We run at night because that’s when bad things happen. Partying. Necking. Breaking. Entering. Stabbing. Slashing. Foaming lust. Bleeding out.
Nothing bad has ever happened in daylight is a thing we tell ourselves.
We start by running around the track at school. We have to wait until it is very late. Late enough to switch off the stadium lights. Late enough to padlock the gate, so we have to rattle over the chest-high fence.
Climbing is not as important as running, but it’s still important is a thing we tell ourselves.
It becomes clear pretty quick that running the loop of the track isn’t what we need. The track feels like a trap, not a way out. We know that it won’t be a gentle circle. A clearly marked path. That it isn’t an episode of Scooby-Doo—a hall full of doors, a choreographed in and out. Bubblegum pop and a monster that’s really just a man in a mask.
All monsters are just men in masks is a thing we tell ourselves.
We know it’s not as simple as just ducking across a hallway and through another door. Halls can end. Doors can lock. There’s no promise of what will be on the other side.
It is possible to be on the wrong side of a locked door is a thing we tell ourselves.
We decide to run through the woods on the little trails and paths built by the parks department, worn brown and flat by birdwatchers and weekend hikers.
What we run from doesn’t follow a path is a thing we tell ourselves.
We run through the scrub and brush. The pricker bushes and the poison oak. We wear jeans every day, despite the July heat, to cover the welts and the scrapes and the thick crust of calamine lotion that coats our shins. But at night we run with our legs bare. We want to feel the things that would slow us down. We want to know we can stand the tangling.
We are the shadows of the girls we pretend to be is a thing we tell ourselves.
In the dark, our sweat shines and our breath comes ragged and real. In the dark, our ponytails whip our necks, hairs stick to our open mouths. In the dark, we are not bodies that can be caught.
We are water and air and moonlight on the summer ground is a thing we tell ourselves.
We start to run without shoes to toughen our feet. We do not stop if one of us falls—we won’t make that mistake a second time. We wear sunglasses to make the dark darker. We shoulder backpacks full of last year’s textbooks, so we always feel like something (someone) is pulling us back.
Even though we run together, survival is something you do alone is a thing we tell ourselves.
Moonlight glints off the kitchen knives we run with now. The baseball bats make hollow thumps against the trees. Still, we worry that it’s not enough.
Running for your life is different than just running is a thing we tell ourselves.
We play rock-paper-scissors to decide. The others get a ten second lead, a slow count of Mississippis. The winner pulls the mask down over her eyes. A little hatchet hangs heavy in her hand. She knows the ways we like to run. Her breath beats loud inside the mask. Her feet beat soft against the forest floor. We never discussed what would happen if she catches us.
She’ll never catch us is a thing we tell ourselves.
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Meghan Phillips is a 2020 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow. Her flash fiction chapbook Abstinence Only is forthcoming from Barrelhouse Books. You can find her writing at meghan-phillips.com and her tweets at @mcarphil.