1. 

The day before the marathon, I ask your mom if there is anything I should bring to New York with me. “Some stress free energy,” your mom replies. “Your friend is going nuts.”

2. 

I like to say that you do everything with a passion. “That’s a nice way to say I’m crazy,” you like to say back. 

You’re not crazy, but I can understand why people might think so. Perhaps I did at first, when I pretended not to remember you during my sophomore orientation. I had just transferred to your high school, and you were the peppy student ambassador I had met at the homecoming dance the previous year. I remembered your voice, pointed and demanding even amid dance music. But your extroversion was something I didn’t want to touch.  

Now I just call it passion. You want to be heard so much that you shout. Your hand gestures are something to be dodged. You cry to be sadder and pound your fists on the steering wheel to be angrier. You want to feel it all. 

3. 

When I arrive at the brownstone in Hoboken that your mom rented for the weekend, you say you want to walk. I had already slipped off my shoes, so I lace them back on—the Asics you convinced me to buy over the summer—and we bounce together down the too-steep steps. 

It’s colder than we’re used to. Our usual walks begin along California’s Coast Highway, always starting at the do-it-yourself dog wash in Solana Beach. There, our crewnecks fall over our shorts and onto our mid-thighs. In this New England November, we wear leggings and layers of long sleeves under jackets.  

“Tell me what’s going on,” I say, looking over at you. Like me, you walk purposefully, heavily on sidewalks. But this time, you don’t put as much weight on your left leg; you wear a band around the bottom of your knee to lift your patella joint. You’re congested, too, and think you might have mono. You consider not running the marathon at all. 

“I just want to know how tomorrow is going to go,” you say.

You could defer, which means you would have to train again. You could start and not finish. Family, friends, and friends of friends are here to watch you. 

I’m proud that you’re even considering not running it, because, in another version of today, it wouldn’t be a question. You wouldn’t consider your own self-preservation if it meant not reaching a goal, not exceeding others’ expectations. 

 

4. 

We didn’t always walk. Our sophomore year of high school, it was lunches with S, and come junior year, it was giggling about Mrs. T with F. We got close on that fourth of July, when I threw up in M’s hot tub. You took me outside in the dark, your arm around me as I hobbled in zig zags to my mother’s car that had just pulled up. You had never met her before. “We’ve got a situation,” you said to her. She still laughs when you retell the story. 

Our high school was weird. Being one of the top public high schools in the state, it attracted some “fucking losers,” as we like to say. Nobody really dated, and, for both of us, the lack of romantic experience became an indication of an inherent unworthiness. Our insecurities were evidence-backed like the thesis sentences of our AP Lang essays. 

During our freshman years of college, we realized we were normal. That we could pull anyone we wanted. We did this too many times; each guy just something to feel better. It was like making up for lost time, and it was electrifying until it wasn’t anymore. 

5. 

I remember running as a child in elementary school. The track that outlined the field and the dust that stung my eyes. The tiny gravel bits stained red; picking them out of a newly scraped knee. I never felt athletic then, always too big to move quickly like everyone else. I remember how the track’s last straightaway hurt my chest, made me feel like I might die. 

During the pandemic, I wanted to run like everyone else could. Gracefully and easily. So I downloaded an app that told me to sprint intervals on Tuesdays, to hobble through long runs on Thursdays, to stretch my hip flexors on Sundays. It taught me how to live. 

One day during the pandemic, you suggested we do yoga on the beach. We recorded a time-lapse of our chaturanga transitions and sun salutation sequences atop beach towels, and you wore two Dutch braids. 

Afterward, we sat and looked at the ocean. I remember that it was cloudy that day, the water grey and slightly protesting. I remember my legs being criss-crossed when I told you I thought I might have some sort of problem with eating and exercise. I didn’t know what to call it. You told me to tell my mother. 

Shortly after, a podiatrist told me I had injured my foot from running, and that I had to stop. 

6. 

When you were in kindergarten, a male classmate told you that you were fat. 

I think of him as we walk in Hoboken. I don’t want you to run this marathon for him, or for anyone else. 

You are one of those people whose insecurities are hard to see. You are loud and surprising, and challenge the world as it presents itself to you. But perhaps it all looks different inside of your head. 

Data from two studies indicates gender differences in motives for running. Men tend to run more for competition and challenge, and women for weight concern, affiliation, psychological coping, life meaning, and self-esteem. 

7.

This past summer, you helped inspire me to start running again. During a walk in California, you told me, “Who gives a fuck how fast you run. It’s for you, and you only.” I think about you every time I run. I try to replace the voice inside my head with yours. 

I want you to run slowly during the marathon tomorrow—to not run at all. I think about spending the day in the city with you, laughing as we watch the runners from afar. 

8. 

We don’t reach a conclusion. “Distract me, now!” You speak with an abruptness that I miss when we are apart. 

I keep trying to push the conversation topic back toward you and the marathon. I hate talking about myself; I’ve never felt like I deserve the attention. On walks, you challenge me to keep talking. “No, go back, I have one more question about what you were talking about,” you say. Nobody has shown more interest in my life than you. 

For the rest of the walk, we don’t talk about the marathon. We laugh about things only we understand.

9. 

We return to the condo and you tell your mom you are going to do it. You are going to run the marathon. Your mom smiles at me as if I did something, and I am confused. 

10. 

The night before the marathon, we drop you off with another friend who lives closer to the starting line. I put my arm around you on the bus, and we don’t talk. You are never this quiet. 

11. 

I stay with your mom for the rest of the night. We keep getting on the subway in the wrong direction, which makes us giggle even more. We speak of Persian music, graduate school, her relationship with her brother, my recent breakup. On the 6 train toward Uptown, which we hoped was going in the right direction, she told me that love is like an addiction. She heard on a podcast that, in heartbreak, the same parts of your brain light up as when the body is in physical pain. My eyes started watering, partly because I needed to hear this. And partly because I realized where you get it from. 

12. 

I remember telling you about my first therapist, K. I don’t remember when you started questioning her, but it was probably before I did. K told me too much about her life—her daughters, her marriages, the box of sweets on her kitchen counter that she locked when her husband would eat too many cookies. K suggested that I implement this intervention to mitigate my own binge eating tendencies. 

You always say what I am not ready to admit at the time.

13. 

Around the back of an apartment complex in Del Mar is a staircase to the sea that will always be ours. We call it Secret Beach. 

Sometimes, the tide is so high that you can’t see the sand, and you step from the stairs directly into the saltwater. One evening there, we caught the sunset at its most orange. We were sitting on the beach writing in our notes apps, predicting where everyone from our high school would go to college. Somehow, you knew I would be in Providence, Rhode Island.

You came to visit me for the first time during my senior year of college. Before you arrived, I called my sister. She said you and my college friends were not going to understand each other. “They’re going to be like, ‘Who IS this,’” my sister said of you. 

It’s true, I sidestep back and forth between the worlds of my college friends and my hometown friends. When you arrived, you were confused as to why my college friends were so intensely stressed about post-graduate jobs. You watched me interact with them and told me afterward that I said “thank you” too often. 

14. 

I don’t usually go for people like you. Even now, you still intimidate me. 

15. 

The morning of the marathon, all you texted your mom was “I’m scared.” She, your stepdad, and I had breakfast around the condo’s dining table before heading to the corner of First Avenue and E 62nd Street, where we’d meet you at your 16th mile. According to your mom, you are considering stopping there. 

16. 

We wait behind the gates for around an hour, slowly making our way to the very front. We trade places with other families and cheer on Grace and Gaston and Janice, and anyone else whose names we can plausibly surmise. There are bells and music and those hand-clapper devices, plastic palms that smack against each other. We track your location and watch your dot drift in little increments across the Queensboro Bridge. 

“She’s wearing all black—very distinguishable,” your mom jokes with the others. I am at the front now, leaning over the gate and looking for you in the crowd of runners.

17.

When I see your face, I scream.

Some runners come over to hug their loved ones watching along the perimeter. But you notice us and keep running, waving as if it’s easy—as if you never had any doubts. Both knees are taped, and your dark brown hair is pulled back into a ponytail. You look like a runner. 

“If she’s okay at this point, she can do the whole thing,” your stepdad says. 

18. 

Around mile 18, marathon runners often reach a point called "the wall.” The body runs out of glycogen around this time, which is its preferred form of energy, made from several connected glucose molecules stored in the liver and the muscles. 

19. 

We talk about motherhood sometimes. “How do you have pride in your kids’ lives…” I say. Sometimes I talk into space as we walk, but this time, on the Cardiff trail, I look at you. “Without failing when they fail? Without your life depending on theirs?” 

Sometimes, I tell you about my mother and you understand her side of the situation better than you do mine. “You know, I would do the same thing as she did,” you laugh.   

We’re both close to our mothers, close enough that it hurts sometimes. We’ve both hurt our mothers, forgetting they too are just daughters. I hope we still talk then, when we become mothers that are also still daughters. 

20. 

Your mom tells me that you haven’t run more than 20 miles, ever. “She knows she could’ve trained better,” she says of you. 

At this point, passing over the mile 20 mark, your feet have taken your body further than they ever have before. I wonder what it feels like to defy. 

21. 

Over tacos, your mom tells me about some girls from our high school that you “really” wanted to be friends with during your freshman year of high school. “It’s interesting and difficult as a mother,” she said. “To know immediately that certain people are not going to be your kid’s lifelong friends…But you can’t say that to them in that moment.” She looks at me. “When I met you for the first time, I knew you were a keeper.” 

We’ve both struggled with friends. We’ve both listened too much, asked “How are you?” too many times to not get it back in return. In each other, we find what we hoped for in other people. 

22. 

There’s a picture of you as a little girl, grinning so big your eyes are closed. You had just run your first 5K. Your mom is squatting down so she is your height. 

We both took part in the Girls on the Run program, although at different San Diego elementary schools. We probably both ran that 5K around Mission Bay. I think I needed you then, as a little girl. Just as I need you now. 

23. 

One day on a walk, you paused. “Look at us,” you said. “We’re built like women.” 

I’ve always thought you were beautiful, even when your hair was black or ginger, dyed with something cheap you found at CVS. But I think so even more now that you’ve settled on your natural dark brown. It matches your eyes. 

24. 

We meet you in Central Park at the 24th mile. There are still smiles here, even so far into the race. Two old women hold hands as they run, bouncing up and down together on the asphalt. 

25. 

We’re making our way down the weaving paths of Central Park when my phone buzzes, notifying me that you finished the race. You did it. 

26.

Your phone died so it’s hard to find you. You take turns calling us from strangers’ phones. We accidentally go through the security and back into Central Park, then back out. Finally, I see you surrounded by your college friends, who are more done-up-looking than I am at this point. I come up from behind you and wrap my arms around you, digging my head into your shoulder. I cry. 

0.2. 

“Please know that little girl would be so fucking proud,” I text you while boarding the train back to Providence. 

“Ran for her, for you, and for myself,” you reply.