No, it’s the waiting that’s doing me in. My troll brain shifts into overdrive imagining how it could all go wrong. I try to stop that by imagining it all going right in as much detail as I can.
D.B. asked Scott for a lift to school this morning, saying he needed to get here early. I picture them pulling into the parking lot right about now, as planned, and D.B. hands Scott a printed note that I folded and taped shut, to give D.B. time to be gone before Scott reads it.
The note says, “Scott, please come meet me at the track? I need to tell you something. Thanks. PG.” The PG isn’t typed; it’s a secret symbol I invented when we were kids, drawn with a ballpoint pen, to prove that a typed message was really from me. It’s like a capital P where instead of the round part I make a capital G.
Maybe he sits for a minute, wondering what’s up, or looks around for D.B. to ask him. Then he gets out, heads for the stairs, crosses the school seal, turns right at the pillars by the office, takes the second left into South Hall, fifty-two steps to the courtyard, passes the tables of the Junior Quad, and walks across the field to the track.
Although I’ve meticulously imagined it all in real time, he arrives in my mind but not in reality. But it’s reasonable things would happen faster in my head, maybe ten or twenty percent?
I start again.
And Scott arrives again… except he doesn’t. Maybe they stopped on the way to school and got here later, or not yet? Or…?
Wow, this was a bad idea. I should have just texted him to meet me and then had a simple adult conversation, but I wanted to talk away from everyone and was afraid if I asked directly he’d have said no or found some way out of it. My stomach is growing queasy, that I arranged this to steer him into meeting me even if he didn’t want to. Maybe I really am crazy.
I just need to be patient but I’m much too nervous to sit…
I start mapping the bleachers. I feel around to get a sense of how high each bench is compared to the one in front of it, how far apart they are, and I count them. In a few minutes I have a picture of how it’s all put together and I walk up and down, all the way to the top rail, all the way down to the bottom rail, stepping only on benches like wide stones across a stream, one foot on each, counting, feeling for edges that would tell me if I’m off track with strides too short or too long.
I walk faster, up and down. I can never be sure enough to trot—even I’m not that crazy—but I’m walking pretty fast now. Up. Down. Up. Down. Up. Down—
“Parker!” Scott calls from across the field when I reach the bottom bench, at the rail, about to turn to go back up.
My heart pounds but not from being startled; his voice was far enough away. I climb under the rail to stand on the ground. It’s breezy this morning and my scarf flutters. I’m wearing solid white and I pull the tails forward to lie on my chest, then I snort and throw them back over my shoulder. God.
“Jesus, Parker, was that some kind of test?” he says, closer.
“What do you mean?”
“When was I supposed to tell you I was here? You’d fall if I startled you so I waited over there till you got to the bottom rail but even then—”
He stops. Maybe because I’m grinning.
“Damn it, Parker—”
“No, no, it wasn’t a test. Really, Scott, I was just… killing time. I’m sorry, I didn’t think about all that. But you did. And that’s—”… why I love you.
We said it to each other plenty of times before so it’s not that big a hurdle, but now… too soon. I even resisted signing my note with Love, PG.
“That’s what?”
“Nothing. I’m sorry. Forgive me?”
“Okay. Jesus, stop smiling like that, you’re freaking me out.”
“Sorry.” I manage to stop. “You were there when I almost ran into the Reiches’ van back in June, weren’t you?”
“Um…”
“That’s a yes, isn’t it? Her coming out right then was too big a coincidence.”
“Yeah.” He’s embarrassed… no, more like worried.
“You told her not to tell me?”
“She didn’t know. I threw the newspaper from their driveway at their door. That didn’t work so I threw it at their window. Then I heard you come out of your house. I was about to run over and pound on the van so you’d hear, or call your name; I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. Then the door opened and I hid around by their trash cans. Sorry.”
“God, don’t be sorry. Thanks for saving me a trip to the hospital.”
“I wasn’t spying on you, I promise. I—”
“It’s okay, I know what you were doing. Jason told me.”
“Jason…?”
“Do you like running now?”
“Not at first but I do now. It’s not really a passion like with you, but being on the track team will look good on college applications too.”
“Will you be my running guide so I can join the team?”
“Um…”
“You know what I mean, right?”