On the Road to Find Out (11 page)

“Yeah,” I said. “Quite a fashion show.”

“I know, people spend a lot of time looking for the perfect red dress for this run. Did you find any scraps of clothing on the trees in those last two miles of trail? Someone always manages to get a piece of dress ripped off by a branch.”

I'd been so busy concentrating on running that if Cinderella's ball gown dyed red had been hanging from a low bough, I probably would have missed it.

“Did you get along with Miles?” When she said this, she cocked her head slightly to the right.

“Um, sure.”

“He's a great kid. Oh, shoot,” she said. “I have to give him his workout for the week.” She pulled a sheet of paper from her jacket. “I can't believe he doesn't have e-mail. Can you give this to him?” She handed me the paper—on which was an incomprehensible script, things like
6 x 800 @ 2:20; 8 tempo; LR (12–13); 3 fartlek
—gave me a hug, and told me to come by the store. Then she flitted off like a tiny running fairy.

People continued to mill around, eating slices of oranges and chunks of bananas and drinking from the same paper cups we'd given out at our—I thought of it as “our”—water station. Everyone still had on their paper numbers and I wondered if any of them would end up on the wall at Joan's store.

It looked like the guys who had mobbed Miles were never going to leave, and I couldn't figure out what to do and felt awkward standing by myself, so I walked over to Miles and shoved the paper at him.

“This is from Joan,” I said.

“Hey, thanks.” He didn't introduce me to the guys he was talking to and I felt even more awkward.

“She still coaching you?” asked a dude in a shiny strapless prom dress that kept falling down to expose his nipples.

“Wouldn't exactly call it coaching,” Miles said. “She writes out a weekly schedule for me. I usually end up doing more than she calls for, but it's good to have a guide.”

“Yeah, well, take it with a grain of salt,” said the winner.

“Remember the trials—didn't have the guts,” chimed in the guy in the wardrobe-malfunctioning prom dress. “But I'm glad she's taken up race directing.”

Miles said nothing. He folded and unfolded the sheet of paper I'd given him.

“Gotta go,” I said, too loudly and too abruptly.

They all looked at me and I wanted to die.

“Cool hanging with you. See you on the boulevard sometime,” Miles said.

 

5

I could not wait to tell Jenni about my morning activities.

I called her and said, “Come. Over. Now.”

“What time is it?” Her voice was soft. I'd probably woken her up.

“Time for you to be up. And for you to get your little self over here.”

“Is something wrong? Did you hear from another college?”

Cripes. I'd managed to stop thinking about the whole thing for one morning. Most colleges wouldn't make the decisions until April, or at the very end of March. I still had a lot of waiting to do.

“No, no,” I said. “It's all good. Come over. Right. Now.” I added, “Please.”

“I have to take a shower.” She sounded thick and blurry.

“No, no,” I said, “you can shower here. You can take a soak if you want.” Jenni loved the Jacuzzi tub. “I have something to tell you.”

“Okay, okay.” She always relented.

I knew Jenni, being Jenni, wouldn't be over for at least forty-five minutes. I was going to burst.

Walter had been awake when I got home. He stood on his back legs and shook the bars of his cage. “You look like a crazed prisoner,” I said as I unlatched his door. He climbed out and, as I walked away, ran after me. I waited for him to do what he normally does: make a flying leap and land on my leg like a superhero scaling a tall building. But he didn't.

So I scooped him up and held him to my face.

“Sweetest baby in all the world,” I said. “My little honey bunches of oats, my Walter-the-pole-vaulter, my Sir Walter Scott, my poochie snoggins, my Walt-with-no-faults, my bambino lovey-dovey man.” He sneezed and his body shook like he was having his own personal earthquake. Then he had to clean his face off so I set him back on the floor.

I was starving, so I went downstairs and, realizing that Jenni probably wouldn't have had breakfast, prepared a plate of her favorite foods: slices of kosher salami, chunks of cheese, a raspberry Pop-Tart (she liked them straight out of the package, unfrosted and not toasted), a handful of potato chips, and a bunch of chocolate-covered Brazil nuts. I made myself some Easy Mac and brought it and Jenni's plate to my room. Walter, who has exquisite taste, also loves Easy Mac. When it had cooled enough, I offered him an elbow.

At first he didn't want it, but eventually he took it. Before he got down to the business of eating he turned his back on me. He often does this. I give him a piece of food and he pivots to eat it. I'm not sure if it's that he doesn't want to seem rude dining in front of me, or if he thinks I'm going to change my mind and take it away from him.

When he finished, he licked his hands and begged for another piece by standing on his back feet and leaning toward me. He held up one paw and put it on my leg, and I could practically hear him saying, “Please, sir—I want some more” in an Oliver Twist English accent.

“That's enough for now,” I said. We both knew that he'd take more elbows but instead of eating them, would stash them somewhere, like inside one of my shoes or in a drawer.

I sat at the computer and searched for Miles. I didn't know his last name. When I Googled “Miles” and “half marathon” about twenty gazillion results came up. I didn't have enough information to be able to stalk—I mean, find out more about—this guy. And I couldn't stop thinking of him.

So instead I did rat Googling.

I found out that rats are both neophobic and neophilic. That means they are afraid of new things (
neophobic
) and also that they love novelty (
neophilia
). Being afraid of new stuff makes sense when people are trying to kill you. Because rats tend to be cautious with any food they haven't had before, they are difficult to poison. I read a bunch about how smart rats are at outfoxing (you might say
out-ratting
) exterminators. If a rat sees one of his friends eat something new and the guy gets sick, he will avoid that food.

Rats are also supposed to be thigmophilic, which means “touch-loving.” They don't have the best eyesight, so they rely on touch to navigate, stick near the edges of things, stay on the sides of cages rather than run across the middle. Again, not my experience. If I bring Walt downstairs, or to some unfamiliar place, he might do that initially. Once he realizes he's safe, though, he'll go wherever he wants to, including the middle of the room and onto the lap of whoever's nearby.

He can be a bit of a man-slut, that Walter.

The little dude came over and we had one of our boxing matches where I poke him in the belly with my fingers and he puts up his tiny dukes to fend me off. After a couple of rounds he settled next to me on the bed. I petted his head and he started grinding his teeth—it's called bruxing—and his beautiful black eyes bugged out. He does that when he's relaxed and happy, like a cat purring.

He got so sleepy he ended up on his back with his feet in the air like a baby, but cuter, way cuter, than a human. I moved him over to the pillow and lay down next to him on the bed. I stared at the ceiling and thought about Miles. He was smart and funny and OMG a tasty morsel if I ever saw one. He had been so nice to me.

I thought about the fact that when he realized I didn't have enough breath to run and talk, he did all the talking. He saved me the embarrassment of having to say anything about it—just started yammering away, entertaining me, diverting me.

I thought about how, when we were standing next to each other by the table, he had lightly touched me to get my attention when he wanted to point out a particularly funny dress. The place he put his hand—just the top of my shoulder—tingled for the rest of the day. When I thought about it, it tingled again.

Crazy, I know.

I thought about how he had bumped me with his hip at one point, nothing more than a playful tap, but I could feel the warmth of his body, could feel some kind of weird connection.

I thought about his hands. His fingers were long, strong. Just like the rest of him. He was narrow, not broad and bulky like that old Kyle, but lean and hard.

And, oh. His legs. His butt.

I thought about how he did this thing with his mouth, kind of like chattering his teeth except it wasn't cold. It was, I realized, a lot like Walter's bruxing. On someone else I might have found it odd, but when Miles did it, he seemed quirky and cute.

I thought about how happy it made me when he smiled. I thought about his mouth.

I surprised myself by thinking about what it would be like to kiss that mouth.

Would I even know how to kiss him, if I ever got the chance?

I thought about that until, an hour and seventeen minutes after I called her, Jenni appeared in my room.

“You call that ‘right now'?” I said, and pointed at the clock. “What if I was bleeding to death? Or choking?”

Jenni's eyes, perfectly shadowed and mascaraed, looked a little red.

“Sorry,” she said, and dropped her purse on the floor. “Were you?”

“Was I what?”

“Bleeding or choking?”

“No. That's not the point.”

“I had to clean up at home. There were beer bottles and cigarette butts and frozen pizza crusts all over the living room.”

Her father. Off the wagon.

“And then I had to call Kyle.”

I rolled my eyes. She ignored me even though I pointed to myself rolling my eyes, and continued, “Then I had a cup of coffee in the kitchen with your mom.”

“Are you kidding me? Not only did I make you breakfast”—I offered her the plate of food—“but I summoned you here because I have something kind of good and a little exciting to tell you—in this time of darkness—and you spend hours talking to her? About what?”

“You know,” she said, and shrugged off her sweater, which I recognized as having previously belonged to my mother, “stuff.”

“What kind of stuff?”

“Boy stuff,” she said. Her left thumbnail was bitten to the quick. She looked down at it and tucked it into a fist. “Kyle stuff.”

I rolled my eyes again, louder.

She looked at me, popped a big hunk of cheese into her mouth, and said, “See. That's why I talk to your mom. Now, let's hear about your ‘something kind of good and a little exciting.'”

 

6

So I told her.

I told her about first seeing Miles on the boulevard with Potato. When I said the dog who looked like Toto was named Potato, Jenni laughed so hard she had a coughing fit and I couldn't be mad at her for being late or for consorting with my mother. I told her how I could hardly talk to Miles at first, but that eventually I got more comfortable.

As I expected, she was all excited about the red dresses and the idea of running skirts and wanted to look online for them; maybe she'd make one for me. It might help me feel better about my thighs.

I said, “Yo, dudette, stop. I didn't get you over here to talk about running skirts.”

She looked at the floor and I noticed a smudge of mascara on her cheek.

I said, “I mean, I'll get to that. A running skirt would be great. But first I have to tell you about Miles.”

“Miles Harden?” she said.

“
What?
You know him?”

I practically started to shake.

“No,” she said, in a calm voice that by contrast made me sound hysterical. “I wouldn't say I know him, but there's a homeschooled guy named Miles Harden who wins nearly all the local races. Kyle talks about him—says he would be a great running back and could help our guys win the division championship if he enrolled here and was on track and cross-country. But I think a coach went to talk to him two years ago and he said thanks but no thanks.”

“That sounds like him,” I said.

Then I backpedaled and said, “Well, I don't know him enough to know whether or not that is something he'd say, but it fits with my impression, which is that he's cool and totally mature and polite and humble and smart and funny—”

“Alice!” Jenni said. “You like him!” And for the first time that day, she looked like herself again. She raised her hands and squealed, which scared Walter, who had been crawling around inside her purse. We looked over at the purse and it was like the belly of a pregnant woman when you can see the baby kick. He kept poking his head up and making the purse twitch and bulge.

“Walter,” I said, in my serious voice. “Walter!” I clapped my hands, which usually got his attention. But he had some kind of project going on in Jenni's purse and wouldn't come out. When he finally emerged, we saw what he'd been up to. He was carrying a Hershey's with Almonds bar.

“Stop, thief!” I said, as he galloped to the bookcase, one of his favorite places to stash food. The top of my
Collected Works of William Shakespeare
was stained with bits of his collected treats.

“No, little dude,” I said, and dashed after him. “Not yours.”

The bar was heavy for him to carry in his mouth, and he had it by the middle so it extended far on either side of him. He tried to jump up to the top of the paperback books and kept falling back down. I went over and attempted to grab the candy bar from him, but he held on with his hands and his mouth and squeaked—which he rarely does—in protest. He wanted that chocolate.

“Oh, let him have it,” Jenni said. “I keep it for emergencies. Seems like he thinks this is one.”

“No, it's too much for him,” I said, and tried to yank it loose. He didn't let go and now I held a chocolate bar with a rat dangling from it. I grabbed him, and he used his hands to push me away.