The man sat in silence, looking down towards his feet. The hot, humid air of a long August day jumped at his pale skin, the heat hardly bearable. Sweat dripped from his forehead, rolled down his head, and off of his chin, creating a small puddle on the ground between his feet before it evaporated away.
He was ready to run. His headphones, plugged into his ears played the same song on repeat. He was in his own world while he sat, thoughts racing through his head, as he built up the necessary intensity for what he was about to do. The song ended. It started again. He was ready to run.
He opened the door, and hit the wall of humidity. Thirty-nine degrees, and it was only 11 in the morning. He looked around and the streets were empty, save for some children playing the sprinkler.
He stared for a second; nostalgia washed over him.
“She looks a lot like--” he whispered, not daring to finish his thought. He didn’t have time for this. His routine had been interrupted. He restarted the song, and made his way down the pavement to the sidewalk.
He recalled the route in his head. Three blocks, then left - two more; take a right; left; left - 2 blocks, right, two left, and four left to get back home. A 2 mile run. Not bad for a Saturday. He checked his laces, and he was off.
He tried focusing on the music. It played a heavy beat, which he could feel every time he took another step forward. His heart was beating fast. Sweat continued to pour. He continued to run. And he ran, until he needed to stop for breath.
He stood at the corner of George Street and Fourth Avenue, and took a moment to look around him. No one around -- not even a car on the road, until just when he was about to continue on his run, he saw someone. He saw her.
She was looking right at him, and running the way he had just come. It took a second for his mind to register who he was looking at, and for him to collect his thoughts. “It. Can’t. Be.” He thought out loud.
He gathered himself and started sprinting away. Past the parked cars. Past the turn he was supposed to make. Past the houses and past the point of exhaustion. He looked behind him, and she was still there, following him, matching him step for step.
He took the next left, then a right, then a left. She was still there. He continued to run, but his pace slowed. His sprint dissolved to a jog; his jog to a stumbling walk. He collapsed on the ground and vomited on the grass.
“Shit,” he tried to yell, but it came out in a whisper. “Why are you here?” He asked, directing attention to his stalker.
“You looked lonely,” she replied. “I thought you wanted to see me.”
“And why would you think that?” He shot back, in an angry murmur. “Why would I want you here?” He looked for a place to sit, so he could gather himself. He regained enough breath to ask, “How did you even-”
“I have my ways,” she interrupted. “Maybe you shouldn’t spend so much time thinking about me”
The wall was broken. The houses in front of him faded into trees. He was no longer sitting on the sidewalk, but instead a log. In front of his eyes, he saw her become younger. Her hair grew longer, time worked in reverse to leave him staring at a twelve year old in track clothes.
“Elizabeth...” he whispered, despite having recovered from his sprint. Elizabeth looked back at him with a smile.
“Yes,” She talked slowly, innocently. Like a child. “Why do you look surprised?”
He looked down at himself, and jumped up from the log, shocked. He was his prepubescent self again. He looked around him, and saw the Glen around him.
“Are you there?” Elizabeth asked, as she walked up and waved a hand in front of his face. “Hello?”
Bewildered, he responded. “What am I doing here?”
“Do you need water? You don’t seem all right”
“No, I’m fine.” He sat down, and looked at the girl in front of him.
Beautiful blonde hair, striking green in her eyes. He thought to himself. Just like I remember. He spoke again. “I’m dreaming, aren’t I?”
She looked at him with a young smile. “Of course you are. Why else would I be here?”
“Well, I thought that, maybe, you had, never mind.”
“You thought that I was going to be looking for you? Why would I care about you”
“It’s a dream. I can think whatever I want”
“You think that I’m just going to appear out of thin air? You think that we have any sort of connection? We saw each other for one week every year. That’s hardly enough time to build a friendship, let alone a bond.”
“Fuck you, then. Let me hold on to this hope.”
“Hold onto it? You’ve held into it. The point of having a dream is to chase it, not sit on a hope that one day everything will magically be better. You want to talk to me? Why don’t you take initiative, or just fucking forget it?”
The words coming out of Elizabeth’s mouth were now his. He was sitting on the sidewalk yelling into the street. He collapsed, partially out of embarrassment, but mostly because he was angry. How dare she. She was his -- his mind’s interpretation of a girl he hadn’t seen in years. How could his mind even suggest forgetting about her?
He collected his emotions, and was running again, but he wasn’t running back along his route; he wasn’t even running home. He was running away. Away from the emotion, away from the sadness and the anger and the pain of not having the closure he needed to move on. As he ran, his demons continued to chase him, biting at his heels. Never popular. Too anxious about trying anything new. All he knew was running, because he had done it his whole life.
The thought hit him like a brick wall, and he tumbled head over heels. Then came the train of emotions, as it caught up and ran him over. He sat and cried. He cried for his lost chance at love. He cried for his introversion and unease. He cried because he was sitting crying in the middle of a neighbourhood that he had never been in before, feeling the stares of people who weren’t there glaring at him.
Conversations jumped back and forth in his head. “Why do I fail?” “Because I don’t try” “Why don’t I try?” “Because fuck you that’s why!” “That’s not an answer.” “Because I’m anxious, and shy, and unpopular and I don’t fit in and I am in love with the idea that a person I knew when I was fucking 12 is out there thinking about me now”
At that, he sat up. The tears stopped coming as the realization started. He was in control. He stood up and started walking back in the direction of his house, with a new found determination. An hour later, he walked up his driveway and sat down in his living room, a phonebook sitting on his lap. He turned each page carefully, determined to find the answers he needed, but also scared of what he was going to discover.
He ripped through the pages. A. B. Bi. There! There it was, sitting right in front of him. The number he had dreamt of having for so long. Her identity, sitting there in the yellow pages. He pressed each number carefully, taking his time. His heart was beating at a hundred miles a minute. Each second felt like an eternity, and each button pressed only made him more nervous.
His finger reached for the call button, and he pressed it quickly, his hand trembling. One ring.
Another.
A third.
Finally, someone picked up at the other end.
“Hello, who is this?” The voice was distinctly not the one he wanted to hear.
“I’m sorry, is Elizabeth there?”
“Of course. Let me get her,” The voice said calmly. Quieter he heard the yell he was waiting patiently for. “Liz, phone!”
Time stood still. His heart stopped. The cliché’s didn’t end until he heard someone else’s voice on the other end.
“Hi? Who is this? Why are you calling?” The voice was polite; sweet, even.
“Hey, Elizabeth.” He whispered into the microphone. “Hey.”
“What do you want?” She spoke calmly, professionally. Every word seemed like it was its own thought. “Who is this?”
“Um...” He stutters, trying to think of what to say despite how anxious he feels. “This is an old friend...”
