A boom of thunder wakes me up. I sit up, sheets soaked through with sweat, and see Gus’s snout hovering at eye level. His front paws are on the bed beside me, back legs on the floor, and he’s whining anxiously, shaking with each ferocious crack in the sky. I bury my face in the thick fur of his neck and try to soothe him, though I myself feel terrified.
“Sorry, Gus,” I whisper, pushing him aside and getting out of bed. I dig through my drawers for some gym clothes and grab my running shoes from the closet. I dress quickly and sneak downstairs to the key dish in the kitchen, sorting through the coins and buttons and other junk for Mom’s car keys. I scribble a note for her and leave it on the island then silently let myself out onto the porch. The rain and thunder have moved off by now, leaving behind a greenish tint to the sky.
I drive Mom’s car to the school, parking behind the field house and staring at my phone in the cup holder for a long moment. There’s something I’ve needed to do, and after last night, I know I can’t put it off any longer. I grab my phone, scroll to Dr. Langdon’s name, and press SEND before I can chicken out.
“Hello?” she answers groggily on the second ring, and I almost hang up. Despite her success, I never particularly liked Dr. Langdon. Quiet and stony faced, she never betrayed the slightest emotional reaction to anything I said, nothing like Alice.
“Hello?” she says again, and I clear my throat loudly, but not on purpose. “Who’s there?”
She sighs, and I know she’s about to hang up, so I blurt out, “Have you been checking the oven?”
There’s a beat of silence before she coolly says, “Natalie?”
“She was right,” I stammer. “Grandmother came back and she told me something was going to happen, and it did, and you really need to be careful.”
Again, silence fills the line. Dr. Langdon never speaks without thinking, never reacts, always plans. “Where are you, Natalie? Are you safe? You’ve made so much progress, and you musn’t—”
“I’m fine,” I interrupt. “You’re the one who’s in trouble, and she’s right. I swear she’s right. So think I’m crazy if you want, but you need to check your oven and your stove and anything else hot in your house, okay?”
“What else did your grandmother say, Natalie? Did she tell you to do something?”
“She’s not my grandmother. Check the oven,” I snap and hang up, tossing my phone hard against the passenger seat. I get out of the car and run to the chain-link fence, pulling myself up it just as Beau and I did on the night of Matt’s party.
I don’t bother stretching. It’s so hot and humid that my muscles are already warm, my skin already slippery with a sheen of sweat. I start at a jog around the asphalt track, and quickly my mind slips into a meditative space I seldom find outside of physical work.
I count my laps—one, two, three, four—until I lose track of distance and time entirely. There’s no end. There’s no point at which I know to stop. It’s an eternal run, with no beginning point for each new lap. Soon it’s as if my whole life has been this run, and I start to feel it through my middle: a quivering veil, like my stomach’s on stage and the curtain’s about to drop.
I keep running, and in my mind, I know I’m breaking right through the veil. The world falls away. For the first time since my Opening, the world falls away, and I know I’m the one who made it happen. The earth is no longer flat and paved under my feet. The damp metal bleachers, the rusty chain-link fence, the orange and black press box and the unlit floodlights and the goalposts are all gone.
They’re still here, but not now. They blip back into view, and I try to move myself backward again, seeking out that roller-coaster sensation in my stomach. But though I have a sense that the veil is trembling, I can’t do it. I can’t move time.
I stop running and bend over, hands resting on my knees, as I try to slow my breathing.
Across the field, someone’s descending the bleachers: a waify blond in shorts and a T-shirt. She steps onto the track and waves but doesn’t say anything. Megan. Not my Megan, but Megan all the same. She begins to make her way around the track at a steady pace, and I start running again too. We jog at opposite ends of the track, falling into sync, never gaining on one another, like two planets in orbit.
I lose track of time again, and it’s only when Megan slows down and heads toward the bottom row of bleachers to sit that I resurface from the depths of my mind. The sun is peeking up, painting the sky a fiery orange.
I finish my lap at a walk and go to sit beside her, wishing she were my best friend. We sit for a while in silence, watching the sunrise. In silence, I can at least pretend I’m with my best friend.
She is my best friend.
“I’m sorry,” I say suddenly. “About Matt.”
She forces a smile but doesn’t look at me. “Yeah, me too.”
“He’ll be okay.”
“How would you know?”
“I guess I don’t know. But I think it.”