Treadmill 4.2

    My wet hair kept bumping into my right eye until I pushed it back into the flopping wet mop. It was harder to do this on a treadmill, my feet gaining traction on the rubber as I flicked my hand up quickly. I pushed my earbuds deeper in.

     A line of black, mechanical treadmills faced the glass wall. There were only a few treadmills taken, girls in spandex and bright blue tank tops walking with their ipads in front of them. I wondered if my shoulders bounced too much, if I looked like a slinky rolling down a staircase. I began to forget what I was doing with my hands.

    

    It was harder to see the freshman on the quad. The sun was setting now, catching on the tall dorm buildings. The grass wasn’t the lush green I had remembered it and the shirtless boys jumped for Frisbees as their girlfriends sat in sundresses under the tree. Their bodies seemed like rubber bands that stretched and coiled, snapping back to their bare white ankles.

     I would have to stop listening to this album in a couple weeks, the songs becoming more of a narrative than an anthem. The lyrics were shouted and vague and the lines of drinking beers alone made more sense every step. Every time my foot thudded on the rubber.

     I would wake up with my hands curled under my quads and my stomach a weight and my body pillow tucked behind me. I’d throw up in the bathroom upstairs whose floors were painted with pubic hairs and spilt toothpaste. I’d throw up because of the combinations of alcohol, the smell of the house, and the fear I would bump into her on my way to class. I’d started entering the cement building at odd hours through back doors and taking curlicue routes to my room.

    As the sun clipped the edge of the dorm and the Frisbee throwers walked to grab their tossed aside sandals that my hand reached out and turned the dial of the treadmill. The quad was dark and the buildings remained, stone and resolute as the orange lights began to flicker on around them. I turned up the speed on the treadmill.

     Soon students would be emerging with water bottles full of neon liquid. I turned up the speed on the treadmill. Soon I would collapse in the locker room bathroom and use toilet paper to wipe the sweat from my eyes and back of my neck. I would use the toilet to stand and I move myself to the mirror, my legs heavy but the ground light as if it were sliding beneath me. Sweat would drip from the end of the bangs in front of my eyes and I would push them back, noticing the thin stretch of skin receding back on my scalp. I would run my fingers through my hair and rub the part of my skull that seemed to have given up.

     I turned up the speed on the treadmill.