The Spinach Streak

My mom's vitamin gummies sat on the counter like a warning label. 'For energy,' she'd said, sliding them across the granite. I'd been running on fumes since eighth grade, but junior year was hitting different. Cross country practice at 6 AM, AP classes until 3, then work at Smoothie King until close. My old friend group had reshaped itself into some kind of social pyramid, and somehow I'd slid all the way to the bottom without anyone noticing.

'You're drinking that AGAIN?' Maya raised an eyebrow at my spinach-mango-kale concoction, her pale manicured hand hovering over her phone. We'd been best friends since kindergarten, but ever since she'd started sitting with the popular kids at lunch, everything between us felt like walking on eggshells.

'It's literally packed with iron,' I said, even though the truth was I'd just seen a TikTok about how spinach made you run faster. Desperate times.

The next day at practice, Coach Miller announced time trials for varsity. My stomach did that thing where it felt like someone was squeezing it like a stress ball. Maya stood near the starting line, stretching in her expensive running gear, surrounded by her new friends who looked like they'd been born at the finish line.

Three laps in, my legs burned like I'd been set on fire. But then I thought about everything I'd been running from—my parents' divorce, Maya drifting away, that constant feeling that everyone else had gotten some manual on how to be sixteen that I'd missed. And suddenly I wasn't last anymore. I wasn't first either, but I was moving forward.

After practice, Maya sat beside me on the grass, unexpected and quiet. 'That spinach thing actually working?' she asked, not making fun for once.

'Maybe,' I said, smiling. 'Or maybe I'm just tired of running away from stuff.'

She nodded, like she understood something about pyramids and friendship and growing up that neither of us had figured out yet. 'Want to split a smoothie?'

'Only if it has spinach.'

'You're impossible,' she said, but she was smiling. 'But yeah. Okay.'