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Running is the only thing that brings me any release these days. Thank god for gym. I’m in a groove, way ahead of the others. That is, until Marcus catches up with me, practically killing himself in the process.
“Man, you’re on fire,” he gasps, like he’s not used to the mile-high altitude, when he’s lived in Denver his whole life.
I nod, trying not to let the interruption slow my pace.
“You coming to practice today?”
I haven’t been to practice since early summer. Since I found my mom in a tub of her own blood. A few weeks before school started, I told Coach, Marcus, and a few others who were in Coach’s office, that I wouldn’t be back this year because I had to work, that I wouldn’t have the time. Coach told me to “take as long as you need,” like he thought I didn’t really mean it. But I did. And I wish Marcus would stop hounding me about it.
“Gotta work.” I push myself harder, setting my quads on fire. It feels good.
I make it a few laps without thinking about anything, but then I’m about to lap the rest of the class, so I slow my pace, keep my distance. Marcus slows down until he’s running next to me again.
“So what, are you, like, quitting?” he asks. I can barely understand him, he’s breathing so hard.
“What can I say? My dad’s a prick. I gotta work.”
“What about your scholarship?”
“I guess I’m not going to college.”
Marcus stumbles, but recovers and catches up to me again.
“Look, that was my mom’s plan, and she didn’t have the guts to see it through, so why the hell should I?”
He ignores my tone and presses on. “Well, what are you going to do?”
“No fucking clue.” I don’t wait for a reply. I push myself again, weaving through the others, focused, until all I can hear are my feet hitting the asphalt, my steady breathing, and the beat of my heart pounding in my head.
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“Um . . . Uh . . . You want ham and cheese?” the chubby, middle-aged woman asks her tween daughter, who couldn’t look more horrified about being in public with her totally uncool mom. She grunts what I think is meant to be a “Yes” and goes back to texting.
“Six-inch or foot-long?” I ask.
Roger glances over at me from the register. I have somehow managed to not meet his high standards of sandwich artistry yet again.
“Let’s do a foot-long. Then we can share it,” the mom says. The girl snorts her annoyance.
“What kind of bread would you—”
“Wheat,” the girl says, the duh implicit.
I pull out one of the older pieces of wheat, one that’s dry and extra-crunchy.
“Can you cut it now?” the girl says. “I don’t want her fatty mayo near my half.”
I do as told. The daughter goes back to texting, not even looking up as she orders me to add toppings, like she has eyes on the top of her head. Every time her mother asks for a topping she doesn’t approve of, the daughter sighs heavily.
Roger grabs the sandwiches from my hands the second I finish stuffing them into the bag and rings them up. He’s aggressively polite to everyone, including me, even though I’m pretty sure he hates my guts. It makes me want to punch him, just to see how he’d react if confronted with any unpleasantness.
It’s not like I’m dying to spend all my free time working at Subway, but it was the first job I found after my dad informed me that if I wanted to continue driving my crappy car or, you know, eating, I would have to figure shit out for myself. I don’t think he cares that technically he’s responsible for me until my eighteenth birthday, which is exactly 217 days away.
The second I turn eighteen, I plan to get the fuck outta Dodge. I will leave this godforsaken place behind and never look back. Screw graduation. Everyone knows the ceremony is really only for the parents. And that would require parents who A) are alive, or B) give a shit.
This year was supposed to be about maintaining my GPA and keeping the Stanford people happy so I didn’t lose the scholarship, and then I could be on my way to a better life. I was going to take my mom far away from my prick father, show her that she didn’t have to live the way she did. I don’t know exactly what I had planned to do—get an MBA and work my way up the corporate ladder at some Fortune 500 company? Maybe. But whatever. She selfishly took that away from me. I’d been doing it all for her anyway. So now what?
“Ty? You want to take your break? I can hold down the fort,” Roger says. It takes every ounce of restraint for me not to choke him for calling me Ty. Only my girlfriend calls me that, and the only reason I don’t choke her is ’cause she’s a girl.
I must look sad or something. I try to hold that shit in for when I’m alone—it makes people uncomfortable.
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Shit. Brett’s black 3 Series Beemer’s parked at the Conoco. But my tank’s on E, so I don’t have a choice—I won’t make it home if I don’t stop.