A week after the funeral, I get a text from Charlie, my next oldest brother and therefore, by Murphy tradition, the one responsible for things like getting me off the kindergarten bus and teaching me to drive.
Mom says you’re not running.
Translation: Are you okay? I text back.
Been hot. Busy packing for the dorm.
Translation: I’m fine. Charlie replies.
Mom also said you hadn’t packed at all.
Translation: Bullshit.
I’ll go running later today.
Translation: I’m fine.
Mom asked me to come home and help you pack.
Translation: Bullshit.
I’ll get her off your back.
Translation: I’ll get it together.
OK. Same. Go run.
Translation: I’ll tell Mom you’re fine but don’t make a liar out of me. So now I have to go for a run.
The reason I hadn’t gone for a run yet was because I knew I was going to have to find a place. It’s not like I only went running with Finn. We went running together a few times a month. Finn liked to go to different places to run, for scenery or whatever. I always thought it was stupid to drive somewhere to run, so he’d invite Sylvie when he wanted to go running at a sculpture park or a nature reserve.
But sometimes, he’d call or text me and say he wanted to go running right that moment, and I wanted to be running already, and we would meet at the halfway point between our houses and just go.
We would run all over Ferguson. There isn’t a street within running distance of my home that isn’t painted in memories of trash-talking with Finn, pushing myself to go harder because of him, or giving myself a break because he said it was okay.
So that’s why I was putting this off. Now I have to drive somewhere to go running, which is stupid. But here I am putting on my running clothes and getting into my car as if there isn’t a perfectly good sidewalk outside. I went with Alexis to her cousin’s birthday party last May at this gazebo in a
park, and I’m pretty sure it had a path around a lake or something, so I drive in the direction I remember the park being in until, to my surprise, I find it.
So fine. I’ll go running.
I’m not going to stretch any more than I normally would, though Finn was always saying I didn’t stretch enough. Just because he’s dead doesn’t mean everything he ever said has to be right.
After a normal amount of stretching, I’m off and it’s fine. But obviously I’m thinking about Finn since it’s the first run. Because he won’t run again.
I feel like Finn’s death has rattled my brain. How many times am I going to remember that being dead means you’re never going to do shit again?
I should have checked how many times around this lake makes a mile. The gravel spread over the dirt path is ground down and causing more slippage than absorbing impact. This will be a stamina run, not a speed run. And that’s fine. I didn’t check the time before I started, and I’ll have no idea when I’ve hit my first mile.
“Let’s run and not worry about why,” Finn would say, and we would just
go.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
Why couldn’t he have stayed in the car? What did he think he was going
to do? Save Sylvie with his bare hands? I mean, fine, this one time, we were watching a TV show, and he was all like, “That’s not how you do CPR.”
I said I figured somebody had looked it up before filming, but Finn started going on about how she’d never break through his sternum in that position. I said they probably wouldn’t have gotten the cleavage shot in the position he was describing. He glanced at the screen and said, “Oh right,” in this disappointed tone, as if the show had failed him by choosing boobs over accurate first aid. Which was weird, because I knew for a fact that he liked that actress’s boobs.
So maybe Finn could have done CPR on Sylvie if she had needed it.
I’m starting my second time around the lake. It doesn’t feel like I’ve been running for even a quarter of a mile.
Still, Finn should have been more careful.
That’s the other thing that pisses me off. He was an annoyingly safe driver. What the fuck happened? Being in his car when it was raining was torture. He was so paranoid about it.
Suddenly, I realize who I should be angry at.
Finn once made us wait forty minutes because Kyle wouldn’t put on his seat belt. Admittedly, Kyle is a bigger asshole than normal when he’s drunk, and it was funny seeing him lose it when Finn said, “I’ll just text my mom that a jerk in my back seat wouldn’t put on his seat belt. She won’t be mad if we sit here all night. Let’s do it.”
But my point is why didn’t Sylvie have on her seat belt?
Until now, the whole “and Sylvie went through the windshield but is fine” thing has kinda run through my brain without being examined.
For that to have happened, her seat belt had to be off, and Finn never drove an unbuckled passenger.
Sylvie says she can’t remember the last few minutes before the accident.
For about six yards or so, I wonder if she murdered Finn, but all the pieces of the puzzle are too random to be orchestrated.
It was evening when he called me. He died around midnight.
Finn would have wanted to find some kind of resolution with Sylvie, and she wasn’t going to let him off easy, so after hours of driving, he must’ve been distracted or tired enough to spin out and hit that median. But why was her seat belt off?
I stop midstep and almost trip but catch myself and pull out my phone. Before thinking about what I’m doing, I pull up Sylvie’s name and type Why weren’t you wearing a seat belt?
I go back to running and let that anger course through me.
Why.
Weren’t.
You?
I let that question be my only thought, over and over again, until the words become meaningless. I keep running until there is no more anger, no more thinking, only my breathing, only telling myself to keep pushing. I keep running, and I keep running, and I just go.
I don’t consciously choose to stop; I think my body must demand it, because I stop short in a way that Finn would remind me was bad for my circulation.
I check the time. I’ve been running for forty-five minutes, and I have four messages from Sylvie.
Forty minutes ago:
I told you. I can’t remember.
Five minutes after that:
I’m sorry.
Eleven minutes ago:
Even if I can’t remember, it’s still my fault.
And a minute after that:
I’m sorry, Jack.
Translation: I’m an asshole.
I stare at her last message, still gulping air. A drop of my sweat drips on the screen and blurs her words. What would Finn say to her?
It was the rain’s fault, I type and hit Send. She doesn’t reply.
