Misty the Miler - Part 1

An original work of short fiction. Tagline: Misty Mattis has never backed down on the track, but two weeks before the state championship, an injury leaves her struggling for answers.

Shit. 

The pinch shoots through my right calf as I round the bend. I’m compromised, a machine with a gear that’s sprung loose. The final straightaway stretches out in front of me, the track awash in the stadium lights. My body charts the familiar passage: through the sea oxygen debt, my acid-flushed legs pounding the last few yards of real estate. 

Even on my off days, what I bring is more than enough. But now, as the roar pulses from the bleachers, I feel the heat of Holly Geissler rising on my right shoulder.

Holly Geissler, the platinum blonde with sun-kissed California skin. She’s powering past me, and we lock eyes for an instant. In that elvish face of hers, I read her disbelief. She knows this shouldn’t be happening. Three times we’ve met face to face, and three times I’ve crushed her. 

I replay those wins in my mind as her nubile body breaks the tape ahead of me. I fall forward on my hands and knees, sucking air. Ari and the rest of the girls follow, one by one, until the last straggler is across the line. Holly is exultant, blowing kisses to the crowd like she’s some goddamn Olympic medalist.

Ari pulls me to my feet, a smile pouring across her freckled cheeks, green eyes gleaming. She’s bouncing on cloud nine. “Oh my god Misty,” she says, “we’re going to state!” She wraps me up, but I’m delirious, my arms limp. Tepidly, I pat her on the back and tell her that I’m proud of her, which I am, but my world has been reduced to the stab of pain in my calf, my mind racing ahead to two weeks from now, when Holly and I will meet again. One last dance for the title of best high school miler in Washington state. 

Holly doesn’t even look winded. She’s glowing, even, as she embraces her cheer squad. She literally brought cheerleaders from her school. Seriously, who the hell does that? It reminds me of all the reasons why I’m allowed to hate her. She’s an interloper from Orange County, a TikTok attention whore who epitomizes the age-old maxim that sex sells, and the whole world is buying. More proof of the decadence of late-stage capitalism, as Bryce would say. She’s a pampered, private school trust fund baby who’s never had to work for anything in her life. 

Me? I’m Misty fucking Mattis, Tacoma-born, a blue-collar daughter. No silver spoons in my kitchen drawer. I’ve sweat it out for everything, every day of my life. 

And still she beat me. And god, my calf hurts. I limp my way to the bleachers, where Coach Anders is waiting. Whatever consolation he’s giving, I don’t hear it. I’m looking up for mom in the crowd. 

Undefeated for the whole season, and I pick today for a royal fuck up. Today, mom’s forty-first birthday, when I have dinner reserved for us at Stanley and Seafort’s. Today, when I can’t even look at her without the screws being put to my chest, without my mind sliding into the oblivion that sits just outside of view. 

I watch as she descends the stadium steps, slowly. Her hair is already thinning. I see myself in those cascading curls, the impish ears poking out, the narrow-set eyes, the androgynous, boyish jawline. 

She is me, two decades into the future. And I think, what a fearsome thing it is to be a daughter, to live in the space between the darkness and the light. 

* * *

“You left it all on the track,” she says. “That’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

Mom’s insistent, but I’m in no mood for platitudes. I stab at the steak and potatoes on my plate, eating ravenously but without pleasure. Outside, the town that birthed me glitters in the dark. From our window on the hill, the artery of Interstate 5 below gushes with commuters, while container cranes at the Port of Tacoma burn like phosphorescent bulbs. Life goes on, somewhere out there. 

“I should have won,” I say. “I had her on the ropes until the last lap.”

“I know.” 

“I don’t get it. I put in the work so this kind of thing wouldn’t happen. And it still happened.”

“We’re gonna do everything we can, ok? I’ll make an appointment for PT on Monday.”

“If I can’t beat Holly now, how will I beat her at state?” 

She gives me the mom stare, the nonverbal equivalent of you’ve gotta be shitting me. I brace myself for the haymaker of common sense. 

“Misty, you’ve won twelve races this year. Your personal best in the mile is four minutes and forty-eight seconds. Holly’s is four minutes and fifty-three seconds. You’re one of the best high school milers in the country, full stop. Even if you have to take a week off, you’ll be fine.”

Even if. I reach down to adjust the bag of ice strapped to my calf. I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be injured, to wonder obsessively about when you’ll take the next step pain-free. 

“What if I can’t run for the next two weeks? What if I’m done for the season?” 

“Well, we’re not there yet. It’s probably just a minor strain, nothing that a few days of rest can’t fix. I know it’s a big deal now that you didn’t win the district meet. But a few years from now, Misty, you’re gonna look back at this…”

Years from now. Already I’ve tuned out whatever else she has to say. Years from now? I can’t think beyond two days from now, two weeks from now, two months from now. I know the statistics. Five years from now, there’s a thirty-two percent chance I could be sitting at this table, alone. 

“….when you lose a race, you learn from it, you know? A race is — ”

“Fuck the race!” I shout. We’re tip-toeing around it. 

Forks and spoons around us clatter on white linen. A roomful of stares bears down on me, the good patrons of Stanley and Seafort’s transfixed by this foul-mouthed teenager. I pretend not to notice. 

“Mom,” I say. “I can’t lose you, okay?”

And there it is. The true villain called out, even if I can’t name it for what it is, even if the shape of the word itself catches in my throat. I taste the salt streaming down my face, and the world outside devolves into a canvas, white lights from the port smeared on black. 

White on black, like the mass on the mammogram. 

Mom is out of her seat, and I am a little girl again, enveloped in her, the floodgates breaking open to a biblical deluge. 

“I’m not going anywhere,” she says. “I’m not going anywhere. We’re gonna fight this together, you and I. We’re both fighters. That’s what we do.”

I cling to each word even as my faith in them fritters away. 

* * *

Sunday morning. It’s dawn, and I’m up, throwing on a sports bra and running shorts. I’ve always thought of it as the hour of ghosts, when the departed snoop on those they left behind. Maybe it’s the cemetery two blocks away that got me thinking this way. Like a constant preview of where we all go, eventually. 

Standing up, my calf is still tight. It’s been less than twelve hours since the race. I unearth the foam roller from a pile of dirty clothes. Carefully, deliberately, I put my calf onto the roller and raise my body up on two hands, rocking back and forth to massage the hell out of that knot. Maybe that’s all it needs. Maybe it’s just a minor thing to be managed, and all the freaking out last night was an overreaction. 

I’m out the door, setting off down the sidewalk into a morning still laden with the residual heat of yesterday. There’s a sharp spasm, then a dull, simmering roar as my body screams what the fuck are you doing. 

It’s no use. I grind to a halt after two blocks. I scream so loud I look for cracks in the sky, as if demanding that the universe, or God, see me in my distress. Real goddamn mature. I’m half-afraid I’ve awoken the neighbors, but the blinds stay pulled, and I’m alone. 

I limp back to the house and fire off some texts to Coach Anders. He responds right away with a pool workout, something that won’t aggravate the calf. Stay off it for the next three days, he says. Cross-train like a fiend and then we’ll reevaluate. 

I shower and send Bryce a text. Hey, I’m coming over at 11. Lunch, then Fortnight. 

* * *

I’m sprawled out on a bean bag, mashing the Playstation controller. It’s man-cave vibes all around down here. A bar in the corner, liquor behind a glass cabinet, pool table. Discarded poker chips and a trace of cigarette smoke hint at recent festivities. Bryce’s dad, a burned out lawyer, is known to get rowdy on Friday nights. 

Now it’s just Bryce and I, and our digital avatars. We’re fueled up on tuna fish sandwiches and tortilla chips, taking on all-comers from the four corners of the gaming universe. Fortnight is a straight dopamine rush — my vice of choice. Bryce’s too. 

Our characters soar across the screen in high-def glory, laying siege to a medieval castle. A pixelated version of me tumbles side to side in blue body armor, strapped with a sniper rifle. No busted leg for this badass. Just a hunter who dispatches her foes cleanly and efficiently. I imagine myself coded in ones and zeroes, incorporeal, unbound by the limits of flesh and blood. Where the solution to death is infinite respawn, where there’s a redo for every failure. 

How long have we been at this? An hour? We’ve said almost nothing. I take a stab at breaking the ice. 

“It’s gonna be ninety today, and it’s not even June.”

Bryce perks up from his screen-induced stupor. “Welcome to the latter stages of the Anthropocene! It’s gonna get worse every year. Did you hear about the heat wave in India last week?”

“No.” 

“A thousand dead. From heatstroke. People baked in their homes.” 

“Jesus.”

“Yep, the boomers have fucked the planet, and now we’re all reaping what they’ve sowed. You know Gina, the exchange girl from Micronesia? Her country’s gonna be underwater in five years.” 

“Sounds like we’re screwed.”

“Oh yeah, dude. Beyond screwed.”

“What should we do then?” 

There’s no immediate response, and I picture the gears whirling inside Bryce’s mind. I think back to that day last year, when I found Bryce sitting alone at lunch. I plopped down next to him and asked why he was being a weirdo, munching on potato chips while highlighting pages in The Communist Manifesto. He gave me an impromptu lecture on dialectic materialism and the inevitability of class struggle. And so we became friends.  

Bryce’s avatar, a Mexican farm worker wielding a hammer and sickle, slays a samurai cowering behind a pine tree. He lets out a victorious whoop. 

“Here’s what we do,” he says. “Unite the downtrodden masses and overthrow the capitalist degenerates that run the world. Then we — oh shit shit!”

From a castle window, someone with a laser cannon zaps him into oblivion. I get blown up by a bazooka a moment later, and the clock counts down to the next respawn. I ponder the irony of an anticapitalist enjoying the fruits of mass consumerism. 

“Didn’t those same capitalist degenerates invent Fortnight?” I ask. 

“Right. It’s opium for the masses. Designed to anesthetize our generation to our real problems. Distract us in the digital world, while they zip around on their private jets and line their pockets on the backs of working people.”

“So if TikTok is opium for the masses, I guess that makes Holly Geissler a drug dealer.” 

Bryce snorts his agreement, then pauses the game to look at me. “She’s a straight up kingpin,” he says. “Did you see her latest upload?”

“No, not yet.” 

We both pull out our phones. I’ve been holding off, but it has to be done. I’ve chosen to follow GoodGollyHolly16 on TikTok, but only for purposes of opposition research. At least that’s what I tell myself. Know thine enemy.

The video is vintage Holly. Pouted lips with the flirty head-tilt. Blushed cheeks, electric blue eyeliner. Supernatural abs. There’s a quick montage of her season, ending with her breaking the tape ahead of me. Now she prances around her living room in her sports bra and bun-huggers, lip syncing to some vapid reggaeton banger. 

It already has fifty thousand views, and it’s not even twenty-four hours old.  

“What a smug bitch,” I say. 

“Still,” he says. 

I give him an accusatory squint. “You think she’s hot, don’t you?”

Bryce shrugs. “Only because the ruling class has pre-programmed my brain with a slick, corporatized ideal of feminine beauty. Look, she’s the kind of girl that overcompensates because she’s secretly afraid she’s not good enough. That’s why you’re gonna beat her ass at state.” 

“Right. Well, she beat my ass at districts. So guess I need to return the favor.” 

Bryce resumes the game, and the arena refreshes to a planet of foreboding jungle, dual moons set against an orange sky. A dozen other users materialize from the ether, and our avatars rush towards the looming pandemonium. 

“Sorry I couldn’t make it to the race,” he says. “There was a situation with my mom we had to take care of.”

“Oh no, is she okay?” 

“I don’t know. They told us they’re adjusting her meds. I’m going to see her again on Friday.”

“Shit, I’m sorry Bryce. Let me know how that goes.” 

“Do you, uh — want to come with me?”

I’m careening through another battle royale, showering the screen with laser fire. I allocate a modicum of brain energy to his request. It’s not the first time he’s asked, and each time I’ve been noncommittal. 

“I’ll let you know,” I say. 

It’s a cop-out, and we both know it. I’m too chickenshit to tell him that Western State creeps me out. A three-hundred bed psych ward. Some, like Bryce’s mom, are more or less terminal, meaning the hospital is basically a prison and a mausoleum. 

It’s back to silence between us. I rack up a string of quick kills and think: how did we end up like this, the fellowship of sick and dying moms?