Chasing Sunday

The summer before junior year, I spent every morning running loops around the neighborhood until my legs felt like jelly and my lungs burned like I'd swallowed fire. Mom thought it was about getting in shape for cross country season, but really, I was running away from the fact that my former best friend had ghosted me three weeks before graduation without explanation.

I'd catch myself scrolling through her Instagram at 2 AM, watching her live her best summer at the lake house while I stuck to my familiar route, past the same manicured lawns and the abandoned gas station where we'd split our first gummy vitamin because we were too cool for actual candy but too broke for anything else.

The neon sign still buzzed like an angry hornet, and I'd pause there sometimes, breathing hard, sweat dripping down my back, remembering how Maya had laughed so hard vitamin dust came out her nose. That friendship had been my vitamin—absolutely essential for survival, or so I'd thought. Now I was deficient, deficient, deficient.

"You're obsessing," my brother said one night, finding me in the kitchen staring at my phone like it might magically produce answers. "She wasn't that great anyway. Remember when she ditched you at homecoming to dance with that senior?"

I shrugged. "That's different. We were thirteen."

"People don't change that much," he said, grabbing a juice box from the fridge. "You'll find new friends. Better ones."

I nodded but didn't believe him. How could anyone replace eight years of inside jokes, shared secrets, the way we could communicate entire conversations with raised eyebrows?

Then came the day I cut my usual route short because of construction, ending up at the high school track instead. Someone else was running—this sophomore named Leo who I'd shared Spanish with but never really talked to. He waved me over like it was the most natural thing in the world.

"Race you for a Gatorade?" he called, breathless but grinning.

Something in my chest unlocked. I didn't have to run alone anymore.

That evening, I finally unfollowed Maya's account. My vitamin had changed, sure—but maybe I wasn't as deficient as I'd thought. Maybe, just maybe, I was learning to manufacture my own.