Gretta

GRETTA

Little Gretta Bunnell from Austin, Minnesota. A girl whose greatest aspiration in elementary school had been to become the next iteration of her teachers. Her frumpy, dreary, bland teachers who were pleasantly content with the slowly suffocating weight of anonymous, irrelevant mediocrity.

The epiphany occurred in high school. Freshman year. First semester. Ms. Dowager’s third period PE class.

It was a grey September morning. September in Minnesota often meant intermittent snow flurries. Sporadic white flakes drifted and swirled on the cinder track encircling the school’s football field. Ms. Dowager stood wrapped in her coat with a clipboard and a stopwatch in her hands. She timed students as they finished the one-mile time trial. Gretta crossed the finish line and stood panting, her breath white plumes in the frigid air.

The results were posted in the girls P.E. locker room the next day. Gretta found her result, then compared it to Erica Summer’s. 

Erica Summer was the freshman class It-Girl. A person seemingly born with, well, everything. Beauty, brains, athleticism and talent. Erica had these things and she knew it. She was unaware that she’d become an arrogant snob.

Gretta had shaved 20 seconds off her mile time, Erica only two. Gretta grinned. This was good.

Feigning a casual attitude, Gretta approached the small knot of girls that always seemed to orbit Erica. She wanted to be part of that orbit and this was her chance. “Hey,” said Gretta. “How’s it going?”

Erica turned. “Uh, fine.”

Gretta maintained a forced smile. “I checked our miles times. I might give you some competition.”

An amused grin appeared on Erica’s face. “What’s your name again?”

“Gretta. We’ve literally been in the same class since second grade.”

“Gretta,” said Erica. “Listen, dear. You were born in the middle of the pack. It’s where you belong. Don’t try to be something you’re not. Okay darling?” She turned away.

Gretta nodded pleasantly as if she hadn’t been curtly dismissed. Her phony smile barely faltered. “Okay. I’ll see you around.” If anyone heard this, they made no reply.

Gretta walked away. As she exited the P.E. locker room that day an odd sensation gripped her. An alien sensation saturating her guts and making them wriggle. An invisible imp reaching into her chest and squeezing. Her face flushed and her breath became shallow. Sweat beaded her forehead.

Gretta sat through fourth period pre-algebra but didn’t register a second of it. She had checked out of the external world and was fully immersed in her own inner landscape. She replayed the exchange with Erica Summer. Fast-forward. Rewind. Zoom in. Pause. Play. Over and over. Scrutinizing Erica’s contempt. Her derision. Her absolute certainty that Gretta was a separate, inferior and pitiable subspecies. Who was Erica Summers to treat her that way?

At last, Gretta interpreted that new sensation bubbling and steaming in her core like a geyser about to erupt. It wasn’t a sense of despondent rejection, as she feared it might be. It wasn’t anger. Not completely. It was a unique motivation that Gretta discovered that day. She understood for the first time that hearing ‘you can’t’ made her decide that ‘I will.’

Gretta wouldn’t try to beat Erica Summer in the spring one-mile time trial. Gretta would humiliate and destroy Erica Summer. She would train until her feet bled and her muscles screamed. She would suffer month after month and mile after mile, battling pain and fatigue until she discovered the furthest limits of ability and tenacity. Then she would train still harder. Gretta understood this clearly as her peers now understood introductory operator precedence (which had been the classroom subject that day).

After school, Gretta went directly to her room. She’d been saving money with daydreams of a used car. The pitiable amount of crumpled ones and fives and loose change was nowhere close to a car. That no longer mattered. Cars were irrelevant. Gretta did have enough money for a pair of running shoes. She collected it and took it downstairs.

“Mom,” said Gretta. “Can we go to the mall?” 

The following April, Ms. Dowager again subjected her students to the one-mile trial. It was first period and the sun peeked down at them through a lingering haze. The freshman girls positioned themselves at the starting line. Most gossiped idly or stood looking bored.

Gretta nudged her way to the fore and stood beside Erica.

“Good luck today,” said Gretta.

“Uh, yeah,” said Erica, not bothering to make eye contact.

“Try to keep up.”

Now Erica turned and looked. This peon was smiling at her. No. Not smiling. It was the joyfully sinister grin of a predator standing over wounded prey. This girl - Gina? Grace? -  wasn’t simply willing to run. She was eager to race.

Ms. Dowager liked firing her starter’s pistol and found every reason to do so. She raised it now. “On your mark… Get set…”

Bang! And they were off.

Pace yourself, Gretta thought. She knew it wasn’t a sprint and that if she treated this as such, she’d be gasping by the third lap. But to everyone else it looked like a sprint.

Ms. Dowager noted this and smiled. Someone was showing some spunk. Some real gumption, by god. A damn rare thing freshman P.E. This girl – Gretchen? Gabby? – moved like she’d been fired from a cannon.

It was everything Gretta had hoped for and more. Erica tried – no, she struggled! - to keep up during the first lap. The two girls far outpaced all others and completed the first circuit in tandem.

During the second lap, a panting, sweating and straining Erica Summers began to cry. Her pace flagged. For perhaps the first time in her life, she fell behind.

On the third lap, Erica Summer, usually as graceful as a young gazelle, stumbled and went sprawling into the cinders. She picked herself up and continued. Ms. Dowager suppressed a smirk.

When Erica Summer began the fourth and final lap, Gretta Bunnell stood and cheered her on.

Gretta had already finished.