You

20

A 2008 study in Germany did pretty much prove that a “runner’s high” is an actual medical condition. Unfortunately, for me, I must be only part human because I have been tracking Peach for eight days now and I have yet to experience the “runner’s high” that she talks about incessantly. It’s been almost two weeks with you staying at her house, just in case the bogeyman stalker returns. Ha. I’ve only seen you twice.

The first time, seven days ago: You invited me over because you’d gone back to your apartment to gather your things. You packed and asked me about my Thanksgiving plans. I told you I eat with Mr. Mooney and his family and you believed me. You said you are staying with Peach’s family because Peach gets depressed when they’re around.

We started to fool around and you stopped me and rubbed your hand on your forehead. I thought my life was over but you put your hand on me.

“This is my shit, Joe,” you said. “I get weird around the holidays because of my dad. It’s not the same since he died.”

I told you I understood and I did and then we watched Pitch Perfect and you hit pause when Peach called and you took the call and apologized to me and sent me home.

I hid outside your window and lucky for me, you put the phone on speaker. The small talk ended and Peach sighed. “So my mom had lunch with Benji’s mom.”

“Uh-huh,” you said.

“Well, don’t you want to know what she said?”

“Benji is a brat,” you said, in the calm way that means you don’t like him anymore. “And obviously, he’s kind of a druggie.”

Peach went for an override: “Well, a lot of artists are weak that way, Beck.”

You weren’t having it and you told her, “By now, he’s probably in China full of top-shelf heroin and drowning in Chinese pussy. I mean he’s definitely on something. His tweets are lame.”

No, Beck. My Benji tweets are not lame. They’re disarming. They’re dark.

And you just kept talking about him. “Honestly, Peach, the last thing I’m gonna do is worry about Benji,” you declared. “Did he worry about me?”

“Down, girl.”

“Sorry, I’m just packing and it’s never easy, packing.”

“I have nightgowns you can borrow. You can wear all my stuff.”

Man, she wants you and you said you had to go and then you wrote to me to apologize for the abrupt ending and I wrote back to you and told you not to worry and then you went to town on one of your pillows and I listened. And I liked it.

Then again, three days ago: You and me and Peach met at Serenfuckingdipity because their chocolate is the only chocolate that she can eat and she really needed chocolate what with all the drama over the stalker. We sat at a table meant for children or people who have children and I watched Peach inhale an oversized bowl of frozen hot chocolate and I know from reading about interstitial cystitis that you can’t do that if you have that condition (not disease, Peach, condition), and she talked more than both of us combined and when I tried to hold your hand under the table you patted my leg, no. Then afterward we kissed good-bye on the street and your lips were pursed so tight, they were puckered.

It has not been a happy Thanksgiving. The holiday comes like it always does. Peach’s family comes home and you are busy with them and I am not your boyfriend right now and you do not invite me to eat turkey with her family. Curtis wants extra days off and I work all the time. The first time I run, it’s because I might fucking kill Peach. I go for walks when everyone else is busy with their family and I find myself drawn to her building because you’re there. I run because Peach comes smashing out the door and almost sees me. And if she saw me hanging out around her building, she’d go all nuts and start thinking that I’m a stalker. So yes, for a second there, I ran as fast as I could into the woods after her because I was going to grab her by the neck and make her stop running once and for all.

And I kept running the next day and the day after that because I was disgusted by the fact that I couldn’t fucking keep up with her. It’s cold in the morning and my thrift store high-tops don’t cut it and I bought special running sneakers at a sporting goods store (shoot me, please), and now my feet are covered in blood just like Peach’s and by the time I get to the shop every day, I am beat. Whoever said running in the morning gives you energy never had a day job that involves customer service.

By day ten, I miss your face so much that the pictures of the pictures don’t do it anymore. We talk every day, but you are different now that you pretty much live at Peach’s. I miss you and me at Bemelmans Bar and I go there one night alone and feel sorry for myself and get a nasty waiter who keeps asking me if I have a friend coming. It’s a dark lonely time and I really can’t go on like this, Beck.

On day eleven, I look like a real runner in my new sweats and kicks. I even have a freaking sweatband wrapped around my head. Peach gets a late start because you girls did some drinking last night, as I saw on your Twitter:

Vodka or Gin? Vodka and Gin is more like it. #girlsnightin

She’s slow and off and definitely hungover. She bends over like she’s gonna vomit and most people avoid high-impact exercise. It is cold and my legs are humming and I am sick of running through the woods every day. But one thing about running that I will agree to: It is fucking addictive. Less than two weeks into my life as a runner, and I don’t need to set an alarm clock.

She always starts out slow before sunrise with Elton John singing it’s four o’clock in the morning damn it, listen to me good and I know the song so well by now—someone saved my life tonight, tonight—and it’s not the kind of music that makes you want to work up a sweat. The reason I can hear her Elton John is that she has no regard for shared public space. Dignified respectful citizens of the world use earbuds or headphones to privatize their music. But not Peach. She tucks her iPhone into a band that she wraps around her upper arm. She has a special speaker attached and the music blasts. When people sneer at her or object to this, which has happened (I fucking love New Yorkers), she doesn’t apologize. She tells them to deal with it. And the music! The Elton John is slow and thus contrary and the exercise is a punishment to her body. She is joyless and ugly when she huffs and puffs and most girls run on well-lit paths, but Peach runs where she doesn’t belong, alone, save Elton John (you’re a butterfly and butterflies are free to fly, fly away, high away, bye-bye), and I follow her each day because you are not a butterfly as long as she exists. You are not free to fly, fly away because she is a dangerous fucking pervert, photographing you, coveting you. Is there anything sicker than photographing someone while she’s sleeping?

I have to stop her and I have to save you and I run faster and I am gaining on her, I can smell her now, sweaty, and Elton is louder now (someone saved my life tonight, toniiiiiight), and I am your someone and I will save your life. This is it. I summon all my strength and I charge at her and slam her bony body into the ground. She screams but the sound cuts off as her head thuds against a rock. She’s out, cold. Elton is sleeping with myself tonight, saved in time, thank God my music’s still alive. If only Peach could have been more like him: honest, grateful, true.

The music is still going and I’m breathing so heavily and shaking and I want to make the music stop but fingerprints are dangerous. But now that her defenses are gone I understand her music. It’s a security system. She was preparing for a moment like this. And while it’s annoying, shoving your music on other people, there is something intelligent and bold about it too. It’s a shame that Peach’s parents are such motherfuckers because there was potential for her to be a good person, an innovator. I let her music play on as a tribute, the irony, of course, being that the music did not save her life. But hey, she tried.

Nobody will be that surprised to hear about a dead girl in Central Park. Women who run alone in the dark deprive themselves of their senses. It’s a dangerous thing to do, running alone, and as the reality of her body in the woods sinks in, I quicken my pace. I have never run this fast, never known the depth of my lungs and I make it onto the street and disappear into the subway and now I might throw up and I heave and I smile.

Those Germans were right after all. There really is such a thing as a runner’s high.

And it’s a good thing that I’m a bit high on life because a little while later, I get a rather upsetting text from you:

Can’t get together tonight. Am at NY Presbyterian. Peach

She is supposed to be in a morgue, not a hospital. Because I have no idea what happened, because I am not a stalker I respond surprised and inquire about details. You tell me that she got attacked in the park. But there’s good news too, according to you:

She’s lucky. A girl found her right after it happened. Otherwise she might be, you know . . .

I write back:

But she’s gonna be okay?

You write back:

Well, physically yes. But emotionally, this is hard. She’ll be in the hospital for a while.

You’d never be talking to me if Peach got a glimpse of me, so at least I can be grateful for that. I offer to help and you insist that you don’t need me but I will show you that I am a good boyfriend and I will look beyond the injustice of her getting a bed in a hospital. She only gets to stay because her dad is on the board of the hospital. And it’s not fair to think of all the genuinely sick people turned away. But nothing is fair.