Page 50 of I Would Stay Forever
I didn’t think about where. I never did. Just forward, faster, away.
The wind stung my cheeks as I picked up speed, lungs working overtime, legs burning, eyes blurring slightly from the sharp morning light. I was wearing the worst possible running outfit—my school uniform—but I didn’t let that slow me down. Houses blurred past. Lawns. Mailboxes. Sidewalk cracks. I ran until I couldn’t hear anything but my heartbeat pounding in my head. I ran until I thought I might collapse and then I pushed myself even longer.
It was only as my steps slowed and the stitch in my side became bad enough for me for me to think about stopping that I heard the footfalls behind me. It wouldn’t have been weird, except that I wasn’t on a residential street anymore. I was on the outskirts of my neighborhood where the houses gave way to a ravine and park.
AKA pretty much the best place to get murdered.
I spun around, almost twisting my ankle in the process, ready to scream at the top of my lungs, but whatever scream I had died in my throat as I came face to face with Dean Graham. And because I apparently had no brain-to-mouth filter, I said, “You’re following me?” As if there was no other reason he could be in the park.
He didn’t seem offended, though. Between deep breaths, he said, “Not in a creepy way. Just in a friendly-concern way.”
I wasn’t sure what to make of that, so I decided not to acknowledge it at all. I pushed past him and started walking back up the trail in the direction of the road. I had no idea what time it was right now, but I did know we needed to be getting back if I didn’t want to be late yet again. I was just glad we’d gotten up early for breakfast this morning so we could spend a rare morning home with Mum, who was often either working or sleeping in because she’d worked late.
Dean fell into step beside me and neither of us spoke as we made our way back onto the sidewalk. I was glad that this was one of the times where I actually had a sense of where I was and how to get home, because there had been a few mornings of the summer where I’d been stuck walking in circles without my phone to act as a GPS.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Dean asked after we’d walked a block away from the park. I spared a glance at him, but the concern in his eyes made me turn forward again. I didn’t wantto talk about it, or at least I thought I didn’t, but the words came tumbling out before I could stop them.
“Imogen broke her wrist,” I said. “She asked me to come get her at Urgent Care.”
Dean hummed but didn’t say anything. I wondered if he was waiting for the rest of the story. It had been a few days since I told him about the panic runs. Was it because I told him about them that he decided to follow me?
“She was on her way to see Dad,” I said and I felt a perverse sense of satisfaction when I heard his sharp inhale of breath at the words. Like somehow the whole situation was bettered by someone else being just as shocked about it as I was. “Apparently she tried to call him first when she got hurt but he missed the call, so then she called me. But then he got her voicemail saying what happened and…”
I couldn’t even get the words out. It felt like such a pathetically small thing—I saw my Dad—but it felt like I was being strangled as I tried to force myself to say it. With that came the all-consuming hatred that had washed over me many times across the past few weeks. Mum told me once about the five stages of grief, and sometimes I wondered if I was going through them with him. If I was, I seemed to be stuck onanger. I hated him for what he did, but even more, I hated myself for even giving him the power to hurt me like this. I hated this stupid town for being small enough that Imogen could go visit him at all.
“He looked so normal,” I said. “Like nothing had even happened.”
“Did you talk to him?”
“No.” I pressed my tongue into the side of my cheek as I replayed last night’s events in my mind. “He tried to talk to me but I ran.”
Dean laughed under his breath. “Glad I’m not the only one who gets that treatment.”
I flushed as I remembered the day we were assigned our group project and I’d pretended to get sick so I could run off. Definitely not the most mature way for me to have handled the situation, and I was sure it was a bit of a bruise to his ego, but I’d panicked. Much like I panicked last night.
“I’m sorry about that,” I said sheepishly. “But I guess when it comes to fight or flight, I’m firmly in the camp offlight.”
I half-expected him to make a crack about me running this morning, but he stayed silent. But I thought about it all the same—all the running I was doing in my life. Running from Dean, from my dad, from my feelings at home, and soon from this town altogether.
“Maybe that’s why I’m interested in going to B.C. for university,” I said, my brain-to-mouth filter letting me down again. “Because I want to run from here and that’s as far as I can get. Somewhere where the memory of him can’t reach me.”
I regretted speaking the words aloud pretty much as soon as I said them. They made me sound like I was worse off than I was and Dean might tell me to see a counselor or something. But it felt so right to confide in him. Not only was he the only person who knew exactly what happened that night, but he was the only one who had been trying to check in with me since it happened. Maybe I was being stupid by thinking he actually cared, but I couldn’t help but want to share every small piece of myself with him.
“I think about leaving too,” Dean said, breaking through my anxious thoughts.
I blinked in surprise, sure that I heard him wrong, and turned to look at him. He wasn’t looking at me anymore, just staring off into the distance. We were close to home now and I strangely already found myself missing this. Missing him, beforehe was even away from my side. The feeling was so strange that I immediately tried to push it out of my mind.
“It’s because of my parents too but not the same as you,” Dean continued. “Sometimes, I feel like the only way I can find out who I really am is if I’m somewhere they can’t scrutinize my every move.”
I thought of what he’d told me in the library on Monday, about how his parents were obsessed with the image of perfection. I couldn’t imagine how stifling it must be to make every decision based on how your parents thought the rest of the world might perceive it.
“It’s not just them, either,” he added. “It’s the whole town, you know? Everyone here thinks they know you. What you should want. Who you are. I feel like if I stayed, I’d end up folding into whatever version of myself they’ve already decided on.”
“Don’t,” I said without thinking. He glanced at me in confusion. “Don’t fold, I mean.”
I shrugged, trying to act nonchalant when I was feeling anything but. My heart was still pounding even though we’d finished running ages ago and just the act of his eyes locking on mine made my stomach turn into butterflies again.
“I kinda like you as you are,” I said.
