Dust and Rivalry

*I wanted to write a story where two people who are basically flirting through insults finally collide in a hot, dusty place. The challenge was keeping the spite alive even as things got physical, rivals don't give up easy.*

The lot was almost empty when I pulled in. Almost.

I saw the silver pickup right away. The one with the stupid hiking sticker collection on the back window and the pelican decal he thinks is funny. His car. Of course his car was already here.

"Unbelievable," I said to nobody. "Just unbelievable."

I turned the engine off and sat there gripping the wheel. Two hours of driving through nothing but scrub and heat, and he beat me here. That was so typical of Marc Montgomery. Beat me by a car length before the race even started.

I got out. The heat hit me like a hand pressed flat against my chest. Late afternoon in the Painted Desert section, and the sun still had teeth. The air shimmered off the sand between rust-colored ridges, and somewhere out there a petrified log sat in the dirt, two hundred million years old and not giving a damn about my problems.

Fine. Let him have the parking spot.

I opened the trunk and checked my gear. I always check it twice. Water, four liters. Salt tabs. The good electrolyte mix, the one that tastes like chalk but works. My pack, my poles, my hat. New trail runners, broken in for exactly one week, because my old pair finally died on me in Zion.

"Come on, Fitzpatrick," I muttered. "Lightweight. Fast. Nothing to worry about."

My phone buzzed. I already knew who it was before I looked.

Marc: you lost already?

Me: your car in the lot doesn't count as winning

Marc: it counts for something. See you at the trailhead. Try not to trip.

I shoved the phone in my pocket. We'd been doing this for a year now. Ever since the White Mountain speed record, when he edged my time by four minutes and then had the nerve to text me about it. Four minutes. I have lost sleep over four minutes. Since then it's been a low, steady exchange of snide messages across two state lines, times screenshots, trail records, the occasional taunt at midnight. My sister says it's flirting. My sister is an idiot.

I shouldered my pack and started across the lot. My shoes crunched on the gravel, and the heat came up off the ground and wrapped around my ankles like it was trying to hold me back. Good luck with that.

The trailhead sign stood at the edge of the sand, all cheerful browns and yellows. Devil's Playground Loop. Nine-ish miles if you did it right, longer if you got lost in the badlands, which people did, constantly. The ranger at the entrance station had given me a whole speech about it. Stay on the cairns. Don't wander. People die out here. I said yes ma'am and drove on.

Marc was at the sign, bent over, cinching a strap on his pack.

I took a second to watch him without him knowing. Sue me. He was taller than me by a head, built like somebody who actually trained instead of just running trails on spite, which is my method. Sleeveless shirt. Sunglasses pushed up in his hair. A stupid bandana around his neck like he was cosplaying an old prospector.

He looked up before I was ready. He always does that. It's his most annoying talent.

"Well, well," he said, straightening up. "She lives."

"Barely. Your driving wore me out just thinking about it."

"I left the city at noon."

"And I left at one and still almost beat you here. What does that tell you?"

"That you speed." He smiled. God, that smile. I hated it. I hated it the way you hate a song stuck in your head.

I stopped a few feet from him and looked at the trail. The path wound off between the rock formations, narrow and baked pale in the middle. Heat rose off it in slow ribbons.

"So," I said. "Rules."

"You always want rules."

"Because you always cheat."

"I have never once cheated."

"You cut the switchback on the last half mile at Mahogany Flat. Keith saw you."

"Keith is a liar and also you're just mad because I still hold that record." He adjusted his pack. "Anyway. Rules. Go."

"Same trail, same direction, clockwise. Full loop, both markers. GPS on, public track. First one back to the sign wins."

"Wins what, exactly? We never settled that."

I had thought about this the whole drive. That was the problem with Marc, he made you think about things the whole drive. "Loser buys dinner. And admits it. In writing. On the group chat."

"The group chat," he said, like the words tasted bad. "Where Keith will be insufferable either way."

"Keith is always insufferable. That's his job."

He laughed at that. A real one, short and surprised, like he hadn't meant to let it out. I felt it land somewhere under my ribs and I told that feeling to shut up.

"Last chance to back out," he said. "It's hot as an oven out here and you look already cooked."

"I'm fine."

"You're sweating."

"It's called being alive, Marc."

He shook his head, still smiling. Then his face did that thing it does, the shift into something sharper. Race face. I know it well, because I have one too, and I've seen it in every photo he's ever posted.

"You remember last year?" he asked. "The canyon loop?"

"I remember beating you."

"You remember almost beating me. And then remember the last two miles, where you died on that climb and I passed you like you were furniture."

My jaw tightened. "That was the heat."

"That was the heat," he agreed, mocking my tone, "on both of us. Except one of us handled it." He shrugged. "I'm just saying, Charlie. Desert trails. They don't seem to be your friend."

"Don't call me Charlie."

"Charlie."

"I will bury you in a petrified log, I swear to god."

"Promises." He checked his watch. Tapped the screen. Held it up so I could see the timer start. "Same as always. We go on three, or do you need a longer warmup? I can wait. I'm generous like that."

What I hated most, in that moment, was that he was actually generous about it. He'd wait all day if I asked. He'd hand me his water if I ran out. I'd seen him stop a race once to help some guy with a blown-out knee, carry the guy's pack for two miles, and then still finish ahead of everybody. It made winning against him feel less satisfying and losing feel worse.

"No warmup," I said. "I've been ready since Tuesday."

"Tuesday," he said. "Cute."

"On three."

He positioned himself at the sign, one hand on it like a sprinter on a block. I did the same. Our shoulders were almost touching. He smelled like sunscreen and some dumb cedar deodorant. I hated that I noticed.

"Charlene."

"What."

"Good luck," he said. And he meant it. That was the worst part. He always meant it.

"You too," I said, because I did too, and I hated that even more.

"One."

I bounced once on my toes. The sand was soft here and it would eat our strides for the first half mile. I'd planned for that. I'd planned everything except him standing this close to me.

"Two."

"Don't hold back on my account," I said.

"Wasn't going to."

"Three."

We went.

***

The first mile was a blur of red dirt and cairns and his back. He ran maybe ten feet ahead of me the whole way, close enough that I could have reached out and grabbed his pack, far enough that I never could. He was toying with me. I knew he was toying with me. I let him, because I had a plan for mile six and I wasn't spending my legs on mile one.

The trail wound between the rock formations, quick shadows and blinding light, blinding light and quick shadows. A petrified log lay split beside the path, red and purple at the broken end, heavy as a car. I'd read about them. Trees older than dinosaurs, turned to stone, just lying around in the sun like firewood.

"Nice rocks," Marc called back, without turning. "Try to keep up."

"I'm pacing, jackass."

"You're fading."

I gave him the finger, which he couldn't see, which somehow made it better.

And then, because the world hates me, my left foot came down on a patch of loose gravel that the trail had hidden in plain sight, and the whole world tilted sideways.

I stumbled, flailed, caught myself on a rock that scraped my palm raw. Kept my feet. Barely.

"You okay?" Marc had turned around. He was slowing down.

"Fine."

"You sure? That looked ugly."

"I said fine." I waved him off and got moving again. My palm stung. I wiped the blood and dust on my shorts and refused to think about it.

He hovered a second longer. Then he turned and pulled away, and this time he wasn't toying anymore. He opened a real gap, a hundred feet, two hundred, and I watched him shrink into the shimmer of heat off the sand and got mad all over again.

Fine. Fine. The plan still worked. The plan worked even better if he thought I was rattled.

The trail climbed into the rock formations around mile five, switchbacking up between rust-colored walls. The heat pooled in there like it had nowhere to go. I counted my breathing, four steps in, four steps out, and kept his pack in sight. Red. Dumb red pack. He'd bought it specifically so people could spot him from a distance. Show-off even in gear choices.

Then, at the top of the second switchback, he stopped dead.

I nearly ran into him.

"What the hell," I said, and then I saw it. A rattlesnake, laid out across the trail like it owned the deed, thick as my forearm, sunning itself on the warm rock. It didn't move. It didn't even rattle. It just lay there being a snake with all the confidence of a snake.

"Oh, hell no," I said.

"Give it space," Marc said quietly. He was already easing backward, one hand up like he was directing traffic. "There's a bypass. Go wide on the right, past that juniper. Slow."

"You go wide. I'm not going last."

"Charlene."

"I'll go first, you big baby." And I did. I gave the snake the widest berth I could without losing the trail, picked my way past the juniper, heart hammering more from the snake than the climb. When I looked back, Marc was still standing there like a man negotiating with a landlord.

Then he saw me ahead of him and his whole face changed.

"Oh, you did not."

"Race rules," I called down. "Trail hazards count."

"That is not a rule."

"It's a rule now."

He came around the juniper fast, mad fast, and the race was back on. I had maybe a hundred feet on him and I spent it like it was my last money. The switchbacks burned. My lungs burned. Somewhere in there I laughed out loud, actually laughed, alone on a trail in a hundred degree heat, because I was winning. For the first time in a year of racing this smug desert rat, I was winning.

"Where's your snake now, Montgomery?" I shouted over my shoulder.

"Still in your future!" he yelled back.

I crested the top of the formation with my legs on fire and my arms up like I'd won something that mattered. I heard him coming, fast, too fast, but I had the high ground and a downhill I knew how to run. Halfway point was the old stock driveway crossing, flat and open, and I hit it with maybe thirty seconds on him.

Thirty seconds. I could taste the dinner he was buying me.

***

It happened on the descent, of course. It always happens on the descent, because downhill is where you get greedy.

The trail dropped off the formation in a long scree slope, loose rock over hardpan, the kind of ground you take quick and light. I was taking it quick and greedy. Marc was right behind me, close enough I could hear his footfalls, and every one of those footfalls made me go faster.

I remember thinking: let him watch my back for a while. Let him eat my dust for once.

Then my right foot came down on a rock that rolled.

Not a slip. Not a catch. A full roll, the rock pivoting under me like it had been waiting all day, and my ankle went with it. I went down sideways, hard, arm out, hip on rock, and I heard this wet little pop from inside my ankle that I will hear for the rest of my life.

The world went white for a second.

Then I was on my side in the dirt, breathing in dust, and Marc was crouched over me.

"Charlene. Hey. Hey."

"I'm fine."

"No you're not."