Twenty Miles Read Online Free PDF

and began to walk away, a slow, loping stride like he was in a rap video limping to the beat.
    I recognized the football player from the gym. We’d done a team workout the day before – circuits in the Gritty Grotto, the gym in the bowels of the Phys. Ed. building. A sprawling, low-ceilinged space you descended into, the sweat-bloated air pulling you down. The gym was arranged in a series of concentric circles, weight machines surrounding the free weights, all lassoed by a rubber track, the track surrounded by a halo of gravel. I’d left the Grotto with a taste in my mouth like I’d been eating chalk.
    Here, the Gritty Grotto, was where the teams all roamed, different herds mingling in their Scarlet athletic gear. A marked division of species. The giraffe pack of the women’s volleyball team, high ponytails and black spandex shorts. The men’s hockey team: a lean, shaggy-haired, baseball-capped pack of wolves, their smooth strides. The bearish football players, vibrating size, confident in their tattooed bulk. I lay on my back next to Pelly on a mat that smelled of socks, resting between sets of crunches, and watched a group of football players collide with Boz, Heezer and Toad, who were on their way to squats. Heezer and Toad had a Tweedledee and Tweedledum thing going in their workout gear, both wearing knee-high sweat socks with stripes around the top – Heezer’s blue, Toad’s red – and matching black shorts with the Scarlet symbol on the thigh and the word
Hockey
sprawled in bold across the butt. Toad had snorted at Heezer in the shorts as she followed her out of the dressing room, swigging from a water bottle.
    ‘I love how the shorts announce our junk in the trunk. Like everyone can’t tell what we play, come on. Yeah, we’re fucking gymnasts. Look at us. You know what they should have? One of those alarms built in like garbage trucks have, you know? Like every time we back up the shorts go BEEP ... BEEP ... BEEP. Warning. Junk in reverse.’
    The two groups, football and hockey, collided in high-fives, the beer-chugging football player greeting them all as Tough Bruce, holding his palm down low for them to slap in succession.
    To Heezer: ‘Tough Bruce, what’s up.’ Slap. To Toad: ‘Tough Bruce, pleasure as always.’ Slap. ‘DariUS!’ Toad barked. To Boz: ‘Looking fine, Tough Bruce. Touch it out, sister.’
    The armholes of the football players’ T-shirts had frayed edges where they’d ripped off the sleeves. The teams separated, football to bench press, hockey to squats, and Pelly and I started the crunches again.
    Of course they wouldn’t be at the rink on their day off. Of course they’d be there, drinking beer in the sun. But it was strange seeing them outside the dressing room, away from the ice, the gym, away from Sam Hall. Seeing Hal there in sunglasses, her smirk behind the plastic glass of beer as she talked to Heezer, felt like seeing a teacher on a weekend at Zellers.
    I floated in the current of students, heading toward the rink. The crowd thinned out as the path emptied into the long, sheared lawn bordering the Sam Hall parking lot. Green humidity hung in the air. A bike bell behind me and then the rushing winged sound of tires grew, a quick touch of wind on my legs as Clare Segal whizzed past – ‘Heya, Iz!’ – her teeth a quick flash at her shoulder, a Metallica sticker stuck crooked on the back of her helmet. She shot into the maze of trees and buildings beside the arena. Clare was my other stall neighbour, the southerly one. She wore the daily uniform of jeans and plain T-shirts that most of the other players did, but once in a while she wore a T-shirt that said
Birtle Quilting Bee, 1982
or
I’d Rather be Sailing
or
St. Rose Pie-Eating Champion, 1994
and I’d wonder about the rest of her life outside Sam Hall.
    Quick footsteps behind me and I stepped to the side as a guy brushed up against my elbow. But then he slowed down, loosened his stride to match my own and