The Dream That Doesn't Fade

LUNA

The track burns gold under the late-afternoon sun, and I love it.

I love the heat rising off the rubber in waves. I love the ache in my lungs, the sweat sticking my shirt to my back, the way Coach Pearson's whistle cuts through the thick Tennessee air and makes everything else disappear.

"Set!"

I drop into my stance.

Fingers against the line. Heels lifted. Every muscle in my legs wound tight.

Behind me, the rest of the girls shift and breathe, but I don't look at them. I never do.

This is between me and the clock.

The whistle shrieks.

I'm gone.

Four hundred meters isn't a sprint, and it isn't a distance race. It's worse than both. It's about how much pain you can carry without letting it slow you down.

My arms pump. My ponytail slaps against the back of my neck. By the time I hit two hundred meters, my lungs are screaming at me to stop.

Just ease up.

Not today.

I push harder.

Around the last curve, something strange happens.

The world goes quiet.

Not actually quiet. Somehow, I can hear everything.

Coach Pearson's watch clicking from thirty yards away.

The girls behind me sucking in air.

My own heartbeat pounding inside my skull.

It should be distracting. Instead, everything sharpens. My legs move faster, almost before I tell them to. For one strange second, it feels like my body knows exactly what to do.

Then it disappears.

My legs are burning. My vision narrows. The finish line rushes toward me.

I throw myself across it like it owes me something.

"Fifty point two!"

Coach Pearson's voice cracks with something close to disbelief.

I bend over, hands braced on my knees, dragging air into my lungs. It tastes like rubber and cut grass.

And I grin.

I probably look half-dead.

I don't care.

"Three seconds, Willow."

Coach Pearson jogs over, still clutching the stopwatch like it's worth more than his truck.

"Three seconds. Do you know what that means? You're three seconds off Olympic qualifying times. Three. Keep this up, and we're talking nationals. I mean it, Luna."

"I heard you the first time, Coach."

I straighten slowly, wiping sweat from my forehead with the back of my wrist. My heart is still hammering, but now there's something else mixed in with the exhaustion.

Pride.

This is mine.

Nobody handed it to me. There was no destiny involved. No invisible force pushing me toward the finish line.

Just mornings before school, when the sky was still bruised purple and I was the only idiot running laps around the football field.

Months of shin splints.

Burned lungs.

Slowly shaving seconds off my time.

Fifty point two isn't luck.

I earned it.

I glance toward the bleachers out of habit.

And there he is.

Jace Calloway sits with his cap pushed backward, his notebook balanced on one knee and his pencil moving so fast I wonder if he's going to break the tip.

For half a second, right where the sun hits the metal bench behind him, something glints.

Gold.

Animal.

Gone before I can focus on it.

Probably a soda can.

Probably nothing.

"Take five, ladies!" Coach Pearson calls.

The rest of the team heads toward the water fountain, but I make my way straight to the bleachers.

"You know staring is creepy, right?"

I climb up and drop onto the bench beside Jace.

"Not staring. Sketching."

He doesn't look up. His pencil keeps moving in short, confident strokes.

"There's a difference."

I lean over his shoulder.

It's me.

Mid-stride, caught in that split second where my entire body is leaning into the run. He's captured the angle of my shoulders, the blur of my legs, even the fierce concentration on my face.

I didn't know I looked that intense.

"I look mad."

"You look fast."

He finally glances at me.

His blue eyes narrow against the sunlight, and something warm settles low in my chest.

It always happens when he looks at me like that.

Like I'm the only person in the stadium.

"Fifty point two, huh?" he says. "Guess I better start running faster if I'm going to keep up with you."

"You'd have to actually run for that to be a problem."

"I run. Just not in circles for no reason."

He closes the notebook and jumps down from the bleachers. Then he holds out his hand.

I don't need it.

I take it anyway.

"C'mon, Willow. Mae's got the fryer going. I can smell it from here."

"You cannot smell the diner from the track, Jace."

"I can smell it in my soul."

I laugh.

It's easy. No effort. No second-guessing.

We walk off the field together, my legs still humming from the race and his hand loose around mine.

For a moment, I think about how normal this is.

How good normal can feel.

Small town. Small school. A boy who's known me since freshman year and somehow still looks at me like he's seeing me for the first time.

I don't know yet that this is the last day it gets to be this simple.

Mae's Diner sits two towns over from Little River, tucked just off the road that follows the Pigeon River. On a hot day, you can smell the water from the parking lot, mixed with fry oil and coffee that's been sitting on the burner too long.

My grandmother has been running the place since before I was born.

Half the town treats it like their second kitchen.

The bell over the door jingles when Jace pushes it open.

Nana Mae doesn't even look up from behind the counter.

"There's my girl."

"Hey, Nana."

"Fifty point two," Jace announces before I can even sit down.

He slides into our usual booth by the window.

"She's basically an Olympian now."

"Is that so?"

Nana Mae raises an eyebrow as she wipes her hands on her apron and comes around the counter. There's flour on her cheek and that familiar look on her face, half pride and half concern.

"Well, somebody better bring that girl a milkshake, then."

"Chocolate," I say, sliding into the booth. "And don't let him steal my fries this time."

"No promises," Jace says with a grin.

He steals my fries anyway.

The second Nana Mae sets the basket between us, his hand shoots across the table.

I smack it.

He laughs around a mouthful.

For the next hour, we argue about absolutely nothing important.

Whether the diner's jukebox needs new songs.

Whether Coach Pearson secretly likes us more than the boys' team.

Whether Jace's truck is actually going to survive another Tennessee winter.

It's stupid.

It's perfect.

It's an ordinary Tuesday, and I don't appreciate it nearly enough while I still have it.

Then, as I walk past the kitchen doors, everything changes.

The smell hits first.

Fry oil.

Coffee.

Onions from three tables over.

The bleach Nana Mae used on the counter that morning.

Someone's perfume from the other side of the room.

I can smell all of it.

Separately.

Too clearly.

Then something else cuts through everything.

Wet earth.

Pine.

Sharp and fresh and completely out of place.

My ears fill with sound.

The refrigerator humming.

Six different conversations.

Silverware clinking against plates.

Someone laughing near the counter.

My own heartbeat.

Loud.

Too loud.

I grip the edge of the booth.

The room tilts.

"Luna?"

Nana Mae's voice reaches me from somewhere close.

I look up.

She's stopped in the middle of the aisle, dish towel hanging forgotten from one hand.

She's staring at me.

I've never seen that expression on her face before.

Confusion.

Alarm.

"Baby, your eyes just did something strange."

"What?"

The answer comes too quickly.

"No, they didn't."

I blink hard.

Once.

Twice.

The noise settles.

The smells fade until all I can make out is coffee and fry oil again.

"I'm fine. I just got up too fast."

Nana Mae keeps staring.

She doesn't believe me.

Jace, meanwhile, is halfway through another fry.

"You did look a little green," he says helpfully. "You okay?"

"I'm fine."

I sit back down.

My heart is still beating harder than it did after the race.

"Long day. Sit down, Nana. Your fries are getting cold."

Eventually, she sits.

But she keeps looking at me from the corner of her eye for the rest of the hour, as if she's waiting for whatever she saw to happen again.

I shrug it off.

I eat my fries.

I drink my milkshake.

And if my hand shakes a little around the glass, I make sure neither of them sees it.

By the time Jace drops me off at home, the sky has turned the color of a fresh bruise, purple bleeding into black.

My legs are finally starting to ache from the race in that deep, satisfying way that usually means I'll sleep well tonight.

I don't.

The dream comes fast.

And wrong.

There's no slow transition. No warning. My mind seems to skip right past anything that might make sense and drops me straight into the middle of it.

I'm running again.

Except this isn't the track.

It isn't Little River.

I'm in a forest made of silver.

The trees look carved from moonlight, their branches stretching overhead as I race between them.

And I'm not on two legs anymore.

I'm low to the ground.

Fast.

Faster than I've ever been.

Four legs tear through the forest, eating up distance my human body could never cover.

My breath comes out in a white fog.

My heart pounds with a rhythm I don't recognize as my own.

The air smells like wet earth and pine.

The same smell from the diner.

Sharp.

Familiar.

It makes my chest tighten.

There are others running with me.

I can feel them more than I can see them, shadows moving between the trees on either side of me.

Then a voice calls from somewhere ahead.

Not words exactly.

More like the shape of a name.

Something old.

Something buried so deeply inside me that I never knew it was there.

I run toward it.

Ahead, low in the brush, a pair of eyes catches what little light there is.

Gold.

They flare brighter.

They don't move.

They're watching me.

Waiting.

It isn't my name.

I don't know whose name it is.

But it matters.

I know that much.

If I could just run a little faster...

If I could get a little closer...

Maybe I'd understand.

Then the ground disappears.

I'm falling.

Not through air.

Through something colder.

Darker.

Something that knows my name even though I don't know its own.

I sit straight up in bed.

A gasp tears out of me.

My sheets are tangled around my legs and soaked through with sweat, as if I'd actually run through that forest instead of dreaming about it.

My heart slams against my ribs.

For a second, I don't know where I am.

The darkness feels too big.

The walls seem too far away.

Then my phone lights up on the nightstand.

Little River.

My room.

My bed.

Just a dream.

I press a hand against my chest and wait for my heartbeat to slow.

A shaky laugh slips out.

"Okay."

I rub my face.

"Track practice must've really wiped me out."

Or too many fries.

Not enough sleep.

That has to be it.

Except the smell won't leave.

Wet earth and pine.

The same scent from the diner.

The same scent from the dream.

It's as if the forest followed me home and crawled underneath my sheets.

And the eyes.

Gold.

Steady.

Waiting.

The same flash I dismissed on the bleachers.

The same strange thing Nana Mae swore she saw across the diner table.

I lie back down and pull the sheets to my chin.

I want to tell myself it was nothing.

I almost do.

But I can't.

Not this time.