Since You've Been Gone

“I thought that was you,” Frank said as he straightened up and headed toward me, dashing the last of these hopes. As he got closer, I could hear that he was a little winded, his breath sounding labored. His hair was dark red with sweat, and he was wearing a faded blue T-shirt that read Tri-State Latin Decathlon . . . Decline if you dare! He was wincing as he walked closer to me. “This is all your fault, you know.”

I just blinked at him for a moment. I had no idea what I’d done, or what he was referring to. “Me?”

He ran his hand over his face and through his hair. “Yeah,” he said. “I seem to remember you said you’d help me learn to run.”

I opened my mouth and then closed it again, not sure what to say to this. It wasn’t like he’d found me and asked me to do this. Was I supposed to have tracked him down and offered my running services, or something? “Sorry,” I stammered, as I looked back to the lovely empty stretch of road behind me, wishing I’d turned away a second earlier, or that Frank had just tied his laces more tightly.

He smiled and shook his head, and it sounded like he was getting his breath back. “I’m kidding,” he said. “I’m just so terrible at this.”

I nodded and looked down at the road, at my sneakers on the asphalt, and took a breath. “Well, I should keep—”

“Are you going this way?” Frank asked, pointing in the direction I’d been heading. I didn’t know if I could say no. If I did, I would pretty much be admitting that I was choosing not to run with him.

“Yeah,” I finally said, aware that the answer didn’t require nearly as much time to think about it as I’d given it.

“Me too,” he said. He bent down to tighten his other shoelace and looked up at me. “Want to run together for a bit? Unless I’d slow you down,” he added quickly.

“That’s okay,” I said, then wondered if this response had been rude. “I mean, I’m sure you won’t. I’m not in the best shape myself.”

“Excellent,” Frank said. He nodded ahead, and I started running again, Frank falling into step next to me, groaning a little as he started to match my pace. We were running side by side, with me closer to the side of the road and Frank closer to the center line. We’d only been running for a few seconds before I noticed that he had started to drift nearer to me, so I moved over to the left to compensate. I thought this was just a one-time thing until Frank started to drift toward me again, and when I tried to move over this time, I was now running on the dirt.

“Um,” I said, trying not to cough at the clouds that I was kicking up. “Frank?”

Frank glanced over at me and seemed to realize what was happening. “God, I’m sorry,” he said. “Maybe we should switch places?”

“Sounds good,” I said, as I jogged around to run on the outside of him. After we’d been running in silence for a few minutes, I looked over at him, then straight ahead again. I had no idea what the etiquette here was. Should we start listening to our own music again? Or maybe we should just keep running silently next to each other. But wasn’t that kind of weird?

“Bug Juice?” Frank asked. I glanced over at him, surprised, and then I looked down and realized I was wearing the original Broadway cast T-shirt, the one that had been nightshirt-size on me when I’d first gotten it, but now fit me like a regular T-shirt.

“Oh,” I said. “Um, yeah.” I kept on running, Frank keeping pace next to me, and I heard, in the silence that stretched out, that I really needed to give him some kind of explanation; otherwise, it would just seem like I was a really big fan of a play that had closed years ago. “My, um, parents wrote it.” I figured that was all he needed to know; I didn’t have to tell him that the play had been inspired by my experiences, that Cecily, the lead, was based on me. At least, she was in the beginning of the play. She starts out shy, but over the course of it, she becomes confident and daring and brave, finally engineering the coup and takedown of Camp Greenleaf.

Frank’s eyebrows shot up. “Really?” he asked. “That’s so cool. I’m pretty sure I saw a production of it. I would have been like twelve or something. . . .” I nodded. This wasn’t that surprising. Between the Broadway run and the endless regional and community theater productions, most people had at least some familiarity with the play. I braced myself for the inevitable follow-up question. “Have they written anything else?”

I looked to the road ahead for a moment before answering. This was the problem, I’d learned, with sudden and unexpected success. My parents had been writing plays for ten years before Bug Juice made it to Broadway, and they’d written plays since. But nothing had been as big a hit. It might have been partially my parents’ fault for following up their crowd-pleaser about kids at summer camp with an incredibly depressing play about a suicidal country-and-western singer. “They’re actually working on something now,” I said, happy that I could answer like this, without having to go into details about their less-successful plays that very few people had heard of.

“Oh yeah?” he asked. He looked over at me, and I could hear that his breath was starting to get labored again.

I nodded. “It’s about Tesla.” Frank nodded, like this meant something to him. “You know who that is?” I asked, so surprised by this I didn’t stop myself.

“Sure,” Frank said, “He was a genius. Responsible for stuff like X-rays and radar. Way before his time.” I nodded, realizing that for a moment I’d forgotten who I was talking to. He might have been red-faced and struggling to talk, but this was still Frank Porter, who was going to be in the running for valedictorian next year. “Can we,” he gasped, and I could hear how ragged his breathing was. “Can we just maybe walk for a bit?”

“Sure,” I said quickly. I had been feeling pretty winded myself, and while I was in better running shape than Frank, I was still struggling. We slowed to a walk, Frank taking in big gulps of air.

“Sorry about that,” he said when he’d gotten his breath back, wiping his sleeve across his face. “I’m probably holding you up. Feel free, if you need to go faster.”

“It’s okay,” I said, then realized a moment later that I could have taken the out he was giving me and gone ahead on my own, with no hard feelings. But I could actually have used some walking time myself, even though I knew from experience how hard it was to start running again if you’ve been walking for too long. But right now, my legs felt like they were made of lead, and I knew it didn’t seem likely I could start running again, not without a break.