Petra reached for the cardboard box she'd left underneath her bed when she'd first moved in here. The packaging tape still meticulously lined the seam between the two flaps, covering the inside of the box. She shifted her weight onto her knees, and stretched herself to grab a pencil from the top of her desk, and used it to mercilessly tear through the tape until the box opened. She pulled the flaps open until she was left with the contents of the box.
For a second, all she could do was stare. And the things packed inside stared back at her, as if in disbelief. Like they couldn't believe what she'd left behind.
All memorabilia of her running achievements. At the very top of the box was a stack of running bibs of her most memorable races. The first time she'd made it to regionals, then the time she made it to state. And the bib that tracked her as she qualified for nationals. The bib for the biggest race for her age and division in the country. They all stared back at her. Numbers 067, 824, 844, and 503.
Carefully, unsure, she pulled them out of the box and set them carefully on top of her bed. And then she sifted through the medals, the baton from the winning relay race her high school team had given to her once she graduated, signed by each leg of her senior year 4x100 relay team. And slipped inside, the signatures and notes of everyone else on the team. She blinked away the wet spots starting to crowd her vision.
But buried at the bottom of all of this were her racing flats and track spikes. Track had always been her soft spot, had always had a special place in her heart. There was something about smelling the fresh track in the rain, and the burning tinge that it added to the air on a hot day. The day the city track got remodeled and finally reopened, the whole team lined up on their knees, a few people to a lane, and they licked the fresh track. She still remembers the feel of the ridged surface on her tongue.
Pulling them out from the box, she set her spikes in her lap, running the palm of her hand under the sharp peaks of each metal spike, still screwed to the bottom of her shoes. She traced her finger along the smooth surface of the black logo, then onto the golden surface. She'd told her coach that if she ever qualified for states she'd get a pair of golden spikes. Because she'd proven herself. When she actually did qualify, the entire team chipped in to get her a pair. She never wore them to anywhere further than regionals, but she always loved seeing them laced together, hanging off of the knob of her closet door. She doesn't know what pushed her to bring them with her to college, or even here after she transferred. She didn't plan on running track here. Yet…
The door slammed open, and Petra jumped, scrambling up and kicking the box back under her bed.
Levi slinked into the room, looking around for Hanji, probably.
"What tHe fUck." Petra shouted at him. He trained his eyes on her, and noticed that she had slipped one shoe over each hand, like she had armed herself.
He smirked, then walked up to her, and lowered each hand, cautiously. "Relax. I was just looking for four eyes."
She let her hands drop to her sides, reluctantly, and started tying her shoes back together.
Satisfied, he backed away from her again, and let his eyes flick around the room. He noticed the bibs lying on top of her covers, and the stray medals on the floor, the bed… Holy fuck. She must've been good.
He looked back at Petra, who at this point had her head down, focused solely on tying back her shoelaces in what must've been the saddest way possible.
"You run?" he asked, admiring one of the gold medals dropped carelessly by her pillow.
Her head jerked up in surprise. "Huh?" She followed his gaze, and noticed him staring at one of her medals. That one she'd gotten at a college invitational.
Nodding, she placed her shoes back into the box. "Yeah." she paused briefly.
"Yeah. I used to run… a lot." she felt ashamed saying that, especially in the presence of all her running souvenirs. How long had it even been since she went on a decent long run? Three months? Four?
Levi's presence just worsened the whole ordeal, and she felt an overwhelming sense of guilt. She thought back to her high school coach and team. And even briefly her college team. Or what was her college team. Wordlessly, she grabbed the rest of her running things, and dumped them back into the box, hearing the satisfying clink of the medals, then setting the bibs carefully back on top.
She let Levi pick up and examine her medal, but grabbed her keys, phone, and wallet from the her desk. She swung her jacket on, and pushed past him towards the door. "Feel free to wait here for Hanji, but I'm going to have to ditch."
Petra turned down the hallway towards the elevator, and tried to think about getting away as quickly as she could.
The only thing that could really calm her down—besides maybe a run—was going to the bookstore on campus. She'd discovered it the first few weeks after she'd moved in, and she found herself going back to it whenever she was stressed.
It was a small two-floor semi-used bookstore, staffed by hipster college students in flannels, who would all be hunched over the register, reading a book. It was comfortably busy there—with just enough people around regularly for the place not to feel empty. A few people in the YA section. A couple in the self-help.
Petra liked to walk through the aisles of ash wood bookshelfs, stuffed with a mixture of hardcover and paperback books, the spines already cracked and worn. There was something undeniably charming about used books and library books. It had that distinct shared smell that let you know that there were many readers before you. She liked seeing the yellowed pages of the book, and the slightly rough feel of it when you turned the page with your finger.
She stepped through the single glass pane door, the bell ringing delicately when she pushed it open. A guy was sitting on a stool behind the register, reading. He wore a pair of black frame glasses that were extremely flattering, and was completely engrossed in his book. She passed the register.
The store was half empty, as usual, but there were a few people scattered around. A couple whispering behind one of the shelves, and a couple people browsing.
Petra knew her place in this setup, as if this was some scene from a movie and she was just another extra placed in the cookbooks section, between authors with the last name L-T. Then, like every other time she came here, she went to the Fiction section, and picked a book from the shelf. A different one than last time. If she'd counted all the books that she'd only read the first few chapters for, it probably outnumber the books she'd finished in the past year.
She found a particularly worn copy of The Help, by Kathryn Stockett, and sat down on the steps that separated the first floor from the second floor landing. She threw her bag to the ground, and sat on the edge of the step. She cracked the book open, and started reading the first chapter.
Levi was meeting Hanji for coffee. When he got to the cafe, she was already sitting at a table, staring blankly at her laptop. She had a Word document pulled up, and when you looked, there was only half a page that was filled up. He sat down in the seat across from her, holding a paper cup filled with black coffee. He started emptying his packets of sugar into it.
"Sometimes," she said, "I just stare at the stupid blinking cursor. And I feel wordless. Like there's nothing I could possibly say or write on this document." She blinked briefly, as if in a trance. He watched her over the rim of his glasses, and tore the top off another sugar packet off. Her gaze shifted off of the computer screen.
"And other times," she said, relentless, "I'm typing at top speed." She lifted her own coffee cup from the table, and took a sip. "83 words a minute."
"113." Levi said.
She raised her eyebrows at him. "Well, we can't all be special like you, shorty."
Sighing, she closed the top of her laptop, and pushed her (now empty) coffee cup across to the middle of the table. "What do you think of drinks tonight?"
"Can't." he replied blandly, stirring his drink. He took a confident sip, and relished the feeling of the scalding coffee passing over his tongue. It was too thin. He needed half and half.
"I have to go to some stupid music thing with Camille." he took another sip.
Hanji watched him with curiosity. "Camille," she said. "Camille, Camille, Camille…. Which one is she again?"
"The violinist with the brown hair."
"Ah, yes. Her." Hanji gave a brief grin. "The sexy one. I can see why you like her."
He grunted.
"Well, enough to go to a recital with her, it seems."
"Not even hers," he muttered. He took another sip.
"Still, enough to care." Hanji grinned, and settled back into her chair, making herself as comfortable as possible on the stiff wood surface. "Let's see. She's the longest in a while, I think, right?"
Levi thought about it too. "Yeah. I think so."
"A couple of weeks." Hanji nodded approvingly. "You're getting better at this."
He snickered. "Well don't expect this to become a trend. I just happen to enjoy her company."
"Amongst other things."
"Amongst other things." he agreed.
"Do you plan on keeping it going? I mean, she's pretty much a great package. She's smart. Talented. Gorgeous. She has a great sense of humor—"
"—she laughs at your jokes—"
"—exactly what I mean. I don't see any reason for you letting her go."
Levi had a fleeting thought cross his mind. "I can see a reason why."
"Oh?"
Levi ignored it. "Amongst others, it just doesn't feel right. It's too right. You know? Or moreso, she is. It can't work out."
Hanji shrugged, a grin growing on her face. "Look at you. Thinking about love. About your future. Getting married—"
"Enough." he growled.
She suppressed her grin. "When will it end?"
"Tomorrow." he said decisively.
Hanji raised a single eyebrow, and watched her friend (because that's what he was) take another sip of the burning coffee. He's going to wake up one day and realize that he burned all his fucking tastebuds off. She was tempted to pull it away from him. But Levi pretty much does what he wants.
"Well," Hanji took a deep breath, "Try not to break her heart too much. Especially after this recital that's not even hers."
"Yeah, well. They always take it kind of hard."
"I can't imagine why."
He shrugged.
Levi polished off the rest of his coffee.
When Hanji got back to her dorm room, she found Petra on the floor again, sifting through her old running memorabilia. Her back was to the door, and she was hunched over the cardboard box, looking at an old photo. A team photo.
She let the door hit the wall, and Petra turned around the face Hanji, jumping when she heard the soft hit. She had earbuds in, and immediately she pulled them out. "Hey, Hanji." she forced a smile, then sheepishly looked back at her box.
Hanji's expression softened, and she smiled back warmly. "Hey Petra. Sorry if I'm intruding."
"Oh, no." Petra gave a soft laugh. "No, I was just looking through some old junk."
"Doesn't look like junk."
Petra was taken aback. She wasn't used to Hanji not agreeing and laughing. "You're right." she finally admitted. "It's not. I mean, not to me. At least."
Hanji squatted down beside Petra and looked at the smiling faces on the photo. They were all squinting. Like the sun was in their eyes. "You should go back to running. I think it would be therapeutic for you."
"Yeah?"
"I don't know why you stopped—and it's none of my business, really—but something tells me you'll be a lot more genuinely happy when you start up again."
"Yeah. Maybe."
Petra was leaving the library late that night, a printed out copy of her essay tucked neatly inside the fold of her laptop. It was raining when she was making the long way back to her dorm. She lifted the heel of her rainboot with every step, walking through puddles and the damp pavement. She was lost in her thoughts, thinking about everything from the mundane, to her greater purpose in life.
The heel of her boot skidded across the cement, snapping her out of her thoughts. Distracted, she readjusted the tilt of her umbrella, pausing in her step. Then continued on.
She passed the occasional person rushing by, their hood drawn up over their face, damp from the rain. All she could think about was the essay safely stowed in her bag. It wasn't until she passed the main music building—Hoeffler Hall—that she noticed a lone figure standing in the door, under the awning.
Petra squinted through the rain. It was Levi.
His face, illuminated by the white fluorescents of the lobby, and slim cigarette hanging from his lips, the tip orange.
"Hey," Levi turned around. "Smoking is shit for your health."
Petra Ral was standing just in front of him, rain pouring onto her umbrella, creating a fine curtain of water around her.
He took a long draw from it, letting out an exhale into the rain. "Relax, just this one time. I'm just really stressed and I thought it might help. Never any other."
"And is it helping now?"
"...not really."
Shaking her head, she plucked the cigarette from his fingers, putting it out against the cement blocks of the building's exterior. She handed it back to him, the whole thing damp from the rain.
He studied the crushed cigarette in his hand. "Thanks for watching out for my lungs. I'm already doing a shit job taking care of my liver."
He saw her crack a smile in the corner of his eyes.
Petra noticed how he shoved his hands into the pockets of his slacks. He was dressed nicely—light button down, dark slacks. He cleaned up well for such a hot mess. He even had a tie he must've undone hanging around his neck lazily.
"What are you doing here?"
"My girlfriend dragged me here to see a fucking recital."
"Your girlfriend… what's her name again?"
"Camille."
"Right. Her recital?"
"Not even," he scoffed, echoing the words he'd said to Hanji the other day. "Just some random guy in her music classes I think. I don't know, honestly." He sighed, running his hand through his hair.
"Well, have fun working out whatever your dilemma may be." She smiled at him, then turned on her heels, heading back into the rain. He was tempted for a split second to follow her through the rain, and walk her back to their dorm.
But his girlfriend was probably starting to wonder where he was. He shouldn't keep her waiting.
Author's Note [4:10AM]
So it's been a month.
But I can explain. Maybe (not).
The thing is I have all these chapters and blurbs in this verse that I thought I would use for upcoming chapters, but I kept changing what I wanted to happen or replacing crappy chapters. So I'm just this disorganized fool trying to regain my bearings and understand where all these random paragraphs on my doc are coming from. I'm debating creating a separate blurb series or dump where I can just post it if you guys want to read the word vomit.
Thank you for all the kind reviews friends. It's pretty neat reading what you guys think is going to happen, and I hope that this story will live up to your expectations (and if the expectations are low, well I hope it'll exceed them). I'm trying to go for the slow build, but it's also 3:18AM and my thinking's cloudy, but I've been wanting to get a chapter out recently. This is the best out of the other options I think. I hope, at least. Feel free to PM me about anything!
[I wrote this note a few weeks ago, actually. I wasn't sure whether or not to post this chapter. I don't even know now. Buy I thought, hey, why not.]
Thanks guys!
