Chasing Concrete

At 7:43 AM, the suburban quiet felt like a held breath. The only sound was my ragged gasping and the rhythmic slap of my running shoes against the pavement. Coach said I needed to shave twelve seconds off my mile time if I wanted varsity, but honestly? I just needed to escape my house before Mom started her morning ritual of laying out the vitamin supplements on the kitchen counter like some kind of holistic intervention.

"You're wasting your potential, Maya," she'd say, arranging the orange gel capsules in neat rows. "These support focus. Mental clarity."

Whatever. The only thing they supported was my growing resentment toward breakfast.

I turned the corner near Miller's Creek and stopped cold. A dog—this mangy, golden retriever mix with fur like tangled sunshine—sat in the middle of the sidewalk. No collar. No owner in sight. Just this dog, watching me with these weirdly intelligent eyes, head tilted like it was evaluating my life choices.

"Uh, hey?" I tried.

The dog stood, stretched elaborately, and started jogging ahead of me. Not running away—leading.

"Okay, weird. I'm not following you."

I turned back toward my route. The dog circled around and positioned itself directly in my path, tail wagging with terrifying enthusiasm.

"Fine. You're lucky I'm procrastinating."

We ran together for three miles. Me in my beat-up Nikes, this random dog keeping pace like it trained for this. Somewhere around the old elementary school, I realized I was grinning. Actually grinning. The first real smile I'd managed all week.

The vitamin gummies in my backpack bounced with every step, and suddenly they didn't feel like Mom's attempt to fix me anymore. They were just gummies. The dog was just a dog. I was just a girl who liked running, even if I never made varsity, even if college applications were looming like a storm cloud, even if everything felt like it was changing too fast and not fast enough all at once.

The dog peeled off toward a blue house two streets over from mine. A woman on the porch called, "Buster! There you are, you little escape artist."

Buster gave me one last look—definitely judging my mile time—and trotted home.

I walked back, breathing hard, sweat cooling on my skin. My phone buzzed. A group chat blowing up about something that felt huge yesterday but suddenly didn't. I popped a vitamin gummy in my mouth. Orange flavor. Not terrible.

Tomorrow I'd run the same route. Maybe Buster would be there. Probably not. But for the first time in forever, I was actually looking forward to finding out.