“I mean that you’re wrong.” He pauses, watching me, and I struggle to keep my face composed, even though I can feel my left eye straining and fluttering. Hopefully in the darkness he can’t tell. “We’ve seen each other plenty.”
“I would remember if we’d met before.”
“I didn’t say that we’d met.” He doesn’t try to close the new distance between us and I’m grateful, at least, for that. He chews on the corner of a lip—a gesture that makes him look younger. “Let me ask you a question,” he goes on. “How come you don’t run past the Governor anymore?”
Without meaning to I gasp a little. “How do you know about the Governor?”
“I take classes at UP,” he says. University of Portland—I remember now, the afternoon we walked up to see the ocean from the back of the lab complex, hearing bits of his conversation floating back to me on the wind. He did say he was a student. “I worked at the Grind last semester, in Monument Square. I used to see you all the time.”
My mouth opens and shuts. No words come out; my brain goes on lockdown whenever I need it the most. Of course I know the Grind; Hana and I used to run past it two, maybe three times a week, watching the college students float in and out like drifting snowflakes, blowing the steam from the top of their cups. The Grind looks out onto a small square, all cobblestone, called Monument Square: It marked the halfway point of one of the six-mile routes I used to do all the time.
In its center is a statue of a man, half-eroded from snow and weather and scrawled over with a few looping curls of graffiti. He is striding forward, one hand holding his hat on his head so that it looks like he is walking through a horrible storm, or a headwind. His other fist is extended in front of him. It’s obvious that he was, in the distant past, holding something—probably a torch—but at some point that portion of the statue was broken or stolen. So now the Governor strides forward with an empty fist, a circular hole cut in his hand, a perfect hiding place for notes and secret stuff. Hana and I used to check his fist sometimes, to see if there was anything good inside. But there wasn’t—just a few pieces of wadded-up chewing gum and some coins.
I don’t actually know when Hana and I started calling him the Governor, or why. The wind and rain has rubbed the plaque at the base of the statue indecipherable. No one else calls him that. Everyone else just says, “The statue at Monument Square.” Alex must have overheard us talking about the Governor one day.
Alex is still looking at me, waiting, and I realize I never answered his question. “I have to switch my routes up,” I say. I probably haven’t run past the Governor since March or April. “It gets boring.” And then, because I can’t help it, I squeak out, “You remember me?”
He laughs. “You were pretty hard to miss. You used to run around the statue and do this jumping, whooping thing.”
Heat creeps up my neck and cheeks. I must be going a deep red again, and I thank God for the fact that we’ve moved away from the stage lights. I completely forgot; I used to jump up and try to high-five the Governor as Hana and I ran past, a way of psyching myself up for the run back to school. Sometimes we would even scream out, “Halena!” We must have looked completely crazy.
“I don’t . . .” I lick my lips, fumbling for an explanation that won’t sound ridiculous. “When you run you sometimes do weird things. Because of the endorphins and stuff. It’s kind of like a drug, you know? Messes with your brain.”
“I liked it,” he says. “You looked . . .” He trails off for a moment. His face contracts slightly, a tiny shift I can barely make out in the dark, but in that second he looks so still and sad it almost takes my breath away, like he’s a statue, or a different person. I’m afraid he won’t finish his sentence, but then he says, “You looked happy.”
For a second we just stand there in silence. Then, suddenly, Alex is back, easy and smiling again. “I left a note for you one time. In the Governor’s fist, you know?”
I left a note for you one time. It’s impossible, too crazy to think about, and I hear myself repeating, “You left a note for me?”
“I’m pretty sure it said something stupid. Just hi, and a smiley face, and my name. But then you stopped coming.” He shrugs. “It’s probably still there. The note, I mean. Probably just a bit of paper pulp by now.”