CHAMPIONS

[an unpublished novel] by Annabel Gregg

CHAMPIONS (122,000 words) follows a girls' cross country team—perennial underdogs and upstate hicks—as they’re led through the physical and emotional trials of becoming State Champions by a voracious high school senior driven to madness for her last chance at the title. I am actively seeking representation on this project. 

manuscript excerpt: chapter 24

Standing on that podium, all six of us miserably squished on a platform an inch and a half lower than first place’s, I remember my ears being red hot. I had to pull my hair down over them during the ceremony so their radiation wouldn’t be permanently captured in the photos. I still don’t know, or maybe don’t want to truthfully acknowledge, if my anger was burning for Summer Springs, or the ethically ambiguous notion that I was more angry at my own team. I felt it in the pit of my stomach, tarry and icky: we deserved this loss. Of course we fucking lost. We deserved the inch and a half below, the lack of recognition and praise for our mediocrity, our imminent return to passive obscurity in The Sticks. Summer Springs beat us again because they were better. Of the runts, we were the lesser, deserved to be the first losers. When the director strung the heavy silver around my neck, that’s what I was repeating in the back of my mind: You deserve this. You deserve this. You deserve this. 

You couldn’t even fairly consider it gloating when Summer Springs hopped off their podium, hooting and hollering into the arms of their adoring parents and proud coaches. They’d just secured their place in Nie-scizz-ahh history: it was their seventh consecutive win, the most of any Class D school. Ever. According to Coach—who’d watched us receive our awards with his hands in his jean pockets and an inscrutably neutral expression—we’d just clenched our seventh runners-up as a program, a record in our own right. We were Coach’s eighth cohort. A program of historic, consistent loss. 

The ride home is when it set in, fermented. All our parents had driven three hours to watch the race but we all seemed to feel this weird obligation to ride home together, despite how crappy we felt. Two hours back up north—Champs that year had been on a slightly riparian course deep down in the Hudson Valley, slippery and technical—on a silent, putrid bus. Sage and Lila slept fitfully with their temples clattering against the window panes. Eve knitted half of an entire sweater to keep her hands busy, but I’ve never seen her wear anything that resembles that lavender mess, so I think she abandoned the project as soon as she got off the bus that day. Genevieve had wrapped herself into a pink blanket burrito, disconsolate sunken eyes staring passively at the highway. Parker sat in the very back with her Beats covering her ears. 

I sat in silence. Simmering. After any race I lose, I immediately believe that I could have—and subsequently remand myself for having not—run faster, regardless of what the circumstances were. I looked at the black and white results page on my phone, attempting to calculate and recalibrate placements to figure out how we mathematically could’ve won. I mentally murdered Tari for Parker. I sneered at every Saint Catherine’s bitch that stole precious team points from us. I looked at West Guthrie’s name in 8th place and flipped my middle finger at my own phone. Slammed it face-down next to me after clocking Summer Springs’s name at the top of the final team results. I’d hunt for Cubbins’ analysis of the race, and really the entire season, the next day. 

The bus wobbled into the North Lake parking lot, where seven cars were parked, six with the engine already running. All runners sprang up and started shoving our stuff together, sliding out from our seats into the aisle. We were all just eager for the day to be fucking over. 

But Coach stepped into the aisle and rested his arms on top of the seatbacks, staring at all of us. He cleared his throat while the bus driver turned off the engine. 

“I want you all to know I am still proud of the effort you put in today,” he said. He scratched the back of his neck before saying the next part, not one for espousing profound speeches. “I know this was not the result we necessarily wanted. I know we trained to win. For some of you, this is the third time you’ve been handed a silver at States,” he said, catching my eye. I flex my fingers, bite the inside of my cheek. Surprisingly, he held my gaze here, and nodded. “Here’s the thing. All of you will be returners next year. That means this group right here has three hundred and sixty four days to train like hell to prevent the same result.” I wasn’t surprised that he was focusing on the physical requisites for eventually beating Summer Springs. But I was surprised at what he said next; a man who, other than this single instance, I’ve yet to hear speak about anything but biomechanics, racing strategy, and physical grit. He took a deep breath, adjusted his cap with his thumb and pointer finger, and concluded, “Winning makes us great. But losing can make us greater.”

Coach scanned us evaluatively for another moment, seeing if his words had meant anything to us. He had tried, and looking back I wish I had appreciated his effort here more, so as maybe to prevent the hours later spent in the Counseling Office. But instead he was greeted with gray, defeated stares and teenage girls checking their watches. 

Coach turned to his side to clear the aisle.“Go get some rest. I’ll send this week’s training plan in the groupchat tomorrow. Down week. You all earned it.”  

The six of us filed out and uttered disappointed appreciations to Coach as we passed. I know Coach has a wife that he went home to that evening, but that is the extent of my knowledge on his personal life. A man of few words in truly every regard. 

Gen and I walked in tandem toward our respective parents’ waiting cars. “What are you doing the rest of the night?” I found myself asking. Not that I was really in the mood to do anything other than eat and sleep. 

She still had her pink blanket wrapped around her shoulders. This was her second time losing States to Summer Springs, and only by a few hopeful points. “Probably homework, or help my mom with chores. Something distracting.” 

“Yeah. Distraction sounds good.” 

Gen clicked her tongue. “Don’t go on socials for distraction. You’ll see Summer Springs’s stupid celebration parade.” 

I stop walking. Gen took a second to notice and halted a few paces ahead of me. “They’re having a celebration parade?” 

She pulled her blanket tighter around herself. “Yeah, I saw it on their team Insta. Tonight in their town square.” 

An image flashed before my eyes, mean-spirited and sinister, of all of them, plastic gold laurels on their pious heads, waving like monarchs from the back of a maroon Summer Springs firetruck, horns blazing and smiles pearly. Rich townsfolk hold up primo homemade signs—that premium plasticy posterboard—with fat glittery letters spelling out the names of their darlings and Queen Tari. The simmering pot was broiling, turgid bubbles popping the glass lid up and down, clamorous and threatening. 

Gen saw the fire in my eyes and warned, “Just go home and sleep, West.” 

Snake eyes clicked to hers, and I forced myself to nod. 

I walked up to the window of my Dad’s Tacoma. It was old, and the metal frame was rusting along the bottom, and you could hear the muffler rattle under the car whenever we drove in it. The inside of the cab was a miasma of exhaust and rankness. I don’t miss it. And something about stepping into this stinky, rickety-ass truck knowing the Summer Springs girls were driven home in scintillating Teslas and sleek Volkswagons might’ve prompted my behavior. 

I tapped on the pane when my dad didn’t notice me walk up, motioned for him to roll the window down. He made a big show of psychically cranking the lever. 

“Gen wants me to ride with her.” 

“You coulda texted me.” 

“Sorry. She just now decided she wants to get ice cream.” 

He shrugged. “If that girl wants to eat, you better get ‘er eatin’.” Dad leaned forward, releasing a drawling, absent groan as he pulled his wallet out of his back pocket. It was a replica of the one that Samuel L. Jackson’s character in Pulp Fiction has, the leather one that says BAD MOTHER FUCKER in stitched block letters. He pinched out a ten dollar bill and held it out to me. 

Retrospectively, this had likely been Dad’s way of consoling me. "Would've been a twenty if you won!” he joked, exaggerating a cartoonish eyebrow raise. 

“Not funny.” 

“Too soon?” 

“Bye.” I pocketed the cash and started in the direction of Gen’s Dad’s car. 

“Castillo is bringing you home, then?” Dad attempted as I walked away. He says an ll instead of the y sound. 

“Yeah,” I confirmed over my shoulder. 

“Alright. Bring home a pint if you have extra cash.” 

“Okay.” We were both yelling from halfway across the parking lot at that point.

“Nice try today, kiddo,” he called as the truck pulled away. 

Nice try. A nice try. 

I watched the Tacoma until it puttered out of eyesight. Then I yanked off my backpack and dumped it on the curb.

“West!” Their car pulled up next to me, and Gen stuck her head out of the passenger window. “What are you doing?” 

“Forgot something in the locker room,” I waved her on, jogging noncommittal back toward the school. 

“Oh. Huh.” 

“I’ll text you,” I prompted. 

She nodded, frowning. “Good job today, Westie,” Mr. Castillo called out from the driver’s seat. “You girls run faster than I could in a million years.” He had a smile on his face, warm and sympathetic like he didn’t get why we were as upset as we were. I thanked him and waved at them slowly until their car was gone. 

The parking lot was empty. 

Dusk had turned the sky blazing ochre, streaky clouds mixing orange and red. 

A nice try. 

Sudden, stabbing, sinister. 

Explosive. 

I wanted to kill, I felt poisoned. Injected with a mold-green toxin, needle jabbed right into the heel, spreading up through spidery veins and turning my stomach rotten and hate-filled, sour, bitter, fermented, and I tried to sit with it, but it wasn’t long before I was running.

Seemed like the only way to expel the subcutaneous venom, seeping deeper and deeper into my entirety, contaminating my bloodstream. Felt like only a matter of time before it would wash over my brain completely and then I could no longer see with rational eyes, not even fiery ones, but deep, obsidian, soulless things that would overtake me, make me inherently, capaciously evil. I understood evil. That’s the only way I can describe this deep, pure rage. It makes humans lose all sense of rationality, which is the basis of empathy and sympathy, and thus anger is just a hop, skip, and a jump from evil. I was not running, I was sprinting, at least at the start. Down the deserted streets of North Lake, winter settling in appropriately early for Upstate New York. In the remaining light of dusk I could see my hot breath become steam engine puffs in the cold air. I sprinted down Main Street, past Twenty Below and the corner store and the antique store. Every muscle in my face was taught. My mouth would remain shut until I was physically forced to open it in order to breathe. For that first in-town mile, I wanted to scream every fucking curse word in the dictionary. I let out a few, a fuck and a dammit and some others, but it made me feel more like I was losing hold than letting go, like squeezing emotional toothpaste out of the tube that’d be impossible to shove back in. This made me put pedal to metal in a semi-desperate attempt to regain the compsure that’d slipped away. North Lake proper is small.  I’d reached the one road out of town, the county route that connects us to our neighboring villages. Without considering my lack of cell phone on my person or if anyone would give a shit that I was gone, I kept on. I was warmed the fuck up now. But my throat was hoarse, and I realized I was holding back an absolute sob. It was truly caught in my throat, a presence. Anger devolves into crushing sadness eventually; I’d just sped up the process by running, attuning the nervous system at a faster rate. I didn’t stop running as I let very ugly cries out. It was getting dark and I was running on a shoulder the width of a cell phone, but I didn’t really register the cars whizzing past me. Fuck them, frankly. None of them have nothing. None of them have flaws as deep and intrinsic to deal with. Driving to their fucking Saturday night potlucks or whatever the fuck. The cries hurt my abs and ribs and I hastily wipe tears off my cheeks. I blow a hefty snot rocket onto the dirt. Now I was mad at the sad, at the mad, at the fact that I had to feel this much at all, Jesus Goddamn Christ, does anyone feel this deeply, this inscrutably, this unshakably? The poison had settled right at my sternum, made my stomach appetiteless from being pumped full of tar. I wanted it to stop. I wanted to feel nothing, just wanted numb. I begged for numb. I kept running and pleaded for the God to which Ma prays to please make me not care. To please bless me with the paradisic life like the other people I know that just float, that don’t have goals or passions and subsequently no flaws nor pain. I know they exist. I felt stupid, shameful, for caring this much, knowing anybody else would look at me and think I’m a fucking lunatic for caring as much as I do, did. I passed a green metal sign that indicated New York City was 180 miles away, that the Capital was 36 miles away, and that Summer Springs was 20 miles away. I’d taken the long, winding path through town to get to the county route, so as the crow flies I wasn’t far from home. I could’ve turned back. Should’ve. 

I kept on. 

I thought about how my whole identity was tied to this horrendous sport, how much I’d put into it every day, but not necessarily out of choice and delight but need and desperation and nothing else directing me any other way. How much the others put in every day, likely for the same reasons. And it’s all unforgiving. Because it’s not just an hour or two at practice. It’s every waking minute. Thinking about your macros, making sure you’re rehabbing, not having too much fun because that’d disrupt recovery. All for differences in performance so minute that every waking decision you make has a quantifiable impact on your worth. And it doesn’t even matter that hardly anything in school piques my interest because I’m preoccupied anyway, thinking about how much practice will hurt later, or whether or not I’ll hit the workout splits I will inevitably hit, or I won’t hit them and that will discourage me so heartily that I spiral into thinking my season’s over until the next workout or meet and see that it’s inevitably not. All that for a Nice try, kiddo. 

My pace rapidly senesces, the morning’s race catching up to me and shame sullying me. I didn’t want to stop but I also wasn’t taking pleasure in keeping on. I knew if I paused even for a minute to walk, I’d be too exhausted to start back up again, and I didn’t want to think about what would happen if I stopped running, in the grand scheme. My intention was to never stop running. I could stay numb this way. 

I distracted myself with the litter in the ditch adjacent to the road. Essentially a drained moat between the highway and the forest. November, so by then the branches were mostly bare or dotted with maroon stragglers, the rest of the colorful, composting leaves carpeted the forest floor. In the ditch were iterative appearances of nicotine gum rounds, plastic bottles, glass bottles, aluminum cans crumpled in varied degrees, candy wrappers with ants on them, whipped cream cans, socks and underwear that were usually damp and in a matted heap, scratched-off lotto losers abandoned in disappointment, loaded diapers, cigarette butts, broken wire-flared earbuds, and even a radio. I imagined that most of these were tossed out of car windows, either thoughtlessly or angrily or amusedly, but others I wondered if they came to find their home within the ditch via someone on foot. If I was running (I was jogging at that point, in fairness) along the side of that rather remote, wooded road, it was plausible for other bipeds to have traversed it as well. The socks and underwear surely were not tossed sopping out of a window, but removed by a sartorially unlucky wearer. After at least a mile of passively observing the litter I passed by, I got hit with a sense of connection to the farrago, a sudden desire to contribute. I didn’t want to litter, necessarily, but I wondered about a reality where the ditch had no litter at all, was a uniformly green knoll as the unclaimed “Adopt-A-Highway” sign I’d seen a few hundred meters back optimistically envisioned for this ditch. Such a change would inevitably shift the character, the entire composition of the landscape, if there was no trash along the side of this road, and yet it was quintessential to the essence of this place and time for it to be this way, littered with years of miniscule accumulated human decisions. This compelled me to want to be a part of history. I yanked off my warmup hoodie, sweaty and black with an Icers logo screen-printed across the back, and tossed it ahead of me into the ditch without stopping. I stared at the fabric heap as I passed it, then never saw it again. 

Now I was running in just my uniform top and black swishy shorts. I wasn’t cold but I was numb. As I’d hoped, my mind had gone blank, mechanical movement of limbs and kinetic exertion distracting whatever neural connections are required in order to think. Blissful thoughtlessness as my body carried me down the road and through the forest. But I had no watch or phone nor any real articuable sense of how far I’d gone, I didn’t know how many miles from Summer Springs I was (the nearest civilization) and the environment was so monotonous that as the minutes passed I couldn’t tell if I was cooking at a steady tempo over fast miles or trudging through a hardly respectable distance. I call it blissful because such numbness is inherently ephemeral. It is impossible to go on without pain eventually rearing its ‘ole head. But what I felt now, maybe twelve miles in, was a creeping hunger. A spreading, corporeal hollowness. My brain had deemed my stomach full earlier, specifically full of tar and gunk, but now was realizing it needed subsistence to keep up with the incessant and exponentially increasing caloric demand I was forcing upon it. It was more of a nag for a mile or two, a push notification that’d keep mentally pinging me as I doddered on, but as time passed I became truly, unforgivably hungry. Ravenous. Perhaps fifteen miles in—dark now, save the ambient headlights of successive cars that passed, approaching something like two hours straight of running—and I was truly running on empty. I envisioned the elite endurance runners that’d be slurping down a colostomy bag’s worth of sugary goo to keep going at this point. Remembered a viral social media series of a guy who’d eat a donut before every successive mile… on thirty-mile long runs. I licked my chapped lips, felt my mouth watering, and my stomach petulantly rumbling. 

Then, I thought of Genevieve. I hadn’t seen the extent of her disorder at this time, had only gotten breadcrumbs (ironically); hearing her stomach rumble egregiously loud before meets or workouts without her ever verbally acknowledging it; her denying every morsel of food I’d ever offered her, telling me she thought it was “bad luck” to eat before a race. So I’d had an inkling, especially since at this stage of my eleventh grade non-development I was half-heartedly considering a career path as a nutritionist, considering the self-ingrained ethos of “food is fuel” had indicated potential for a long-term interest. But I pretty quickly realized that I didn’t find that shit all that interesting, and had built a knowledge base just foundational enough to make sure that I was eating enough and correctly, and that was all I really needed or wanted to know. Regardless, I was at this time very seriously wrestling with attempting to understand why she would be so, to put it coarsely, stupid. Carbs fuel, protein builds, fat sustains, all that. It’s fucking science.

So, my near-desperate need for food prompted the neural connection to my friend who must feel this way constantly. I had no intention of stopping, so instead I honed in on the sensation for a bit, this hunger. The urgency and frustration it fosters in you, feeling like a toddler about to whip out a Grade A monster-tantrum. A cavernous stomach, my body sending frustrated signals to my brain that it needs fucking fuel if it wants to keep doing what it’s doing. And then there is this choice, this anti-survivalist choice, to ignore those signals actively, to rewire your brain to think that no, this is the survivalist choice, to do the opposite of what your body is saying it wants, disregard the intrinsic knowledge it has about food. And I realized that there is an odd discipline in this choice. The commitment to a belief even if it is totally, scientifically proven to be wrong. A faith, in its way, because to believe despite ample evidence of the contrary is faith. And to have faith so prolonged and constant, of which Genevieve has exercised, is, in its demented way, persistence. And so I kept running with this hunger, carrying it like a burning candle through pews. Listened to the stomach gurgles as litany, ignored the proven biological indicators that I should stop, or at least do something fucking differently. All for Gen. To understand, even if I didn’t believe in it. To sit at a sermon of a church to which I am not a member of the congregation, not just to understand but to attempt to respect. To recognize that there is some sense of drive and will in wanting to see how far you can go while running on empty. The obstinate in me could at least see this, resonate with and respect in part, while still wanting Gen not to do this to herself. The idea that we can always go further than we think. 

I would abandon my nutritionist aspirations after this run. 

Not that it was a particularly difficult abandonment, though. Shit was boring. I didn’t wanna study more reasons to eat chicken. 

I was fading. It was dark. The initial sheen of sweat had dried and I was chilly. The woods were scary. I wanted to stop. The rage-induced mental resilience and Fuck You Attitude were gone. I’d run more miles than years I’d been alive and thus had been stripped down to my bare humanity, the naked truth. I was just a hungry, tired, sixteen year old girl in November, alone in the dark, untraceable and unbeknownst to anyone, in Bumfuck Nowhere, USA. 

The thought crossed my mind: maybe I was going to die. Maybe this had been an inadvertent kamikaze mission. What a colossally stupid way to die, I thought. No offense, Pheidippides. 

Maudlin, I considered my own demise. Admittedly I thought I was too young to die, but that quickly seemed selfish. Steve Prefontaine was an Olympian and he didn’t get to live past twenty-four. I came in second in the Class D section of the State meet. Actually, West Guthrie individually placed only eighth. Didn’t even make the podium. Surely that ratio earns me no extra years. I perfunctorily wondered if my parents would miss me if I weren’t around. At the time, I was fairly confident that my mother would, though even then I knew my father wouldn’t necessarily care if he and I were separated for some reason (less than a year later, I would be proven right). And my team would probably make me some sort of martyr, if only temporarily. But as I kept running, the consideration of this moved beyond one of pain and fear to something more neutral. 

The odds of me dying that evening on the road weren’t zero, though not necessarily much higher than that. But I wanted to keep running, despite the literal possibility that I could die. I had this friend back in elementary school who later moved away for a reason that eleven year old me didn’t bother to retain, even though she was the last actual friend I’d have until I would join cross country four years later. 

She’d get these night terrors. Her mom had left the family when she was even smaller, so I suspect it had some psychological connection to that. She’d tell me about how the doors to her room would violently rattle or how spooky figures would appear just out of her periphery, how she’d have nightmares so disturbing that she’d wake up screaming some nights, but then the next day wouldn’t even remember them. When she told me all this—on the playground swings after school one day, one of our last days together—I asked her how she could even fall asleep at all anymore. Sounded freaking (I wouldn’t gain the courage to swear until I was a teenager, believe it or not) terrifying. She laughed and said it took awhile. That the scary things still happen: the door still clamors, figures still haunt her. But she decided to tell herself that the scary things weren’t scary, to her. The demons persisted, but so would she. They would co-exist, and she would just choose not to be afraid of them, even though they were still indeed frightening. And it was a bit of a fake-it-til-you-make-it strategy at first, but eventually she truly wasn’t scared of these objectively scary things. They were just there. And not long after that, they faded away. They’d pop up here and there still, maybe the terrors’ attempt to wield the element of surprise, but after that initial jump wore off, she’d remember: You are not scary, to me. Just an unfortunate inevitability. 

So as I ran through the dark, I decided that death wasn’t all that scary to me. My body was deteriorating, my vision was blurry, and I was so hungry I wanted to cry. I would keep on, and if it happened, it happened. But I was still alive then, so why worry about being anything but? I was just running along the side of the road in the dark. The air smelled cold and earthy. I’d ran twenty miles, give or take. The blisters that’d formed on my toes were already popping, stinging as they rubbed up against my shoe sole. But I didn’t have any thought to do anything else. Ever. 

To run is to be stratified in your own corporeal presence and thus a reminder of the only things that are real—the present, and you.

A car whizzed by, and its highbeams refracted against a red gemstone at the center of another road sign, this one wooden and kitchy. Welcome to Summer Springs, it read. Established 1803. 

Their name was incendiary, briefly recharging a flicker amongst dying angry embers. 

The air in Summer Springs smelled different, almost as soon as I crossed the municipal boundary. Slightly sweeter, but in an artificial way. I could hear ruckus from further in-town, and followed the sound like a truffle pig on scent. At this point I was trudging, fading fast and painfully, steps uncertain and protesting. I could feel all fifty-two bones in my feet, crunching and cracking. I ran down the sidewalks of Main Street, where swaths of swanky stores lined the edges, organic cafés closed at this dark hour while the gastropubs were just starting up, their patrons outside in Patagonia vests and Northface jackets to observe the commotion. They tipsily cheered, but others were residents and families holding homemade signs, smiling with pride, just as I’d imagined. 

A squad of four police cars were crawling down the street with their sirens on, blue and red lights flashing. Behind them was a garnet-red firetruck—God that’s so annoying they can’t even let their firetrucks be regular firetruck red—moving at the same creeping pace and honking its horn. Figures were sat on top of the firetruck’s folded ladder, holding onto the rungs and waving slow and pompously like monarchs greeting their subjects. 

At this sight, without really thinking about it or what my final total was, I slowed to a stop.

I stared at the firetruck as it approached. It moved painstakingly slow, probably so the girls on the back could really marinate in the celebration. As the truck got closer to where I stood in the crowd, my anger returned, at a rate equal to that of my leg muscles giving out, to the increasing black spots dotting my vision. I stared at them, or tried to, with my senescing eyesight and stumbling attempt at standing in place, and began to make out their smiling faces. Kate, Colleen, Harper. They all had maroon warmup gear on, matching the color of their moniker firetruck, with their big, fat Nie-scizz-ahh gold medals strung around their neck. Tari, waving at the front of the ladder, had two medals, scintillating in the light from the streetlamps. 

Pheidippides ran from Marathon to Athens because he was just exuberant that Greece had won that battle, and needed to move as fast as his body would let him—walking is so cumbersome to runners; once you get used to getting from Point A to B as fast as biomechanics allow, it’s agitating to force your legs to purposely move slower than that—to get there. He was motivated by pure exultation.

The first woman to ever run an Olympic marathon, Melpomene, was never even officially recognized. A poor woman from some port city in Greece. The Games refused to let women compete, so she ran the day after all the male athletes did. And even after she threw down an intrepid 40k from Marathon to Athens all on her own, the Committee refused to allow her into the Olympic Stadium, nor acknowledge that she had run at all.  

Some might say the first male marathon was fueled by joy, and the first female marathon was fueled by rage.

I had started this marathon out of wrath, and even after exhausting my body to its physical max, I still had it in me. If I’d had more energy, I would’ve screamed in terror at this realization, because even twenty-six miles later I was still unable to control this. Maybe, I would never be able to control myself, how I feel. Maybe I would always be a slave to my emotional whims. 

I locked eyes with fine-haired Colleen, who recognized me first because I had spent so much of the race that morning competing with her, but also because I was literally wearing the same pale blue uniform top I’d raced in. I watched her expression morph from passive elation to confusion, then maybe even eyebrow-raised fear. I can imagine I looked pretty jarring, post-marathon and angry-death glare, haggard and woozy like a drunkard. 

I held her gaze and she stared at me until my legs gave out, my vision went black, and I collapsed to the ground, middle finger still in the air.