Twelve.
Thirteen.
Fourteen.
I can hear you push out the numbers with cut-up breaths every time we reach the starting line marked out on the grass, and I'm listening for your gasps to make sure I stay at your pace.
You're built for moving for a long time at one pace, your body small and compact and efficient, but it's not made for speed. You sometimes joke, your body's made for everything, Britt, and all your words pool together in how you draw out everything and there's a teasing smile on your face.
Your body doesn't seem to work properly when we do speed training, and wind sprints always hurt you. My body doesn't mind, but then my legs are longer than yours. And I'm not sure I feel any kind of pain the same way you do, anyway. When we run, the sharp rake of my breath inside my lungs is smaller than the good electric feeling in my head and legs and in the air around me. I am always singing to your voice, plucking out soft notes with my footfalls, and I think you run to a beat of nothing, of desperation.
And next to me on the field, your face is squeezed and small-looking and the heat coming off your body doesn't match your paleness: a paleness which is hiding under warmth and the dark of your skin, like a growing thing. And the sweat on your face is a slick, sick, wrong kind. It's not the jeweled and shining wetness of your upper lip during the Indian summer we had this fall. Then, even the middle of the night was hotter than midsummer. And one night you woke me in the dark just to kiss me, and kiss me again, and when you pulled away I could see the light shining on your upper lip, as well as taste your salt on mine.
Here on the football field I'm not paying attention. No-that's wrong-I'm ignoring what I'm supposed to be paying attention to.
I'm just watching you. I've let you fall behind me-not because I want to beat you; why would I ever want to beat you?-but so I can watch you better. When I've run hard enough, I turn. We're at opposite ends of our sprints; I'm running towards you from half a field away; you're running towards me in a slowing, strange shape.
And I see it before it happens. Something passes over your face that looks like all the lights going out. But for a second I think of the opposite from what I'm seeing on your face. I see stars blinking in a black sky.
Later I'll realize that I was seeing what you were seeing. Lights crowding over your vision before it all goes black.
I'm already breathing harder than I think is possible and I hear my heart in my eardrums and my head is beating out an uneven thrum-pound noise and-I can see your left foot trail behind-and I wasn't running fast before. For a second my stomach turns and I can feel a wrong-shiver all over my body, even though I am so hot, and then the twist in my belly clenches into something hard and now I am running.
Everyone and everything around me that I was seeing moments ago falls into dark and I can't remember where I am or anything else because all of me is runningrunningrunning-so fast I can't breathe because I have to reach you before you touch the ground. Nothing else has mattered. If I can just reach you. You're all I see, and the space between us measured out in my eyes as my running steps in front of me.
Later I'll think of when you explained to me what adrenaline is. I didn't understand how that would work in my body when I am playing sports because when I run I have always had a happy, steady feeling: the same as when I hit out the beat of a dance routine perfectly in time. But now I realize I've never run in fear before. I've never had to run towards you like this before.
Maybe I won't catch you before you've crumpled into the grass but I will be close.
I run the last ten steps slowing my body even though it doesn't want to because I know I have to change my pace if I am going to be able to get closer to the ground to pick you up without falling over you.
You're so light and even though I am scared my hands feel right when they're tucked under your knees and wrapped around one shoulder and lifting up to bring you close, your neck supported against my upper arm. I forget there's other people there until you're safe in my arms and I am saying santanasantana please wake up ok on a loop and jogging towards the school and one of our teammates is pushing on my shoulder and saying my name and then Coach is standing in front of me and barking for everyone to make room and telling me to lay you back down and I don't want to-but-she's Coach-and then I decide I don't care-I don't care who's in charge-and I change direction to go around and I hold you tighter and start running with you in my arms towards the nurse's office.
Once you're on the nurse's bed, the silvery sweat on your face has lifted off and left darker parts at your temples and the back of your neck, marks I think are probably leaving you cold, and I start to press them lightly with a towel. Then you're coming around-something near pink is coming back under your skin-and your eyes flicker under your lids and then they open, dark pupils squeezing tight in the light, and you're looking for me.
Your gulp is dry and your words are tired. What happened, Britt-why-
I smooth a hand over yours and the steel feeling in my stomach knots over and over. It feels less hard now I've carried you in my arms to here, but it still gnaws, like I am so mad, and I can't figure out why. Your hand softens under mine, and then you look mad, too. When our eyes meet I see my own anger in your eyes and I know it. We're both furious, even though neither of us is furious at the other one. I think your anger is because you feel like your body has betrayed you. But my anger is because I can't make you see it hasn't.
I forget you asked a question until the nurse speaks behind me.
You fainted, Santana. Your friend carried you here. Ran with you, actually.
Your anger leaves the room when she says that, even though I know it's going to come back, harder and steadier than before, when someone tells you that your father is on his way. He's going to ask you questions, and I've been trying so hard not to ask you questions, because they will make you hide even more.
Your father takes you home, and I can't go with you. I try, but he puts a careful hand on my shoulder and speaks in that voice like yours, and says I can come by after school. And all through the day I have to be slippery and quick so I don't tell anyone more things than you would want me to. She's sick, I say, over and over, and most people stop listening to me after that anyhow. Glee club is harder, but even there my words fall away and no one makes me carry on. Only Rachel looks at me like she sees things I'm not saying, but I can feel the steel still in my belly and I think maybe now it's showing in my blank face, too, because she looks away like she's seen a ghost.
