Chasing Saturdays

The vitamin gummies sat on the kitchen counter in their cheerful orange bottle, a daily reminder that Mom thought sixteen was too young for existential dread and too old for cartoons. I palmed two—cherry, gross—and grabbed my phone.

"You running today?" Marcus's text read.

"Always."

Truth was, I wasn't running toward anything. I was running away from the suffocating silence of our apartment since Dad moved out. Running from the way my friends looked at me like I might shatter if they said the wrong thing. Running from the version of myself that couldn't keep up.

Saturday mornings meant the abandoned trail behind the old middle school. I'd been going there for weeks, headphones blasting, legs pumping until my lungs burned in that way that felt like feeling something real.

But today wasn't like the others.

Today, there was a cat.

He was ancient—matted gray fur, one ear permanently folded, judging me from a fallen log like I was the weirdo for waking up at 6 AM to sprint nowhere.

"Sup," I said, because talking to stray animals was definitely not a cry for help.

The cat yawned, unimpressed.

I stretched. He watched. I started my warm-up jog. He followed.

By the third lap, this geriatric feline was casually keeping pace, darting through bushes and reappearing like a fuzzy lieutenant assigned to monitor my terrible life choices. It was absurd. It was the first thing that had made me laugh in weeks.

I stopped running, hands on knees, wheezing. The cat sat beside my shoe, waiting like I was the one being ridiculous.

"You're not even a little bit out of shape, are you?"

He headbutted my ankle. Solidarity.

That's when I heard footsteps—Marcus, breathing hard, Jackson trailing behind him, looking like he'd rather be literally anywhere else.

"Yo," Marcus said. "You gonna introduce us to your squad?"

I stared at them. Then at the cat. Then back.

"This is... actually, I don't know. He just showed up."

"Dude," Jackson said, bending down to scratch behind the cat's ears. "He looks like he's seen some things. Respect."

And just like that, we were sitting on that log, sharing a protein bar Marcus had brought, watching the cat clean his paw like he hadn't just facilitated my first normal conversation in two months.

"My mom makes me take those same vitamins," Marcus said suddenly. "The cherry ones taste like despair."

"Literally the worst," I said, and something in my chest loosened.

The cat stood up, stretched, and vanished into the woods like his job here was done.

"See you next Saturday?" Marcus asked, already jogging back toward the parking lot.

"Yeah," I said. "Yeah, definitely."

I walked home, not running. That could wait. Today, I'd done enough moving forward for one day.