks ago. Plus, life is all supposed to be about making love, not war. My dad listened to John Lennon; I know this stuff.

  “You’re fast,” he says, easy. No huffing. No puffing. No blowing the house down.

  “So are you.”

  We run together, keeping pace. The only one ahead of us is Ian, who is loping around the track as if it’s nothing.

  Nick shrugs at me while he runs, which is really something, because when I’m running full tilt it’s hard for me to speak, let alone break form to shrug.

  “You can go faster, can’t you?” I huff out.

  He just gives a little smile again and then his eyes shift into something cold, like gravestones with just the barest information about a life etched onto them.

  “Zara,” he whisper-says.

  I lean in closer to hear him. “What?”

  My voice is not a whisper. It matches the thudding beat of my heart, the bass of the music that blares out of the speakers.

  “Awesome job, new girl!” Devyn yells, clapping.

  Nick locks his eyes into mine. “You should stay away from Ian.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. He’s just . . . he’s a user.”

  “A user?”

  We thunder past the jogging/singing girls.

  “What do you mean, a user?” I ask again.

  We flash by some unhealthy boys, including the onion-smell guy.

  Nick sniffs the air. “Smells like they might not make it.”

  Might not make it. Like my dad.

  I gulp and turn my head to look at him. He is oblivious. My dad’s face flashes into my head, the water bottle on the floor, the way I couldn’t do anything to help him. I ache, just ache, and it makes me mad. I start kicking. It’s way too early, but I have to get ahead and get away, like I can outrun death somehow, like I can run away from what’s real.

  Might not make it.

  Every muscle rebels but I ignore them and push past Nick, closing the distance between Ian and me in the final lap. I pass people but don’t really notice who. Some yell, but I don’t really hear them. With every footfall I increase the distance between me and Nick, between me and bad memories.

  Might not make it.

  Just Run. Run. Run.

  I halve the distance between Ian and me. I quarter the distance.

  People yell, I think. People holler. My red running shoes blur as they move over the grainy track. My arms pump. Kicking high to catch up, all power, all speed, and I get so close I can smell Ian, cold and icy like my windowpane this morning. He turns and looks at me.

  He isn’t even concerned. A runner never turns to look back unless he knows he can’t be beat.

  He smiles kindly—amused, I think—and picks up his pace. No sweat soaks his shirt, no beads on his forehead. Nothing.

  God, that’s incredible, to be able to run like that.

  He crosses the line three strides ahead of me, standing up, smiling.

  I stumble across the line and fall to the ground, gasping for air, clutching my cinched-up stomach, and suppressing the urge to vomit, which is what happens sometimes when I run hard.

  “You were great.” Ian bends over me and reaches a hand out to help me up.

  I grab his hand, stagger, and the world dizzies around me. Ian wraps his arm around my waist, steadying me. My dad used to put his arm around me like that and I liked it, liked the comfortable feeling. Some part of me notices that his arm isn’t even warm. It’s cold. It makes no sense.

  “You’re amazing,” I tell him. “I’ve never seen anyone that fast.”

  “I do okay.”

  “Okay?”

  “Lots of training.”

  My eyes lock with Nick’s eyes. He’s not winded, but he is sweaty, musky smelling. He glares at me and I’m suddenly super conscious of Ian’s arm around me.

  “Everyone is an amazing runner here,” I pant, bending over again. “I can’t believe how good everyone is.”

  “You were too,” Ian says. “You need a little Maine training, that’s all.”

  The gym teacher pounds me on the back. “I want you on the team. That time! That’s a minute better than the girls’ Maine state record. I can’t believe it.”

  I nod and smile. My heart lifts and starts to settle. The world loses its blurry edges. Ian still hangs onto my waist. He says something, but I’m too tired to hear it. Nick stands near Devyn, hands on his hips. There’s a little sweat on his forehead and he wipes it off with his hand before his eyes sear into mine.

  That’s all it takes. I’m hooked.

  Sitophobia

  fear of eating

  The PE teacher is tallying up everyone’s times and giving them out. Nick’s eyes are still locked with mine. He mouths the word again, “User.”

  I open my own mouth to say something. But before I can he turns his back to me and walks away.

  Ian scowls and points at Nick. “He bothering you?”

  “I don’t know,” I answer honestly, pulling away.

  Ian’s face clenches. “Ignore him, okay? He’s a jerk. He’s got this cop-complex thing going on.”

  “Cop complex?”

  “Thinks he knows everything. Thinks he’s better than everybody else. He isn’t. He’s just an overgrown thug who can run. He’s been a freak ever since Devyn’s accident, and then this other kid ran away last week and Nick’s all ‘there could be a serial killer.’ I swear he watches way too many crime shows. It’s no wonder his parents took off.”

  “Took off?”

  “Supposedly on some photography work. They do nature movies. I don’t know. I like your shirt.”

  I glance down at my U2 T-shirt. Sweat mars the light gray of it and it seems crumpled, all used up after a hard run. The title of their old album, War, has started to flake off. I can’t stop thinking about Nick. “He seems so . . . I don’t know . . . stressed.”

  Ian takes me by the shoulders. Maine people are way too intense. I try to back away. His fingers sink in and hold.

  “Zara, just ignore him,” he repeats. His fingers relax and he flicks some lint off my shoulder. “He’s a jerk. Okay?”

  Nick stands by Devyn. He taps the wheel on Devyn’s chair with his foot. I meet his eyes.

  “Okay,” I say to Ian.

  But I know I’m lying.

  I know I don’t want to stay away.

  The rest of the morning goes fine, as far as the first day in a new school goes. There’s a lot of gawking at me and whispering. Issie tries to explain who everyone is, but the names and connections don’t stick. I can’t remember anything.

  “Is the blond guy Jay Dahlberg?” I ask Issie as we charge down the stairs to the cafeteria.

  “No, that’s Paul Rasku, who makes the pumpkin bombs,” Issie explains for the eight hundreth time. “Jay Dahlberg is the skater who made this sound-cannon thing out of a nine-foot-long cardboard tube. It’s super cool. He trumpets through it during basketball and soccer games and stuff.”

  “I give up.”

  “You’ll get it,” Issie reassures me.

  I can’t believe I live here now.

  But Issie is terribly sweet. She and Devyn sit with me at lunch, which, having watched enough Disney tween movies, was what I worried about the most. The whole “new girl alone in the lunch room” thing.

  I’m pretty content, actually.

  I bite into my veggie sandwich and stare at Devyn’s happy face. “So, you guys have always lived in Maine?”

  Devyn nods. “Yep. But Issie moved up here from Portland.”

  “In first grade,” I remember.

  Issie laughs and points at Devyn with her carrot stick. “I already told her.”

  She yawns a ferocious yawn—I can see down to her tonsils—and stretches her arms over her head.

  Devyn reaches over and covers Issie’s mouth as she yawns
. “I wonder where Nick is?”

  I must have made some sort of frightened face because Devyn explains, “Nick’s cool. He just has this weird protector thing going on.”

  I open up my sandwich. The lettuce is limp against the bread. I shut it again and twirl the string on my finger.

  “Do you have an Amnesty International chapter here?” I ask, changing the subject. I wipe my mouth and pluck a cucumber out of my sandwich.

  “I have always wanted an Amnesty chapter. Are you in Amnesty?” Issie pops up. She’s been staring at her pizza slice, picking off the pepperoni. Devyn scoops them off her plate and gobbles them down. She smiles at him. “He always does that. He’s so into protein. He eats raw meat.”

  “Like sushi?” I ask.

  “Yeah, like sushi . . . ,” Issie’s voice trails off.

  “Some people are afraid of fish. It’s called ichthyophobia,” I say, and then cover my mouth with my hand. I try not to give people useless phobia information, but Devyn is into it.

  “Hey, that’s better than ideophobia,” he says.

  My hands drop down. “You know what ideophobia is?”

  Issie answers for him. “Devyn knows everything about phobias and mental conditions.”

  “My parents are psychiatrists,” he explains. “Ideophobia is the fear of ideas.”

  “Duh, even I could get that one.” Issie wiggles her nose at him. “But anyway, about Amnesty. We should start a chapter, shouldn’t we, Devyn?”

  He nods and wipes the pepperoni grease off his fingers.

  Life here could be okay after all, really, if it weren’t so cold.

  Then Devyn tenses up, a low sound comes from the bottom of his throat, almost like a whimper.

  Issie puts her hand on his arm.

  “Is?” he says quietly.

  She doesn’t answer.

  When I follow her gaze out the big cafeteria windows, I see what it is that’s freaking him out. At the edge of the woods there’s a man.

  “Crap,” I say.

  Issie snaps out of it. “You know him?”

  She and Devyn both focus their attention on me. I try to shrink myself down even more. I’d like to stare back at them, but I’m too busy watching the man lift his arm and point, point into the cafeteria, at us, at me.