with her arms crossed, dressed in a pair of tight black workout pants and a matching black long-sleeve. No clue what time it is, but she’s about to tell me what I’m late for.
“We’re going for a run,” she says with extra intensity, handing me an iced coffee. Unexpected bonus: She’s already put the straw in for me. I take the water-beaded cup from her hand, thanking her, trying not to drain it in one gulp as she watches me bring the straw to my lips for three mini-chugs in a row.
She pulls back the blankets from my chin. “Is that what you’re wearing?”
I’m in my boxer briefs. Thankfully, nothing’s escaped or excited or arranged at an odd angle. I sit up and start looking around the floor for the same clothes I wore last night. She points to the overstuffed chair next to the fireplace, having already laid out a clean pair of shorts, a T-shirt, and socks. She also found the remote control to the fireplace, because the flames are crackling. Through the window behind it, the sun is rising above the water.
“Don’t put on your shirt yet.” She walks over and starts spraying me down with enough sunscreen to make the ozone a moot layer. Not that I’m complaining, especially when she starts rubbing the spray gently into my neck, as liberally as she’s ever done anything when it comes to touching me. She even remembers the backs of my ears.
A short while later, we’re on the beach, running, and it doesn’t suck as much as I recalled, but I’m sure sucking a lot of air.
“You okay?” Juliette asks, with plenty of breath to spare.
I nod.
“Adderall?” she offers, as casually as one would an Advil. “I keep an extra underneath the insert of my shoe.”
Once I realize she’s not kidding, I shake my head no, and she looks at me like it’s my loss. Except it’s not, I tell her, because that tiny chunk of pill she gave me a few weeks ago, before eighth period, made my brain latch on to all kinds of to-do’s: Abram! You should make a bunch of lists and clean your locker and pick scabs that turn out to be freckles and trim your fingernails, but it’s essential that you do this all at the same time!
I consider anything related to me wanting to multitask a disorienting, what’s-happening-to-me? experience, and on that note, I should make sure I don’t step on a one-hundred-thousand-dollar sea-turtle egg.
“Can we take a break soon? Just a thought.”
She checks her iPhone. “It’s only been twenty-eight minutes and thirty-three seconds.”
I grab her hand and lead her back toward the house. Break time. She’s been needing to give herself one for a while now, anyway.
Juliette
A BRAM DOESN’T SEEM to have a plan, but he does find the exact spot of sand I would’ve chosen—a good distance away from that demented scene over there: a visibly happy couple making a sand castle with their bouncy, halterkini-wearing little girl. The two of us sit down, and then nothing happens. At least the sun feels like it’s burning the pale off my face, since I’ve stopped moving long enough to let it get a decent shot. Remind me why you quit running again? asks my brain, but instead of waiting for an answer, it releases a few more stress hormones. I’d worry about my health if I weren’t the type of lifeless person who lives forever. Guaranteed, I’ll be five hundred years old someday, the stereotypically bitter old lady down the road who refuses to croak out of spite toward people long since dead, and all I’ll have to show for my life is a bunch of check marks. Remember that one time I went to the beach with a cute boy, completed a bunch of self-given assignments, and vacuumed the fun out of everything? Granny would never admit to regretting that, so let’s talk about something you’re doing wrong. I won’t have any kids or grandchildren lighting candles around my deathbed, though, so I’ll just be lecturing my hospice nurse, mistaking her for my next of kin as she yearns to pull the plug.
The
“We’re going for a run,” she says with extra intensity, handing me an iced coffee. Unexpected bonus: She’s already put the straw in for me. I take the water-beaded cup from her hand, thanking her, trying not to drain it in one gulp as she watches me bring the straw to my lips for three mini-chugs in a row.
She pulls back the blankets from my chin. “Is that what you’re wearing?”
I’m in my boxer briefs. Thankfully, nothing’s escaped or excited or arranged at an odd angle. I sit up and start looking around the floor for the same clothes I wore last night. She points to the overstuffed chair next to the fireplace, having already laid out a clean pair of shorts, a T-shirt, and socks. She also found the remote control to the fireplace, because the flames are crackling. Through the window behind it, the sun is rising above the water.
“Don’t put on your shirt yet.” She walks over and starts spraying me down with enough sunscreen to make the ozone a moot layer. Not that I’m complaining, especially when she starts rubbing the spray gently into my neck, as liberally as she’s ever done anything when it comes to touching me. She even remembers the backs of my ears.
A short while later, we’re on the beach, running, and it doesn’t suck as much as I recalled, but I’m sure sucking a lot of air.
“You okay?” Juliette asks, with plenty of breath to spare.
I nod.
“Adderall?” she offers, as casually as one would an Advil. “I keep an extra underneath the insert of my shoe.”
Once I realize she’s not kidding, I shake my head no, and she looks at me like it’s my loss. Except it’s not, I tell her, because that tiny chunk of pill she gave me a few weeks ago, before eighth period, made my brain latch on to all kinds of to-do’s: Abram! You should make a bunch of lists and clean your locker and pick scabs that turn out to be freckles and trim your fingernails, but it’s essential that you do this all at the same time!
I consider anything related to me wanting to multitask a disorienting, what’s-happening-to-me? experience, and on that note, I should make sure I don’t step on a one-hundred-thousand-dollar sea-turtle egg.
“Can we take a break soon? Just a thought.”
She checks her iPhone. “It’s only been twenty-eight minutes and thirty-three seconds.”
I grab her hand and lead her back toward the house. Break time. She’s been needing to give herself one for a while now, anyway.
Juliette
A BRAM DOESN’T SEEM to have a plan, but he does find the exact spot of sand I would’ve chosen—a good distance away from that demented scene over there: a visibly happy couple making a sand castle with their bouncy, halterkini-wearing little girl. The two of us sit down, and then nothing happens. At least the sun feels like it’s burning the pale off my face, since I’ve stopped moving long enough to let it get a decent shot. Remind me why you quit running again? asks my brain, but instead of waiting for an answer, it releases a few more stress hormones. I’d worry about my health if I weren’t the type of lifeless person who lives forever. Guaranteed, I’ll be five hundred years old someday, the stereotypically bitter old lady down the road who refuses to croak out of spite toward people long since dead, and all I’ll have to show for my life is a bunch of check marks. Remember that one time I went to the beach with a cute boy, completed a bunch of self-given assignments, and vacuumed the fun out of everything? Granny would never admit to regretting that, so let’s talk about something you’re doing wrong. I won’t have any kids or grandchildren lighting candles around my deathbed, though, so I’ll just be lecturing my hospice nurse, mistaking her for my next of kin as she yearns to pull the plug.
The
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