Page 53 of Script Swap
It had been such an awful night.Weirddidn’t come close to covering it.The bizarre and disorienting experience of having to deal with Pippi’s play, and the fact that Dylan was now, somehow, playing me with shoe polish in his hair.And that stupid question about whether I was more afraid of being loved or of being alone (still both, obviously).And the strange tension at The Foxworthy, the silent friction between Jonni and Nora, with Betty and Milton lurking in the background.Finding Terrence.The way-too-convenient arrest of Milton.
But worse than all that, the part I couldn’t shake, was that I’d sat in that play, watching something Pippi had created, and I’d rememberedwhat it was like.To want to create.To be excited about your creations.To feel that pure joy of making something, and hoping it would be beautiful, and wanting it to touch someone else.
Remembered.
Because it had been a long time since I’d felt that.
How was I supposed to make sense of that?How was I supposed to process that or internalize that or whatever buzzy word a therapist would say?
How had I forgotten?
And why wouldn’t it come back?
Maybe that made me a bad person.(Insert a few words of your choosing to describe me—you can even use the four-letter ones Hemingway was so fond of.) Maybe I should have been more upset about the attack on Terrence.Maybe I should have been grieving that something evil like that could happen.
And I was.
But that experience in the theater tonight had been like walking into one of those glass sliding doors.I’d been moving along so neatly through my life, and then I’d smacked face-first into something, and in the aftermath of the collision, I’d seen this fun-house reflection of myself.
Okay, it’s melodramatic.
Okay, in the big scheme of the universe, it’s not a big deal.
But if you’ve ever loved something and lost it without even realizing it—a friend, a place, a hobby—you’ll understand.
That’s it.That’s all.I’m done now.
End scene.
Something—a distant crunch—pulled me out of my self-pity.I glanced over my shoulder, my legs continuing to pump rhythmically.There was only the water-silk pattern of the shadows, the trees moving faintly in the breeze, the fog gathering so thick that it turned the air white after a few yards.
And then, out there, something moved.
Uh.
Okay.
I turned my head forward and turned up the throttle.
Was I the only person who ever ran out here?No, obviously not.Lots of people liked to run in Oregon.For that matter, lots of people liked to run in Hastings Rock.And with this heat wave, maybe runners were shifting to a nocturnal schedule.Maybe there were going to belotsof runners out here tonight, and this was the first person I’d seen.
I glanced back.
Nothing.No sign of whoever it had been.
Was that suspicious?Was that a sign?Because let’s be real here: I wasn’t afastrunner.Shouldn’t this person be gaining on me?Getting closer?
Or maybe Iwasfast.Maybe all this exercise and working out and eating right had turned my body into the ultimate running machine.
That seemed like a stretch.
I slowed my pace until I was moving at a steady jog—most of the Silver Sneakers were faster than this.(The Silver Sneakers, in case it needs saying, were the senior walking club who took over the Hastings Rock gym at literally themostinconvenient moments.One time, it was during a fire alarm, and they kept power-walking back and forth under the truck’s ladder until one of the firemen threatened to turn the hose on them.)
Eddies of fog.High branches stirring in the breeze.The road behind me nothing more than a dark tunnel through the trees.
Where was the mystery runner?
Maybe they’d gone back.Maybe they’d turned around, had enough.I’d gonebarelya mile, but maybe they’d started back in Hastings Rock.Maybe they were tired.And the night was still unusually warm by the coast’s standards.
