Everyone hates the Athletics Carnival.
Everyone. The nonathletic kids hate it because it’s one whole day spent sweating in the open and stumbling after your classmates. The athletic kids hate it because there’s an incredible amount of pressure to perform, and someone always ends up with a sprained ankle or torn ligament.
Though I fall into the latter category, I don’t usually mind the event as much as the others. But after spending the weekend hungover and miserable, it’s difficult to drum up any enthusiasm.
“I have a solution,” Abigail says as we walk into the rented stadium, our duffel bags bumping against our knees. The sun is unreasonably bright today, and the temperature rises anywhere the light touches, so that soon most students are shrugging out of their thick sweaters and tracksuits. Better this, I guess, than the year the school insisted we run in a literal thunderstorm.
More than one person sprained their ankle that time. “What if you ran me over gently with a car? They’d have to cancel the carnival, right? I’m willing to take one for the team.”
A small snort escapes my lips. The stadium is so vast that it takes us ten minutes just to reach the stands and plop our water bottles down on the plastic seats. Every year, we come here, and every year, I still find myself intimidated by the sheer size of the running track.
“If you want to take one for the team, you could join the relay,” I tell Abigail while I slather multiple layers of sunscreen all over my body. Those year-round UV radiation infographics they shoved down our throats in primary school have really stuck with me. “We still have an opening left.”
She makes a face. “Listen, we both know I’m multitalented, but running is one of the only things I’m not great at.”
“Doesn’t matter. I’ll run fast enough to make up for it.”
“Could we please at least consider the idea of hitting me with a car?” she whines.
“Abigail.”
“Fine.” She throws her hands up. “Only because I still feel guilty about leaving the party early.”
My gut squirms at the reminder, but I force myself to smile. “I told you, it’s fine. It went well.”
“That’s not what everyone else is saying.”
I make an effort not to react. I don’t care. I squeeze more sunscreen into my palms and smear it thick over my neck, the strong, artificial smell burning my nostrils. I don’t want to know. It’s better if I don’t know. “What . . . What is everyone else saying?”
She hesitates. “That you kind of, like, flipped out.”
They’re not wrong, but it feels like a slap in the face anyway. A hundred protests and explanations and apologies make their way to my lips. I swallow them all down. After my little breakdown, I’d promised myself I would listen to my mom. I would give it time. Resist picking any unripe watermelons, or whatever the metaphor is meant to be.
“Also,” she says, frowning, “I heard that something . . . happened with Julius?”
My stomach contracts. “Hang on. First tell me what happened with you,” I say, wiping the excess sunscreen on my arms.
I’m mostly changing the subject to buy myself time, to figure out how I’m supposed to tell her I kissed the boy I’ve been ranting about for the past decade. “Did you manage to help your sister?”
A shadow crosses her face. “I did. Well, kind of. I helped her with the car, but . . .” She chews her lower lip, then heaves a sigh.
“The reason she and Liam were fighting was because she found out he’s been cheating on her. Not just with one person, but multiple people.”
I wince, sympathetic but unsurprised.
“I can’t believe I didn’t know,” she says, kicking at the artificial grass. “I even encouraged her to stay with him the last time they fought. I should have been able to sense something was off.”
This is the thing about Abigail: She might not have the best grades or the most reliable career plans, but I know she prides herself on having good instinct, whether it’s about shoes or boys or if the teachers will actually be collecting the homework on Monday. She makes all the calls, gives out the advice. She’s always right— and that’s a direct quote from one of the sticky notes on her lunch box.
“I just— I thought I was doing what was best for her,” she continues in a small voice.
And I realize that I absolutely can’t tell her what happened between me and Julius. The party had been her idea too. The last thing she needs to hear right now is how much I regretted the whole night, how it’s made my weird relationship with Julius a thousand times more complicated. “You couldn’t have known,”
I reassure her. “It’s an unfortunate feature of douchebags that they’re good at hiding their douchebag tendencies. And by the way, you were totally right about the party.”
“Really?”
The fact that she’s even asking is proof she’s just suffered a terrible blow to her self- esteem. “Yeah, seriously. Like, yes, I kind of lost it at the end because things got a little out of control, but before that, I had so much fun. I haven’t felt that enthusiastic about life since I finished color- coding all my history notes.” It’s a miracle I don’t choke on the words. Before she can detect my lie, I spin around. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go get a bunch of people to sign up for races they would rather die than run.”
It’s a legitimate reason. Ms. Hedge had cornered me outside the bus before we left this morning and forced the task on me.
Julius and I each have twenty spots to fill, which is why I spend the next half hour running around the stadium— not in races, but in search of potential participants. By the end, ten spots are still left empty. Nothing works, even when I use every strategy I can think of:
Pleading.
“It’s really important,” I beg one of the sportier boys in our year. He’s lounging in the front row of the stands, shamelessly scrolling through some pretty girl’s account on his phone. He doesn’t glance up at me. “Please. Everyone should sign up for at least one race—”
“Is it compulsory though?” he asks.
“I . . . It’s expected—”
“Will the principal expel me if I don’t run this race?”
“No, but—”
“Yeah, I’m good, thanks.” I watch him send the girl’s recent post to a friend, alongside a disturbing number of heart- eye emojis. “Good luck finding someone else.”
“Good luck getting her attention with your current profile picture,” I can’t help muttering. I wouldn’t under normal circumstances, but after the party, I figure I can’t be any less popular than I already am.
Now he jerks his head up. Looks alarmed. “What? Hey, wait, what’s wrong with my current—”
But I’m already moving on to my next target with another strategy.
Negotiating.
“Just one race,” I tell Georgina when I find her by the water fountains. “I can run the fifteen hundred meters for you if you run the five hundred meters.”
She shoots me an apologetic smile. “Sorry, Sadie. I twisted my ankle on the bus just now. It’s probably best that I don’t.”
“On the— on the bus?” I repeat, blinking. “How did you . . .
How is that even . . .”
“I think I was sitting down,” she says.
“And?”
“And then I stood up,” she says somberly.
“You twisted your ankle,” I say, in case I’m misunderstanding.
“From the very act of standing.”
“Yep. That did it,” she agrees, and turns away. Which leads me to my last resort—
Guilt tripping.
“We need you,” I say, cornering Ray outside the bathrooms.
“If you don’t run at least one of the races, then Georgina Wilkins will have to, and she’s twisted her ankle. You’re not going to let her go instead of you, are you?”
Ray dries his hands on his shirt and raises his brows. “Twisted her ankle? How?”
“You don’t need to know,” I say hastily. “Can you run? Or will you sit on the sidelines, in the shade, and watch all your classmates struggle out there on the track, sweating and gasping for breath?”
“Sit in the shade,” he says without hesitation. “I have a fear of running, you see.”
I almost throw up blood. “You’re not serious.”
“It’s a very real fear. Google it.”
“I’m sorry, but how does that even work?”
“As soon as my feet start moving very fast,” he says, “my heart just starts beating wildly, and my vision goes all blurry. It’s like being on a roller coaster. Or in a race car. The speed at which the world rushes past me is terrifying.”
“How poetic,” I remark under my breath.
“You’re welcome, by the way,” he adds.
I stare. “For what?”
“The dare at your party.” He grins. “Never imagined you and Julius would be so into it.”
“I wasn’ t—” My voice comes out ten octaves too high, and I forcefully lower it back down as Ray’s grin widens. “I was not.
And he most definitely wasn’t either.” Just the memory makes my face burn like it’s being pressed to a stove. I would rather die than kiss you again. “Forget it,” I decide, shaking my head free of all unwelcome thoughts. “I’ll just— I’ll run the races by myself.”
“Well, you better go soon,” he says, stepping right into the shade. “I think the relay’s starting now.”
I’m cursing the world when I take my place beside Julius.
He looks unreasonably relaxed. Prepared. The sun dances over his hair as he stretches his limbs out and surveys the running track. Of course, if I had his team, I would probably be relaxed too. He’s got Rosie, Jonathan, and a national athlete as his first three runners for the relay. They’re all known for being fast. I have Abigail, one of Rosie’s friends, and the guy who came in dead last in the one- hundred- meter sprint last year because he got tired halfway.
“How did you go with the sign- ups?” he asks, glancing over at me.
“Fine,” I say briskly, flexing my right leg, then my left. The race will be starting in two minutes.
“Well, I’ve filled up all the positions for my races,” he says. “It was hardly any trouble getting people to enter.”
“How nice that it worked out for you.”
He pretends to miss my sarcasm. “Aren’t you going to wish me good luck?” he asks. “Since we’re racing against each other and all.”
I bounce slightly on the balls of my feet to warm up, waiting for my nerves to morph into adrenaline. Since it’s the first race of the day, the relay is always the one everybody pays the most attention to. I need to focus. I need to win this. I need to beat him. “Are you going to wish me good luck?”
He laughs. Literally, laughs in my face. “Now, why would I do that?”
In the distance, the teacher lifts the starting pistol. All the muscles in my body tense.
“In that case,” I say, staring straight ahead, “I hope you break your leg.”
“You’re very prickly today,” he comments, unfazed. “Is it because you couldn’t find anyone willing to run? Or is it because of your massive hangover?”
I stiffen, my focus breaking, and whirl around to face him.
Luckily all the other runners are already in position, so there’s no one around to overhear.
“Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten how drunk you were,” he says, his gaze sharper, assessing.
“ I— I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Really?” He cocks his head. “Nothing?”
“No.” I’m lying, sort of. The details from Saturday are fuzzy, but I remember the feeling growing inside me when it was just the two of us. Like there was a burning torch in my chest, heat buzzing through my veins, more potent than the liquor itself.
I remember the wanting, the dangerous knife point of desire, the need to do something foolish and reckless with him. Now that I’m completely sober, it’s easy to dismiss it all as pure, physical attraction. It makes scientific sense. The alcohol would have helped me ignore the many defects of his personality, until all that was left was his geometrically pleasing features, his eyes and his lips and his hands. And from an evolutionary standpoint, isn’t it normal to want someone pretty, who happens to be your age, and who also just happens to be in your house? Isn’t it coded in our biology?
“Then why are you blushing?” Julius asks.
I twist my head away. “Stop it. I know what you’re doing.”
“What am I doing?”
The pistol goes off with a loud bang, and cheers rise from the stands.
It’s starting.
“Distracting me,” I reply through my teeth, willing myself to focus on the race. On Abigail. A few seconds in and she’s already falling behind Rosie.
“You wouldn’t think that if it wasn’t working,” Julius says, and I can hear the poisonous smile in his voice. “But do you really not recall any details?”
The second runner on their team has picked up the baton.
Jonathan is so fast I swear I can see the wind at his heels. Abigail, meanwhile, is panting hard, holding out the baton with one shaking arm— and the next runner fumbles it.
A mixture of screams and frustrated cries sound through the stadium.
It’s okay, I reassure myself. Repeat it like a chant inside my head. It’s okay. It’s fine. I’m the last runner for a reason. I can make up for all the lost time.
“You don’t remember what you asked me to do?” Julius presses.
I can’t help it. I swivel toward him again, my heart thudding, even though I’m aware I’m rising to the bait. “What?”
But now he chooses to shut up. Their team has completed their second exchange, and I can only watch, choking on my own frustration, as Julius smoothly accepts the baton and takes off.
“Come on,” I hiss, tapping my feet. Our runner is still five feet away.
Four feet.
Julius is racing far ahead, only the back of his head visible from where I stand.
Three feet.
I tense my muscles, stretch my hand out.
Two feet.
“Hurry,” I urge under my breath, even though I want to scream it. Julius can’t win. He can’t. I won’t give him that satisfaction.
One foot—
My fingers close over the baton, and I’m running.
It takes a moment for me to find my rhythm, but once I do, all the built-up adrenaline floods through my limbs. I run faster than I ever have in my life, my eyes pinned on only one person: Julius. My target, my goal. This is what we do, what we have always done. We chase each other and circle each other and catch up to each other.
I have to catch up to him now.
I force my feet onward, relishing the hard push of the ground beneath me, the blood burning inside me, my hair flying back in the wind. Colors blur past my vision. Noise rushes down to me in waves. I’m running so fast I feel weightless. I feel like I’m falling, my body moving ahead of me. There’s no gravity, no friction, nothing except the frantic beat of my heart and the person in my vision. I’m only a few steps behind him now, and I can sense his awareness of me from the way he speeds up. He’s breathing hard, his forehead covered in a sheen of sweat. His eyes dart to me.
The distance between us widens, then narrows, like a game of tug-of-war.
A muscle in my side starts to cramp, but I ignore the pain.
Lengthen my strides. Cut my hands through the air. It’s not only a physical competition, but a mental one, a test of willpower, of who wants to win more badly. And I’m so close. We’re neck and neck by this point, and the end is just ahead of us.
I need to keep going.
Keep running.
He pulls ahead again by an inch and my vision flashes red.
With one final burst of pure, unrestrained energy, I leap forward, the air whipping my face as I break the finish line— a split second before he does.
I’m beaming, laughing between great gulps of air. I’ve won.
Victory is always delicious, but it tastes even better when it’s Julius I’m beating. We both slow down. The crowd applauds wildly in the background, the claps indistinguishable from the sound of my heartbeat in my ears. Seven points to me, I gloat inside my head, though I realize I can’t remember what our scores were before. I haven’t been properly keeping count.
Most runners double over as soon as the race ends, or collapse dramatically on the ground, the way Abigail is doing now. But of course Julius is too dignified for that. He merely stands, wipes the sweat from his brow, and turns to me, his lips pursed.
“Aren’t you going to congratulate me?” I ask, mimicking his smug tone from before.
He rolls his eyes. “Shameless.”
“I must have learned it from you,” I tell him, my grin widening.
He pauses then. His irritation melts away, replaced briefly by a confused, dazed sort of look, like he’s just been presented with something unexpected. He stares long enough for me to feel self- conscious.
“What?” I try to sound casual. “Are you too stunned by your own defeat?”
A scowl quickly reappears on his face. “That was only a warm-up for me.”
“We’ll see if that’s true in the next race,” I tell him before I walk away to fetch my medal. I can feel him glaring after me.
Regrettably I don’t have time to savor his defeat. I don’t even have time to sit down or grab a drink of water. There are too many races to run, too many people demanding my attention.
I manage to win the next race, but Julius wins the sprint after that, as well as the long jump, which I bitterly attribute to the unfair advantage he has in height.
The sun rises higher in the sky, throwing off blinding beams of light.
I start to lose count of how far I’ve run, how far I still have left to go. I just push my body harder— and it’s working. I’m invincible. I’m doing so well I even manage to come first in the eight hundred meters. Another medal collected, another tick next to my name, another number added to my winning streak.
But as I stagger off to the sidelines, a sudden wave of exhaustion crashes over me, and—
I can’t breathe.
The realization sends me into a panic. I try to suck in more air, but it’s like there’s an invisible hand wrapped around my throat, squeezing tighter and tighter. The oxygen gets stuck halfway down, and my lungs are empty. I double over, trembling, clutching at the stitch in my side. The sun is too bright.
All my senses are off- balance, everything tilting away at an odd degree. My vision narrows to a white pinprick.
I’m still struggling to breathe.
I blink hard, and when the world comes rushing back to me again, only one face sharpens into focus. Black hair, pale skin, sharp lines. A strange look in his eyes.
Julius.
He’s staring at me, saying something, but the sound is distorted. At first I can only hear the blood thudding in my ears, the thunderous beat of my heart. It’s so loud it scares me, and I have a terrifying vision of my heart exploding inside my chest. I swallow down another futile mouthful of air. It goes nowhere.
“. . . Sadie. You need to sit down.”
Somehow, it’s his voice that cuts through everything else, the blur of noise and colors in the background, the oblivious cheers of the crowd. Clear as the sky, familiar as my own heartbeat, a line to cling on to out at sea.
I mumble a response, I’m fine, it’s okay, just a little tired, but I’m not sure if he can even hear me. If my lips even move enough to form real words.
A crease knits itself between his brows. “ Sadie—”
I take another step forward and my knees turn to water. I stumble.
Then suddenly, without warning, his arms are around me. If I weren’t so dizzy, I would jerk away. But to my own humiliation, I lean into him. It’s nice. It’s horribly, disgustingly wonderful, to feel the warmth of his body, the hard lines of his chest. I could sink into this moment forever, could let him hold me and—
No.
The lack of oxygen must be suffocating my brain cells.
“Here.” He guides me onto one of the benches in the shade, and the immediate reprieve from the sun is blissfully sweet. The air here feels cooler, gentler. I drink it in like I’m drowning, until my head is light.
“Breathe in slowly.” He kneels down in front of me, his hands around my wrists. “Count: one, two, three . . .”
I follow his guidance, counting to five, holding then releasing, then breathing in again. After ten counts, the white spot in my vision begins to fade. Another ten counts and the metal band around my chest loosens.
“Are you feeling better?” Julius asks.
My voice is a dry croak. “Y-yes.”
In a flash he drops his hands, steps back, and I feel a pinch of something like disappointment. Like loss. His features are tight when he hisses out his next words. “What’s your problem?”
“What’s my problem?” My mind is lagging behind, working at half its usual speed. I can only repeat the words foolishly.
Wonder at why he looks the way he does, the muscle in his jaw tensed, his gaze cold and sharp and furious.
“Are you trying to kill yourself?” he demands. His eyes cut through me as he speaks, splitting me open from head to toe. “You look like you’re about to faint, Sadie. It’s not a very pretty image.”
My lungs are functioning well enough now that I manage to pant out a reply. “What are you getting so worked up for? I’m the one gasping for air over here.”
He makes a small, angry sound with the back of his throat, like a scoff and a sigh at the same time. “You don’t get it, do you?”
“Get what? What are you on about?”
But he doesn’t answer the question. He’s talking faster and faster, the words spilling from his mouth. “It’s laughable, really.
You’re always insistent on coming first in everything, but when it comes down to it, you’re ready to put yourself last just to please other people—”
“The others need me to,” I protest, confused why we’re even having this conversation. “They didn’t want to race so—”
“Screw the others,” he says fiercely. The heat in his voice shocks me. Burns me to the core. “I don’t care about them. I only care about—” He cuts himself off. Averts his gaze, stares out at the vivid blue sky stretching over the stadium. The students milling around the water fountain, tearing open packets of dried nuts and chocolate bars. Participants warming up by the fences, bending and straightening their legs out over the grass.
My head is spinning, but I can no longer tell if it’s from the lack of oxygen or him.
“Why are you mad at me?” I ask him outright. “You should be happy. There’s no way I’ll win any of our remaining races.
You get to beat me. It’s what you’ve always wanted.”
He huffs out a laugh. Gazes back over at me, his eyes a fathom-less black, the kind of darkness you could wade through forever and never reach the end. “Good god, you’re infuriating.”
“And you’re making no sense,” I snap.
“Why can’t you just—”
The shrill shriek of the whistle drowns out the rest of his sentence. The next race will be starting soon: the one thousand meters.
I stand up— or try to. But my legs feel like they’ve been infused with lead, and the whole world wobbles when I rise, the running track sliding sideways. White stars spark in my vision again. Frustrated, I fall back onto the cold bench.
“My body won’t listen to me,” I mutter, catching my breath.
“Yes, bodies tend to do that to protect themselves from self-destruction.” Julius’s tone is scathing. “I believe it’s one of our key evolutionary features.”
I don’t have the energy to argue with him. “I still have to race . . .”
“The one thousand meters, right?”
I blink at him.
“I’ll run it for you.”
“ Wait— what?” I massage my throbbing temples, willing myself to concentrate. To make sense of this.
“I’ll be faster anyway,” he says with his usual disdain, like I’m slowing him down right now. But the smugness doesn’t spread to his eyes. He’s watching me, tentative, intensely focused.
“No. Julius, you don’t have to—”
“I’ll give you the medal as a present,” he says, already turning around. “Just wait.”
I can’t do anything except stare as he goes to the teacher, says something, points over at me. My skin flushes. The teacher nods quickly, claps him on the shoulder, and then he’s joining the other racers at the starting line. For most of them, this is only their first race. They’re clearly well rested, their hair combed back, shirts smooth, shielding their eyes from the sun, restless energy rippling off their bodies. Next to them, Julius moves with the calculated quiet of a predator. He lowers himself into the correct stance. Fingers touch the red synthetic surface. Shoulders tense. Eyes ahead.
The teacher raises the starting pistol.
Bang.
Cheers and screams erupt from the crowds in the stands as they take off. From the very beginning, he’s ahead by a good few feet. I’ve always raced beside him, only ever been granted flickers of movement in my peripheral vision, the threat of his footsteps next to me. I’ve never had the chance to observe him in action.
He makes it look easy. His every stride is long, deliberate, steady. He runs like there’s no gravity, like there’s no resistance.
We’re typically told to jog the one thousand meters, to save our stamina for the end, but he sprints the whole way without so much as faltering.
“Holy shit,” I hear someone yell from the sidelines. “Holy shit, dude. He’s going fast—”
“What’s gotten into him?”
When Julius crosses the finish line alone, the indisputable winner, to wild roars from the spectators, a grin splits over my face.
But I bite it back down when he walks straight over to me.
The gold medal swings from his neck, gleaming in the sunlight.
He takes it off, then holds it out toward me.
“Yours.”
I’d thought he was joking. “You . . . But you won it. You should keep it.”
He rolls his eyes. “I have so many of these lying around my house I don’t have any room left.”
“Okay, you’re just openly bragging now—”
“Only speaking the truth.”
“ I—”
“Just take it, Sadie.” He closes the distance between us and presses the medal into my palm. It’s still warm from his touch.
Smooth against my skin. I turn it over, unable to stop myself from admiring its faint glow, the shine of the gold. The weight of it in my hand. It’s prettier than any necklace I’ve ever seen. I open my mouth to thank him, but then he adds, carelessly, “Consider it compensation for all the awards I’ve taken from you.”
My gratitude curdles into a scoff on my tongue, and he laughs at the look on my face.
“You’re welcome,” he says.
“For being cocky?”
“That too.”
But I slide the medal into my back pocket, and even though I can’t decide what it really means— a gift, a form of compensation, proof of something— it’s somehow one of the best things I’ve ever received.
