Everything We Lost by Valerie Geary

Author:Valerie Geary
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2017-06-29T04:00:00+00:00

11

Monday morning dawned cool and foggy. Lucy didn’t wait for the sun to rise above the mountains. In the chilled, gray light, she double-knotted her laces and jogged a slow half mile warm-up to Bishop Union High School. The track was open to the public, and within the next hour kids would be arriving for the first day of class after the winter break, but for the moment, Lucy was alone, racing herself. With each lap her pace quickened. She focused on her breath and her stride, trying to lose herself in the motion. Only this time, unlike all the times before, she wasn’t running to forget. She hoped the familiarity of the track combined with the steady rhythm of her breath and body, the monotony of running in circles, might shake loose some, even one, small memory of the night Nolan disappeared.

Her mind was restless after finding the backpack. She felt like she was getting close to remembering something, but it was a dreamlike feeling, a déjà vu—whenever she tried to grasp hold of any kind of detail, it would slip away again, shifting into something else, camouflaging itself inside other, less important memories, and leave her frustrated and confused. It was something about Patrick, something he’d said or done or made her do. Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe she only thought it was because she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about him since yesterday.

The cool air made her lungs ache, but it gave her something to focus on as she tried to slip into a relaxed state. Running was its own kind of hypnosis. Forget the world around you, focus on the body. Forget the responsibilities waiting for you in real life, focus on the breath. Don’t think, don’t stress, just run.

Lucy hadn’t always loved running. When she first joined track and field, she was the slowest person on the team, and every practice, without fail, she wound up puking her guts out in the grass. But Patrick had encouraged her to stick with it. “Wait until you get your first runner’s high,” he said. “After that you won’t be able to stop.” He ran with her sometimes during practice, shouting encouragement, smacking her butt to go faster, and she did go faster eventually, and then faster still, until she was running near the front of the pack every time. Her body changed, too, becoming leaner and longer. Her first official race she came in second. Patrick brought her a dozen yellow roses and called her a natural.

After the party at Ship Rock, but before Nolan went missing, Lucy remembered being under the bleachers with Patrick, the very same bleachers she ran past now. She was missing Algebra, and he told her it didn’t matter, that no one used math in real life. They sat close together. Her heart pounding triple speed. She didn’t want to give him another hand job. What she wanted was for him to lean over, cup her face, and kiss her deeply, kiss her like he meant it.

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