Going for Kona (21 page)

How quickly things changed. The bicycle course cut through a lava field, which was pretty to look at in an austere way, but it was a giant grill and I was a slab of ribs. I tried to visualize past it for Adrian’s sake, but I failed. Every cold image I conjured ended up melted, then boiled, steamed, and burned into a black residue.

“You’re missing a really sucky time, Adrian,” I said aloud, but the wind stole the sound away.

Meanwhile, the leaders were starting to whizz past me in the other direction. They’d finish the marathon before I made it off my bike. I would be lucky to finish out of the bottom ten percent. I passed a young female rider in head-to-toe lime green as she loaded her bicycle into a SAG wagon. At least I’d beat her.

On my right, a rider was bent over his back wheel, changing a flat. He couldn’t have been any older than Annabelle. I was so tempted to stop, but I didn’t know how I’d get going again if I did. Besides, he was supposed to flag for help if he needed it, and he hadn’t. I rode on, feeling like a jerk.

I kept going. Even down in the aerobars, I was far from flying. It was more like crawling. Crawling across glass. The bumps strained my neck and back with no respite, and because of the headwinds—which were gusting up to forty mph, I’d overheard as I passed a rest stop—I stayed flattened in position from the start. I’d lose most of my forward momentum if I sat up, and the tradeoff of less neck strain in favor of slower speed wasn’t worth it, so I forced myself to ride through the pain. I lifted an arm, shook it, and laid it carefully back into the aerobars. I repeated with the other arm, then very, very carefully I rolled my neck. My bicycle had a tendency to follow my eyes, especially when I used the aerobars, and I couldn’t afford a wipeout.

But thanks to Stephanie Willis and the conditioning time I’d lost on the
real
La Mariposa because of her, my neck couldn’t take much more. Of course, losing La Mariposa and my neck strength paled in comparison to what she’d really cost me.

I fought the downward spiral those thoughts could start, but I didn’t have the willpower and I spun helplessly around Adrian’s warning and his missing money. I had an incredibly bad vibe about Sam and Annabelle being there, being alone back in town, and it came back in a rush. I wished they’d stayed far away from me and Kona.

Over the past month, I’d tried to block that stuff out, tried to block everything out. I’d kept my stress level so low I almost didn’t have a pulse. I thought I’d learned how not to feel. I’d licked this, hadn’t I? Because it just didn’t matter as long as I kept the kids safe. Which I couldn’t do if they followed me around like little lambs.

“Stop, just stop.” I was muttering aloud, a crazy woman on a bicycle on a tiny island in a giant sea. I forced myself to focus on my body position and on easing the strain on my neck without sitting up.

Yet that didn’t help and my torturous thoughts didn’t stop. My emotions returned in a landslide, raw and ugly. “What did you do with that money, Adrian?” I screamed, not caring if anyone heard me. I sat up and the wind slammed into my chest, slowing me down so much it felt like I was going backwards. “Do you have a baby mama out there? Did you pay someone to throw a race? Did you order a hit? Was someone blackmailing you? What did you do, Adrian? Who’s coming for me?”

I collapsed back into my bars. “Chingate, Adrian,” I whispered. “Chingate.”

“On your left.” A woman at least twenty-five years older than me went past.

I kept going.

“On your left.” This time it was a man about my age, carrying far more flesh than was healthy.

I kept pedaling. The rhythm eventually soothed the worst of my rage and replaced it with a deep loneliness, a black emptiness. On the swim, adrenaline and endorphins had sustained me. The accomplishment, and seeing my kids, had pushed me through transition. Out there, alone, hurting, and exhausted, though, there was nothing. Crowds were few and far between. Riders spread out to prevent drafting. It was just me in poor company for seven hours. How different it would have been if Adrian had kept his promise and come with me.

My balance was off, and I felt a little dizzy. I realized I hadn’t run through my course checklist in a while. I looked at my Garmin. It was far past time to hydrate and eat a Quest Bar. I sat up and pulled a chocolate chip cookie bar from my bento bag and ripped it open. It had melted. I squeezed the wrapper and it oozed into my mouth. I followed it up with Nuun, counting my sips to make sure I didn’t short myself on any pulls. I added five since I was late. I glanced down as I stuffed the wrapper back into the bento and saw that white salt had surfaced through the brown fabric on my thighs. That meant I was underhydrated. Way to go, Michele. You’re too late. Well, chingalo.

“Did you hear me, Adrian? I said chingalo. I don’t care if I finish. I don’t care if I live through today. I don’t care if I never go back to Houston. Chingala.”

I came up on the long climb to the turnaround. I was nearly halfway, but this was much more than just another hill. On my way up, the infamous crosswinds swept across the road and nearly took me down. I lifted out of the aerobars one hand at a time and sat up again for better stability. After the turn, I’d have a tailwind instead of a headwind, I told myself. I could make up speed on the downhill.

Minutes later, however, I discovered an ugly truth: there were no tailwinds. How could the wind on that damn island blow in every direction at once? My speed fell dangerously low and I wobbled along. My knee started hurting. I started up another hill.

Suddenly I heard a loud crack, and my legs spun the pedals crazy fast, all tension gone. I weaved into the road, into the paths of other riders.

A man screamed in a high-pitched voice as he rode at me. “Watch out, lady!” Not a man. The young boy from earlier, the one changing a flat.

“I’m sorry!”

I pulled over to the side of the road. Oh, please, not my chain, I thought, but I knew it was. I looked back over my shoulder, and I saw the coil of traitorous links in the road. It raised its head like a cobra and hissed. Get a grip, Michele, I told myself in my mom voice. This is not the time for your make-believe games. Riders were dodging the chain, cursing. I darted into the road and retrieved it before someone punctured a tire. I dismounted and stood beside La Mariposa the Second.

So this was it. Kona, for Adrian, for me, would end with a broken chain. I didn’t have enough fluid left in my dehydrated body to cry, so I backed off the road and sank cross-legged to the ground. The lava fields behind me broiled my back, but I was past caring. Let them fry me like a roasting chicken. It just didn’t matter anymore.

A rider pulled to a stop beside me. I didn’t look up.

“Hi there. What’s the problem?” A woman’s voice. Calm. Friendly.

“Broken chain. No spare. I’m done.”

“Why don’t you use mine? We’re both on Trek Pilots, three rings, ten-speed, so it should fit.”

She had a spare? The odds against it were incredible. No one carries a spare chain. They’re too heavy to lug a hundred and twelve miles, and, besides, chains rarely break. I looked up—and into the green eyes I saw on the swim.

“Did we meet in the water?”

“Maybe.”

“I think you’re my angel, then. The priest told us to believe in our angels.” I stopped. I wasn’t making sense even to myself.

“Maybe so.”

I stood and brushed off my shorts. “Nobody carries an extra chain.”

“I do. And the tool, too.” She slipped off her seat but remained poised over her bicycle with both feet on the ground. The leg facing me had “RIP AH” written on it in black Sharpie. She twisted around and unzipped the bag behind her seat, then pulled out a chain and the little tool. I had a clear view of the bag, and it had nothing else in it. No tire, no tubes, no CO2 cartridges. Just a chain, a tool, and a tiny can of chain lube, which she handed to me. She zipped her bag closed. “Do you need help changing it?”

“No, I can do it. But how can I repay you? You’ve saved me twice.”

She pointed at the stenciling on my monarch bicycle. “Fly strong, be safe. See you on the course.” She clipped in and pushed off.

“Thank you,” I called after her. I saw the bib number on her back: 2200. I needed to remember it so I could thank her after the race.

Adrian had taught me to change my chain, but I’d never had to do it without him. It should have taken five minutes. It took fifteen, fifteen of inhaling the smell of Papa’s gun oil, fifteen minutes of smearing it all over my hands and arms. The chain fit, though, and when I started to pedal, it stayed on. “Thank you.” I pointed upward.

I rode on. I had fifty miles left to go across hot lava fields before I would even get to start the run.

Fifty miles with no Adrian.

Forty-nine miles. Picturing a page of bank accounts with one missing.

Forty-eight miles. Riding in my smallest ring at a pace that would have embarrassed me back in Texas.

Forty-seven miles. My knee screeching in pain and me dreading what that meant for my run.

Forty-six miles. Looking over my shoulder for the doom foretold by Adrian and worrying about my kids.

The odometer kept racking the miles up as I counted them down. Somehow I managed to overcome the noise in my head and pedal another three hours.

114.4 miles down. 26.2 to go.

The cheering started as soon as I reached the transition area.

“Go, Michele!” I tracked toward the sound of her voice and spotted her. Annabelle’s blonde hair made her easy to find.

Sam yelled so loud his voice cracked. “Way to go, Mom!”

It wasn’t just them. They had convened a whole pep squad for me. Well, they’d had nearly eight hours to work on it. Didn’t that mean they’d talked to strangers, though? I didn’t like that at all. But they were sweet, and the little group cheered me on like a winner. They even held up posters in Annabelle’s handwriting.

“Racing for two,” one read.

“Michele Lopez Hanson is My Hero.”

“Rock it, Mrs. Hanson.”

“You’ve got this, Michele.”

I lifted my thumb, barely. I tried to smile. Then I stopped my bike, and down I went like a novice, ingloriously, humiliatingly, and painfully. I had forgotten to clip out of my pedals.

“Mom, are you okay?” Sam strained against the fence, leaning toward me.

My mind, numb before, jerked sharply back into focus. I made an okay sign with my fingers, and the crowd cheered again.

Annabelle grinned at me. “You’re the tenth person to do that since we came back here to wait for you.”

I clipped out the other foot and stood myself and the bicycle up. I hobbled it to my transition area and carefully hung her on the rack. She had done her best, and we’d made it within the time limit. I took a water bottle out of its holster and squirted off the road debris from my little tumble. I tried to dry-swallow two Aleve, then gave up and squirted the last sip of Nuun into my mouth to chase them down.

Checklist time. Moleskin on toes, socks, shoes tied but loosened to make room for more swelling in my feet. Body Glide on my inner arms. More sunscreen. My vented white cap. I was forgetting something. I reached up out of habit to touch my locket, and realized that it was the last item on the list. Locket tucked into the top of my tri-suit. Check. I doused myself with my last bottle of water, then turned to begin the painful plod out of the transition area on quads that felt like burning bricks and a knee that made every other step torturous.

The first part of the course ran in front of the line of spectators. The crowd size peaked to greet the top finishers, and most of the twenty-five thousand were still there. When I returned, all but a few would be gone. They cheered me out of transition and onto the course now. Sam and Annabelle wove between people, yelling all the way.

“You can do it, Mom.”

“Michele, do you see all the signs for you and Adrian? They’re everywhere!”

“You’re almost done, Mom.” If five hours of running in ninety-plus weather counted for almost, I thought. Who was I kidding? Five was overly optimistic at this point.

Annabelle flapped her hand at me. “Did you see our shirts?”

I mustered the energy to turn and look at them. Their hand-lettered white t-shirts said “IronSon” and “IronDaughter” on them. I smiled as big as I could. “Have you been okay? Has anyone bothered you?”

“We’re fine,” Annabelle said. “You can do this!”

I pointed my eyes ten feet in front of me on the road and trotted out of town. Now my real test began, starting with the biggest hill on the course, right out of Kailua-Kona. My biked-out legs screamed in protest, and I was reminded how much uphill hurt my bum knee. I leaned forward and locked my knees out gently for a few extra inches in each stride. I missed my Shuffle so much.

Soon after I crested the hill, I came to the first aid station. Volunteers thrust cups at me and shouted encouragement. I slowed my trot and doused myself with water. I gulped red stuff. I left with half a banana in my mouth and a quarter of an orange in my hand.

The run route was flat, mostly, but the heat made up for the lack of hills. The temperature in Kona has killed many dreams, but I wasn’t there to quit. The consolation for a back-of-the-pack racer like me was that I would get to do part of my run after the sun set. I had hours to go before that relief came, though. I let my mind go slack, trying for a sort of hypnosis that I could sometimes reach on long runs. If I could get there, I could escape the storm clouds in my head. I waited for Adrian or the nothingness to come, but neither did.

Instead, memories came. I replayed my first marathon, when Adrian insisted on running with me to cheer me on. The disparity in our abilities irked me. He started running backwards, talking to me and making me so mad I wanted to punch him. I stopped in the middle of race traffic and let him have it. “Gloater,” I accused him. “You’re fast and in great shape, I get it. Stop rubbing it in my face.” Twenty minutes later, I’d calmed down enough to continue.

Afterwards, I told him that I beat my goal time.

“No you didn’t, Michele.”

“Yes, I did, if you subtract the twenty minutes we were stopped.”

“You can’t subtract the twenty minutes. It’s total cumulative time.”

I didn’t budge.

“You’re impossible.” He shook his head.

I leaned my tired, sweaty body against his. “You’ll never leave me.” A statement, not a question.

He kissed my hair. “Never.”

But he had.

“But you did.” I tried to yell it, but it sounded puny in my ears. “You promised you’d never leave me, but you did. Then you promised you’d be here with me, but you’re not.” I knew it wasn’t his fault he got murdered. I knew I had to remember the good times. I couldn’t let myself do this. I had to stay mentally tough. This wasn’t real. It was just my mind playing tricks on me, and I had to fight it off. Yet my rational mind gave way to a sort of delirium as the heat fried my brain like a state fair Twinkie.

I tried to figure out how far I had to go. If I knew how far, then I could estimate my steps and divide them by two and know how many more my knee had to endure. I’d been racing since seven a.m. I checked my Garmin, but for some reason I couldn’t make sense of it. The stopwatch read one hour and twenty-nine minutes. But that couldn’t be right. It didn’t look like breakfast time out there. It looked like the Sahara desert.

“What do you think, Adrian? How much longer do I have to keep going?”

My footsteps vibrated with a deep sound inside my head, like mallets hitting a bass drum. I liked bass drums but I liked bass guitars better. I loved the bassline in “Can I Walk With You?” I wanted to walk. Adrian wouldn’t let me walk. Adrian wasn’t here. Why wasn’t he here? Would I catch up to him soon, or had he already finished? When we finished we could take a shower. A shower would feel good. Cold would be good. I usually like hot better than cold, but not today. Today my knee hurt. The knee bone’s connected to the leg bone. I had to keep running on my legs.

Another aid station. I stopped and poured cup after cup of water on my head and drank three cups of the red stuff.

“Has Adrian Hanson come through here yet?” I asked a volunteer.

“Have a great race.” She smiled. “You can do it!”

Huh. He really should have finished the whole race around the same time I finished the bicycle leg. Maybe he hadn’t been back through yet. If he’d had a problem, he could still be out here. We would pass each other, and he would hold out his hand and I’d let mine hit his as he went past me in the other direction at twice my speed. I needed to do that now.
“Adrian?”
He was probably around the next turn.

“Adrian, I need you.”
I wasn’t sure if he could hear me, but I had to keep trying. I tried and tried and tried, but nothing. I started to cry, but it was just noise with no tears.
“Where are you? Why aren’t you here?”
I shivered. When had it gotten cold out here?

Then I remembered. Adrian was dead. He wasn’t here. God was, though, fearsome and mighty, but surely He didn’t expect me to keep going without Adrian? The best of my life had passed me by. If I kept going, it would hurt this much forever. I didn’t want to keep going.

“No, it’s not fair. You can’t make me.”

I stopped running and limped a few steps off the road. I stared out to sea, over the high tumble of jagged lava rocks. The wind blew hard and hot in my face. Grill. I was standing beside the world’s biggest grill. Good, because I was still freezing to death.

“You can’t make me,” I repeated. Did He not hear me? I was done. No one could make me change my mind. No one needed me anymore. Sam had Robert. Annabelle had Diane and that boyfriend. Jay. Jay rhymed with betray and Adrian had betrayed me. He had. He wasn’t so perfect after all, with his tricks and secrets. And worst of all, he’d left me. He’d left me to spend the rest of my life alone, and I’d decided I didn’t want to do that, and so I wasn’t going to.

“You can’t make me.”

The scream of a siren rose above the howl of the wind. It hurt my ears. I couldn’t see it, but it was getting louder, so, so loud. I put my hands over my ears. The road between the sound and me turned against a big outcropping of the rock. I tried to see around the corner, but how could I? There was a big rock in the way. I stared in the direction of the sound, but I didn’t see anything but that rock. And a white butterfly.

White butterfly. Was that the kind I saw in that store in town? White butterfly, white skin. I walked into the road, following it. The white butterfly had long wings like me, and claws. I wanted to touch it, but it was getting harder to see. The sky had turned off the light, and it was swallowing the butterfly. There it was, just a little farther around the corner of the rock. I stepped toward it as the noise screamed in my ears. “Hush. Stop that,” I whispered. The noise grew so loud that I forgot all about the white butterfly. My throbbing knee buckled, and I caught myself on the ground with my hands. “I’m going to get hit by an ambulance. Good. Then I can stop.” I crouched, pressing my fists hard into my ears. Flashing red beams of light swept over me. I shut my eyes to block it out. Then there was a new sound on top of the siren. BWAHNK BWAHHHHHHHNK BWAHNK. It sounded like the horn on the 4Runner, Adrian’s car before, but Sam’s now. Sam. Sam was waiting in Kailua-Kona with Annabelle. I couldn’t let this happen.

And then over the siren, a woman’s voice screamed, “Jump, Michele! Jump now!”

I jumped to my feet and to the right, jumped away from the noise. I fell to the ground on the side of the road. A squeal. A whoosh of air. I screamed louder than all of the noises. I crushed my face into the dirt and tugged my hair with both hands. I yowled in pain and grabbed my locket from inside my tri-suit and flung it away from me.

A man’s voice shouted, closer to me than the sirens, “What the hell, lady? Are you trying to get yourself killed?”

I looked up into the red lights. I came up on my hands and knees.

“Are you okay?”

I shooed the talking man away with my hand.

The woman’s voice again. “She’s fine. She fell, and I’m helping her.”

“You’re sure? I can call for transport. We’ve got to go though.” He jerked his thumb back at the ambulance. “Severe dehydration, cardiac arrest.”

I bobbed my head along with the siren, RAH-EEER RAH- EEER.

“We’re sure.”

I heard a door slam, and the lights flew past me and the sound faded into the distance. After a few minutes, I stood up. It hurt, it hurt so much. I brushed the gravel and sand off my body. I didn’t get to stop after all. I wanted to, but I had to keep going, and that was all there was to it. I didn’t get a choice.

I did a double take. Green eyes that I could see even without the sun. “It’s you.”

“Hello, Michele. It’s me.”

“Thanks for helping me again.”

She dipped her head in a nod. “What’s the matter?”

“I can’t find my husband.”

The green eyes stared back into mine. “I think you need something to drink.” She had a water bottle in her hand, and she extended it to me.

I drank.

“Go slow.”

When it was empty, I handed it back to her.

“Now eat this.” She ripped open a chocolate Gu.

I did as I was told. I was already feeling better. I sighed. I had a long way to go to get back to Sam and Annabelle. The wind blew a little cooler now, though, and the sun was gone. That was good.

She pointed at my chest. “You dropped something.”

I nodded, slowly. What had I dropped? My butterfly. My butterfly had flown away. The urge to find it overpowered everything, even my pain.

“Where are you, butterfly?” I looked around me, in the air, on the ground. No butterfly, but I caught sight of the woman’s leg. “I <3 MLH.” That was odd. I’d ask her about it when I found my butterfly. I crouched down, close to the ground, and my eyes followed its flight path from minutes before, straight to my left. I got up and walked in that direction, zigzagging over the rocks as they fell away from the road.

“There you are.” My legs trembled as I climbed down. I had to use both hands to help with my descent. There it was. I scooped the butterfly into my hand. “I’ll have to carry you, but I’ll be very careful.”

I scrambled back to the road, using only my right hand for balance, every muscle in my legs screaming in protest.

I held it aloft to show my friend. “I found it.”

No answer. I looked all around me. The woman was gone. Well, I had my locket. “I think I can do this now.” I put the chain over my neck but it fell to the ground. I picked it back up. Well, I would just have to carry it.

So I did, and I ran. It hurt. But I kept going. Full dark fell. I came to the turnaround, and the next aid station. A man handed me a lightstick, and I stuck it down the front of my top to keep one hand free for food and liquid, one hand for my locket.

The volunteer talked to me while I drank red stuff. “Did you see a runner down? Somewhere between here and the last aid station?”

“No.” I stuffed an orange into my mouth, then another and another, and chased them with more red stuff. I felt better than I had since the swim. “Is someone in trouble?”

“We thought so. The SAG wagon couldn’t find anyone, though. Keep an eye out. Stay hydrated.”

“I will.”

And I ran again, my lightstick in one hand and my butterfly in the other. Time ticked by, miles passed, and I ran. I ran until I found the road ahead of me dotted with fireflies bouncing along toward the brighter light of Kailua-Kona. I followed them. A song started in my head and I smiled. “Can I Walk With You?” Who needs a Shuffle? I let it play. It made me think of Adrian, and I missed him, missed him to the center of my being, and I always would. I hated that we hadn’t had Kona together.