Running on Empty

My sneakers hit the pavement at 5:45 AM, same time as always. Running was supposed to be my thing—varsity track team, future college scholarship, the whole deal. But lately? My lungs felt like they'd been swapped out for paper bags.

Then there was Maya, my friend since seventh grade, who'd spent the entire summer texting me thirst-trap photos from her cousin's wedding in Miami while I was stuck working at my dad's grocery store. The store that smelled like onions and disappointment.

"You're overthinking it," she'd said yesterday, spinning in my desk chair like she owned the place. "You're good at running. Just run."

Easy for her to say. She was Maya, effortlessly cool, while I was still trying to figure out if I was allowed to use the word "rizz" unironically at age seventeen.

The real problem wasn't running though. It was what happened when I stopped.

Last week, my abuela had sent me home with a Tupperware container of sliced papaya from her garden, told me it was for "energy." I'd forgotten it in my backpack for three days. When I finally opened it, the smell had hit me like a memory I didn't know I had—sweet and fermenting, like something precious turning into something else entirely.

That's when it clicked. I wasn't running because I loved it. I was running away from the truth: I didn't want to be on the track team anymore. I wanted to join the school newspaper, maybe actually write about stuff that mattered instead of just chasing a finish line someone else had drawn for me.

Maya found me sitting on the curb, still in my running gear, staring at my phone screen where the journalism club application was pulled up.

"You gonna tell me what's wrong, or am I supposed to guess?" She dropped beside me, breath minty and judgment-free.

I showed her the screen.

"Finally," she said, and it was the first time all summer I felt like someone actually saw me. "Now, are we gonna get boba or what?"

The papaya sat forgotten in my backpack, rotting into something new. Something real.