Bee had known, even as she finally gave in, that she would regret her
decision to join the school Cross Country team. She’d never liked
running. Though she was now almost on par with the average eighth
grader, it hadn’t always been that way.

As a kindergartner, the first time she’d run around that quarter-mile
track, she had come in next-to-last against a little girl who’d gotten
a terrible cramp about halfway through, and whose shoe had fallen off
ten yards from the finish line. The next year, she had done only
marginally better and, being inflicted at that point with a nasty case
of bronchitis, had thrown up all over the rocks by the bleachers. The
first year she’d been allowed in sports, she’d joined her school track
team. It was the only thing she’d ever quit.

Running just wasn’t her forte.

Eventually, though, her firm resolve never to run competitively again
was worn down by her friends’ insistance that unless they had one more
team member, their times wouldn’t qualify. Guilt. Trip.

And so it was that Bee found herself jogging around the perimeter of
the park at 4:15 in the afternoon on a Wednesday. She’d already
fallen far behind the rest of the team, but she didn’t mind, really.
The quiet solitude of running alone was kind of nice. It gave her
time to think.

And think she did. As she rounded the course’s next bend, she again
set her school-exhausted mind to the task of identifying the
tantalyzing scent that never failed to come into existence at this
part of the course. It wasn’t an unpleasant smell, exactly. But she
was certain she’d smelt it before, and she just couldn’t figure out
what it was. Not that it mattered, really, but it was intriguing.

Is this what carbon monoxide mixed with cinderdust smells like? she wondered.

Are they serving pickles at the concession stand…during a practice?

Is my body shutting down: hallucinating synesthesia in the desert or light at the end of the tunnel?

She stopped wondering the moment her shoe caught a slight rut in the track. Toppling to the ground, she forgot all about the smell. It had been replaced by a combination of sensations including burning pain, sanguine tar scent, and humiliation.

Slowly, she peeled herself out of the earth. Her eyes darted from left to right, wondering who had seen. To her eyes, Coach Weerd was not visible, but she knew from a place deep within herself that he had seen and he was laughing.

Dignity considerably wounded, she continued her trot through Stuart Park, for indeed, it was by this point no more than a trot. Why bother? It wasn’t like they could kick her off the team.

The sound of rustling leaves pushed forth from behind, and she wearily turned her head. “Oh, crap,” she stated mildly, and picked up her pace a bit more. The ruffled hair of Steve Harvington was rising over the hill she had just scaled, and the rest of him followed soon after, moving with otherworldly speed.