He runs with his sneakers kicking up gravel, his knees pumping, his hips and chest drawn out with sharp intakes of breath. He is a free man, he is a slave who has broken his shackles and left them in my hands. He is a butterfly who has first sprouted his wings. Once before, he lived as a creature, squirming and writing in my fingers. Could hardly get out of his own way. But he’s liberated now.

And is that a cause for celebration?

Because I’d kept him in chains for a reason. I’d firmly gripped the keys in my hands, the locks and bolts hanging listlessly from my fingers. Back and forth, back and forth they dangled, like time pressing continuously forward and yet hesitating and moving back again. Time, when he was locked away, was of no value to me. With one variable of Ian’s murder off the table, I had ample opprotunity to solve the equation.

It didn’t take long for me to realize that I needed to let him go.

I had the numbers. I had the memories, the moments. I had everything I needed to uncover him and bring justice, a judge in my black, velvety gown hammering the mallet down onto the broad oak desk.

Guilty.

Somehow, someway, I knew he was. I had the numbers. I had the equation. But he had me. And I have to face that he still has me now, clutched in his balled fists as he races down the track. He has me, he has the keys, he has the cell, he has Ian. He’s taken everything away, and he’s running away with it, and for the strangest reason, I don’t care at all.

Time lulls, it lurches, it races back to the starting line.

Time is a broken record tape, punching and stabbing and sending waves of violent static through perfectly good music. Because it’s sick how time brings me back now to Ian, even as he runs away. Ian, who was once my best of friends. More than best friends. We had more than that. Best, best, best, best, friends. So many bests that it would take a century to simply finish the acronym.

We didn’t care about time back then.

Time was nothing. Time was the clock, ticking away until 10:00 PM, when Horror Central aired Friday The 13th and we sat through the entire thing until the families next door were screaming at us to turn down the volume. Time was 2:45, when the school bell rang and we were jostled roughly out the door alongside a hundred other screaming kids as they raced down the stairwell.

Then there was nothing left.

It had only lasted one, maybe two years. He ran away, his sneakers kicking up gravel, knees pumping, chest heaving in and out. He was a caterpillar who still awaited its transformation, and I was keeping him down. I determined that the hands ticking away on the clock were mine and that I’d point them at him—just to slow things down, just to keep the record tape from falting.

I was insane.

I was insane. My room was an asylum. I locked myself inside and I tied myself to the wall, just to keep from flicking the remote to Horror Central at 10:00 PM, just to keep from bolting out and running, running after him.

It wouldn’t have been much use, anyway.

Ian was running, Ian was gone. He was breathing, and he was talking, but he was killed. I knew it. And somebody had done it to him, somebody was to blame. What about Horror Central, what about school bells, what about races at PE that I knew you would win? Why did you bolt so hard, so fast?

You’re always running, but I’ve never seen you in such a rush.