Microstory 1067: Harvey

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I’ve always been a pretty athletic guy, but I also never liked sports. I find no joy in watching other people compete for trivial prizes, and I don’t much enjoy doing it myself. I guess it’s not always trivial. If you’re really good, they may start paying you for it, but you won’t get any income from me, because I won’t be there. I could theoretically play just about any sport I want, but I tend to stay away from them. I’m both a runner and swimmer, but I don’t do either of them in school, or on any team, for that matter. I like to keep my heart rate up to stay fit, but that’s really my only reason. What does this have to do with Viola? Well, she and I used to run together. We actually quadruple-footedly created a long desire line around the entire town. At least two times a week, we would run a full square around Blast City, which turns out to have a distance of exactly four miles. Even stranger is that the town itself is almost a perfect square. I say that we did this at least twice a week, because while I tried to go for godlike six days, one of us could sometimes not make it. She was the one who usually had to text and cancel. She and her family spent a lot of time out of town, on what she referred to as secret missions. I think we all know by now that whatever she was doing while away, the term secret missions was probably a pretty accurate descriptor. Anyway, she told me near the end that she wasn’t running with me for her health. She claimed the perimeter we formed was going to be important one day, and that I would understand later. I had learned by then to not ask her too many questions. Questions didn’t upset her, but if she didn’t think you could handle the truth, she wasn’t going to say anything. That was the last time we met up, and a week later, she was gone. I don’t know if the perimeter has anything to do with her death, or what happened that day, or if the purpose of it has yet to be fulfilled, but I’m leaning towards the second possibility. She was an interesting person. We talked a lot during our workouts, but always either about me, or something unrelated. It didn’t dawn on me until she died that she never really spoke about herself, and whenever I tried to elicit a relevant response, she managed to change the subject every time. Don’t listen to anything these people tell you if they claim they knew Viola Woods, because I’m quite certain no one knew her at all.