Элисон Скотч - The Theory of Opposites

And then everyone on the trail turns to look at me.

But no matter. I keep hauling uphill for a good two minutes more until I am certain I’m going to puke. There’s a reason that Shawn and I quit jogging on Sundays.

I stick my hands on my knees, my head between my thighs. At least I got a jump on them, at least I’ll have a few minutes to formulate a plan , I think. To tell Vanessa that she had no right! to meddle like this, even if I did agree to let her meddle but not with this! ; to tell Theo that maybe he should take a goddamn hint and that when someone doesn’t accept your friend request, maybe it’s because she doesn’t want to be friends.

But before I can figure out a way to resolve any of these questions, a pair of orange Nikes present themselves on the ground in front of me.

“Hey,” he says from above.

I gnaw on my lip and wish that I’d gotten more sleep, taken the time to maybe brush my hair, adjust my braid so it wasn’t tilted to the left side of my head.

“I thought I had a least five minutes on you.”

“I’m used to you running,” Theo offers. “So I was ready.”

“You’re supposed to be in New Orleans,” I say, once I have wearily made my way upright.

“Vanessa called, so I came home.”

“Just like that.”

“Why should it be any more complicated?” he says.

“Things usually are.” Why is my life so goddamn complicated?

“Only if you make them more complicated,” he says. “At least, that’s what I’ve found.”

“Well…emailing your ex-girlfriend on Facebook to tell her about your revelation due to your testicular diagnosis tends to complicate things.”

“Touché.” He smiles.

“Whatever.”

“Vanessa said you wouldn’t write me back but that you wanted to.” He gazes across the landscape for a beat, then half-laughs. “God, that sounds so trite now that I say it out loud. I’d never tell my clients to hedge their bets on advice like that.”

“So I’m a bet?”

He waits a long time to answer. Then, finally, he shrugs and responds:

“No. But I think we’d both agree that you’re a bit of a gamble.”

Mount Rainier is an active volcano, though it hasn’t exploded in over 150 years. There are over twenty-six glaciers and thirty-six square miles of permanent snowfields, and on clear days, the mountain can be seen from as far away as Portland.

I learn all of this when I get stuck behind the family of six again; after my initial explosion of adrenaline that allowed me to flee and gave me the courage to forge small talk with Theo, I’ve gone soft and have slowed to what can only be described as an embarrassment of a tortoise’s pace, red-faced, huffy, sweat dripping down the backs of my ears. I’m too angry to speak with Vanessa, and too discombobulated to speak further with Theodore, so I’ve let them set the pace in front of me as we ascend a 7.2-mile trail on which I have at least a 50-50 chance of dying from cardiac arrest.

The mom of the family is cute, perky, and has more patience with the four children than I ever had with Alan Alverson, much less my own (imaginary) offspring. We reach a plateau on the peak, and the mom tucks the brochure from which she was reading into her fanny pack, which I very much covet right now. Blisters have formed on both of my big toes, and I might slay a man on the mountain for some moleskin. Why hadn’t I thought to bring a fanny pack? Be prepared! Why wasn’t I ever a Girl Scout? Why hadn’t my parents made me be a Girl Scout? Add that to my list of grievances: Girl Scouts. Things could have all been so different.

“Come on, family picture!” the dad of the family booms, and then looks around to find a passerby to snap it. I avert my eyes, but he must not intuit that I am in the middle of a life crisis, and he beckons me over.

“Sure,” I beam. “Happy to! Everyone smile!”

The kids fidget and make weird faces, but the parents manage perfect grins, even while clenching their cheeks and imploring the children to please just hold still for one moment! Owen, I swear, if you don’t smile normally, you will not get that Tootsie Pop I promised!

I take two pictures just to be nice.

“I bet this thing is going to explode any day now,” Owen says to me afterward, gesturing to the mountain, apropos of nothing, as if we’re old friends, like he should talk to strangers.

“Oh, I doubt that.”

“Doubt it all you want. But you can’t keep something in forever. Like, eventually — BOOM! — it has to erupt.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I deflect, trying to make my exit, though I’m really in no rush to catch Theo and Vanessa.

“Please, lady, this thing is going to kaboom. Everything does eventually. The only thing you can do is hope that when it does, you’re no place near it.”

I nod my head and start running again. He may actually be right — what do I know? — and I’ve never been one to place myself in the eye of disaster.

A good hour later, Owen passes me for the second or third time. I’m hunched against the railing, willing my insides to calm the hell down, the cramp in my side having evolved into a tornado of spasms. My lungs are on fire, my cheeks are sunburned and my big toes would be less painful if they were actually surgically removed. Right at the moment when I am thinking that death would be a more welcome reprieve than hiking the remaining two miles, Owen rolls past and yells:

“Come on, lady! You can’t be that old!”

But I am that old. I’m thirty-two years old! And my husband no longer loves me! And I am barren and childless! And I lost my job because I can’t think of a decent campaign for adult diapers. And my father has taken a lover.

So that’s it. I quit.

“Tell my friends they can find my rotting carcass here on this rock!” I yell back to him. There’s a rather pitiful-looking boulder to my left, and I pitifully join it.

“Suit yourself!” he shouts over his shoulder, already around the bend.

I will suit myself, I think, though I have no idea what this means. That’s the sticky part about the weight of my dad’s psychology: what’s the point of suiting yourself, of being yourself, of honoring what you want out of life when it’s all leading to a certain inevitability that’s entirely out of your control? The Master Universe Way! You can’t outrun God’s plan because…it’s God’s plan, for God’s sake! So why not embrace it? Love it? Enjoy it?

I stare out onto the horizon. Shawn is out there somewhere, and he’s suiting himself.

I nudge the dirt with my toe and check my phone, like maybe Shawn’s reconsidered and has emailed, but I don’t have cell service up here in the thin air, which figures. I start typing a note to Nicky anyway — maybe he’ll tell Shawn that I’m in Seattle, and Shawn will remember that Theo lives here and be driven mad with jealousy — but then I realize that Shawn has never been jealous of anyone because why would he be, and besides, I don’t think he even remembers that I dated Theo. I once saw an article in the Sunday Times about him, and I casually slid it over to Shawn’s side of the table while we were eating our eggs. Shawn scanned the piece and bounced his shoulders and said, “Eh, I sort of think that guy’s thing is a gimmick. Like, if you need someone to tell you how to say yes or no to something, how smart could you be?”

I just slid the paper right back next to my placemat, and didn’t say: he used to tell me how to say yes or no to everything all the time .

The sun is so goddamn bright up here on this godforsaken mountain. I thought it always rained in Seattle. Why isn’t it raining today in Seattle?