The man in the sparkly pajamas ran laps around the high school track. His walkman was broken and he had only the freshman lacrosse game on the turf to entertain him. He watched the goalie block a terrible corner shot. He smiled. He used to play goalie.
The man ran a total of seven laps. He always meant to do eight, but he could never quite finish. He took a huge gulp of Vitamin Water, which the magazines told him was trendier than Gatorade.
The man had not stopped watching freshman lacrosse games since he graduated twenty-five years ago. He arrived every Monday afternoon and ran laps around the track. Funny how, no matter how many times he came, each lap was the same length.
The man wiped the sweat off his forehead with his sleeve. He glanced up at the bleachers and recognized a man in a light blue button-down who was dividing his time between a laptop on his knees and the players on the field. The pajama man waved enthusiastically and yelled as loud as he could. "How are you, Danny?" he bellowed. "Is that your son out there?"
The man in the stands looked up, squinting at the sun. "Harold?" he asked, running down the bleacher steps to greet him. "By God, it's been years! What have you been doing with yourself since high school?"
"I've been running," said Harold quietly. "Really I have."
He shuffled his feet and looked down at his toes.
"I wanted to run like the rest of you did. But I just couldn't go away."
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