Out of Breath Read online

  But he doesn’t frisk me; instead, he hands me the juice container that he saw me contemplating in the store. He must’ve been following me all along. I’m embarrassed that he witnessed me drooling over all that food, and still a little worried that maybe he’s already called the cops.

  I shove the juice back and give him the sandwich at the same time. “Look, I don’t know what you’re up to, but I haven’t eaten anything so please just take it back and I’ll go, okay?”

  “Don’t worry,” he says. He takes my hand and pulls out my clenched fist, revealing my palm. He places the sandwich there and puts the juice in my other hand. “I paid for this, as well as your sandwich. Enjoy it.”

  I stare at the food in my hand. “I don’t get it.”

  “I get an employee discount.” He smiles again, then shrugs. “You looked like you could use a break. But don’t do it again, okay? I don’t want to lose my job. There’s a food bank about six blocks from here. They’ve probably even got tofu.”

  A vegetarian-friendly food bank—only in Lithia. Certainly not in Texas. I want to throw my arms around him, I’m so happy, but instead I nod until my head feels as though it’ll bobble off my neck. “Thanks. Thanks a lot.”

  I watch him return to the store. Perhaps this was a sign, the sign I needed. Maybe Lithia is a place I can still call home after all.

  I go to the park to eat. I sit near the pond and pull apart the sandwich with my fingers, making every bite last as long as I can. A couple of ducks glide past me on the water, mumbling to themselves, and they stop in front of me, hanging out at the water’s edge, begging for a piece of bread. I know I shouldn’t feed them, me of all people, but I toss down a small piece. From one beggar to another.

  The day is aging quickly, but it’s still nice and warm. The deciduous trees are losing their green, and even the pine needles are dry and dying. I walk back through town, suddenly wanting to be among people, though I don’t know why because it’s not something I normally enjoy. But Lithia feels better to me somehow. It’s amazing how one act of kindness can make an entire town, even an entire world, seem friendly.

  The courtyard around the theater complex is crowded. I see that there was a matinee on the Elizabethan stage. Hamlet. I’ve never seen Hamlet, have never even read any Shakespeare. Shakespeare wasn’t among the courses offered at the community college I went to.

  I keep walking, past the restaurants and shops. Then I see the shoes. A bright new pair of Brooks running shoes whose blue-and-yellow coloring seems to mirror the sky. I can’t help but look down at the shoes on my feet. They’re the same brand—if there’s one investment worth making, it’s in good shoes—but they’re more than four years old and worn past the point of recognition. The rubber bottom has completely worn off my left shoe, and the right has a gaping hole tearing through the toe.

  As if possessed by a force I can’t control, I go inside and find the shoe on the wall. I take it from its little metal shelf and hold it up, breathing in its new-shoe smell. The untested nylon. The freshly stamped and glued rubber soles. It’s as yummy to me as a bakery is to a normal person.

  “You want to try on a pair?”

  I turn to see a tall blonde woman watching me. She’s wearing a T-shirt that reads Lithia Runners.

  “Oh.” I put the shoe back. “No, thanks. I’m just looking.”

  She stares down at my feet, dubious. “Looks like you could use a new pair.”

  “I can’t afford them.”

  “Well, why don’t you try them on, just to get a feel for them. Let me guess, eight and a half?”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “I’ll be right back.”

  The woman exits into a back room, and I sigh. Trying on new running shoes will be like being in that co-op—the temptation will be too great. A sandwich is one thing, but a hundred-dollar pair of running shoes is another. And after this morning, I’m not sure what I’m capable of anymore.

  I have to get out of here. I’m on my way out when a flyer on the bulletin board near the door catches my eye. It’s advertising an upcoming race called “Cloudline.” A half marathon, only a few weeks away. I feel my legs growing twitchy, eager to be running again.

  “Have you run Cloudline?”

  It’s that woman—she’s back again, standing over my shoulder, a shoebox in her hand.

  “No.”

  “It’s brutal. It climbs up the side of Mount Lithia—one vertical mile.”

  “Sounds like fun.”

  She laughs. “We runners are such masochists, aren’t we? Good thing I chose to marry another one—the only person who ever really gets it is another runner. I’m Stacey, by the way. My fiancé and I own this place.”

  I pause before telling her, “I’m Kat.”

  “Well, Kat, let’s get these shoes on you,” Stacey says, holding up the box.

  “That’s okay,” I say. “I really should be going.”

  “Are you sure?” She looks down at my feet again. “Really, Kat, you shouldn’t be walking around in those things. Bad shoes can affect your knees, your back, cause all sorts of problems. If you really are a runner, you have to take better care of your feet.”

  “If you think my shoes are scary, you don’t want to see my socks.”

  “Is that it? I can get you new ones. We keep a few pairs on hand for people who walk in with sandals and that sort of thing.”

  Stacey crosses the room in three steps, and the next thing I know a pair of white athletic socks is hurtling toward me. “Think fast!” she calls out, and I grab the socks just before they hit me in the head. They are so white and clean I want to press them against my cheek.

  I slowly untie the laces of my decrepit shoes, and I’m grateful when another customer walks in and Stacey turns away. Hurriedly I take off my shoes, revealing socks that are stained so dark with dirt and sweat it’s hard to believe they were ever white. Both of my big toes burst out of the fabric as if they’re trying to make a prison break. I quickly remove the socks and slip on the new ones. They are so soft I never want to take them off. I stuff my old socks into my pocket.

  Then, the shoes. After I put them on, I stand and feel half an inch taller, my old shoes so flattened by mileage and weather and time that it was like I’d shrunk. I’m five foot three and a half, but in these shoes I can claim five-four without getting doubtful looks.

  “They fit you well,” says Stacey, walking back toward me. I see that someone else is helping the other customer now, a man at the cash register wearing the same Lithia Runners T-shirt. There’s a small pile of clothing on the counter, running pants and shirts, a hat. What a luxury, I think, to be able to walk into a store like this and buy anything you want.

  “What do you say?” Stacey continues. “Should I hold them for you until you have the money?”

  “That might be a very long hold,” I say. “I sort of have to find a job first.”

  She turns away. “Honey, come over here,” she calls to the man in the other Lithia Runners shirt. “That’s my fiancé, David,” she tells me as he hands the customer a receipt. When he comes over, I notice that they’re about the same height, both a head taller than I am, both muscular and strong, though David is longer and leaner.

  “David, this is Kat—” Stacey looks at me, waiting for my last name. I don’t have time to think, so I give her the first name that pops into my head.

  “Jones.”

  “This is Kat Jones. She’s new in town.”

  “Oh, welcome. I see you’re getting off on the right foot.” He laughs, but Stacey and I only stare at him. “Come on,” he says. “That’s at least sort of funny, isn’t it?”

  “Not really, honey. Listen, do we need any part-time help?”

  “Not unless you start slacking off.”

  “Don’t tempt me,” Stacey says.

  David tilts his head toward the storeroom. “Hang on, I think I hear the fax machine. Be right back.”

  “Coward,” Stacey says, rolling her eyes. “Giv
e me a sec.”

  She follows him to the back, and I return to the Cloudline flyer and study the details. I grew up in the imposing shadow of Mount Lithia, gazing up at it from town, from the shorter hills I used to climb as a kid. This run looks brutal. A vertical climb of 5,300 feet. Fog and snow likely along the route. I want to run it, badly. I want to conquer this mountain. To prove that life hasn’t conquered me.

  Stacey returns with David wrapped around one arm, both of them smiling.

  “Kat, how would you like a little part-time work?” David asks.

  “I—well, I wouldn’t want to impose,” I say, looking from one of them to the other. I have the same feeling I had at the co-op, that this must be some sort of joke, that it’s impossible for people to be this kind.

  “You’re not imposing,” Stacey says. “With Cloudline coming up, we get a surge of runners from around the region. They need shoes. They need gloves. They need jackets. It’s our version of the Boston Marathon.”

  “It’s not permanent or anything,” David says. “Just a few weeks.”

  “That’s great. That’s perfect. I’ll do whatever you need.”

  “You can start tomorrow at ten,” says Stacey. “You’ll help me open the store.”

  “Okay.”

  “What’s your phone number?” Stacey asks, picking up a pen from the counter.

  “Um. I don’t have one.”

  “Address?”

  “Not yet.”

  “You mean you don’t have a place to live?”

  “I’m still looking,” I say. “I just got into town yesterday. But I can be here at ten, no problem.”

  She and David exchange a look. “We’ve got a small studio out back, behind our house,” Stacey says. “It used to be a garage but we got it all fixed up, with a little kitchenette and a bathroom and everything. You can stay there tonight. And tomorrow we’ll work out a rental agreement.”

  “Really?”

  I see Stacey’s grip tighten around David’s arm. “David, you do not hear that fax machine again,” she says, then adds, to me, “Yes, I’m sure. It’s not the Ritz, but you can afford it.”

  “How do you know?”

  She grins. “Because I know what you’re making.”

  She digs around in a drawer and finds her purse, pulling a single key off her keychain. “Come on,” she says, “let’s go take a look. We’re only a few blocks away.”

  She leads me out the back door, through an alley, down sidewalks covered with dead leaves. They crunch under our feet.

  “Why are you being so nice to me?” I ask.

  “I don’t know,” she says. “It must be the water.”

  “The water?”

  “Lithia Springs,” she says. “You never heard about the springs?”

  I have only a vague memory of the water, so I shake my head.

  “Our water comes from natural springs that contain traces of lithium. Lithium has been used for years to improve moods. That’s what put this town on the map a hundred years ago. People from around the country would travel here to drink the water, soak in it. They thought it had healing properties, too.”

  “Does it?”

  “Beats me.” We turn down a quiet street, the trees forming a canopy above us. “I don’t drink it,” she adds. “Stinks too much.”

  “What does it smell like?” I ask.

  Stacey smiles at me as she leads me down a brick walkway and opens the door to the cottage. “Remind me to show you the fountain in the town square. You can’t live in Lithia without drinking from the springs.”

  As she says that, a memory resurfaces—of someone holding me up to the fountain in the square, of a sulfur-like smell, of me spitting water out, of laughter.

  “We have a filter on the faucet in here,” Stacey says, “so you won’t notice the smell.”

  The cottage is beautiful. It’s tiny, with only two windows, but its old wood floors are whitewashed, and it’s painted in light blue and white, like a cloud-dusted sky. I peek into the bathroom, which is sparkling clean, the nicest bathroom I’ve seen in ages.

  “I’ll bring you some towels,” Stacey says, “and you’ll join us for dinner. Most of the time, we just grab take-out because we’re working right through. But the co-op has good healthy stuff. Do you know the co-op?

  “Um.” I feel my ears burn and imagine they must be bright red. “I think I saw a sign, yeah.”

  “I’ll have David pick up some bread and juice for you while he’s there. Just so you’ll have a little something in the morning. Busy day tomorrow.”

  I look around the little room—a place of my own, after all these months. For now, anyway. Then I look at Stacey, at her kind face. She is so tall I have to stretch my neck backward. “How can I ever thank you?”

  “Tell you what,” she says. “You can accept those Brooks as an advance on your salary and go for a run with me tomorrow. I’m behind in my Cloudline training and need a running buddy who won’t smoke me the way David does.”

  “You’re on.”

  Three

  This morning, a couple walks up to me and asks where the theater is. And I tell them—just like that, with confidence, like I’ve lived here all my life. It’s been a week, and I’m starting to wish I can live here for the rest of my life. I have a place to sleep. I have a job. And I love being around shoes and people who love the outdoors as much as I do.

  And then there is running. Every morning before work, I go out for a quick run, each time in a different direction, with no idea how far I will go or what I will see. Yesterday, I went north, wandering through the residential streets until I nearly ran right into a family of deer. I startled them—a mother and father and two younger ones—and they all jerked their heads up and stood frozen, staring at me with their big eyes wide and their ears focused on me like satellite dishes. I stopped and waited as they tiptoed across the street. I’ve seen them eating the vegetation outside my cottage, wandering through backyards and open grassy lots. The deer are year-round residents of Lithia, Stacey told me, and she likes them, too—They do my weeding for me, she said—but she also said that not all the homeowners share our enthusiasm. I don’t see why not; the deer are so peaceful. I love their silence most of all.

  My first customer of the day is an elderly woman who is trying on her first pair of running shoes. She just retired here from Los Angeles, and she wants to start working out.

  “Better late than never,” she says.

  “Running will change your life,” I tell her. “It changed mine.”

  After work, Stacey invites me for a run up the hill. Even though I ran this morning, I’m excited to go out again. She changes her clothes in the back. Me, I’m already ready to go; I don’t have much else to wear other than running shorts and T-shirts, and I’ve been wearing my new shoes everywhere.

  While Stacey is still in back, David approaches, his voice low. “Is she taking you up the Lost Mine Trail?”

  “I think so,” I say. “We went up there yesterday, but we didn’t make it all that far. It’s quite a climb.”

  He looks worried. “Stay together,” he says.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Keep an eye on each other,” he says. “Don’t let her out of your sight.”

  “Bears?” I ask. His anxiety is a little catching.

  “Stacey says I’m paranoid, but there have been attacks up there. Just last month, a tourist in town for the theater went missing.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll look out for her.”

  He smiles. “By the way, you’re doing great. I wish I could hire you permanently.”

  “That’s okay. I’ll find something.”

  ~

  Tonight, Stacey leads me through town to the Lost Mine Trail. Just getting to the trailhead is no simple feat. We start up Frontier Street, which climbs sharply for several hundred feet. Then we turn right onto Highview Drive and follow it along two arching switchbacks, passing ever-grander mansions that cling to the side of the
hill.

  As we heave our way up, she tells me about Lithia’s theaters, how these three stages have supported the town for decades, bringing in tourists from around the world. “When I first came here five years ago,” she says, huffing a little, “it was to be an actress. I didn’t get offered a role that first season, so I worked for an accountant. And then there was David.”

  “How’d you meet?”

  “Met him at the store, first day he opened. He’d just retired—he sold his software company when he was thirty and moved up here, bought the store to keep himself busy. I’d just started running myself, so I went in and found the whole place a mess. Poor guy’s great at software but doesn’t know the first thing about inventory or customer relations. So I became employee number one.”

  Eventually the paved road turns to gravel, then dirt, then narrows to a trail. I glance over my shoulder to take one last look at the town below. We must’ve gained at least five hundred feet in elevation—Lithia looks so small from up here. Then we enter the forest.

  The Lost Mine Trail is a winding trail that meanders up the side of the Siskiyou National Forest and continues for hundreds of miles. It connects with the Pacific Crest Trail, that two-thousand-mile trail that committed (or crazy) hikers can take from San Diego all the way up to Canada. But even this part of the Lost Mine Trail is also for committed (or crazy) runners, and it’s pretty desolate; we’ve seen no one else since leaving town. I promised David that I wouldn’t run on this trail alone in the evening, Stacey said when she first brought me up here, but when she rolled her eyes, I knew she did anyway.

  Stacey is a strong runner, with a longer stride than I have, but I keep pace with her. I can hear her breathing grow louder, and soon we cease our conversation. She stops talking first, and I wonder if she’s been pushing herself because I’m here, or if she’s testing me.

  I’m tempted to pull ahead of her, to prove that I can do more than just keep pace, but I’m too grateful to her to risk showing her up. Runners are a strange lot. I’ve seen friendships formed and lost based on who is faster, and most of us can’t help being competitive. I wouldn’t want anything to come between our new friendship.