1.
When you'd just turned 17, you ran into the street, pulling your sister Addie from the path of a speeding car, which swerved into a mailbox to avoid running down the both of you.
As the cops took statements, you stood on the sidewalk, head down, hands on knees, hyperventilating while Addie giggled, waving at everyone who'd been attracted to the spectacle of a Cadillac wrapped around a mailbox complete with steam rising out from under the hood. As far as Addie was concerned, this was Hollywood and she was the star.
The old bat from across the street who usually gave you sour looks for even walking down her part of the sidewalk was offering you water, tea, anything – "You take such good care of your sister. Why that poor creature has no more sense than a cabbage, and you just ran out there and saved her… too bad about the mailbox, though!"
You were too busy barfing to snarl at her that Addie wasn't as stupid as the old bitch looked in her faded flypaper yellow housedress, eternal curlers, and dumbass bunny slippers.
As the neighbor lady was led away by one of the cops to get her statement, one of the coaches from the high school you occasionally remembered to attend put his hand on your shoulder and said, "Tate, I want you over at the High School track at 6 a.m. tomorrow morning. Bring running shoes."
I didn't think he knew my name.
2.
You had no running shoes.
However you did have a pair of broken down sneakers with random Dante quotations and swear words doodled on them in ballpoint, a stiff formal pair mom inflicted on you for Sunday (when she remembered) and family dinners out, and a pair of combat boots you scored from the Army Navy Store and wore faithfully after you gouged "Nirvana" into the soles with a box knife and wrote the titles of all of Kurt' songs on the sides in white Sharpie.
("Tate, my God those are ugly. Throw them away!")
So you went through mom's purse that evening while she was next door fucking the neighbor in the big mansion she once owned while his wife took the kids to a movie after ballet practice, and along with Addie, you walked to the nearest big box store and bought a pair.
They looked unreal against your favorite boots, but for some reason, you didn't care. Addie loved their hot green laces and wanted to keep them. To avoid a meltdown, you had to buy her own set, hot orange, to get her to leave your new shoes alone, which she wore around her neck and forehead proudly all the way home because mom wouldn't let her wear anything but Mary Janes – with a pull tab from a Coke can for a pendant.
Mom was still over at the neighbor's mansion long after you put Addie to bed and locked her in for the night for her own safety.
Around 2 a.m. you passed out mid-rock in your own room, mind churning and nose burning, dirty magazines and used Kleenexes stuffed under your mattress, hand lotion tipped over and dribbling into the worn shag carpet, razor blade and mirror stashed under your mound of dirty laundry.
3.
Next morning found you exhausted, swaying slightly as you awkwardly fidgeted beside the track coach's office door in the faded Nirvana t-shirt with a baby on the front swimming after money on a fish hook that you'd swapped for a couple of gay skin mags you'd found in the basement, crammed into the pair of ratty gym shorts left over from the 8th grade you'd dug up out of the bottom of your laundry mound after the alarm went off.
The shorts reeked, but as long as you kept moving you figured nobody'd notice where the pong was coming from and your head had settled into a dull pounding – maybe it was the baboons who squatted in your skull uninvited having a jam session, while your eyes felt like two holes burned into a blanket with a red-hot poker.
Sniffing suspiciously, Coach looked you up and down, led you out to the track, and told you to start running- he didn't have all day.
After a lap or two, Coach looked at his stopwatch, grunted, wrote something down, and said, "Run all summer the way you did yesterday and I'll have a spot on the team for you if you want it.
Did something just happen that I missed?
4.
It had never occurred to you that you had any abilities besides running after Addie, fidgeting and foot bouncing in the classroom, disappearing into books nobody else read while hiding in the school library, pulling your mother off the front lawn on Saturday morning when she had a boyfriend (or not), hanging around doing nothing, and jacking off when things got too intense and snorting whatever random illegal substances you'd scored didn't do it for you.
In other words, you were invisible.
Still, invisibility had its advantages even if it pissed off your mom, who seemed awfully stuck on your appearance when she wasn't yelling at you for not being perfect.
Only lately, even with Addie to look after and occasionally showing up at school when nothing more interesting and less stressful was available, there wasn't much to do because even mom had a new hobby, (Yeah, the asshole next door, what was his name… Larry? Like one of the 3 Stooges or something or other.) leaving you at loose ends.
5.
So, not having anything better to do and nobody to hang out with (as usual), that evening after chopping and snorting a small amount of whatever was available to dull the constant background noise made by the rowdy but invisible baboons residing rent-free in your skull, you put on the ratty Nirvana shirt, the slightly too tight gym shorts, and your new running shoes, and started running.
Just running, nothing more, nothing less, legs mechanically moving up and down with Addie enthusiastically lumbering along beside you so that you had to shorten your stride so she could keep up.
6.
The two of you ran-waddled down the sidewalk, around the corner, down that street, around the corner, down THAT street, passing the mansion mom once owned, and back to your own house, Addie panting and red-faced.
So you distracted her with a Barney video and a glass of water inside before setting off down the block again in the growing twilight.
By the time you were done running, you were at the beach, amazed that you'd got there without passing out or at least throwing up.
You did this every day all summer, once in the morning when it was quiet, and once in the evening, when the sun painted everything gold and red, taking a different street each time because you were easily bored. Addie insisted on waiting on the front porch with a towel, a stopwatch (upside down), and a water bottle. Sometimes you'd see Beauregard's face in the attic window.
You'd wave back, which seemed to make him happy.
Mom was busy sucking off the neighbor, Mr. Lawrence something-or-other, so you didn't see much of her.
Which suited you just fine.
7.
The neighbors, whom you hardly knew, would wave and yell as you ran past them, one guy even called out "Hey, there goes the Human Jackrabbit must be 7:30!" – which you took as an insult only you later realized that he was right. You became part of the neighborhood even though you didn't know anybody's name: over here, the fat guy with the even fatter wife would water his roses at 5 p.m. every night. The old bat across the street always sat in a chair by the window watching TV, knitting without fail, dustmop dog running along his side of the fence barking hysterically at you. The kids three doors down always whined the same whine when their mom told them it was time to come in and get ready for bed… the two lesbos who liked to smoke on their balcony every morning after work… all becoming familiar, oddly reassuring, as you loped past them regularly, avoiding the heat of the day while the skin mags and cocaine languished untouched under your mattress and your skin darkened to the point where your hair looked white in contrast while eating everything you could get your hands on when you weren't running.
8.
You wore out two pairs of running shoes, replaced the rapidly too tight shorts, cut your hair short because it was a pain in the ass to keep out of your eyes when you ran, and got a new Nirvana t-shirt before school started again.
Coach lived up to his promise, telling you that he thought you had potential, and that he'd seen you running on his way to work and on his way home, "Keep up the good work Tate, the fist meet's on Tuesday, here's your uniform. First practice is after classes today, don't be late."
Cool.
9.
It was weird; you'd always avoided jock fests – the noise and the motion made you feel even more awkward and out of place because everybody around you seemed to have a purpose but you.
Only now you did.
You outran everyone in the first event coach entered you in, coming in second only because you stumbled at the last second, letting the guy behind you shoot on past.
Nobody yelled. Nobody called you a loser. Coach just told you to get ready for the next event, your team-mates high-fiving you when you came in first, while girls that never even looked at you came up and gave your their phone numbers unasked with giggles and sidelong glances while you cooled down after your third race of the meet.
Then you saw them, Addie with her upside down stopwatch, your mom in a big hat and sunglasses, and the asshole from next door.
10.
Shoestring necklace bouncing, Addie ran up to you, giving you her usual enthusiastic hug and big sloppy wet kiss, the neighbor appraising you, as your mother took you by the arm and said, "Tate, I'm so proud of you!" which made you blush all the way to the roots of your now close-cropped hair ("Oh Tate, what have you done with your beautiful hair?") - And then she pushed the asshole from next door who screwed around in front of his wife and kids with your mother towards you, beaming, "Tate, Tate honey, you've made me so proud, so proud that I want to share the good news RIGHT NOW: Lawrence here is going to be your new father – we're moving back into my fine house as soon as his wife and daughters move out. No more wretched little dump for my beautiful son – you can have your old room back!"
What the fuck?
11.
You didn't feel the pavement under your feet as you ran home, past the familiar neighbors, through the front door, up the stairs, and into your room.
The shoes and track uniform got kicked under the bed.
Back in your broken down sneakers and a baggy jeans with the knees deliberately ripped out, you hunched over your desk, chopping, chopping, chopping, inhaling deeply, baboons throwing shit inside your skull, laughing at you from the inside.
11.
That night there was a fire truck and an ambulance parked in front of the mansion next door. Three body bags were trundled out and loaded into the back of a coroner's vehicle after the fire in one of the upstairs bedrooms was put out.
You were too busy sitting on your unmade bed at the time, rapidly rocking back and forth, staring blankly at a crack in the plaster between two posters, face twitching, nose burning, to notice any of this.
Later, when you moved into the mansion next door just after Halloween, you pulled your dusty running shoes and uniform out from under the bed, and threw them away without a backward glance.