Victory Lap

Emerald grass blades poked up from the ground, only slightly damp now from the rainstorm in the morning, now warming in the sun. A few feet away, the rain-fed stream sparkled through the soil slopes over rocks and red clay. The warm breeze brushed fluorescent yellow buttercups and gentle periwinkle, swaying in the shade. It was hot that day, but comfortable by the water in the shade of the woods. Stepping out of my flip flops, I put my phone face-down beside them in the grass. Its battery was low because I had kept checking for college acceptance letters. I lay down on the softest spot on my side examining some clovers up close, finding spongy moss under the grass. The air in the woods carried the smell of the moss and rain. Cicadas and birds above me were as noisy as the stream in the early summer afternoon.

That morning, I got my acceptance letter from Beloit. I was spreading blackberry jam on toast when my dad called to congratulate me. I’ve never heard his voice so happy. If I hear his voice so happy again, I think I’ll remember jam before remembering why. I arrived late to my last physics class at the community college because I didn’t end that call. I had been at that college for four years working toward transferring to a four-year school, never sure that I would ever do it. It still hadn’t sunk in that I had. Resting outside after class in the hot sun, my dad’s phrase over the phone stood out to me: “take a victory lap.” I wondered what that metaphor would translate to and imagined jogging in a circle around the college.

Needing to escape the sun, I remembered the shady woods across the college parking lot, with a trail looping along the stream. I would go there between classes to eat my packed lunches of rice and black beans or tofu on the banks of the creek. The first time I went to those woods was another summer, a calm night at the end of my last class of my first successful semester. Though I could see in the moonlight and the air was gentle, halfway through my loop on the trail, a few sudden rain drops from the canopy became a downpour, flooding my path. I swam through the rain, lost for hours in the dark, ruining my last pair of shoes from high school, singing.

Today, the woods were bright. The rain had ended, left bubbling through the stream. I didn’t want to leave my grassy spot. My phone vibrated, and it was another admissions decision. My dream school, two hours away in Virginia, the one I had imagined going to since childhood, had rejected me. Time passed, and the flowers still swayed in the sun. The world felt alien now. Though I wanted and planned to go to Beloit, I hadn’t confronted the prospect of traveling so far from home until now that my college choice was finally decided. I never expected to feel reluctance to leave after all my dreams of escape. After a while, I remembered I still needed to finish my victory lap. I picked up my shoes and walked barefoot along the muddy trail. I reached where the stream passed wide like a slow river, with maple trees leaning in their glistening leaves. A fallen tree functioned as a bridge to the other shore, but I didn’t cross it today. I pressed my toes around in the mud and squatted down to brush the chill water. I watched the stream absently and balled up some mud in my hand. Plopping from above into the muddied, swirling water, the rain started lazily again. I stood up to finish my victory lap and flung the mud ball in my hand into the center of the stream, staying to watch the ripples I made until I could no longer distinguish them from the current.

I had one more summer class to finish there two months later before moving to Beloit. It ended on a hot August night. I wanted to run back through the woods one more time. There was no moon this tonight, and I had to use my phone’s flashlight. Not long after entering the woods, in my light’s glare, a moth fluttered into my face, startling me, and I dropped the phone into some rocks. Already on edge from the darkness, I shuddered when I felt thin strands of a spiderweb tug through my hair. Every few feet, a wide spider web with a plum-sized spider blocked the path. I tiptoed my way along the trail, sweeping my light for webs and holding a branch in front of me in case I missed any. After dodging my sixth spiderweb, I reached two webs in a row separating me from bank ahead, at the wide part of the water. I hesitated before deciding it was time to head back so I could wake up in the morning and work on packing.