Tripp
My head is pounding when I wake up at six a.m. on Wednesday morning. All I want to do is go back to sleep, but I force myself to toss the covers aside and climb out of bed. The only thing I hate more than running is how I feel when I don’t run.
I dress quickly, unplug my phone from its charger, and rummage through the top of my bureau for my earphones. No luck. They’re not on my desk or the floor either, so I grab my sneakers and head to the living room. The shaggy green carpet muffles my steps. Our house is a split-level that my dad inherited from his parents, and it hasn’t changed much since the seventies. One of the last things my mother did before she left was strip the loud floral wallpaper and paint each room in a different, jewel-toned color. I still remember her standing in the middle of the dining room when she finished, paintbrush in hand, glaring at the walls as if they’d betrayed her. “This is no better,” she said.
Even then, I knew she wasn’t just talking about the wallpaper.
She never got around to pulling up the rug, though. Just as well—it’s ugly, but it’s good for insulation, which matters when you’re not allowed to set the thermostat above sixty-five degrees. My pace slows as I approach the kitchen, and I yawn so wide that my jaw cracks. The bitter smell of burnt coffee hits me, which it shouldn’t, since I’m the only one supposed to be awake at this hour—
“Morning,” a voice calls out, startling me so badly that I drop my phone on my foot. It lands right on the wrong spot, sending pain shooting through my toe as I pick it up.
“Jesus, Dad!” I limp toward the kitchen, glaring at him. “You scared the crap out of me. What are you doing here?”
He’s wearing a T-shirt his friends got him as a gag that says *Peaked in High School*, and I have to give him some credit for owning it. My dad was a kind-of star football player back in the day; good enough to get his name on a couple of plaques at Sturgis High, but not good enough to get recruited beyond that.
Dad rubs one hand over his thick, graying hair before taking a sip of black coffee. “I live here, remember?”
I spot the cord of my earphones beneath a jumble of silver on the table
—Dad’s key ring, which takes up way too much space because it’s full of random discs that he calls his “lucky medallions.” I used to like them when I was a kid, partly because there was something comforting about the jingling noise they made, and partly because I still believed in luck back then. Now I avoid looking at them as I tug my earphones free.
“Yeah, but why are you up?” I ask. Dad works the night shift as a security guard at Sturgis Hospital and comes home about an hour before I get up for school. He sleeps most of the day, and I don’t usually see him until nearly dinnertime.
“Working at Home Depot later this morning,” Dad says through a yawn. “No point in going to sleep for two hours.”
“Back-to-back? Why?” Dad’s occasional Home Depot shifts are usually on the weekend, to avoid exactly this scenario.
“Car needs a new transmission,” he sighs.
That’s life in the Talbot household. My father works hard, but at jobs that don’t pay much and offer zero stability. He’s been laid off more times than I can count. On the one hand, you have to give the guy credit for
plugging along, always landing something right before things fall apart. On the other hand, it’d be nice not to have to choose which bills to pay every month.
We don’t talk about that, though. There are a lot of things we don’t talk about.
“I’m gonna run,” I say, stuffing the buds into my ears. “See you.” Whatever Dad says in return is drowned out by my playlist, and I pull the hood of my sweatshirt over my head as Rage Against the Machine propels me out the door.
My feet automatically carry me on my usual path: down my street, a half mile until I pass Sturgis High School, and then a left onto Main Street. The upper section of Main is the best part of Sturgis, full of old Victorians that look good no matter how badly their paint is peeling. I steadily increase my pace for the next mile until I reach the end of Main Street. I’m at top speed now, the fastest I can comfortably run for any length of time. My limbs pump, smooth and purposeful, as endorphins course through me and fill my veins with a buzzy sense of well-being.
This is why I run. Because it’s the only time I ever feel that way.
At this hour almost everything on Main Street is closed, even Brightside Bakery. The streets are quiet and nearly deserted; I can only see one car in my peripheral vision as I near the crosswalk. I don’t slow down, since pedestrians have the right of way, but whoever’s driving decides to be a dick and speeds up to blow past me before I can cross. “Asshole,” I mutter, pulling up short on the sidewalk.
Then I do a double take as I catch sight of the driver. They pass in a flash, and I blink at the bumper, confused and disoriented. No. It can’t be. The car is a nondescript gray sedan I’ve never seen before, with a New Jersey license plate.
It can’t be.
I keep going and turn onto Prospect Hill. My heart thumps harder as I struggle to maintain my pace against the incline, and my lungs start to burn. Music pounds in my ears, urging me forward even though everything in me wants to slow down, until all of a sudden it’s interrupted by a text tone.
I shouldn’t look in the middle of the hardest part of my run. But that flash of familiarity in the gray car makes me pull out my phone, because there’s no one else who ever texts me this early. I stop abruptly, panting, and steel myself for what I might see. It’s not what I was afraid of, though. It’s actually worse.
The text is from an unknown number, and the message is a single word.
Murderer.
