Run to Me by Erin Golding

Author:Erin Golding [Golding, Erin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Erin Golding
Published: 2012-04-02T04:00:00+00:00

***

Within minutes of the final bell, I’m in my car. That image of Paul at the hospital has been in my mind all afternoon and what I’m craving now is a long run. I know the isolation and the rhythm will clear my head. It always does.

As I’m driving I go over my conversations with Paul. He barely mentions his father and when he does it’s never good. No one at the school, not even Peter Stewart, knew the details of the accident. All Cynthia had been told was to call Paul to the office as his Mum was on her way.

I did ask Matt more about it after English, but he is as much in the dark as everybody else.

‘I really don’t know, Miss,’ he said, ‘He’ll probably call me later.’

I take the shortcut along Tate Street and pull up in the driveway well before three thirty. I’ve got time to do my hour long circuit this afternoon. I normally go around the park’s outer path twice, then back over the bridge and through the tree-lined streets behind our place. On a good day it takes me fifty minutes. On a bad, edging towards seventy-five. My legs feel good, but I can tell my brain’s going to need a lot of time to switch off. I could be looking at over an hour today.

I waste a few minutes searching for a clean pair of socks, but I’m still out the door by a quarter to four. My new shoes feel tight around my feet and I can’t wait to have them broken in. There’s still four weeks until the May race. That’s plenty of time.

At the end of our street is a roundabout and I have to wait for a few cars to pass. I run up and down on the spot so I don’t lose my momentum. I’ve forgotten to take off my necklace and the pendant flicks me on the chin as I move. Without stopping, I slip it over my head and jam it into the tiny pouch on the back of my leggings, where I keep the house key.

Once I’m in the park I get into an easy rhythm. I love the noise my shoes make on the gravel path. Each scrunch is like a voice echoing in my head, driving me forward. Move, move, move, move. It’s comforting.

Off to my left, a group of kids throw a Frisbee back and forth. One girl with short, red, spiky hair is laughing at the others and clapping her hands together. As I pass she starts to dance, spinning and twirling like a ballerina. She is so caught up in it that she is oblivious to the Frisbee being thrown to her, and it smacks her directly in the forehead. I look back over my shoulder to see her reaction and hear the other kids chastising the young boy who threw the Frisbee.

‘Nice job doofus.’

‘Yeah, nice going, Paul.’

At the sound of that name I stumble a little, my shoes scraping in the dirt and my knees banging together.

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