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My head was pounding after spending what felt like hours of homework from each of my least favorite classes. I checked the time on my phone, and it was only seven thirty. I sighed and laid my phone back down, and rubbed my eyes with the palms of my hands.

"You look like you could use some of dad's world famous mac and cheese," a voice from behind me said. I turned myself around in my swivel chair, my eyes going directly to the plate my brother, Isaiah, was holding.

My brother was a good guy, one of the only genuinely good guys in our whole school, and I'm not just saying that because he's my brother. He's the exact opposite of Markus Banks, despite them being the exact same in a lot of ways. Girls, sports, and parties. Our family doesn't have as much money as Markus's, but if we did, Isaiah would've been a lot more popular than Markus when he was still in school. He was still well liked, but nowhere near as well liked as the guy with the Lamborghini and free alcohol.

He was a year older than me, and played football for a school about an hour away from here. We were both athletes, but you could tell he took sports a lot more seriously than I did, than anyone else I've ever seen. He'd spend hours and hours outside throwing a football at the side of our brick house when my dad was too busy to play with him. He'd wake up at five in the morning to go on a run, and wouldn't come back home until he had ran around the whole town at least twice.

While he did football, I did track. Running has always been a thing that feels almost therapeutic for me, while the majority of kids in my elementary school dreading their PE classes for that very reason. I was never the fastest runner, but I had the most endurance. I could run and run and run for as long as I needed to, and would only feel a little winded throughout. I'd mastered my form and breathing techniques by the time I was at least twelve, only a year after my French phase.

Isaiah had been playing ball since he could walk, and was beyond excited when I admitted I was into sports. We'd go on runs together, I'd throw him the football while he'd time my speed, and help each other with money when we needed a new piece of equipment. Despite how different our sports of choice were, we always found ways to work together. When he went off to college, he promised that would stay the same, and it has, as much as possible. We still go on runs and share money and all that, it's just a lot harder to do when he lives a town away and not down the hallway.

"I could, actually," I said, taking the plate from his hands and digging in.

He sat down on the corner of my bed. "Which classes are you missing?"

"All the ones I hate most, pretty much. Consumer math, government, creative writing..."

"You love writing though."

"Not whenever I'm being forced to do it about something I don't care to know anything about."

I wrote a short story my freshman year that went a little bit viral around town, and my whole family and all of their friends thought I was gonna be the next Louisa May Alcott. It was a story about an angwl that was falsely mistaken for a demon and was sent to hell to be Satan's guard. Sounds dark, I know, but I turned it into a lighthearted story with a gut-wrenching twist somewhere in the middle and a happy ending. It won awards at school and the counselor began very subtly recommending colleges for the future with amazing writing programs. People around town really took it and ran with it, my aunt even tried to self-publish it under my own name, which my mom threatened to sue her for.

I didn't really live it down until the beginning of my Sophomore year, and since then I've been very private with what I write. Not because it's just so phenomenal that if I showed someone any of it, that whole fiasco would happen all over again, but because writing is nothing if not personal for me. It's making art with words, and because of that not everyone will understand or see beauty in it. If anything, most would probably think I was crazy, as most artists are accused of being so. I still write short stories, they're my favorite because you can make them as simple or as extravagant as you want, without making them seem boring or over-the-top. It's a short story for a reason, if you don't like it then it's halfway over by the time you realize it's not your thing.

"We're supposed to write about a person who has greatly influenced our lives. Doesn't matter who it is, they just have to be or have been a real person."

"Wow, way to punch me in the face."

I rolled my eyes at him. "Don't do that, you know how much I look up to you. I just don't wanna be that girl."

"What girl?"

"The girl who already has to live in the shadow of her super popular athlete brother, but just making herself seem like she enjoys it by writing a paper worth half her english grade about him."

He stood up and began heading for the door. "You don't live in my shadow, Riv."

"Tell that to the teacher that calls me 'Isaiah's sister.'"

He slapped the top of my door frame before leaving. I never understood why guys did that. I turned back to my desk, still poking around on the plate he handed me and tried my best to refocus on all of the papers and open notebooks. The words seemed to start to all blend together, and I rubbed my eyes again to mentally separate them. It didn't work, and I eventually gave up altogether on doing anymore of this tonight. I stood up and pushed in my desk chair, heading for my closet.

When I was stressed, or upset, or any emotion a human can have, I'd go on a run, for however long I needed. Sometimes I'd be gone for hours, other times I'd be gone for less than fifteen minutes. My muscles ache constantly, and some days my body just wasn't up for it. I finished my dinner and threw on some Nike Pros, my running shoes, and a hoodie on over my muscle shirt. I put my hair in a ponytail and grabbed my earbuds, plugging them into my phone as I jogged out of my room.

Before I headed down to the kitchen to fill up my water bottle, I poked my head inside Isaiah's room, where he too seemed to be doing homework. "Wanna go on a run?" I asked.

He shook his head without looking up. "You're not the only one that's got homework to do. Make sure you get home early enough to finish it, okay?"

"Okay, dad," I said sarcastically.

I jogged down the hallway, grabbed a water bottle from the fridge, and headed for the door. "Dad, I'm going on a run!" I yelled out, hoping that wherever he was he heard me. I stuck both earbuds in my ears and left my house.

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