"Shoelace Bunnies" by Maribel Garcia

Here's a confession: I've forgotten how to tie my shoes.

My knees are pulled to my chin, and I’m crouched over my own two feet, and I’ve come to the stark and cold realization that I’ve forgotten how to tie my shoes. 

In my defense, I haven’t had to in years. Out of my seven pairs, only my running shoes have laces. Everything else is laceless. Crocs and sandals, slip-ons or flip-flops, the occasional Velcro strap if I’m desperate for security, despite how much I despise the appearance of them. Each pair lacks the long string that has come to be my demise at the moment.

But in those rare instances when I do wear laces, during practice or a meet, my mom comes to meet me around the bend. 

We’ve perfected this dance. I change with everyone else, slip into my athletic wear, and mess around with the other guys in the locker room, but hang back while they all head to the track field. She hops out of her car and comes to my aid like a superhero. 

By now, my coaches and teammates expect her to be at every practice and race. She wheels in a wagon of Gatorade and chips, our own personal cheerleader and Waterboy when we’re all too exhausted after running. They don’t know we made up that role for her as a disguise. 

The real reason she comes each and every day is to tie my shoes. 

Like right now.

If I had checked my messages earlier, I would have faked being sick or something else to get out of today's practice. The long string of apologies from our chat burns my eyes. My mother explaining that she was being held back by work and couldn’t get out in time was actually enough to make me sick to my stomach. 

But I already bet the guys I’d leave them in the dust today, so there’s no getting out of it.

I could just run.

Run all the way home and deal with the questions and sly remarks tomorrow. The judgment of skipping is far more preferable than the judgment of being seventeen years old and not knowing how to tie my own shoes. 

My hands are cramping already. Joints creaking and cracking. My skin aches from clenching my fists so hard. I try to relax, but my body is shaking and my breath is ragged, and I feel like I’ve swallowed a rock. I feel so much worse than after finishing the 400-meter sprint. I feel so much worse than that time I threw up in the middle of a race and slipped on my own vomit. I feel so much worse than the accident that screwed up my hands in the first place.

I think I’m having a panic attack. 

It’s such a dim-witted realization. Obvious and inadequate, but now it’s all I can think of. 

My body is collapsing on itself, and all I can think is that I’m losing my mind over the fact I can’t tie my own shoelaces, and I can’t tie my own shoelaces, and I can’t tie my own shoelaces, and I can’t tie my own shoelaces and I can’t tie my goddamn shoelaces.

But then I feel a presence next to me, and someone is pulling my quivering hands away from my shoes. For a second, I think it must be my mom because they’re being so, so careful with me, yet I know that can’t be the case. 

My eyes sting, and I blink as fast as I can to not cry in front of the random person. My head is still angled down towards my shoes, so I can’t even tell who it is. I really hope it’s not one of my teammates or my coaches. 

I watch as two hands slowly fall onto my track shoes. My mom got them for me last year. They were expensive and nice enough to be a Christmas gift. Even after a year of use, they’re still pristine and perfect—a great investment. 

The hands carefully drag my laces out from where they’re tucked into my shoe. They’re long and bony, and for some reason, they make me think of a musician's hands. They’re chapped and rough, though. The nails are bitten horrendously, and I notice the scarring of hangnails torn away. In retrospect, they’re pretty ugly, which is a terrible thing for me to think, considering that this person might very well be my savior. 

As they work through my laces, I can hear them whispering. 

“Bunny ears, bunny ears, playing by a tree. Criss-crossed the tree, trying to catch me.” It's a nursery rhyme we all learned in kindergarten. I remember the shoes with the mismatched colored laces. One yellow, one blue, because some of us still couldn’t tell our left from right. “Bunny ears, bunny ears, jumped into the hole. Popped out the other side, beautiful and bold.” 

The voice was familiar enough for me to recognize a peer and not a teammate. As she softly spoke, I watched as she meticulously tied my shoes. When she got to my left foot, I felt myself finding my own breath again. I shut my eyes and breathed deep, talking myself down just as our guidance counselors taught us to. I always thought those mandatory lessons were so stupid, but I'm grateful for them now.

She must have finished because she rested a hand on my shoulder and squeezed. It was enough to bring me back to reality, and I opened my eyes to look at her finally. 

It surprised me to see Delaney Thatcher. We shared some classes, but had never spoken. Truth be told, there hadn’t really been a reason for us to. We ran with different crowds. Or rather, I ran with the athletic clique, and she ran with nobody. 

Last year, she got suspended for the last week of school after getting in a huge fight with Jason M. (Madden, not Murphy), and everyone has sort of been avoiding her since. Jason said she just snapped and apparently heard from the school’s counselor that she had mental issues. 

But she stayed with me a moment longer. Just next to me, and making sure I could keep my breath. When she stood up, she offered me a hand. I was twice her size, so it wasn’t like she could actually pull me to my feet, but I appreciated the gestures.

I wiped my face with my arm and gave her a nod so she’d know I was okay. She gave me a nod back. Then she lightly punched my shoulder and said, “Knock ‘em dead, Sal.” 

As she walked away, I looked down at my feet. She even double-knotted my laces.

Here’s a confession: I have never had a friend like Delaney Thatcher. 

After she saved me from mortification that day at practice, we began to wave to each other in the hallways. Then I’d say a hushed ‘hello’ to her when I passed by her desk in class. Then, after that, she’d meet me by the boy’s locker room to wish me good luck on my matches. 

I told her she didn’t have to wait. My mom could come by to help me. She told me that wasn’t why she was doing it. 

I didn’t actually become friends with her until I caught her on her way to lunch. She never ate in the cafeteria, unlike my friends and me. Instead, she went to the art room. I followed her (not in a creepy way) and offered her a pack of gummy bears. 

It was the first time I ate lunch with someone besides my track friends, and I realized that the quietness of an empty art room was way, way different than the chaos of the cafeteria. Not just different. I think I might’ve actually liked it better.

We didn’t really talk at first. She emptied the bag of gummies onto a paper towel and sorted them by color. Then she began to eat the bears one at a time until each section had an equal number of candies. I watched as she systematically ate my treat, and a part of me thought I should have been weirded out by it, but I wasn’t. 

I actually thought I kind of made perfect sense.

“What happened to your hands?” she asked out of the blue. 

I absentmindedly took them under the desk to hide them away. 

“You don’t have to tell me,” she said.

“Okay,” so I didn’t. It was pretty obvious that my hands were messed up. Scarred and twitching. An accident that happened three years ago that I still haven’t managed to recover from. Surgery and physical therapy could only do so much, and by my sophomore year, I was too frustrated to keep doing my exercises. I had been at it for a year, and I still hadn’t made any progress. It was the reason I had to drop baseball and switch to track, but I don’t resent the change as much as I used to. 

She asked me if I had heard of the band Radiohead. I told her I had, but I didn’t listen to them much. She pulled out a pair of wired earbuds and slipped one of them into my ear as she began to play an album. 

As she sat there, tapping along to the rhythm of the music, I thought about how so many people had asked about my hands. They pushed and pushed and pushed for answers until I told them about the accident, until I could feel my throat closing up and phantom pain in my hands. But Delaney Thatcher hadn’t pushed. 

I brought out my hands and tapped along with her. She smiled and turned the music up.

We kept meeting up for lunches, and when we were assigned group work in class, we always partnered up. She came to watch my practices sometimes, and she even made a sign for one of my races. I would help queue up songs off her playlist when she was busy with her pottery (that’s why her hands were always chapped), and I’d let her introduce me to weird concept albums from bands I’d never heard of.

It wasn’t all good. Every once in a while, she’d completely block me. I knew there were days when it was hard for her, so I learned not to take it personally. Then she’d make me an oddly shaped apology bowl, and we’d call it even. 

Truth be told, Delaney Thatcher was kind of a bitch. But that was okay because I was kind of an asshole, so we managed to make it work somehow. 

It was hard work being with her. I always had to watch what I was saying because apparently I had a knack for making her upset with me. Oftentimes—most of the time—my jokes landed flat, and she would lecture me. But it was worth it when I got a laugh out of her.

And not just that fake, pursed smile she slipped out when guys tried to hit on her. But instead, a deep and hearty laugh that made her throw her head back. When I laughed, I tucked my chin in. 

She didn’t talk about the fight last year in the same way I didn’t talk about my accident. 

As the track season went on, my mom became more and more overwhelmed with work. Delaney helped with my shoelaces without me asking her to. She even gave me rides after practice. She was the first junior to get her license and a parking spot, which made the other guys on my team take notice of her, too.

Colton asked me if we were together. I told him no. He asked if it was just hooking up, then. I told him no.

He didn’t get it. I didn’t really understand the deal with Delaney and me, either. But I knew it wasn’t like that.

One night, when I was over at her place, I mentioned it to her. The fact that people thought we were together.

She laughed at me. I would have been embarrassed or angry at her blatant rejection if not for the fact that I was laughing too. Even though we never actually talked about it, I knew she didn’t like guys. I didn’t like guys either. But there was still a disconnection between me and her, because at least she sort of liked girls. I don’t think I even sort of like girls. I don’t think I like anybody that much, and I think Delaney got that, too.

As a joke, I asked her if she had managed to fall in love with any guys yet.

She told me no.

As a joke, she asked me if I had managed to fall in love with anybody.

I told her no. 

She took her hand and placed it on mine. When the night got late and we were barely awake enough to keep whispering to each other, she did this. Tracing my scars with her thumb, massaging my damaged hands attentively like she could mold them back to perfection like she would her clay.

“If I fall in love with any guy, it would be you.”

I told her the same thing. Not the guy part, because, you know.

And though we knew we were just messing around and that it would never be that way for us, we were both a little sad. Maybe because it’d make things easier if we were that way. Maybe it was because we hadn’t found that in anyone else yet. 

But the truth was, though, I think I might have been wrong.

On nights like those, I thought that maybe I was a little bit in love with Delaney Thatcher.

Nobody had come to the state match. My father was still on the road, somewhere across the country. My mother couldn’t get off work, swamped in endless tasks she couldn’t get away from. Delaney had an art showcase. 

I wanted her to come down. I needed her to come. But that can’t happen now. Because I knew what this show meant to her. And I knew that even without the conflicting dates, I’d ruined it like my dad ruined my hands. 

I was going to invite her to my match; she invited me to her show. We both laughed as we realized we wouldn’t be able to make it to the other’s achievement. 

And later that day, I was walking back to the parking lot with everyone else when Colton mentioned me setting the two of them up. I had laughed, because I had gotten used to laughing again, but nobody else found it funny, and I realized I had lost my footing in the race that was this conversation.

“You said you weren’t hooking up.”

“We’re not.” We really, really weren’t. 

“Then what’s the big deal?”

And I had almost said it. The words slid past my lips before I clamped my mouth shut. I remembered when we were driving back home together and Delaney mentioned the first time she had ever been called that four-letter word. How it carved into her. How it cracked her like chipped pottery, like my hands cracked. 

“I just don’t want anyone to know. I’m not ashamed. It’s just—” 

So nobody would know.

“I don’t think you’d be good together.” I shrugged, trying to get Colton to drop it already.

But he kept pushing, and then the rest of the team began pushing, and it was like I was stuck between the sheets of metal, the pressure building and my ears popping. I was rambling my way through, trying to deflect and come up with reasons for him to back off. I told him about her blocking me, about her shitty taste in music, and about her weird eating habits. 

Then why do you even like her?

“I don’t. I barely know her. Jason said it best, man. She’s a mental case.” 

And I knew before I even turned around. 

Before the bowl even shattered against my back. 

“Asshole.” 

I blinked at her. 

“Bitch,” Colton shot back. 

And she swerved out of the parking lot, hitting the curb on her way out. 

I was thinking about earlier. How we wouldn’t catch each other under the spotlight.

We told each other not to stress, that there would be other days. 

But I had lied. 

The showcase started at four. My match started at five. 

I had already bought the bus tickets. The second she had gone to class and left me in the hallway, I bought them in advance. 

I didn’t know if I should still go. She blocked me again, and this time I knew it was personal. 

My hands were hurting. 

I skipped the practice before the match. 

I had just enough time to watch her give a presentation on her favorite piece, a vase I had watched her paint so long ago. She didn’t see me in the crowd, my face blurring with the countless strangers surrounding me. For a second, I thought she must have felt my presence because she looked in my direction and stumbled through her words. But as she quickly regained her composure, I knew she didn’t notice me. 

She seemed powerful on stage. Not at all the shy and awkward girl who I saw stalking through the hallway. I realized that this was the Delaney who fought Jason M., who stepped on the gas at yellow lights while I screamed song lyrics into her ear, and who told me she would have fallen in love with me if she could. This was Delaney Thatcher, raw and formidable. 

I tucked my hands in my pockets. I felt the shards of clay I kept in there. Colton didn’t stick around to watch me pick up the pottery pieces from the concrete. As I was crouched on the ground, I realized that it was probably over. 

And standing in that crowd, watching her on stage, I knew it was over. 

I couldn’t get my legs to cross the finish line, though. 

I left too late. I missed the bus I was planning to take. The second one barely got me to the meet in enough time. 

Coach was yelling at me, asking me where I had been. I quickly kick off my slip-ons and race to the track with my running shoes in hand. Some of my opponents were already there, stretching and preparing for the race.

I let my shoes drop and squeezed my feet inside. Only then do I realize that I had worn the laces completely undone. 

I can’t ask my coach, who is still mad at my tardiness, or my teammates, who I know will mock me, or even my opponents, who would probably just stare at me as if I had asked them to go home instead of race. 

I can’t ask anyone for help. 

I don’t even think I’d be able to if I could.

I’m standing at the starting line, trying desperately to tie my shoes, but even more desperately trying not to cry. 

Everyone is called to take their marks.

I crouch to the ground and remember what Delaney would always say. Bunny ears. I thought of the bunny ears. My knuckles scrape against the track field. The shock of pain sends shivers down my entire body. My fist keeps clenching and unclenching without my will. I’m sniffling and wiping my nose. I keep murmuring some kind of plea, but nobody is listening to me.

In that moment, kneeling on the track and helplessly working to get my hands to work, I knew that going to watch Delaney had cost me it all.

I pause to consider this. 

A small part of me was furious. Because she had cut me off without hearing me out. Because after, I had heard her ask Jennifer about my accident even though we weren’t supposed to do that. Because she kept staring at my hands, and she had offhandedly mentioned if I tried to get into a car with my dad again. 

Then, I knew that really, I wasn’t mad. If anything, I was glad I had gone to see her, even if she didn’t want me there. 

It’s that day when I first met her—really met her. 

My laces untied. My hands are useless. My eyes shut. 

It kind of felt like the world was ending.

And just like that day, she came to save me all over.

I heard her call my name, and my head snapped up. My teammates worked to hold her back, but she pushed through them to reach me. The announcer was yelling at her through the speakers. My opponents stood up from their marks. 

I almost tripped over myself as I went to reach her. She fell straight to the ground, reaching for my shoes, quickly reciting the nursery rhyme. I was murmuring it back to her as she tied me up. Double-knotted. Triple-knotted. 

“I saw you.” She said. “I saw you.” 

“I’m such an—”

“Yeah. I know.” She closed her eyes, and when she looked back up at me, she was fierce. Fierce enough for the both of us. “But so am I.” 

She wipes my wet face with her sleeve and squeezes my shoulder. 

“Knock ‘em dead, Sal.” 

Here’s a confession: I know how to tie my shoes because of Delaney Thatcher.