“You’re not my doctor here.” Anker wags his finger. “You’re just my best friend and emergency contact.”
“Wait, why is Garrett your emergency contact?”
“Because, unlike you, he answers his phone.”
“He’s not wrong there,” Garrett says wryly.
“Whatever.” I toss my hands up. “Anyways, if you’ll be healed in six months, then you can still run New York. Just next November. Surely, they’ll let you defer your entry a year due to this, so you don’t have to qualify again.”
“I’ll be thirty-one by then.”
“And?” I gesture at him.
“The point of running New York is to do it the year I turn thirty.”
The Larsen lore.It’s amazing to me that my scientist brother puts so much stock in this. Ever since we were kids, he’d light up each time my father or uncles talked about the year they turned thirty. Even I’ll admit it did seem like a magical time. All threeof them not only met their future people, but it seemed to be the time everything else clicked for them. Our father realized his passion for baking—part of which facilitated his meet-cute with our mom after he’d asked about the recipe for the scones at the coffee shop where she worked.
It's so easy to fall into the magic of their stories, but it’s just the typical time in people’s lives where they settle into careers and their futures. It’s all just the natural flow of some people’s lives masquerading as family legend.And he thinks I read too many romance novels.
“Okay, well you don’t turn thirty-one until October fifteenth, so you’ll have time to run a different marathon. It doesn’t have to be New York.”
“But it does need to betheyear I turn thirty. That year ends in two months. It’s not happening. It’s over. Even before it started.”
“It’s not over. The race. Sonora. Your turning thirty bucket list. They’re not gone. You just have to wait or find a new way.” I sit on the edge of the gurney and take his hand.
My words almost mirror the ones he had given me on my sixteenth birthday. While classmates celebrated getting driver’s licenses, allowing them greater freedom, I faced the realization that I wouldn’t experience that milestone. I wasn’t blind—pun intended—to the fact that I wasn’t going to be able to drive. Still, turning sixteen made it real. It just reinforced the ways I wasn’t like the rest of my classmates.
I would have been fine wallowing, but Anker didn’t let me. Instead, he drove us three hours to spend my birthday at Knotts Berry Farm, specifically to do the bumper cars.
“Anytime you want to drive, I’ll always ride shotgun,” he’d said as we climbed out of one of the bumper cars. Laughter vibrated through us, and our legs wobbled after being crammed into those tiny cars.
“Thanks,” I sniffled, wiping away grateful, happy tears from the edges of my eyes.
Not only does Anker always keep that promise, but most days he opted to walk to school with me, or take the bus, instead of driving us. Well, unless it was raining. The thick, sometimes frizzy, hair we inherited from our mother makes the rain our mortal enemy. Still, I know Anker did it so I didn’t feel alone walking the path I’d been placed on.
“Next year is the year I turn thirty,” I say, my eyes wide.
“What?” He says, his face likely pinched with confusion.
I squeeze his hand. “The Seal Beach marathon happens right after I turn thirty and exactly one week before you turn thirty-one. If we run it together, maybe whatever Larsen lore magic comes with running a marathon the year you turn thirty will transfer from me to you.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. I’m not the expert on mythical family folklore,” I scoff.
“Yet you’re suggesting this,” Garrett drawls.
“You’re not helping.” I toss him an annoyed expression over my shoulder.
“You also don’t believe in the Larsen lore,” Anker says.
“That doesn’t matter. What does is that you do.” I look at him. “Plus, Mr. Scientific Method, wouldn’t running the race together the year I turn thirty test your theory that it both exists and isn’t exclusive to those with Y chromosomes in the Larsen gene pool?”
“That actually makes sense,” Garrett adds, causing me to shift to face him.
“Did it hurt to say that out loud?”
“I may never recover.” The upward tug of his lips is evident in his tenor.
