Running From The Bull

My iPhone lay face-down on my desk, vibrating like an angry hornet every thirty seconds. Another group chat explosion. Someone said something about someone else, and now half the sophomore class was taking sides, drafting manifestos in all caps with too many exclamation points.

Social media was pure bull, but try telling that to everyone whose entire social existence depended on staying "plugged in." My sister called it a vitamin supplement for validation—artificial, but we all swallowed it anyway.

I grabbed my running shoes instead. Dad always said his morning run kept him sane, and at sixteen, I finally got it. The neighborhood was asleep, fog curling around streetlights like something from a dream.

Three miles in, my legs burned honestly. No filters, no follower counts. Just pavement and rhythm and the certainty that moving forward meant I was still becoming whoever I was supposed to be.

Then I saw him.

Tyler sat on the creek bridge, skipping stones. Tyler, who'd spread that rumor about me in seventh grade. Tyler, whose Instagram was a curated museum of apparent perfection.

Except here he was, alone at 6 AM, looking like he hadn't slept.

"You're still running?" he asked.

"You're still posting bull?" The words slipped out.

He laughed, but not meanly. "Yeah. Pretty sad, right?"

He patted the bridge beside him, and against instinct, I sat. The creek rushed beneath us, carrying the silence we couldn't fill.

"My therapist says I do it for attention," he said finally. "But I hate attention. Everyone else is living these lives, and I don't want to get left behind."

"So you fake it."

"So I fake it. You running away from something or toward something?"

The question hit harder than expected. "Both. I think most of us are."

He nodded, pulling a bottle from his pocket—vitamin C supplements, cheap drugstore kind. "My mom's obsessed. Thinks if I take enough, I won't get sick, won't feel bad, won't be human."

"Does it work?"

"What do you think?"

We both laughed. The bull that separated us—the rumors, the competition—seemed suddenly distant, drowned out by rushing water.

"I could run with you sometime," Tyler said. "If you wanted."

"Maybe. If you leave the phone at home."

"Deal."

When I got back, my iPhone had seventeen new notifications. I ignored them. Some days, the only thing worth running toward is the stuff that's real, even if it's just sitting on a bridge at dawn with someone you thought you hated, finally telling the truth.