I step over her, my foot landing with an audible thud, and I cringe, freezing with one leg on either side of the twin-size mattress. If she wakes up now it will be a little awkward. I lift my other leg over and tiptoe to the door, pulling it open as gently as I can, and step out into the hall.
I’m still in my pajamas. I can’t go running in my pajamas. I mean, I guess I could. But I don’t really want to. I glance down the hall, toward Marcus’s room. I swallow, then look over my shoulder at Monica sleeping. The air mattress is pushed against my dresser. I won’t be able to open it without waking Monica, no matter how heavy a sleeper she is.
I close the door behind me and shuffle down the hall. I went to sleep in socks, so it’s easy to glide along the floor without even lifting my feet.
Marcus’s door opens without a sound. I grab the first things I see: his jersey on his desk and a pair of running shorts. The shirt goes past my waist, but the running shorts fit snugger than I’d like. My big brother might be taller and stronger than me, but my butt is way bigger than his. I leave my pajamas in a bundle on the couch under an old blanket Granny Dee knitted when I was little.
My Converse are by the door, the laces worn and full of holes, and the soles feel as insubstantial as the thin dumpling wrappers. But they grip my feet in a way that’s familiar and comforting. I need to get proper shoes sometime. If this keeps up I’ll wear out these shoes by the end of the month. But for now, they’re my midnight shoes. I’m like one of the Twelve Dancing Princesses from that old fairy tale, where the twelve sisters go dancing in a magical world every night and dance so long and so hard that they wear out their shoes. Except I’m not a princess and I’m all on my own.
And running is way better than dancing.
But I do feel a little bit magical.
The night air wraps its arms around me as I silently jog down the street and away from my house. With every step I feel freer. I let my breathing come naturally, my breaths kissing the night. The night kisses me back, butterfly kisses made of mist. The sky is cloudy, not a star to be seen, and feels so low that if I could run just a little bit faster I could leap up and touch the heavy night clouds. No, not just touch them. Pop right through them. Like a mermaid emerging from the sea, I’d come up headfirst, spraying clouds everywhere, and up there in cloud world they would welcome me like a queen. No, like a goddess. I’d run all day and the best part would be when I sent down a special cloud to scoop up Marcus in its fluffy embrace and bring him up to my cloud kingdom and he’d be healed instantly.
Monica and Aaron can come too. And my mom and LaoLao and Granny Dee. And they would be so impressed with the kingdom I’d created that they would hug me tight and say they should always have known I was special, and Marcus would say he couldn’t have gotten better without me, and that he’ll never do anything as stupid as drive drunk again, and then he and Monica would have a beautiful cloud wedding over the ocean at sunset and I’d wear a dress made out of clouds and we’d all live happily ever after for ever.
That’s how low the clouds are. That’s how fast I am. Anything, absolutely anything, seems possible.
I get to the track and run round and round, skipping every once in a while to see if I can jump into the clouds. I don’t reach the sky, and I’m not really that surprised, but it makes me giggle, so when I see the dark shape running at me, I think I’m imagining it, so I keep going straight toward it. It’s slowly materializing into the shape of a man wearing a dark sweatshirt and sweats and his hood is up and it’s too dark to see his face and I’m moving fast so as long as I keep going we’ll pass each other and then I’ll be running away from him, and even if he turns, tries to talk to me, I’ll outrun him because I can run for ever and—
“Wing?”
I stop so suddenly I nearly fall over.
It’s Aaron. Aaron is on the track. He’s staring at me like I’m crazy, and maybe I am. Why else would I be running around the football field wearing my brother’s old football jersey? Chasing a dragon and a lion? In the middle of the night?
I stop, aware that I’m panting and sweat is running down my forehead in little rivers. Aaron looks at me, his eyes traveling up and back down the length of my body.
“What the hell?” he says, but not in a mean way.
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
He snorts. “What am I doing here? What are you doing here?” He pulls his hood off and I’m glad because now I can see his face.
“What does it look like I’m doing?”
He quirks an eyebrow. “I’m not really sure.” And I remember my laughing and leaping and I want to bury my head in the sand like an ostrich and not get up until he has gone away.
Except have you ever seen an ostrich do that? Or a picture of one? It is straight up ass-in-air. Which probably isn’t the best move if you’re trying to play it cool when you run into the boy you’ve loved for your whole damn life in the middle of the night.