The boys who live downstairs are always outside, leaning against the dormitory: the heaviest smokers I know.
They smoke. They smile. They laugh. Seven boys.
I was just like them. I stood outside. I smoked. I smiled. I laughed. I was with the boys who live downstairs.
But I quit smoking. Because my mother kept telling me I have the body of a runner. So I started running.
Whenever the boys who live downstairs see me running, they crack: Hey! Whatcha running from! I laugh because I miss them.
On Wednesday afternoon, my shorts are short, and I go my usual route. I’m running the country roads. Sun on my neck.
The dogs make me out, as they always do, and start barking.
They’re always barking up a storm. But one bark feels closer. A big yellow boy with hot teeth––he hears my blood, he materializes, he charges––and I’ve never run so fast.
I do not want facial scarring. A childhood friend of my mother was never the same. I do not want facial scarring. I would never be the same.
I find myself panting on a green lawn. A man and a woman are examining a car.
I interrupt them. I think I need help. My predator looks gone, but I am so not going back that way.
I introduce myself: a student, a runner, chased by a dog. There’s no need to explain the boys who live downstairs because they’re not here.
The house looks well-kept. The woman has a glass eye. Whiter, shinier than the other.
The man offers to drive me back. He opens the passenger door. The woman mentions going swimming in the pond across the road.
Maybe, next summer.
The pond looks foul. She swims in that pond? And we drive off.
We pass some roadkill hard to cry over. We pass a peeling billboard for a product that never stood a chance.
The man wants a new car. He mentions that. He likes the same music my father likes. He turns up the volume. He places his hand on my upper thigh.
He breathes; I can’t; he won't leave a mark.
I shut my eyes. I blame that dog. His teeth.
Split seconds and decades slip away, and nobody has given me this much attention in a while, except for the seven boys outside––and I like when they call after me.
I will throw rocks at the well-kept house? Later, tonight. The glass-eye woman will be sleeping.
The man drops me off––the main entrance of campus––and I thank him.
I say, “Thank you very much. Thank you.”
