I really need to figure out this running situation. I haven’t gone in three weeks! The perfect solution is not going to come along, so I have to make do with one of the lesser options. The gym is good because it’s safe and has good hours, but it’s expensive and boring. The 30 Day Shred is good because I can do it at home, but it might disturb the neighbors and I still need to get in some actual running. I could try running around the park at night, but I’m still too nervous to run at night even outside the park. I could run in the morning which is good because it’s light out and I’m never busy at that time of day but I like to eat before I go so I would have to get up extra early–

Hey!

Go outside.

Now.

“Nonsmokers don’t smoke.” Nonsmoker. That’s what I was now. It sounded incredibly uncool. I had to come to terms with my new identity as a nonsmoker. No. Not just come to terms with; I had to embrace my new identity.

I call myself a writer. But how often do I really write anything I’m excited about? Not often, I tell you.

“Nonsmokers don’t smoke.” Her point was that I had to choose what I wanted to be. I had lots of options. I could be “trying to quit.” “Recently quit.” “Used to smoke.” What makes a nonsmoker different from all of these is that a nonsmoker simply didn’t smoke. There is no smoking; there is no story.

So, as uncool as it had first seemed, I circled back: I am a nonsmoker. I am a nonsmoker because I don’t smoke.

Writers write.

Magic.

I don’t ever remember putting the sunglasses back into my bag.  I obviously do it at some point, but I couldn’t tell you when.  But every morning, I can count on the sunglasses being in my bag.

Sometimes, shortly after I leave my apartment, I wonder whether I remembered to turn off the hot hair iron in the bathroom.  I console myself that, even if I left it on, the sink in the bathroom won’t burn down and that the cat has never pulled the hair iron off the sink.  Only twice in five hears of ironing my hair, have I left it on; my apartment did not catch fire.  And yet, I worry.  To combat those nags, I have taken to yanking the cord of the iron out of the wall before I leave the house.  The yank is an action I can later remember doing, unlike flicking the little On/Off clip, which isn’t a distinct or memorable gesture.  I have pulled the cord all the way out of the wall, therefore, I know the iron is off and won’t burn down the majority of my earthly possessions.

There is no equivalent for sunglasses.

That afternoon – the afternoon I first pondered the magic I do on my own sunglasses – I caught myself.  Dad in a Santa suit.  I put my shades into my purse as I was packing up my desk at the end of the workday.  I saw myself do it.  And I broke my own magic.

I brushed concealer into the creases between my nose and my upper lip. And then, I splashed into a swimming pool in Dublin, Ohio.

She’s across the deck, by the diving boards. I don’t remember her name. Kara, Carrie, something like that. Like a lot of the kids at the pool, myself included, she wore her green and white swim team bathing suit, even though we weren’t at practice. We were all tanned, but her skin was brown in a way my freckled skin will never be. She was probably 12 years old, several years older than me, and she wore a braided rope bracelet.  I had a rope bracelet too, but mine was stiff and tight, and hers was looser and softer.

She laughed with her friends and numerous siblings, who were all on the swim team too. They did well in races, and they flirted with boys. I earned a lot of participation ribbons and trophies, and I placed sometimes. We had just moved here, and I too young to know anything about boys.

She had pimples on the corners of her nose. The rest of her face was clear, but her nose always glowed a little pink at the edges. This acne, symmetrical and just beyond the nostrils, only added to her Other-ness, what made her cool: what I wasn’t, what I wanted.

Back in New York, I finished brushing on my makeup and I headed to work.

It is a run. That’s a long run. She’s lucky that it’s centered.

“There’s a certain shame to being a Blackberry owner,” she said.  “I know; I have one. It says, ‘Hi, I have no sense of style.’”