Through the carnage of the crash

[Pippi]

((The beginning and end of Scott Osbourne))

His fingers drummed against the polyurethane of the running track and he felt his heartbeat do the same against his chest. He gripped the stopwatch tightly in his left hand, index finger lightly brushing against the bright scarlet button on its north-east. His tanktop rose and fell in time with his steady breathing, each breath measured, precise, mirroring his poise, his stance, his patience for everything to be just perfect. A coiled spring. A bullet in the chamber.

A soft breeze tousled his hair. The wind threatened to pick up again, then laid still. He waited one more moment.

Then he clicked the scarlet button, and his legs propelled him up and forwards as the wind shrieked past him and his feet tore along the track. His heartbeat had vanished, but it was still in there somewhere, his even, controlled breathing testimony to that. His lungs hadn’t even had time to begin tightening before his trainer crossed the hundred-metre line and he pressed down on the button again. His feet thudded from a sprint to a run to a jog to a stop, and he bent down, placing his hands on his knees, rolling his neck from side to side as he waited for his breath to catch up with him.

That felt good. That felt fast. That felt like a personal best. If only he could know for sure.

Scott stood up straight again, as he looked around at all his teammates that weren’t there anymore, and all the precision started to fall apart like it always did.

He exhaled, breathing deeply, the cold air stinging his lungs more than the exertion of running had, and bent down again to grab his water bottle, chill liquid replacing the air in his mouth, half of it spat back onto the track next to him. He glanced down at the time displayed on the face of the stopwatch. 12.7 seconds. Maybe. Might have been more, might have been less. Scott would never know. Having the runner time themselves never gave the most accurate measurement, but it was his only option.

People didn’t like training with Scott. It was annoying, really. This was the only chance he really got to interact with his classmates outside of, well, class, and most of them had said something to the effect of ‘I’d rather stab myself in the dick than train with you.’

It was an annoyance of his own making, and he knew it. He’d hurt people, and the sticking point was that he didn’t think he regretted it. He couldn’t tell. He didn’t really feel anything. He wanted to be the best at anything he put his hand to; wasn’t that something everyone desired? If you were drowning, you let go of the thing dragging you down. If someone was holding you back, then you move past them. He was a star of the football team, a champion sprinter, an ace at graphic design.

Wasn’t he happy?

Scott put the water bottle down and walked back to the starting line.

[Cicadan]

No... hm... no, Bridie didn't recognize that boy. Try as she might she couldn't dredge a name to go along with the eyes, or the windswept hair, or the measured breathing. Oh well! That probably meant she didn't know him, unless she'd just forgotten his face and that would of course be embarrassing, but, pretty much normal as well. On the bright side though something would totally stick with her about his face and form! He was really Super Fast! She'd seen maybe three or four others who could dash the track that quickly.

Super Fast was walking back to the starting line. Bridie stood by the dull-painted double doors leading back into the gym, loitering for a moment with one door pushed open. She didn't really make a decision so much as she simply ambled all the way over to join the stranger. All the while with a spring in her step, winding kinetic energy into her bubbly little smile.

"Hi!"

Okay, but, she had to finish walking the rest of the way first so they could be face to face. She spent the rest of that interval waving eagerly with broad sweeps of her arm flailing through the air.

"Mind if I run with you? Coach asked me to make up a run I missed." Bridie specifically remembered that Coach Moore had said 'something something when you can hit the track to make up for lost time', and Bridie certainly wasn't going to literally hit the track but in the figurative sense she figured now was as good a time as any. No time to waste, Bridie was already pulling her leg and tucking it by her knee into Bridie-shaped-like-a-figure-four stretch. Coach said 'always do your stretches' so that's what Bridie had to do.

"You've already stretched, right? Super important!" Onto the other leg! After a long second where Bridie's mouth-shaped playback tape awkwardly stuttered and paused. "Have I seen you around before? I don't think I have. My name's Bridie, what's yours?"

[Pippi]

Scott felt his heart leap from his chest at the sound of the sudden, all too chirpy greeting behind him, and as he turned to look at the girl, he couldn’t hide the look of surprise on his face. Because, man, as much as Scott wished people would train with him, or even just hold the stopwatch for him, he never expected anyone to do so. Call him anything you liked, but you couldn’t call him oblivious. You hurt people, they’re going to stop liking you, and they’re going to tell other people to stop liking you, and in no time at all, pretty much everyone at school has something to say about you behind your back.

Then again, he also knew that the girl in front of him wasn’t one to judge those sorts of rumours. Or to care. Or… to even know about them, probably.

Bridie didn’t seem to know him, but Scott sure as hell recognised her. There weren’t many other girls who’d been held back a year and then shifted into the Special Ed classes. You stuck out, even if you didn’t realise it yourself, and people would talk about you behind your back as well, even if you didn’t deserve it. Scott hadn’t done the same – it was hard when you barely had anyone to talk with – but he’d found himself wondering about her a few times, whenever he caught sight of her across the classroom. Pity, mostly.

Chalk that up as another shitty thing he’d done.

“I’m Scott. Scott Osbourne, that is.”

Man, there were a lot of Scotts at this place, weren’t there? He stuck his hand out for Bridie to shake, once she’d done with her own interpretations of stretching. A gesture of friendliness.

“Sure, you can run with me if you want to.”

And another one. There was no need to be hostile, here. He was certain that Bridie wasn’t going to be a threat to his status as one of the best sprinters at National Summit, and maybe that was another shitty thing to think, fine. Only getting close to someone because you didn’t think they’d ever catch up to where you saw yourself.

“I’ve already done my stretches. You need any help with yours? Got a water bottle?”

But, hell, surely it was better this way, to not get close to anyone he might hurt in the long run, and to only make friends with these sorts of people? The Bridies of the world?

Scott gave his best attempt at a smile.

[Cicadan]

Bridie bounced a bit on her heels as she crunched forward into a toe touch. It was a fun and quirky sensation, albeit dangerously close to throwing her balance and sending her toppling if she didn't know what she was doing, but fortunately she did probably know what she was doing! Stretching intently as she was Bridie needed a few moments to offer her end of the conversation:

"Hi Scott!" Hey, an extended hand. Usually quite the friendly gesture, yep!

"Great! I'd love to run with you, and I promise I can keep up. But my time's okay-ish, so you're probably way faster." Nine minute miles were good for biological girls, Coach said... Wait... was there, like, a non-biological girl? That was a distracting thought that hadn't occurred to Bridie before. But she had to banish it because now was not the time to be-...

HOLD ON. Handshake. Shake the hand, that's right. Bridie grabbed it with a bit of a floppy grip and shook with a bit of an eager shake, like maracas but with less beads making sound and stuff.

"I'm fine on water!" She had a water bottle...? ... Locker room... at home...? Something like that. Maybe in her backpack somewhere. Though, wait, her backpack was in the locker room anyways, stuffed haphazardly into a locker because the wheels made it a hard fit. "Am I doing my stretches right? Coach says I sometimes mess them up, so if you have any advice you're willing to give that's, like? Awesome, and stuff." Scott smiled some kind of smile that Bridie couldn't quite read, but a smile was a smile, and Bridie beamed back all kinds of huge.

[The Honeless Beard]

((Trace Carver, start))

Trace was busy cleaning up garbage on the track as part of a really, stupid-face, dumb punishment. He had watched, like, a thousand videos on youtube about grass dyeing that hadn't resulted in grass dying. He thought it would've been fun to see the school's logo in a patch of landscape!

But the teachers hadn't thought it very fun - more of a nuisance. They said "Oh, Trace, you killed a big patch of grass! That was naughty! You need to clean the lawns and maintain the track for a week.

A WEEK. Didn't they have landscapers? Where was the justice, the humanity!?

Dressed in a bright orange safety vest and stuffing garbage into a plastic bag on the far side of the track from the other two, and cursing his luck at all of the bits of trash that had blown into a chain link fence and was now wrapped around it tightly necessitating some tugging and pulling and... one, two, three- a-HAH! Got you, stupid cheese string wrapper! Take that, pepper stick!

He glanced over to see two people. Why, there was Scott! With... another person, with a weird name. Birdie? Baldie? It'd come to him soon, he was sure!

[Pippi]

Scott’s smile became much more definitively formed as he waited for Bridie to realise what you were supposed to do with an outstretched hand. A smile of bemusement, true, but it was a smile nonetheless, and one that he didn’t need to force, or the fake smile he put on when his parents or the school guidance counsellor asked him if everything was all right.

It wasn’t a very good handshake, in the end; kinda limp and sorta… not half-assed, that wasn’t the right descriptor, but like Bridie got instantly distracted halfway through it, following another trail and bounding after another conversation thread. Which… quite succinctly summed her up, really.

“Your stretches are pretty…”

How was he going to finish that sentence? ‘Bad’? ‘Sloppy’? ‘Shit’? One of the other words he’d use to put down and disregard his former teammates? It came so naturally to him that he had barely realised what he was about to say until the words were halfway out of his mouth. Honestly, it’d probably roll right off of Bridie’s back, but still. If he was planning on turning over a new leaf he couldn’t just… keep that old leaf in his pocket. Probably wasn’t how that saying worked, but, oh well.

“… good, for the most part, but there’s a couple things you could fix. Try straightening your legs out more, don’t bend your knees. Whenever you’re stretching your limbs you gotta keep them as straight as possible.”

Scott wrapped his arm across his chest to demonstrate, hooking his arm underneath to create a cross and twisting his body to the left. He held the position for ten seconds, before switching arms and twisting the other way. This time, however, he only held it for two, before his arms fell to his side and he let out a quiet, exasperated sigh. Seriously. What was this? What kinda malevolent god was sending all the people he’d looked down on and judged his way today?

Trace Carver was… he was… man, there was no better way to put it than that he was weird, okay? He was weird and there’d always been something off about him to Scott, and, well, they had both been on the track team together, and that was the beginning and end of their relationship. Scott looked away quickly, hoping Trace hadn’t caught wind of him, focusing his attention back on Bridie.

“Lemme know when you’re ready,” he muttered.

[Cicadan]

... Some kind of smile that Bridie couldn't quite read. But. A smile was a smile!

Bridie swore Scott (Os-born, that is) was going to say something but then something else came out, funny how those sorts of things happened sometimes. Bridie watched Scott, intently. But. Like, it was that sort of thing similar to someone telling Bridie 'oh, we're going to throw a party in the warehouse down on the corner of Fifth and Ambrose'- the place with the donuts shop-'so come on by', but then when Bridie would go there she'd only find a scene with a lot of flappy black and yellow police tape and cops telling her to stay away. And of course, she stayed away, because she had to do as she was told. She'd asked Bro about it at some point and he'd warned her that those sorts of events tended to be unsavory types, like 'not-delicious' in the metaphorical sense where they harbored the unpatriotic sort, so Bridie had put two and two together (four) and realized that it was probably best she avoided party invitations unless from friends she knew and trusted! Like Scott in front of her talking, right now, he seemed like an upstanding sort so she was pretty sure she could trust him!

Bridie blinked several more times, emptily. Then watched Scott, intently.

Okay, so she had to keep everything straight and stiff. Kind of like a good old-fashioned standing salute, like Pappy had taught her. Oh, but the weird thing was? Scott Super Fast was telling her to straighten her knees, but he wasn't even stretching with his knees. He twisted his elbow and his spine instead, and definitely it was the case that neither of those things were a knee unless that was some kinda weird anatomy term thing Bridie hadn't learned yet.

Bridie puzzled over what to do for a moment. She eventually decided it had to be fairly simple. Focus on the knees, silly! Bridie sighed, her body sighed in suit as she creaked down, planting both palms firmly on the dust of the track as her knees locked, legs straight as matchsticks, she willed it, kept willing it...

"Ow, ow, ow, this hurts..." Bridie smiled though, the pain came with the rush of adrenaline teasing her heartbeat in giddy flutters. Her forehead was tucked against her kneecaps and she could see through the gap between her slightly quivering (this really hurt) thighs. "Ow, ow

Hi, Trace!"

Trace's face, she was hopefully sure she remembered! He had a way with words and she followed him on his social media because his poetry sometimes made her feel so proud she could cry, like, the happy kind of crying specifically where her chest would be wound up, tight with pride.