It’s getting colder. I’m still running at night, but I’ve started wearing long-sleeved shirts and bringing a sweatshirt. I wonder if Marcus feels the temperature changing. Can he feel anything at all?
Every time we visit him, he hasn’t changed or moved. His hair is growing out, which is weird. He gets stubble on his cheeks and jaw. The nurses shave it. They asked my mom if she wanted to, but she burst into tears and said she wouldn’t know how.
Monica comes with us now. Sometimes she goes on her own – my mom got special permission for her and Aaron to visit him without us. Monica visits a lot. More than I do. I can’t just sit there and stare at him. It makes me angry. I feel like if he just tried a little harder he could wake up… I take out my frustration toward him on the track. You’d think it would make it harder, wearing his guilt when I run, but something funny happens when I start to pick up speed. All my frustration slips off like a coat that’s too big, and I’m lighter than I was before.
Aaron is late tonight. I’ve been standing out on the sidewalk talking to the moon for the past ten minutes and I’m starting to get cold. I hug myself and wonder if he’s forgotten or if something came up. Should I go back inside? But if he does come, I don’t want him to think I’ve forgotten.
I’d never forget.
Finally I see his little silver car crawling toward me. I jog in place to warm up, waving as the car sidles up next to me.
“Hey,” I say, settling into the front seat, the seat I’m starting to think of as mine.
“Hey,” says Aaron, tapping his hands on the steering wheel. He’s got music on tonight, something low in the background, with a pulsing beat.
“I thought maybe you weren’t coming,” I say. I click my seat belt in. I never used to be all that bothered about seat belts. Ever since the accident, though, I always, always wear one.
“Yeah,” he says, sounding distracted and far away. Like a prerecorded message. “Sorry.”
“It’s fine! Don’t worry! I mean, I should be thanking you for coming to get me every night. I could always meet you at the track. Run down there on my own.” I’m chirping like a baby bird.
Aaron glances over at me, and for the first time since I got in the car, he smiles. “Wing,” he says, and I love how he says my name, he says my name in a way no one else does. “I like picking you up. And what kind of gentleman would I be if I let you go running down the streets of Atlanta in the middle of the night by yourself?”
“I was doing just that before you came along and was doing just fine,” I say, but I’m grinning too.
“Ouch,” he says, smile even broader. “How about this? I’ll pretend I don’t know you don’t need me, and you can pretend you do need me to get to the track. Fair trade?”
“Sounds good to me,” I say, even though it isn’t true at all. Sure, I can get to the track without him … but whether or not I need him is a different story.
“I’m just doing it for Marcus, you know. He’d have my ass if he knew I was letting you run around at night all alone.”
Of course. It’s for Marcus. It isn’t for me. He’s being a good friend to Marcus. I force a smile and turn to look at the nighttime world whizzing by.
Aaron clears his throat. “I’ve got something for you,” he says, voice overly casual. “Under the seat.”
I reach under the seat and rummage around. My fingers brush against a small, smooth bottle. It rattles like a warning as I dislodge it from its hiding place.
It’s a small prescription bottle. My eyes focus in on the small print. Antidepressants. I shake it experimentally, and the sound of the pills jumping in their bottle makes Aaron look over sharply. When he sees what I’m holding he swears under his breath.
“Oh. Not that. Not those. Sorry. I didn’t know those were in my car. The other thing. Maybe it’s stuck under the seat.”
We’re at a stoplight, and he leans over me and pops open his glove compartment. “Put those in there.”
Aaron’s name isn’t the name on the bottle of pills. It’s Annamarie. His mother’s name.
Aaron drives on. We’re almost at the track. “She’s been trying to stop drinking? After what happened to Marcus? It scared her?” His sentences come out full of question marks. He’s unsure and nervous, and he’s talking faster than I’ve ever heard him talk. “So she’s trying those.”
“I didn’t know … didn’t know your mom was taking antidepressants.”
“She shoulda been taking them a long time ago. She should be taking them more regularly too. When she doesn’t … she likes to … what they call ‘self-medicate.’” His voice is false and tinny. “Her job, down at Kroger” – he mentions one of the grocery stores near his house, where his mom works as a cashier – “the pay is pretty shit, but she’s got health insurance, and it covers this kind of stuff.”