Banners lined the fences around the track with previous school records and world records. Dozens of collegiate teams milled anxiously around the facility, travelling in mobs of blue, black, purple, red, green, and gold jerseys. Some sprinted up and down the straightaways, warming up, and some laid sprawled in the grass near the finish line, heaving. Some were jumping as far as they could into a pit of sand, sending waves of it flying as they landed. The broadcaster’s voice crackled through the intercom system continually, delivering stats and announcing events as the competition advanced. Periodically, the gun went off and echoed across the field, followed by a roar of cheers. Dad, Recently, I have found myself at a crossroads with something I never expected I would. The noise drifted through the door to the bathroom off to the side of the track, where I stood in front of the mirror with bobby pins between my teeth, pulling my thick, dark curls into two French braids. One of my legs jiggled restlessly as I tied off the braids and pinned back the flyaways. I inspected myself. I looked different on competition days. More determined, maybe. My eyes had a hardness to them that wasn’t normally there, but remained the same murky color of dirt. I want you to know that this is really difficult for me to write. “Not dirt,” Caroline had told me with a nudge one day over bagels and coffee in our usual secluded corner on the fourth floor of the library. “More like hot chocolate.” Easy for her to say. Her own eyes took on whatever shade the sky was and were ever-shifting. Stormy and grey when she pored over her essays and newspaper articles on a deadline, pen between her teeth. Bright, brilliant blue when she threw her head back, laughing, or when she was upset, pacing and gesturing dramatically with her hands. Cobalt, almost indigo, when she leaned her head close to mine to whisper something in my ear. I blinked in the mirror. It’s new to me. I don’t even know if I’m sure about it. But I guess that shouldn’t matter, right? I’m listening to my heart, or whatever. It was almost time. I tucked the hem of my jersey-- maroon and white, for Boston College-- into my matching spandex shorts, squared my shoulders, and marched out to the track. The competitions always started with a meeting after warming up. All of the competitors would huddle in a circle around the official while he explained the rules we all knew by heart. Three attempts at each height. If you missed all three, you’d be done for the day. He’d call three names at a time, who’s up, who’s on deck, and who’s on hold. He’d stand on the runway until the bar was adjusted. He’d wave a hand and step off, and you’d be ready to take your jump. One minute to complete your attempt. The bar would start at eleven feet. We eyed each other surreptitiously as he spoke, sizing up our competition. “Alright, first off, we are going to have Megan Saunders up, Brielle Morgan on deck, and Fiona Pearson on hold,” said the official, reading off his clipboard. I was on deck. Late April in Boston didn’t quite live up to the promise of springtime, but my hands were sweating profusely despite the chill in the air. I knelt over my bag a few feet from the runway, taking out a hunk of chalk and dusting it over my palms. The air smelled of soil and moisture, mixed with something vaguely flowery. Almost artificial, like shampoo. Like the familiar scent I’d catch a whiff of whenever Caroline would throw an arm around me, or run a hand through her choppy, sand-colored bob. I’d met Caroline at a casual get-together in a mutual friend’s dorm room last year. My roommate had dragged me there-- I wasn’t much of a social butterfly-- and as I’d stood leaning against the cement-block wall of the room, clutching a can of spiked seltzer, a girl I didn’t know walked over and leaned against the wall right beside me, close enough that our shoulders were nearly touching. “Looks like you’re having a blast over here.” “Well, you know. I’m kind of the life of the party,” I said ruefully. She laughed. “Can I get you a drink?” I held up my seltzer can with a smile in response. We stood quietly for a few moments, watching people mill around the small room. The main lights in the room were off, but several strands of string lights encircled the ceiling, casting a warm glow across the room as they changed colors every few seconds. I turned to look at the girl. Red, blue, and green shadows from the lights flickered across her face. She was pretty in a kind of nymphy way-- petite, with pointy features. Her light-brown hair was chopped in a blunt bob, barely brushing her jawline, with the front pieces held back in tiny butterfly clips. Her blue eyes were framed in large, round, thinly-rimmed glasses, and several dainty gold hoops lined her earlobes. When she reached up to take a sip of her drink, I noticed a small, barely-there tattoo of a crescent moon on the inside of her wrist. She met my gaze and one corner of her mouth rose into a half-smile, her eyes glinting, and an odd flutter danced through my chest. “So, do you have a name?” she said. I smirked at the hint of sarcasm in her tone. “Brielle. You?” “Caroline.” I guess I’m writing this for you because it’s not something I can verbalize properly. At least not yet. I thought maybe writing down how I feel would help me understand, and then I thought, well, if it’ll help me understand, maybe it will help you understand. Shaking away the memory, I glanced up and scanned the overwhelming crowd in the bleachers, then shifted my gaze to the fence surrounding the track. My mother stood with her camera held in one hand and a sizable posterboard in the other, with the words “Go, Brielle!” painted across it in maroon and white and a very unnecessary cutout of a photo of my face pasted in the middle. She waved goofily to get my attention. That was her-- always there. We lived in a suburb of Boston only about forty minutes from campus, so my parents had always done their best to make it to every meet in the area. I smiled weakly and waved back, my other hand instinctively traveling up to the silver pendant that hung at my collarbone. On my tenth birthday, I’d spent the entire day waiting for my father to come. It was a Saturday, but he’d been called into his office last-minute, crushing the plans we’d had for the day. He was a big corporate executive, after all. I blinked back tears as he’d ruffled my hair and tightened his tie in the mirror. “Sorry, squirt. I’ll be back in just a couple of hours,” he’d said, “Promise.” He winked and headed out the door, and peeking through the blinds, I could see my mother arguing with him outside of his car. At nine o’clock that night, he still hadn’t come home. My mom had done her best to cheer me up, making my favorite homemade waffles with whipped cream and strawberries, taking me to the park to try out the new kite she’d gotten me, and playing enough rounds of Uno to drive anyone insane. An hour after I’d gone to bed, I was still lying awake waiting when I finally heard a knock on my bedroom door. My father came in and sat down on the bed next to me, kissed my forehead lightly, and pulled a small box from his coat pocket. “I’m sorry I’m so late, squirt. I hope you still had some birthday fun without me.” “What’s this?” I said, sniffling. “Just open it,” he said. I opened it carefully and pulled out a small, silver pendant on a delicate chain. It was in the shape of a simple circle, a tiny ring connected to the chain on either side. “A circle is a symbol of bravery and strength. Do you know why your mom and I named you Brielle?” my father said. I shook my head. “It means ‘God’s bravest woman.’” To tell you the truth, I’m scared of what you will think. I’m scared of what the world will think. I’m scared of how my life may be different. I’m just scared. You never know what people think. I don’t want to be treated differently. A disappointed chorus of “ohs” from the spectators brought me back to the present. Megan Saunders climbed off the mat, brows furrowed--she had brushed the bar. I was next. I knelt down by my assortment of poles and dug through the variety of lengths and thicknesses until I found the one I needed. Twelve feet, six inches long. Carbon fiber. Flexible, but stiff enough to give me a good spring in the air. The top three feet were freshly wrapped in clean, white athletic tape, with the measurements marked every six inches in Sharpie. I grabbed it and stepped onto the runway, lining my toe up with the mark from which I usually run-- one hundred feet back from the mat. Eighteen sprinting steps. My hands shuffled around until I found a comfortable grip, chalky and slightly sticky from the tape, and I hefted the pole up into position, bottom tip up to the sky. Two gangly-looking boys hoisted the bar back in its place, eleven feet in the air, and the official waved a hand at me and stepped out of my way. All I could hear was my own breathing as I eyed the bar and clenched my teeth. I rocked up on my tiptoes, then back on my heels, and began to run. I counted my left-side steps in my head and gradually lowered the pole as the spikes on my shoes beat into the rubber-asphalt: “Nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, ONE!” On “one,” I planted the bottom of the pole into the ground and took off with force. The pole bent outward. I swung upside down and kicked my feet up, turning midair and pushing myself over the bar. There was that familiar rush, a flutter in my chest and a pounding in my ears. For a moment, I was weightless. I let go and shoved the pole away from my body, but I felt the side of my thigh clip the bar as I flew over it. My back plunged into the mat with the final release of my breath, and the bar followed me down. Damn. My shoulders tensed as I stepped off the mat and grabbed my pole off the ground. Two more attempts. I looked back over to the stands, squinting, searching the crowd again. Still no sign of him. When I was twelve, my parents got divorced. They had tried to make it work for years for my sake, but the tension that had been building for so long inevitably reached its breaking point. During that time, I didn’t see much of my dad. He worked all day, many times even staying at the office until late at night. Sometimes, long after I was supposed to be asleep, I’d hear him come home and pour himself a bowl of cereal before heading down to the basement. They slept in separate rooms until he found his own place. I know there are a lot of paths your mind might go towards first. I’m too young to know. It’s college, I’m experimenting. It’s the cool new thing now. It’s a phase. I’m not going to lie, my mind went there too. Any excuse to be normal, right? The previous summer, Caroline had been around a lot. She was from a town neighboring mine, just outside the city. We’d become fast friends after meeting at that dorm room party, and when everyone else travelled to their faraway home towns for the summer, we started spending more and more time together. Mainly, she’d come to my house, since her house was chock-full of wild little siblings. We’d go for walks barefoot through the neighborhood, wander around the local botanical garden, old-fashioned film camera slung around Caroline’s neck, or watch movies in my basement, curled up under the same blanket. My mother loved her, often joining in on our late-night kitchen-table conversations. When we were at my father’s house, however, he kept a distance. During one of our movie nights, he’d walked into the basement den looking for something, and stopped short when he saw Caroline and I huddled close together on the couch, her head on my shoulder. A strange, stormy look had passed over his face, and he’d disappeared up into his room. From then on, he treated her with a kind of hostility that was more obvious to me than to anyone else, but I didn’t understand it. One uncharacteristically rainy day in mid-July, Caroline and I were sprawled on the couch, watching reruns of old TV shows. She leaned over so her face was right next to mine and whispered, “Have you ever kissed a girl?” I was taken aback by the bluntness of the question. “No,” I said, cheeks flushing with warmth. “Why, have you?” She gazed dreamily out the window. “No,” she answered finally. ********** The gun fired, signaling the start of another race. “We have Brielle Morgan up, second attempt.” Once again, I picked up my pole and stepped onto the runway. One hundred feet away. Eighteen sprinting steps. Again, I positioned my hands, lifted the pole, and waited for the signal, while my eyes once again wandered to the crowd. He wasn’t there. I knew he wasn’t there. I blinked back the bitter realization when the official waved in my direction. I rocked back on my heels and took off. Nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, ONE! Something was off the second I planted the pole in the ground. My hands were a little too slick. I jumped a little too late, kicked out a little too early, and the bar came down before I did. Tears blurred my vision as I stood and did my walk of shame off the mat. At every competition since the beginning of high school, my father had been there. I think he was trying to make up for how much he’d missed when he and my mom were having problems. He still worked a lot, but he made a real effort to show up. Sometimes he’d take me out to Mitchell’s Diner after meets for peanut butter blizzards. He’d stood next to me with a proud hand on my shoulder when I sat at a decorated table in my high school gym, signing the papers to commit to collegiate track and field. But recently, our phone conversations had become more scarce, and consisted mostly of sporadic small-talk between stretches of strained silence. During one of those post-meet ice cream outings one evening back in high school, my father and I had been sitting in a booth tucked away in a corner of Mitchell’s. He was watching me with an amused look on his face as I enthusiastically recapped every moment of my winning jump that day, when the old-fashioned bell on the door jingled and two young men walked in, holding hands and whispering to each other. I looked back at my father, eager to continue my story, but I stopped short when I saw his face. He was still looking at the two men, but his smile had melted into a faint sneer and his eyes had hardened. “Do you know them or something?” I asked, breaking his gaze. He shook his head and turned back to me, rolling his eyes. “No. I don’t,” he said, “So back to that jump.” I promise it’s not a phase. Yes, I’m in college, yes, I’m experimenting, but does that automatically discount it? Personally, I don’t think so. And I don’t think I’m too young to know. I’m twenty--old enough to vote, right? Four years ago I was old enough to go to prom with that boy from my physics class that everyone (including you) told me I’d make a cute couple with. I was still shaken from the missed jump. I sat down in the grass near my bag to wait for my final attempt, trying to soothe my nerves with deep breaths. I couldn’t cry here. One Friday night in December, a couple of weeks before finals, Caroline and I had gone out to a bar with our group of friends. A good stress reliever, Caroline had called it, tugging me by the arms from my desk chair, where I was hunched over a chemistry problem set. We’d had a blast, all of us slightly buzzed and dancing goofily in the mosh pit of other college students. I looked like an idiot, I knew, but the vodka cranberry erased my self-consciousness. Caroline, eyes closed and head swaying with the music, moved her hips gracefully, her clear plastic cup in one hand with the thin black straw between her lips, the other hand up in the air, somehow looking elegant. Using her free hand to grab mine, she sidled closer to me. She reached out and ran two fingers through a lock of hair falling in my eyes, delicately tucking back behind my ear. A familiar flutter darted through my chest. “Kiss, kiss, kiss, c’mon, just kiss already!” Three or four boys I vaguely recognized from around campus had gathered around the spot where we were dancing, watching us with their eyelids half-drooping and Coronas in hand, sleazy sneers playing across their lips. I blinked when I realized that one of them was a guy on my team. I took a step back from Caroline, who seemed unbothered, and slipped back into the depths of the crowd where our other friends had dispersed. And I can tell you one thing for sure, it is most certainly not a cool thing to be. Sitting in the grass wasn’t doing me any good while I waited, so I stood and paced to the fence, not too far from the pole vault pit. Lost in thought, for a moment I didn’t even notice the figure leaning over the fence a few feet away from where I was, waving her hands to get my attention. Caroline. “Hey! Helloooo! Bri!” I jogged over to where she stood, keeping an eye on the official calling names. “You came!” I said. “Well, duh. You didn’t think I’d miss your biggest meet of the year, did you?” I smiled. “Besides,” she said, waving the camera that was slung around her neck on a strap, “You’re gonna be my next story in the newspaper. ‘Pole vault sensation leaps to new heights at the championships.’” I laughed and swatted her arm. “I have to go, I’ll be up soon,” I said, and Caroline squeezed my hand with a wink. “Good luck!” With one last smile over my shoulder, I ran back over to the vaulters, yet again scanning the crowd for any sign of my father. It’s a flutter in the chest, and a rush in the ears. I know you know the feeling. Does it matter who it’s for? I glanced at the official with the clipboard. It was almost time. One more attempt. “We have Olivia Parques up, Brielle Morgan on deck, and Megan Saunders on hold. Final attempts for Morgan and Saunders,” he called. For the third time, re-tied my spikes, dusted my palms with the block of chalk, picked up my pole and stood near the runway, waiting for Parques to take her jump. Now was the time to focus. Eleven feet; I’d cleared it in practice before. I knew I could. “Brielle!” I heard my name from behind me, breaking my concentration. I turned, and my heart leapt to my throat. He had come. He rubbed a hand over the back of his shaven head, looking tired, unsure of what he was doing here. I stared back at him, gaping. A wave of happiness washed over me, followed by a rush of anger. I turned away, still shaken. “Brielle Morgan, you’re up. Final attempt at eleven feet.” I sucked in a breath and stepped onto the runway. One hundred feet away. Eighteen sprinting steps. While the helpers made final adjustments to the bar, my fingers crept up to my necklace. This is like stripping away a layer of skin and exposing a new part of myself to you. I am asking for your acceptance and for your respect. But above all, I am asking for validation. You once told me to be brave, and now I am asking the same from you. The official stepped out of my way and signaled for me to go. One minute to make this jump. A stroke of fear shot through me, and I glanced over at the fence. My mother was still there, poster board and all. She waved and gave me a vigorous thumbs-up, and my eyes trailed over to where Caroline watched, camera ready. She flashed an encouraging smile at me. I trained my eyes back on the bar, raised my pole, rocked back on my heels, and began to run. Nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, ONE! I gritted my teeth and the pole planted firmly in the ground. It bent outward and I turned upside down, dropping my head back and sending my feet up towards the sky. It launched me up; I made eye contact with the bar and my triceps strained as I turned and pulled myself over the bar: feet, calves, thighs, hips, then watched the bar pass under me and flipped my chest over it, releasing the pole and shoving it outward. The fall back down seemed endless, and on the way down I watched as my pole fell the wrong way-- towards the bar and me instead of back towards the runway. It crashed into the bar, which was still up, and pushed it ever-so-slightly, but enough to push it off its rungs. The bar, for the third time today, followed me down. I sat where I’d landed on the mat for a moment, allowing it to register: I was out. The sounds of disappointment rippled through the crowd and I kept my eyes down while I clambered off the mat with burning cheeks. I finally dared to sneak a glance over at Caroline, who had lowered the camera. Her eyes connected with mine and she gave me a look of sympathy, mouthing “It’s okay.” I know it may take a while for you to be comfortable with this, but for now, I want to be taken seriously and believed. And then my father was there, placing a warm hand on my shoulder. I looked up at him. His eyes were wrinkled in the corners, almost sad-looking. “You came,” I said, looking away. “I did.” He sighed and glanced over at Caroline by the fence. “I read your letter.” My breath caught in my throat and I kept my gaze trained on the ground. The breeze rippled between us, and we didn’t speak for a few moments. “I failed,” I said finally. “No,” he said with a half-smile, “You cleared the bar. It was the pole that knocked it down.” “Yeah, but--” “Bri,” he interrupted. He rubbed his forehead again and his face scrunched into an almost pained expression, as though he was trying to think of what to say next. Finally, he sucked in a breath and looked at me. “How about we go get some ice cream?”