If Only I Had Told Her

I probably should have called instead of showing up like this. Coach shifts from one foot to the other and glances at the team running around the track.

The team that I’m no longer on.

Something Finn and I have in common.

“Technically,” Coach says, “you’re not supposed to be on campus. Once you’ve graduated, it’s like you’re any other adult, and those students’ parents have entrusted me to not allow some random adult access to their child.”

I stand there, feeling very much not like an adult.

Coach glances at the team again.

I just want someone to yell at me to hustle so that my brain can shut up. I want to use all my effort to make my body do something it doesn’t want to do so that I don’t have to stop it from thinking about things that I don’t want to think about.

“Here’s what we’re gonna do,” Coach says. “I’ll fudge the paperwork so that it says you were cleared to be a volunteer this summer.”

He’s using his pregame voice with me, and I feel my spine straighten in response.

“But you need to show me that you understand I’m putting my neck out for you, Murphy. Do you know what I mean?”

“Yes, sir,” I say as relief washes through me. This I know. This I understand. This isn’t like recent dinners with Mom and Dad when they want to know what I’m thinking and feeling for the first time I can remember. This is Coach telling me to shape up or ship out. This I know.

I join the team on the track seamlessly.

“Oh. Hey, Murphy,” Ricky says, but no one else speaks. Everyone is focused on their own pace.

I’m part of the crowd. We are one breathing, moving organism, circling the track, again and again.

I breathe in with Ricky and out with Jamal.

My mind is a blissful runner’s blank.

When Coach blows the whistle, I could still run for longer, and my mind remembers that Finn isn’t with us, and I can’t go running without him, but then Coach shouts, “Box jumps!” and all I can think about is how much I hate box jumps.

I hate box jumps.

I really hate box jumps.

Really, really hate box jumps.

Oh, and high knees now? Fuck high knees.

Fuck Coach for saying that we’re doing high knees for four minutes straight.

Four fucking minutes.

The only thing I hate more than high knees are shuttle runs.

Which are probably coming up next, now that I think about it.

How has it not been four minutes yet?

Finn and I used to argue about which was worse, shuttle runs or high knees.

Doesn’t matter though, because we aren’t doing shuttle runs. We’re doing squats.

Fuck squats.

So it goes.

It’s at the end of the day, when Coach yells, “Showers!” that my brain short-circuits. The feeling I had in Alexis’s basement returns, and I’m watching myself.

Finn is dead.

High school is over.

I stand and watch as the kids jog to the locker room. Coach turns and sees me and opens his mouth to yell at me before he remembers. I take a step forward.

“I, uh, think I’m going to head home to shower?” I can’t believe that I’m allowed to say that.

Coach nods. “Do you think you’ll be back tomorrow or next week?”

“No,” I say. “I got what I needed today. Next week, I leave for school, and I’ll have places to run there that don’t…” I was similarly inarticulate when I showed up three hours ago, but he understands this time too.

“The only way out is through,” he says, nodding. It’s something Coach has said a lot over the years, but it’s always been when one guy was surrounded and he needed to push his way out before the ball got stolen.

But it makes sense here and now too.

“Yeah,” I say. “I think I just realized that.”

He claps me on the back once, then makes a face and laughs at how wet my shirt is as he wipes his hand on his jeans.

“Go get that shower, Murphy,” he says. “Go off to school. You’ll find the way through.”

It’s not that I feel better as I drive away, but I feel more hopeful that what he said was true.