After Obsession by Carrie Jones, Steven E. Wedel Page A

“Head straight above your waist. Focus on keeping that posture most of the run. If it’s close at the end, then you can lean into it and smoke the competition.”
    We run. She doesn’t let me cut loose at the end, instead making me keep pace with her while the other boys race past us. “Focus on posture,” she reminds me.
    At the field house, I change and leave the building first. Second team is just coming in, Blake in the lead. I feel his eyes on me. I glare back at him as he begins slowing. Coach Treat materializes beside me like a pale ghost. Blake pounds past us, but I hear him.
    “Mine,” he says as if it’s a puff of hard breath.

• 9 •
    AIMEE
     
    The whole day feels wrong, like people’s emotions are all tangled into some sort of dark wires, yanking on each other, pulling against one another. At practice Coach notices my limp right away. When I’m in my shorts there’s a pretty obvious bruise running all the way down my leg.
    “You’re not practicing, Avery,” she says. “You’re benched.”
    Even though it’s pretty cold, I sit on the grass instead of the bench. It’s that hard-core rebel in me, I guess. Hayley comes over right before drills and says, “Blake is out of control, Aim.”
    “I know.”
    “Look at your leg.”
    “Pretty, isn’t it? Sort of a Barney the purple dinosaur look?”
    “It’s not funny, Aimee.”
    “I know. I know it isn’t.”
    “Not everyone’s on his side, you know? What he did was wrong. Even if you slept with that Alan guy, it would still be wrong.”
    “We haven’t even kissed. We don’t like each other that way!” The moment I say it, I realize that’s a lie.
    “Right.” She lifts an eyebrow.
    “I mean it,” I mumble, and feel guilty for even thinking about Alan. Instead I start remembering all the sweet songs Blake made for me, all the times he’d get mad at other guys treating girls like possessions. How could he change so much? Maybe Courtney was right.
    “HAYLEY! GET YOUR TUCHUS OVER HERE!” Coach yells way more harshly than she normally would.
    Hayley rolls her eyes and runs off.
    I watch. They’re doing pressure passing drills and it basically sucks to be stuck here doing nothing. My hands cover my face. My body sits on the ground. I just exist.
    Even though I try not to think about him because I’ve only just broken up with Blake … this whole thing with Alan? It’s so weird. When we talk there’s this funky connection thing going on and when he touches me, it’s like the cliché of sparks and electricity. That’s got to mean something, doesn’t it? Something good in this world of bad? I can’t believe Courtney mentioned the River Man. I’ve been trying for years not to think about him.
    When I was around seven, I dreamed of this tiny airplane all broken in the woods with fire all around it in little bursts. In my dream, everything was the opposite of supersized; things were mini-sized, like toy sets. There was a man in a blue jumpsuit standing at the edge of the road. He looked lost. He lifted his hand to me, and I tried to take it.
    That was the first dream I had that came true.
    I tried to tell my mother about it during breakfast in the kitchen. She liked to hear about my dreams. If she could have had an automatic feed into my brain so that she could know everything I was thinking, she would have done it.
    “There was a blue man,” I said.
    “Sweetie, don’t talk with your mouth full.” She smiled to make it not so much of a scold.
    I chewed my English muffin and swallowed real fast. “And there was a little plane in the woods, but it was broken in half like Benji’s toy plane that he dropped off his high chair, but it wasn’t a toy. And there were lots of fire bushes all around.” I got back to my muffin. My belly felt too liquid from so much apple juice.
    My mom nodded. “Anything else?” I shook my head. “Well, that’s an interesting dream,” she said, which is what she always said. “I wonder what that