I’ve always been running from something. Usually, this is in the most literal sense of the expression—there is a guy right behind me. He wants the same thing I want. And so, I have to run.
Growing up here is easy, but living here is hard. The headaches of privilege mean I live in a clean and simple town where I am certain to succumb to death by nostalgia at any second. Sometimes I think teenagers are nostalgic for things that haven’t happened yet. There’s just so much yearning in an apple orchard, in a silent study hall, in a shared bedroom, in a town with too many culs-de-sac to be rural and too many farms to be the suburbs.
I prefer extremes—when I got my SAT scores back last spring I prayed for them to be either really bad or really good. They were 1220. Last year, the state average for New York was 997. Two years ago in 1996, the state average was 996. I know this because our guidance counselor announced it in the auditorium.
If I went to private school they’d have announced it in the Assembly Hall or the Announcement Parlor and our score sheets would have been printed on parchment scrolls. I do not go to private school. I am on the right side of average, just like all the rest of the kids in my town. I will never beat Zack Morris’s 1502, but he’s fictional so I really can’t complain.
Dan slaps my cheek. “Did you just challenge me to a duel?” I ask him. “Can you snap out of it? We have one more set of 800s,” he says. I stand up from the chipped purple-painted wooden bench under the finish line pavilion. Dan is sweating. I am sweating. It is October in the Northeast and no one should be sweating.
We roll out two more laps of the track. This is our eighth set—I’m winded but not close to exhausted. Dan gasps for air; track work is harder for him than for me. He’s a great guy to train with because I can see what it looks like to throw everything on the line. Dan churns every muscle full-throttle—and he will never beat me. I run fast because it’s easy—I imagine if it ever becomes difficult for me to run this fast I will stop.
Even running isn’t visceral for me. My body is not my body—it is a Dawson’s Creek episode. It is an angsty journal entry. I’m all thoughts and feelings: they replaced my bones with black-framed glasses and my blood is just a ground-up Pinkerton CD mixed with red Gatorade.
“Is she meeting us at the car?” Dan asks me. “She’s there, can’t you see her?” I tell him. Sabrina sits on the bumper of my ’89 Honda Accord. It’s a color my mother calls “taupe”, but to me it just looks like dirt. I don’t care, I’m glad to have a car, but “taupe” sounds like something a contractor uses to fill in cracks in concrete. My father told me the best things in life are dirt-colored. I don’t have any idea what he meant by that.
We drive to Sabrina’s house, which is best stocked with groceries and gives us the most choices for post- school binging. In the kitchen, Sab’s still wearing bright orange shorts from volleyball practice and she leans into me whispering “Adam, did you talk to him?” Dan looks up from his seat at the kitchen table “I can hear you. Also, I don’t know how you’re standing so close to him after that workout.”
“Hey man, I don’t know what you were doing in the locker room earlier, but I was showering,” I retort. “Oh, I thought you were crying,” Dan retorts. We love retorting. In a world where everything made sense, we would already have our own morning talk show. It would be called “Up and Adam”, and in this world people would find proper noun wordplay endearing.
Dan moved here last year and I don’t remember the day we met. I remember my fourth day of knowing him when he told me the correct plural form of cul-de-sac is culs-de-sac. Later that week, he told me everything he needed to know in life he already learned from Dazed and Confused. I sincerely doubt that he learned French grammar from Matthew McConaughey, but still it feels like I’ve known him forever.
“Danielle wants to go to the dance with you,” Sabrina tells Dan. Dan takes a bite of a pretzel rod that he’s dunked in peanut butter and subsequently coated in honey. “Great,” he says with his mouth full, “so we can be Dan and Danielle and I can blow my brains out.” Sabrina is not amused. She likes high school and hates sarcasm.
Sab is a good person, no baloney. Between her and Dan I feel like an imposter. Or maybe it has nothing to do with them. I do the right thing because it’s easy—I imagine if it ever becomes difficult for me to do the right thing I will stop.
Well, I don’t imagine this so much as worry about it. I think teenagers feel guilty for things they haven’t done yet. There’s just so much yearning in a dirt road, in a plate of cheese fries, in a late night car ride, in a town with too many people to be small and too many cows to be exciting.
“Wishing you the breasts of health? Is this a sex thing?” Dan asks Sabrina. He picks up a sheet cake from the shelf and displays it for us. The refrigerator door hangs open, swinging on its hinges. “Don’t touch!” Sab yells. “It’s for my mom’s charity thing tonight.” I walk over to inspect this baked good adorned with no less than two happy, healthy royal icing boobs.
I’m not sure when exactly the cake hit the floor. Looking at it smeared on the hardwood it becomes clear to me that it doesn’t matter really. A very prestigious double-breasted cake—upon which the success of an imminent charity dinner rests—was introduced into our environment. This cake was born on the floor.
There was negative chance that the cake could have escaped being dropped by one of us. I just wish it wasn’t me who did it. Dan dives to the floor and grabs the spongy carcass. Raspberry filling drips down his hands so that he’s now a confectionery Lady MacBeth. “We can salvage it!” Dan exclaims. Sabrina walks over to the phone book and flips through it.
I’m driving my taupe car three towns over to Desierano’s bakery, which closes in twenty minutes. We are still about nineteen minutes away. Sabrina sits cross-armed in the passenger seat. We aren’t even allowed to turn on the radio. She convinced them on the phone to make a new one by adding breasts to another already prepared cake. The guy agreed, but told her “no promises” that he would stay open for us.
Dan’s in the back seat, but I can feel his hand gripping my headrest. He loves things like this—“adventures” he calls them. This is not an adventure for me; I will drive here because I messed up this cake. I will either buy a new one or apologize profusely. Sab’s mom might be mad, but she’ll get over it.
I’m not sure when exactly I realized I was out of gas. But now that I’m putting on my signal light—I’m pretty sure everyone else is going to realize it too. “What are you doing? The bakery is half a mile from here!” Sab screams at me. I point to the gas gauge as we roll into the Mobil Station. We are now third car on line for one pump.
“Adam! The bakery is closing in five minutes!” I’m at a loss for what to do. “I’ll go!” Dan says. “Adam, give me the money.” He takes my cash and jumps out of the car like he’s parachuting out of an exploding plane. Dan starts sprinting down the road—I can see his jaw set and chest surging. That baker is not ready for him.
We drop Sabrina and her busty cake off back at her house. She’s not that mad, but I think she thinks she’s starting to be too old for us. Dan puts a mixtape into my cassette deck and “My Name is Jonas” starts up immediately. “Do you want to swing by the reservoir?” Dan asks, even though I’m already driving that way.
There is a pretty good view of the town from the reservoir. You can also see the screens from the drive-in movie theater. We like to make our own soundtrack like Mystery Science Theater 3000. I like doing that because it feels like something real people do. I think Dan likes it because it’s the closest thing we have to Dazed and Confused.
I pull down the gravel path and park at the top of the hill. We get out and sit on the hood of the Honda. Dan pulls his flask out of his gym bag. “I see you brought our friend Jack?”
Dan nods as he takes a swig and extends his arm to me. I take a few sips and we watch L.A. Confidential through the trees. “So you’re going to take Danielle to the prom?” I ask Dan. He leans back to recline on the windshield. “No I’m not.”
The whiskey is starting to hit me. I see Kevin Spacey’s face and it looks like a huge moon. “Why not?” I ask him—not because I care, but just because I’m curious. “I’m a dick,” he says. This movie doesn’t make any sense at all but it looks fantastic.
“What? You’re the opposite of dick—look at what you did for Sabrina today. If I didn’t know any better I’d think you had a thing for her. If you do it’s okay, it never really worked out between us. I think we’re just better as friends.”
Dan sits up and looks really serious. I think he’s going to puke on my car. Maybe this is what my dad was talking about. Dan leans toward me “I didn’t do it for Sabrina. I did it for you.”
I‘m not sure exactly when Dan kissed me. However, I am definitely sure that he did because now I am running through the woods and away from the car. I feel every muscle in my body churning, and blood—real blood—careening through my veins. This must be what Dan feels like every day. I look back to see him, but I can’t see the car anymore.
I’m not sure exactly when I started running. I’ve always been running from something. Usually, this is in the most literal sense of the expression—there is a guy right behind me. He wants the same thing I want. And so, I have to run.
