Breathe, Annie, Breathe (12 page)

“They won just for you,” I joked.

“They could’ve lost for all I care,” he whispered, softly running his knuckles against my arm. “You made my birthday perfect.”

When I got home later that night, somehow my mother just
knew
. It must’ve been because I was playing with my necklace—it has always been my nervous tick. She didn’t smile, and she didn’t say anything except that she’d get me a doctor’s appointment.

I’ve always been grateful I could talk to her about anything. But I can’t talk to anyone about this. About how I fooled around with Jeremiah and it seemed different, it scared me, it made me feel like a bad person, it felt great.

But as she searches my face, I get the feeling she already knows.

•••

When I get home, it’s time to work out.

Matt’s exercise schedule is intense. Some weekdays I run five miles. Others I run seven. Sometimes I don’t have to run at all. Today is one of those days. But that doesn’t mean I get to slack off.

Matt told me, “You need to work your heart hard. So even if you’re not running, you need to ride a bike or swim or even go for a walk.”

Since we don’t have a garage, I keep my bike in my room. I bought it used a few months ago, specifically for training, but now I’m thinking I might ride it at college. Biking usually clears my thoughts just like running does. Tonight, however, after a day of shopping and that dreadful hepatitis B shot, I can’t get my mind off leaving home next month.

It’s a sweltering July evening, so hot the minute I step outside with my bike, sweat beads on my forehead. I climb aboard and start pedaling through Oakdale, passing by the basketball court where some of the neighborhood guys are playing a pick-up game.

My knee aches a little each time I pedal. Did I tweak something at yesterday’s personal training session with Matt? I reach into my CamelBak’s side pocket, pull out two ibuprofen, and swallow them.

I turn out onto the four-lane and work my way through town. I wave at Joe as I pass Joe’s All-You-Can-Eat Pasta Shack, where I like to carbo-load on Fridays at lunch before my Saturday long runs. I zip past Madison Street Elementary, where I won the
Friendliest
superlative at sixth-grade graduation. Even after I graduated there, I would go swing on the swings and twirl around on the merry-go-round. At fourteen, when Kyle and I first started dating and needed our privacy, sometimes we’d go to the playground. I would sit on the swing, he’d twist up the chains and let go, and I’d fly around in a circle, squealing. Then we’d kiss as fireflies flickered on and off in the moonlight like floating Christmas lights.

It’s weird to think that in a month, I’ll be living in Murfreesboro, I won’t be in Franklin, and I won’t be a kid anymore. Leaving elementary school and going to middle school was a big change—I remember freaking out that we wouldn’t have recess anymore. When would I play with my friends? I worried that girls coming from the other elementary schools would tease me about my non-name-brand tennis shoes. I worried about getting my first kiss, shaving my legs, wearing a bra, whether I’d remember my locker combo.

It all seems so not newsworthy now. So much has changed. The idea of leaving my safety net to go to college and being thirty minutes away from my mom is a lot scarier than buying a training bra. Going to college is sort of like starting kindergarten all over again.

What if I can’t find a job in Murfreesboro and I go broke after one semester? What if my grades suck and I lose my financial aid? It’s like the world is open to me, the sky is wide and blue, but clouds are threatening in the distance. I shake my head, push the clouds away.

I drop by the Franklin library for a new book. I decide on a thriller about two Secret Service agents (who are secretly having an affair) who discover the President is having an affair with the Secretary of the Treasury. Oooh, steamy. Then I hop back on my bike and pedal past Sonic, the place where kids from school hang out in the summertime.

“Annie Winters!” Vanessa waves from the back of Rory Whitfield’s pickup truck. I shift into a lower gear and ride up to her. She and Savannah are lounging on the tailgate. Rory and Jack Goodwin are talking with a group of guys from the baseball team. And Kelsey and Colton are arguing over what they should do tonight.

“I want to go to Miller’s Hollow,” she says.

“Let’s go to the movies,” he says.

“That’s silly. You’ll fall asleep just like you always do.”

“I won’t this time,” he replies, and I don’t believe him one bit. Colton has always been a big fan of dozing during class. The boy could sleep through a rock concert.

“Seriously,” Kelsey goes on, “only you could fall asleep during
The
Fast
and
the
Furious
. I mean, what boy does that?”

He scowls and she points a finger at him. They look like an old married couple.

“What’s going on there?” I ask Vanessa.

She smirks. “Delaying the inevitable, as usual.”

“Are they really not into each other?”

“I’m pretty sure they are, but she doesn’t want to lose him as a friend, so she isn’t willing to try anything. I think that’s it, anyway.”

I use my T-shirt to wipe sweat from my neck. “So what’s up? I still got ten miles to ride before I’m done with my workout.”

“It’s amazing you’re doing this,” Savannah says. “I can’t wait to see you run in the race.”

“I’m coming to watch too,” Vanessa says excitedly.

I swallow hard and dab my forehead with the back of my hand. “You are?”

“Of course,” Vanessa says.

“Jack and I will drive down from Kentucky,” Savannah says. She and her boyfriend are so in love, he decided to go to the University of Kentucky with her instead of Vanderbilt, so they could be closer. She got this incredible opportunity to teach younger kids how to become horse jockeys in exchange for college credit. She followed her dreams and her boyfriend supports her. I glance over at Jack Goodwin. Even though he’s in a conversation, he keeps looking over his shoulder to check on her. Watching them kind of makes my chest hurt, and I sigh.

“You okay, Annie?” she asks.

“I’m good,” I say with a wobbly voice. “I’m glad you’re coming to the race.” Honestly, I’ve been so focused on training and wondering if I can actually do this—run a full twenty-six miles—that I haven’t even thought about who might show up on the day of. I figured Mom and Nick would be there, Kyle’s friend Seth, and Matt of course. Hearing that Vanessa, Savannah, and Jack will be there stirs a new kind of nervousness inside me.

“By the way, did you get Kelsey’s PowerPoint presentation?” Vanessa asks.

“Yeah, that was something else,” I reply.

“What PowerPoint?” Savannah asks, and by the time Vanessa gets done telling her about the no-fish rule and the color-coding of supplies, Savannah is cracking up.

“Kelsey, you need to get laid and get out of this drought already!” she shouts, dissolving into giggles with Vanessa. Kelsey crinkles her nose in reply and starts complaining to Colton about having to live with Iggy.

Vanessa said the same thing about getting laid to Kelsey when we met at the Roadhouse. Their inside jokes make me jealous. And Vanessa finishes nailing the coffin shut when she picks one of Savannah’s long red hairs off her shoulder. Kelsey and I used to do that for each other. We joked that we groomed each other like monkeys.

“I need to finish my ride,” I say quietly, placing one foot on a pedal.

“I’ll text you about college stuff,” Vanessa says.

I peek over at Kelsey. She sees me looking but pretends to focus on her cell phone. College sure will be
fun
if this is what I have to look forward to.

I suck it up and give her a wave, to show I want to put everything behind us. A small smile appears on her face and she waves back, but then she turns to Colton to say, “Can we
pul-eese
do Miller’s?”

“I swear, woman, you could start a fight in an empty house!” he replies. But as I start to ride away, I hear him calling out to the group, “Who wants to hit up Miller’s Hollow?”

I’m glad I have a bike ride to finish.

When I get home, I fill a plastic baggie with ice for my knee, grab my cell and book, and head to the living room. Before I dig into the mystery I’m reading—think
Charlie’s Angels
meets
The
Da
Vinci
Code
, I swipe the screen on my cell to check my messages. I smile at Jeremiah’s text asking me to call him.

“What are you doing tonight?” he asks once I have him on the phone.

“Nothing really,” I say, settling onto the couch beside my brother, who shushes me, which is ridiculous because he’s watching
Die
Hard
for the thousandth time and knows every line by heart. I reach over into Nick’s bowl and steal a potato chip.

“Do you want to go bungee jumping tonight?” Jeremiah asks.

He must be joking. “Uh, no?”

“C’mon! It’ll be fun.”

I prop a foot on the coffee table and drape the ice baggie over my knee. “Didn’t you almost lose an eye doing that last year?”

Nick glances over at me, turns the volume down on the TV, and leans closer to the phone at my ear. I push him away.

“My roommate Mason and I are heading over to Pigeon Forge. They have a good bungee platform at Dollywood—it’s completely safe and there’s a balloon to land on, in case something goes wrong. They have safety certificates and everything.”

“No way.”

“It’s only, like, a hundred feet high.”

A gasp escapes my lips. That’s, like, ten stories. Is he crazy? “That can’t be safe.”

“It’s completely safe,” Jeremiah says. “I’ve done it at this place at least five times.”

I hate the idea of not being able to help him if something goes wrong. Because that’s what would happen. Say he fell off the platform the wrong way. Or the bungee cord snapped. I wouldn’t be able to push undo like on a computer.

“I can’t,” I say.

“You won’t come?” Disappointment laces his voice.

“I don’t understand why you’re doing this. I mean, didn’t your mom ask you not to? Don’t you want to stay on good terms with your family?”

“I can’t just quit cold turkey. And this is a perfectly safe way to have fun.”

To
get
a
rush
, he means.

“Annie?” His voice wobbles over the phone. “The thing with my eye, it happened on a bridge and the cord was too long. What I did wasn’t safe. I know that now.”

“What about when you broke your arm and the bone grew back wrong? And going to the hospital three times in a month?”

No response.

I have nothing else to say either. This is too much. I like having him as my friend, but I hate the risks we’re both taking. I burrow into Nick’s side and he slides an arm around my shoulders, still entranced by
Die
Hard
.

“Are we still on for the race Sunday morning?” Jeremiah finally asks.

I hesitate before saying, “Yeah.”

He exhales into the phone. “I’ll text you when I get back tonight.”

“I think this is stupid.”

“I’m trying, okay? But I need this.”

I’ve never known anyone on drugs—well, except for kids at school who occasionally smoke weed, but none of the hard-core stuff. But that’s what I’m thinking about when we hang up.

While
Die
Hard
continues to entrance Nick, I use my phone to Google “adrenaline junkie,” the term Matt used to describe his brother. I click on an article about how having sex, eating good food, doing things you love,
and
extreme
sports
pump dopamine into your brain. The article says that the effects of dopamine can be stronger than snorting cocaine. Wow. I scroll on, discovering that riding a bike and running can do the trick for some people, but others need bigger and better thrills to get an adrenaline rush. Some pro athletes who went to the Olympics later suffered major depression and now turn to extreme sports or drugs in search of a fix for that lost adrenaline.

Another recent article says a man tried to break a free-diving record by going more than two hundred feet below the water’s surface without any gear and died after he resurfaced. My heart aches for his family and friends…

The scariest part? The article says falling in love with the right person can trigger more dopamine than extreme sports and drugs combined.

A shiver races through me.

He made me feel so alive that day by the river. Yeah, the guilt ate at me, but I still get goose bumps just thinking about his hands on my skin and his lips warming mine. But that feeling is not worth the risk of losing somebody again. I need to know the people I care about are safe and sound. Maybe I shouldn’t hang around somebody I could lose just like I lost Kyle.

I try to put Jeremiah out of my thoughts, but all night I’m on edge until I get his text.

Until I know he’s all right.