Lilly

In my dream I am running. I don’t feel like I have to stop. I might be sprinting on the asphalt at the end of my street or through some gravel alleyway or across a field of unkempt grass—I don’t know. It doesn’t make any difference to me. All I know is that I am running and there’s no pain and I won’t stop until I have to.

Yeah, my alarm says, you have to.

The air cast comes off, for good, in a few days. Beneath its clunky frame, the incisions have been reduced to clean pink lines in a stark V-shape across my ankle. Sometimes, when my parents aren’t home, I rip off the Velcro straps that secure the boot and walk gingerly across my room with nothing between the sole of my foot and the floor, pins and needles prickling up through my calf. I’m more than careful. It never hurts.

One of my friends’s favorite bands releases a new music video and within 12 hours of its release someone brings up the idea of recreating it for fun at our next sleepover. That quickly escalates into planning how we’ll shoot specific scenes and what props we’ll need to find and how we’ll recreate their high-fashion getup with cheap, lookalike costumes. When we go, we go all out, and we go together.

The title of the music video is “Run.” ♦