Free Last Run by Hilary Norman

damned scared since
it
happened, had been straight and clean and feeling like shit because he was clean.
    Except the truth was he wasn’t feeling shit because of not doing coke, was he? It was because of what had happened, because of what he’d seen, because he was scared half out of his
mind that he or she or
it
was going to come back for him
because
he’d seen it. And maybe the only thing that was going to help him
was
coke, because the fact was no one
else was going to be able to help: no doctor, no parents, no shrink.
    What Greg needed now, more than anything – except for it not to have happened, or at least for him not to have
seen
it happening – was for the memory and the fear to go
away.
    Cocaine could do that for him.
    And it wasn’t as if he even had to go looking for it, not as if he had to risk his mom and dad or even the cops finding out he was buying it, because he already had it, didn’t
he?
    Because last night Santa had come down his frigging chimney, metaphorically speaking.
    Because when Greg had got up this Friday morning and unlocked the sliding doors to the deck outside his bedroom, he had seen it lying less than eight feet away.
    Folded silver paper glinting in the sunlight.
    Plastic baggie inside.
    And sure, it was kind of weird,
more
than kind of, actually, because how in hell had it got there? And Gregory had wondered if maybe one of the guys who knew how freaked out he was
feeling had left it as a gift, because otherwise how
could
it have got there? But bottom line, it
was
there.
    It had come just when he needed it. So tonight, if he still didn’t feel any better . . .
    Tonight.
    It was late Friday when Kez called Cathy to ask if she felt like driving up to West Palm Beach for the meet the next day.
    ‘I could use the support if you’d like to come,’ Kez said, ‘and if your ankle’s up to it.’
    ‘My ankle’s fine, but I’ll bet you’ll have a zillion supporters,’ Cathy said, though she’d been longing to go up, but suppressing the urge, figuring that
since Kez had not asked if she was going, that had to mean she didn’t want her there.
    Not the case.
    ‘No one but the coach that I know of,’ Kez said. ‘And I’d like having you in the crowd.’
    Excitement shot through Cathy again, warming her. Another kind of longing, she thought, still unsure. About anything.
    Except that she wanted to go.
    The first hundred metres of the 800 was run in lanes, but after that, as often happened in this race, the runners were bunched so close for the rest of the first lap that had
it not been for the fierce red of Kez’s hair – no sun, so she was wearing no cap – Cathy might not have been able to pick her out of the pack.
    At Sarasota where Cathy had seen Kez win the 800, one of the competitors had gone off fast, driving all the runners into too high a speed in the first lap, and with the favourite laid up with a
broken ankle and the other main threat, Maria Valdez, finding herself boxed in on the inside, Kez had been the athlete with the most strength and speed on the last lap. Valdez had come home first
in Tampa, but Kez’s run had been both tactically near-perfect and almost – even Coach Delaney had felt – inspired, gaining her the silver.
    ‘Tail wind,’ Kez had answered self-deprecatingly when Cathy had asked her, at the café on Wednesday, what she thought had made that race so special.
    ‘Why do you do that?’ Cathy had asked. ‘Make it sound like nothing.’
    ‘Just one race. Greatest buzz in the world at the time, but doesn’t mean much on its own.’
    Coming right after Sarasota, Cathy had wanted to argue, she’d have thought it meant a hell of a lot. But something – a kind of reluctance to overstep – had held her back, kept
her silent.
    Later, perhaps, when – if – they knew one another better.
    If.
    A lot of talent was absent today in West Palm Beach, and even as Cathy saw Kez breaking away from the pack and sprinting into the lead, she