Psyche

Chapter Five

I always swore in my head after the crack of the starting gun. The sudden profanity quieted my thoughts and let me focus. As I was preparing for a race I should not have run today, I spotted him, that guy, that hunky, LARPing guy. Reminded of last night's nightmares, I shook the thought of his face away. The next thing I knew, the gun sounded.

This was 1600 meters: a whole mile. I would be an idiot to start off sprinting, but I began fast enough to pull away from the group of other girls as they scrambled for a place on the inner-lane. I soon became light-headed, just after the first lap. I had three to go. But it was so early in the race-how could I have been tired? I drank a surplus amount of water, ate a good lunch. I did everything right. I even paid extra attention to my pre-run diet due to the problems I was having today. I shouldn't have run but I wanted to, I had to. My coach would not have believed my complaints. And with the lead that I had now, how could I have even considered pulling out of the race? I was averaging less than two minutes per lap.

I pulled ahead even more, almost sprinting. I arrived at the final 200 meters. I knew well enough not to sprint the corners. However, I did begin picking up the pace. At the last 100 meter straightaway, I ran with everything I had left in me, and then some... big mistake. I sprinted through the finish line and began to slowly descend from my rapid pace. I came to walking and then I stopped. I saw double. Sixteen lanes? That wasn't right. And I had plenty of trouble dealing with just one coach. Everything went blurry and I began to sway a bit.

"Park!" my coach shouted, clearly dissatisfied. "What the hell's the matter with you? With that kind of a lead, you could have just jogged in and still won by plenty. And..."

"Coach," I managed from my reeling brain. "I don't feel so good."

The rather heavy-set adult finally found concern. "Oh, yeah. You're looking kind of pale."

You don't fucking say, I almost said. Instead I kept silent, again swaying. The coach took my hand, palm facing up and pressed his fingers into my wrist. He glanced at his watch. After that, everything went dark, and all I remembered was suddenly being swept off of my feet before total silence.

I woke up in a parked car, he sat next to me, a distressed look slapped across his sorry face. I stared at him before he noticed the wide, gray eyes upon him.