Twenty-Five Miles Without You — Emma Hall
It all feels just the same.
The dry air of Tucson, Arizona. Freezing air, clawing at my ears. Panting breaths. My shirt, decorated with my goals in the form of the number twenty-five in neon green marker, glowing in the night. My racing pulse. The dirt of The Trail pounds beneath my feet, twenty five miles of dips and turns.
Normally, I would love it, adore the treasured trinkets of memories that The Trail helps me recall. Everything feels vividly familiar as I pass towering cacti and stacked rocks with the wind rasping in my ear. When we first ran The Trail, as freshmen to mark the beginnings of a new year, we nicknamed it ‘The Figurine Shelf.’ Emrys would give a towering cacti with white flowers the name ‘Willie Lillie.’ Then Mike, our best friend, would give it an awful backstory about how Willie Lillie was rejected from the water cycle due to his sweet aroma and how he vowed to never drink water again in protest. I would just snort and tell them it's called a Saguaro Cacti. I’d tell them, “it’s supposed to smell sweet, you nincompoops.”
There is no laughter now. I’m alone with only the sun setting over the city to keep me company and the desolation of the desert around me.
Sometimes even at home or at school, I still feel like I’m here. Surrounded by dirt and emptiness in the desert of my own mind.
My fitness watch beeps.
Mile Ten down.
Only fifteen more miles until I reach the mountain top, or “The Ascension Tower,” as my brother would call it.
For a long while, there is nothing but the uneven symphony of my own breathing to focus on. I measure my steps by every labored breath, until with a jolt I realize that the sound of my strides have begun to echo. No, not echo, multiply.
There is another chorus of pounding, I’m sure of it now. Dread makes a nest in my shoulders and spine.
“Hey, Val—Valerie,” a voice breathlessly says next to me.
I nearly toppled to the ground. For a split second I wonder if I am hallucinating. If that is why I am seeing the ghost of Michael Agafonov running beside me. Of course, I know that ghosts aren’t real though, except for in Dungeons & Dragons, obviously. But ghosting is.
I want to say something sardonic, however, all that comes out is, “Nice shorts.”
He glances down at his peppermint running shorts and laughs. It sounds hoarse, like he hasn’t laughed in years. Then he says quietly that he wonders how I’m doing, and I wonder if he hates me after the funeral.
I know I hate myself.
Every year Emrys and I would watch The Lord Of The Rings movies (the extended edition—director’s cut) over spring break. It was our favorite tradition and Mike began to join us when we became friends. We would eat food and have deep conversations like whether Gollum could have been redeemed and which LOTR character embodied us best. Emrys claimed he would be Gandalf, all mystery and magic, while Mike and I always claimed we were most like Sam. So struck were we by admiration of his loyalty and heroism.
The last time we watched it together there was a fourth figure in our living room. The IV pole and respiratory tank that was keeping my brother alive took up their own corner of the room. Emrys had a hard time staying awake, but he was determined to watch it anyway. We were on the third movie and fifth pizza slice (while Emrys devoured his pizza through intense staring that made Mike and I cringe guiltily), when Emrys asked me to speak at his funeral.
The pizza slices in my stomach turned to clay. My seat on the couch seemed to sway like I was sitting on a decaying bridge. I wondered if I was suffering from a spontaneous bout of Catatonia. I couldn't move; I was a frozen sculpture of a terrified girl in the living room. Should someone grab an ice pick?
“Valerie,” my twin asked. Even his voice sounded like it was half in the grave. The cheerful notes dampened by the wretched enemy invading his cells.
My neck thawed enough for me to nod.
Emrys smiled. “Thanks, little sis,” he paused.
This is the part where I should say, ‘Only by two minutes!’ but my voice was still an ice cube sitting in my throat. For once I didn’t mind being younger, if it meant he could stay and annoy me a little longer.
He continued, “I know I can count on you to impress on everyone how truly god-like I am at Dungeons & Dragons. Ooh, and you should tell them about the science fair and how we both got into–” he broke off. His green eyes filled with tears. We both got into early acceptance at MIT. He was going to major in physics and I was going to pursue biology. And now he’ll never go.
We didn’t say anything for the rest of the movie.
We hardly say anything at all until the moment he goes. My running shirt on the bedside table drying from the markers scrawled with goals that he will never see fulfilled. The smell of sterile chemicals lingering in my nose. The hospital lights are too bright for such a dim moment. He clings to my hand, but I say nothing, I’m a silent raft that he will soon slip off. Emrys says he loves me, that he’ll see me soon and all I can do is squeeze his hand.
I only have the courage to say, “I love you,” after the heart monitor goes flat.
And at the funeral…
At the funeral I was no Sam Gamgee. I was a coward; weak and scared. I marched up to the podium, notes in my hand, tears in my eyes, heart in my throat, and I said nothing.
Perhaps someone really should have brought an ice pick.
Mile Sixteen.
There is stabbing pain in my side that started after mile twelve. And this mile sixteen is really taking a toll on my feet. The tension in the air between us feels as tight as a fist before the first blow.
He’s the one who hits first. “So, how…is school going? How have you been lately?”
You mean our high school you left two weeks after Emrys died? Or the months where you ignored my text messages and locked your door when I came to talk to you? Or when you didn’t show up to the track meets you encouraged me to do in the first place? “It’s been fine. How has school been going for you?”
I want to sprint away from him.
Instead I just examine the sun sliding below the horizon. The streaks of gold and violet are like splatters of paint on a window. I can see stars pressing their noses against the dome of clouds.
“Good,” Mike says cautiously.
“Just fantastic. I’m so glad you are just fine when Emrys–” I stop. What am I doing? Anger has been but a distant mountain through the floods of grief drowning me. Now I’m stuck on that mountain.
I need to get away from the memories of The Trail. Away from the run that was supposed to be a fun New Year’s tradition, but now only serves as an annual reminder of who I lost. I need to hide beneath my textbooks and grades and accomplishments until I feel numb again and the regrets hammering on my window go silent. I need to tell my brother I’m sorry. I need my best friends.
Beep. Mile Seventeen.
Of course, I can’t have any of that.
So I do what I do best.
I say nothing.
Then I run away like the coward I am.
I remember the track meet, the last time Mike and I really talked to each other before the world began to smoulder, like it was yesterday.
It was last spring, and the meet at Indigo Hills was one of the most important meets we had all year. The team was dependent on me for the four-by-four. I was dependent on hiding from my coach from behind the girl’s bathroom.
When Mike found me, I was scrolling through pictures on my phone. My back against the rough brick of the bathroom; my body facing the parking lot. Our sophomore year when Emrys and I did this we ended up starting a selfie contest, trying to be the first person to take pictures with everyone on our team. There were a hundred and two members of the Track and Field Team that year. We ended up sending all two hundred and four pictures to Mike, much to his phone’s displeasure. We thought it was hilarious. But as I looked back on it then, I just wanted to cry.
Silently, he sat next to me. He was still sweaty from the gym. Sweat stuck to the front and back of his black Arizona Cardinals shirt as did a mildly odorous smell. I resisted the urge to wrinkle my nose. It wasn’t as if I smelled peachy anyways.
“Ditching?” he said.
There was no judgement in his voice. And without saying the words, I could tell he knew why I was here. In a dark way it was almost funny, how despite me being unable to understand him anymore, he always seemed to read my brother and I like we had graffitted our feelings onto our foreheads. I almost reached up and swiped at my face to make sure that wasn’t the case.
Ever since Emrys got diagnosed, it was like the world was a flavorful pie that had been scorched by the sun, leaving the remnants scorched and bland and crumbly and meaningless. What was the use of racing when Emrys couldn’t be there beside me? When he couldn’t even sit up long enough to come?
I stared at the cracked pavement below my criss-crossed legs. An ant crawled over my running shoe. “I guess.”
While the world was tasteless for me, for Mike it seemed to hardly alter its trajectory. He was completely normal. Completely in control. And completely fine.
“Wanna do it?” said Mike.
I glanced up. He had shifted to sit in front of me.There was a stack of cards in each of his hands. The yellow font winked at me.
Pokemon cards.
We played it all the time during our useless health class last year. And sometimes he would still bring it out when we would hang out, and I was upset about getting a B on an assignment or something like that. So far I totalled eighty-seven wins, which unfortunately was the same score Mike had.
“Prepare to lose,” I said.
Yet, I lost after ten minutes. “I can’t race because…” my words began to slide back down my throat.
Mike laid down another attack card. The motion was soothing for some reason.
“My team is relying on me,” I continued, my eyes had begun to water, “but everything is so…I can’t, I–I,” my throat closed up.
Mike shook his head. “Do you want to do it?”
“But Emrys–”
“Do you want to?”
I slowly put down another card. “Yes. Maybe. I think so. It’s just…”
Mike nodded. His blue eyes appeared to deepen with sadness. A vast ocean of emotion that I can’t seem to touch. “I know. I’m here though. I can FaceTime him during your race, so he can watch from home. Watching you keep Indigo Hills’s heinie is definitely something he’ll want to see.”
I sniffed, then looked down at our cards “Oh, I just won the game.”
“Dang it,” Mike groaned. “Eighty-seven to eighty-eight. How do you feel about a rematch?”
“That’s okay, I don’t need one,” I said.“You’ll FaceTime him during the meet?”
Mike slid the cards back into their boxes. He grinned widely, showing his dimples. “You’ll do it?”
I pushed myself to my feet. “I’ll do it.”
Lunging for his gym bag, Mike rose to his feet. He gave me a dorky fist bump that made me laugh for the first time in a while. Then, together we walked over towards the red bullseye encircling the green football field.
“I’m calling him right now, Valerie,” Mike said, when we reached the track. “Emrys won’t miss a thing.”
If only that had been true.
Mile Twenty.
Eventually, I tire myself out towards the end of Mile Twenty and slow from a run to a walk as I make my way towards The Ascension Tower. There are cacti shapes that look like hulking, twisted figures in the darkness. Mike, Emrys, and I used to give each the name of a villain as we jogged past.
There’s quiet footsteps behind me and I’m afraid to turn around and see no one.
“You’re mad at me,” Mike observes, walking briskly beside me.
My skin prickles. “Where were you?”
I examined him. The purple circles underneath his eyes are deep pits dug by grief. His hair is longer and sweat-soaked, so different from the buzz cut he used to keep when he was captain of the football team. Mike has always been an unexpected leader, a persona of steel underneath layers of shyness and timidity. The first time I met him I thought he was a careless jock, but once my brother and I became friends with him, we realized how wrong we were. Mike is one of the kindest, most thoughtful people I know, which is why it was so confusing when he ghosted me.
“I’m sorry, you run really fast and–”
“That’s not what I meant,” I say. “Where were you?” My voice has a jagged edge, that belays the brokenness I’ve been trying to swallow this last year. I suppose one can only eat glass for so long before it cuts through.
He’s fidgeting with a black ring on his thumb. “I wanted to be there. It was hard to get out of bed, to function, knowing that Emrys…”
“Is dead,” I finish. My words seem to hang in the air, an uncomfortable tapestry neither of us seem to quite be able to look at.
“It was like I was trapped in a sandpit that I just didn’t care to fight free of and after two weeks of missing school my mom just transferred my credits to online school. It was really hard for me to do things I used to do knowing that I would look up and Emrys would never be there,” he looks at me. “I didn’t mean to go missing. I just didn’t know where I was either.”
Shock splashes me in the face. I don’t say I’m sorry because by now I know how meaningless those words are in the face of loss. Still, did he think I wouldn’t understand?
“I know it's hard for you to–
“I’m fine,” I lied.“I…thought you were mad at me. For the funeral. Because I was a coward and I couldn’t even speak.”
“You are not a coward. Everyone mourns differently and that was how it was for you. Honestly, I think the only person mad is you.”
I don’t know how to believe him, but he speaks so earnestly that I want to.
“There’s just so many things I wish I could go back and do differently,” I whisper.
“Me too,” he says, then more quietly whispers, “Me too.” He fidgets with his ring. “I think, or at least what my therapist tells me is, that we all have things we wish we could do differently—tiny regrets that stick to us like porcupine needles. At some point we have to let go, though. We have to yank out the needles, or we will never finish healing.”
This time I really do believe him.
Mile Twenty-Five.
It must have been nearly ten at night when we reached the top of the mountain top. From beside me I can hear Mike breathing heavily. The view is spectacular to me, but maybe ordinary to others. The memories of the times the three of us ran to the top makes it more beautiful than anything in the world. Below us to the left the desert reigns, yet slowly the desert bleeds into a city lit with Christmas lights and street lamps spotlighting the distant winding ways of Tucson. The stars gleam as bright as incandescent candles. My clothes feel welded to my skin by sweat and I fear that my heart rate will never go down again.
I smile. It’s so easy to imagine that Emrys is with me right now.
Mike swallows. “Do you want to run it again next year?”
My voice freezes. Then unfreezes. “You really hurt me, Mike.”
His shoulders slump.
“I want to try to be friends again though,” I say. “It just might take some time.”
“I’ll be here next year. I want to try, too.”
“Then you better make sure you bring your goal shirt next year.”
Mike smiles. “I will.”
We’ve come a long way to get here. And while the path from where we stand now may not always be easy, I have to believe that things will get better. That the scars will fade and the regretful needles will pull free from my skin. It may be a long time before we are really fine, but if we keep pressing onward who knows what the universe has in store.
I stare up at the nosy stars. Emrys, if you are listening I hope you know that I love you. That I could never forget you. I’m trying to be okay like I promised. It’s one step at a time. It’s a long trail ahead.
It’s Twenty-Five Miles Without You.
Emma Hall is a high school writer who has won Honourable Mention in Scholastic’s Writing & Arts contest in the novel category. She has also won first place in Henderson Library’s short story contest two consecutive years in a row. Emma lives in Henderson, Nevada and loves running as well as playing piano, listening to Taylor Swift music, and hoarding second-hand books. Her goal is to go to Iowa State University and become a published novelist.