Maybe formula is the wrong word. Doesn't matter.

I was in high school, a sophomore. I got A's from the teachers that gave them out for free, B's from the teacher's who thought they knew it all, C's from the teachers that cared. I had a few friends, non achievers like me, sometimes we hung out at the mall, smoking cigarettes snatched from some parent's purse, watching people walk by. My dad was an accountant, my mom worked for the phone company. I had an older brother in the army.

Jesus Christ, this sounds like some kind of Catholic confessional. "Forgive me father, for I know it all. Make a movie out of my life and give the money to God."

Let me start over.

One day in April I was walking through empty halls at school which were still dusty and dark from the weekend, when the janitors don't work. I was bored, thinking about nothing, not even about the German I was skipping. I turned a corner, onto another dank corridor, and decided I needed to use the bathroom.

Bored, I ran.

Maybe it was because I had led a sedentary life. Maybe my jeans shorts were just too tight. But something wasn't quite right about the way my butt moved as I ran.

"Well, we can put a stop to that," I thought. And I did- I started running faster.

It felt good. I didn't have an orgasm, I didn't see God, I didn't stumble on the physiological/psychological connection. it just felt good.

And I got to the restroom a hell of a lot faster then I thought I should have. But, "When was the last time you ran?" I thought to myself, "Third grade?" Of course it seemed faster.

After school I went home, changed into some sweats, and went for a jog.

It seemed okay at first, then my lungs started to hurt. Too many cigarettes. Then my thighs started to ache. "This is good for me," I thought, so I pushed on. Then my shins caught on fire, and I had to stop. Maybe it was the heat, I don't know- I threw up loudly all over the sidewalk. I walked home, feeling like three kinds of hell, and it was dark before I got there.

I had run most of the way to school, five miles, which in a car always seemed like no big deal.

I tried running again a week later. Mr. Henry, my German teacher, had finally confronted me about my frequent absences. "I've talked to some of your other teachers, Scott. They tell me you've been in their classes those days. Do you have a problem with German?"

"Bunch of self-righteous Nazi assholes." I didn't say, staring at my shoes. "No, just been listless lately, I guess."

"Try to show up. That's the first step." he said.

Instead of going with Leon and Daren to the mall to talk about Annie George's tits or Mrs. Downowski's lisp, I went home and went running again. German went away, and so did school, Leon, Daren, tits, lisps. this time the pain started in my feet and worked its way up. But I didn't lose my lunch, even though I wanted to. I even managed to do a little jogging on the way back home.

I'd been gone ninety minutes- six miles.

What the hell, I thought. I tried a salad in the school cafeteria. It tasted like shit, but then, so did the burgers and fries they slinged at us. I was hungry exactly one hour later, in Mr. Henry's class. "Issen." I said, over and over again. "Ich bin issen. Du bist issen. Herr Issen ist ein issen." Nonsense. When I got out of class, I hit the vending machine, and snarfed down two bucks in candy. Puked it all out after school. Went for a jog. I guess the empty stomach helped- my lungs didn't complain too much. Eight miles.

"Hey Scott-head." Leon called everyone "name-head." Daren-head, Dad-head, Mrs. Downowski-head. "What's with the frat-shorts?" That's what we called anything with a sports logo on it.

"It's warm out- they were Joey's"

He nodded. "You miss Joey?"

I shrugged. "Naw, he's just shooting at stuffed dummies." Something was up.

"Yea."

Suddenly, I wanted to ask him what the fuck we were doing there. Middle class-fuck ups with no agenda except finish high school, survive college, get old and die. To hell with that- we weren't even thinking about college. "Where the hell are we going, Lee-?" But I didn't ask, because I was already at strike one with the frat-shorts. "You getting wussy on me Lee?" I said instead.

"Naw! I was just, I don't know. Doug's joining the Navy next year, you know- maybe I'll get his room."

"Yea, and his Playboys."

I went with the guys to the mall, smoked some cigarettes, ate some corn dogs. But I kept running' from store to store, I even looked at some frat-shoes. Pieces of shit, I said. How the hell did I know that?

Next day, I slept all the way through school.

Things went like that for a while. I'd eat some leafy crap, run a little, eat some fatty crap, run some more. I got up to ten miles once. Did my grades improve? Nope. Finished off the year with 2.8 G.P.A., a case of diarrhea, and a few cinches on my belt. No big deal.

I spent the summer wandering around. Annie George got pimples, so we forgot about her tits for awhile. Daren's dad went to Arizona for the summer so Daren got to use his mom's car, and she drove her husband's. Didn't need to run much. But I did anyway.

I forgot what I ate that night. Not important. It was the end of June, and I woke up around two a.m. I put on those frat-shorts, and nothing else. Barefoot, I walked out of the house, down the street, a few blocks to get the blood moving, stretch the muscles. I found the park, and I just started running. 2.8- I could've gotten a 4.0 if I gave a fuck. If I gave a fuck, I could've flunked every damn class just to get the teachers to notice me. I could've gotten straight B's if I'd wanted, could've ran for student president. What a joke. I could've fucked Annie George before she got those zits- could've fucked her mom too, and her old man, and her dog, and her little sister Lisa. I ran around the perimeter of the park, I don't know how big it is. The sweat cooled on my chest, collected in the small of my back, glistened on my stomach which still stuck out, and probably would as long as I ate those corn dogs. I could've kicked Leon's ass, could've beat Daren into a bloody pulp, stolen all of his cigarettes and smoked every goddamn one right in Mrs. Downowski's face. "Come on, bitch, lisp at me, say it, say it, lisp at me some more." Could've shown the whole fucking flaming pack to Mr. Henry and told him, "Here's what I do when I'm not in class, you pathetic fuck." The grass started to collect dew but my feet stayed dry in between steps. My thighs rippled, my calves got hard as rocks. My arms pumped, cut the air, made it whistle in the still June morning. I could've aced every damn class, stolen shoes from the mall, could've gotten away with it, and told my dad anyway that I did it because accountants suck, because phone operators give aural blow-jobs to dumbshits who sacrifice dollars to talk to their cheap-ass talk to the boss-man. When the sun decided to peak up and break the haze I stopped on the beaten grass, at a spot I'd passed countless times, and stared at my toes- they were grimy with sand and broken grass, but clean somehow. I went back home, took a shower, got back into bed at 7:00.

The phone rang at noon- I let it ring, and when it rang at three, I let it again, but I got up after and stumbled into the kitchen. Stumbled is what I did- my legs were sand bags from last year's flood. It was an odd sensation of numbness, relieved momentarily by the occasional sharp pain. I cleaned out the fridge of everything raw, and drank about twenty-five gallons of water. Warm water, straight from the tap. Maybe not twenty five, but enough to make that many trips to the bathroom during the evening and piss what seemed like a gallon every time.

Thank god, I only ran like that twice more before school started.

Being a junior, according to juniors a year before, was infinitely better than being a sophomore. I discovered that was bullshit. Nothing changed, except they started bugging us about what college or career we wanted to pursue. "What's the career where I steal your wife's underwear and your grandmother's and you pay me for it and you let me yell at you when I can't get it up?" I did decide to see if all the shit that went through my head was true or not. I brought my own food to school, carrots and celery, whole-grain muffins, plain macaroni, sometimes pear juice. I studied when I wasn't out jogging, although I never thought about what I read when I ran. I took their tests, wrote down as many wrong answers as I could, and handed in the right ones on a different sheet of paper. The A teachers gave me C's, the B teachers gave me F's, and the C teachers called my parents.

"Maybe he's still upset about his brother's leaving you know the hardest part of puberty is getting over it these are hard times for the middle class child to develop in what do you expect with the school funds being continually reduced we've been very busy in our work and we meant to spend more time at home the junior year is considered almost twice as hard as the sophomore year I'm sure this is just a phase."

It got cold in the winter, so I had to run faster to stay warm. I ran everywhere- to school, back home, between classes, to the mall, all weekend. I was probably pissing green from all the green beans I was eating. I stopped fucking with my teachers, because I decided their attention was even more boring then their indifference. B's all the way, although once in Miss Telpin's geometry I had to take a dive to keep my grade down and I don't know how many papers I didn't hand in to English.

Once, after an afternoon of jogging and some short sprints just for the heck of it, I came home to find my folks sitting in front of the television, the room otherwise dark. Some kind of boring sit-com. My dad handed me a beer, his eyes never leaving the set, and he said in his flat voice, "It's our anniversary, Scott- help us celebrate." Before I got in the shower I put it back in the fridge.

I only had one late night episode that winter, except I wasn't half-naked and I didn't stay in the park. I got out on the snow-packed streets, right in the middle, and never saw a car except from half a mile away. "If a line divides two sides of a triangle proportionally, then the line is parallel to the third side. Prove this in five steps." I can do it in four. "In Hawthorne's 'Rappaccini's Daughter,' she asks of Giovanni, 'Oh, was there not, from the first, more poison in thy nature than in mine?'" Yea, and can I hand in a ten page paper instead of five? "Conjugate 'Gehen.'" You want that in just the present tense, or shall I throw in the past, imperfect, future, subjunctive, and conditional tenses? I ran past where my father worked, breath pluming, ran around the parking lot, saw the spot where he left the Cutlass for six hours a day, four on Fridays. "Scott, take out the garbage." You want I should take it to the dump, pop? Be back in an hour- I could even do it one orange-rind at a time for you. "Scott, run to the store and get me some milk and cheese." You said the magic word ma, but I'd better go to the store across town- save thirty-two cents on that cheese. I ran past the phone company, which was lit up with the late shift. The winter night has a certain stillness to it, a kind of closed room feel, no matter how far or how fast you go. "Hey Scott, let's check that new place across the river, they got two floors and an arcade and everything." Okay guys, meet you there, hope my shoes float. "Jeez, Scott, did you see the way Annie George was staring at you in history today?" Must have been the tracks I left in her backyard when I cut through there to get to first hour on time.

I went back home in time to shower and change and run to school, where I showered again before class. Took a few tests, ate a few apples, everything was so smooth it was invisible.

One night after a silent dinner the phone rang. Dad talked to it for a while. Then he said, "What? Oh yeah." He said through the kitchen door, "Scott- it's Joey."

I picked up the phone from where he left it. "Hello?"

"Hey asshole. Still a virgin?"

"Hey Joey. What's going on. How's the Army."

"Not bad. Made me a private second class."

It was good to hear his voice. "Yeah? What's that mean."

"Same shit- just shinier. What are you up to? Heh- five inches?"

Same old Joey. "Heh. I guess I've been running a little, lately."

"Mr. Stick-legs? Going to give yourself a heart-attack, Scott."

"I kind of like it, I guess."

"Yeah- oughta join the track team. Probably use a loser like you."

I laughed, then paused. "When you coming home, Joe?"

"Well, some of the men want to go down to Florida for Christmas leave. Maybe we can stop by."

"That'd be great, Joe." I paused again. "We all miss you here."

"Yeah, I bet. Say hi to mom for me."

"Sure. So long Joey."

"Bye, Scott."

I went up to my room, which Joey and I shared before he joined up. I sat on my desk chair, which was now located where his bed had been. The area still held the crunchy musk of his sweat. I looked at my desk, a mess of papers and pens and books.

On my way out for a jog, I stuck my head in where mom was watching T.V. and said, "Joey says hi." She nodded.

* * *

Joey didn't get to stop by for Christmas, but later spring happened, and I joined the track team. "What do you do, Scott?"

"I don't know. Distance, I guess." "All right." Coach Dewey said. "Warm up and give me four laps."

Jog it? Run it? Sprint it? Walk the sonofabitch? I did a lazy five minutes.

Coach shrugged. "We ain't exactly a big-time city competitor, so I guess you're on. Get me a signed physical. Practice is after school, three-thirty to five."

I got the physical from the same guy who gave me the freshman physical, the one you have to get before taking phys-ed. "Lost some weight there, Scott."

"Yea?"

"About thirty pounds," he said, checking his chart. "Grew a couple of inches, too." He pinched my arm with a weird looking tong thing, then my belly, then my back.

"What the hell's that?" "My nurse calls it a 'Fatometer.'" He checked the back of my thigh, my calf.

"What's it say?"

He scribbled something on his pad, "About three percent." He looked me blandly in the eye. "No big deal."

Practice always went the same. Stretch yourself out a little. Gawk at the cheerleaders. Walk-jog around the track a few times, give Annie George the eye when you pass. Do the team exercises under Coach Dewey's expert guidance, break into your group, run like hell. There were three other milers. All of them tall and skinny. Earnie was the smoothest, but John had the coolest shoes and sounded like a fucking locomotive. Sarah was the only female miler. She was flat as a board.

We'd run two or three miles, get some water, slow jog a half mile, then after a considerable rest, stretch again and race the mile. They never beat me once. The day before our first meet, I poured it on, and did four laps in four minutes nineteen seconds. Coach said, "Save it for tomorrow, Scott." He said it to Earnie, too.

At the meet, I broke the city record by two seconds. 4:08:6. The judge smiled and wrote my name down.

At the following meet, I broke the record, my record by another two seconds. Coach clapped me on the back and said, "Good job."

I begged my dad to come to the next meet, and he did. I gave it all I had, lapped Earnie, and finished in four oh four point three. Afterwards, Dad said, "How come they don't use starter's blocks for your event?" I told him it was because we weren't supposed to sprint it. "Ah, so that's why you started standing up."

"Coach, I'm getting kind of tired of the mile. Can I give the four hundred a shot?"

He shrugged. I expected him to go ballistic, yell at me, tell me to stay where I belong, to not try and fix what ain't broken, to do what I was obviously meant to do. "Yea. Go with Arnold over there. Let him pace you up to it."

So I let Arnold pace me up to it. We ran a few in sixty seconds the first day, a few in fifty-five the next, fifty the next. Then I ran one myself in forty-seven flat. "Okay, we can put in three runners at the next meet, and since we only have two, we've got room.

Got room? Holy shit, if we didn't have room, I could start ten feet back and still be done before they hit the stretch.

Track's a team sport, so even though I didn't lose a single fucking race, we didn't win many meets. Coach let me do a couple different events- I settled on the eight hundred, the four hundred, and a leg in the 1500 medley relay. We won those. If it weren't for the city's rule that a student can't run more than a mile per meet, I would've run every fucking event, and swept the God damned things myself.

City was approaching, where all the local heroes compete at the same time to impress the scouts down from the universities. I got my four hundred down to forty-six seconds, and my eight hundred down to one fifty. I asked coach to put me on the hundred meter dash. "Scott, we got a lot of boys who need this opportunity to shine." Shit, wasn't I one of them? "Come on, coach. We got three heats- there's room."

"That means I'm going to have to take you off the eight hundred."

"Take me off the medley instead, coach- Will can do it."

He shrugged. "All right."

I practiced before school, during school, after practice. I ran all night. I ran to the other high schools, I ran to the other guy's houses. I ran around Annie's George's back yard, the new mall, to the next county, around the whole God damned city. I was eating nothing but raw shit now, and boiled water, cooled in the fridge for fifteen minutes, some plain pasta. I aced my tests, did extra credit papers while sitting in class when I couldn't run.

City was set for a Saturday and I told everyone. I made sure Leon and Daren would be there, and Mom and Dad, and even Miss Telpin. "I've been working my ass off for this, you've got to go, I run like ten miles a day, this is the big one, you've got to be there to see it."

"Okay, whatever."

That Friday after school, I ran home. I ate a head of lettuce, two tomatoes, some carrots, a celery stick. Slurped down some cold spaghetti. Drank a bunch. I put on my frat-shoes and my frat-shorts and I went out and ran. I ran all afternoon, and evening, and night, and the following morning. I didn't stop until eight a.m. when I went back home to get my track uniform, then I ran to school and just ran in place until it was time for my events.

Usually, the hundred is first, but they wanted to save this most spectacular event for last. This time it was okay, because none of the hundred runners were in any other events. Except me. I didn't bother to remind them.

First up for me was the four hundred. The clouds were playing with the sun, and there was a healthy breeze making the fans in the stand shiver. I saw Leon sitting next to Daren. They were smoking and talking to some old guy. Mom and Dad were on the other side of the bleachers. Mom had a book, Dad was reading the paper. Miss Telpin was at the front, watching the high jumpers. Annie George splashed her pompoms at everything that moved. I wished Joey could have been there.

I ran the four hundred in forty-five seconds. The crowd clapped.

I sort of ran around the outside of the track, waiting for the eight hundred. The crowd went crazy when the fifteen hundred meter relay ended in a near photo-finsh. Even Leon and Daren paid attention during the two hundred, when a guy from our school, Don, broke the city record by four tenths of a second. I'd broken it by three seconds during practice two weeks before.

The second heat for the eight hundred finally started, and I whipped around the track twice in only one hundred-five seconds. One hundred and five motherfucking seconds. The next guy behind me did it in one fifty-one, his best ever. His coach just about knocked him over with enthusiasm. Mine told me to get some water and wait for the hundred.

I got the water, ran around some more. I watched Mom and Dad applaud with vigor when two of our guys won the mile for us. Miss Telpin got into watching the long jump, and waved her hands until her glasses fell off. Annie George gave all the pole-vaulters from our school a kiss, even though our best was only fourth.

Mine was the third heat of the hundred. I watched the first one zip by. Ten point eight two, not at all bad. Then the second. Ten point three oh. Then it was my turn.

I got in line with the other seven guys. They pumped their shoulders, touched their toes. I jogged in place.They kicked their legs out, stretched their necks. I jogged in place. The wind stopped blowing, the sun came out and sat on our heads. I jogged in place. The judge told us to get on our marks. We set ourselves in the blocks, thighs tight, calves loose, fingers splayed perfectly on the cinders. We were still. I held my breath and my heart stopped. The judge told us to get set. We craned our heads up to look at the tape one hundred meters away, pricked up our ears to get that preternatural sound before the gun's bang hit our real senses. The crowd hushed itself, the cheerleaders stood still, the air became thin. Pow.

Stupid motherfuckers with their books and their rules and their guidance and they don't know a damn thing cause they know every damn thing and they're not going anywhere because they've been everywhere already and seen it all and done it all and now they want me to do it but I won't and I'm just going to move this along and I ain't going to stop until there's nothing left but my bones running on the side of the road where no one's ever run before and no one'll ever see me- done.

I hit the tape first, of course, ran it out around the track, and jogged up to the clock. "What was my time?"

He looked casually at his watch. "Nine nine nine."

"That's got to be a state record."

He shrugged. "Yea, by about a second, I guess."

I watched the stands empty under the returned clouds. Leon and Daren were already gone. Dad was trying to read his paper while he walked. Mom smiled and waved at me. Miss Telpin was gone. Annie George walked by. "Good job, Scott." I watched the scouts haggle with some of the other runners. There was even one talking to our pole-vaulters. My legs were like dumb pillars, and I watched everything standing still.

I got the city medals for the four hundred meter and the eight hundred meter and the hundred meter dash. I dropped them in the gutter as I walked home. The secret to running? Be invisible.