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front, striding like the track star he was. Mattie was second. I ran in the middle and Sam and Seth were pulling up the rear, neither of them seasoned athletes like the rest of us.
    Thomas set an easy pace that put us in the middle of the group, but was slow enough for Sam and Seth to keep up with. At that point, I don’t think it really mattered what kind of shape you were in. Adrenaline could have carried me around the world twice. Something about running in the woods at night when you weren’t supposed to with a group of people was exhilarating, and I found myself pulling even with Mattie and then playfully running ahead.
    “You sure you want to race me, Faye?” Mattie questioned, not the slightest bit winded by our pace.
    “I thought that’s the reason I was out here?” I shot back at her, unable to keep the smile off my face.
    “You think you can handle these two, Thomas?” Mattie asked, pointing over her shoulder to where Sam and Seth were already panting.
    “No problem, babe,” Thomas waved her on. “You go show Faye a good time,” he encouraged, his smile tinted purple by the glow necklace around his neck.
    “Start us off, just so it’s fair,” Mattie looked over her shoulder at me in a pitiful way. “I hope you don’t mind losing, Faye.”
    “I hope you don’t either, Mattie. I hate to embarrass you in front of your boyfriend!” I joked with her.
    “All right you two. On your mark. Get set. GO!” Thomas yelled as we continued his easy pace. As soon as he barked go, Mattie and I took off, passing the other runners like they were standing still.
    Mattie weaved through the crowd like a sharp needle, while I seemed to catch every elbow that swung my direction. Mattie had told me to stay on the path, but she was beating me, and it wasn’t because she was faster, it was because she was meaner and didn’t mind pushing people out of her way.
    There was a break in the trees ahead, and I ducked off the path so I could run unobstructed for a few strides to hopefully get passed an especially thick group of runners.
    It was pitch black on the opposite side of the tree line, and for a moment I was running completely blind. With the lose of sight, my other senses heightened, alert to what was around me like I had been the night Dayne found me in the woods. My ears pricked to the sound of running feet to my left and the sounds of forest creatures scurrying away from the intrusion to my right. I inhaled deeply, and smelled the familiar evergreen scent that always made me think of him.
    Maybe that’s why I hadn’t come in these woods before. I told myself it was because the green was just too close to Ireland’s fields, a memory that would inevitably bring the entire summer crashing back over me. In the dark, the green was gone, but Dayne’s familiar scent lingered as if he had just passed by.
    Without the crowd to block me, my feet hit the ground harder, with more purpose than before, no longer concerned about catching Mattie, but now chasing the hope that Dayne was hiding somewhere in these woods. A slightly delusional part of my brain thought I could run fast enough to catch him. Maybe he had come back for me.
    My eyes adjusted, and the woods lay before me, bathed in silver light like those long ago nights in Clonlea. The way the moonlight lay bright white on the ferns, only to disappear the moment I rushed passed, had my feet hitting the ground harder, hoping that if I ran fast enough, I might be able to catch those memories long enough to hold onto them for a while.
    The woods came alive around me, the crowd of runners to my left had disappeared. With every heartbeat and panting breath, the forest seemed to find its way deeper into me, until I could feel it coming to life around me.
    I no longer needed to keep my eyes open to see where I was going. My skin prickled, the hairs turning to goosebumps, like an internal sonar device, telling me when I needed to shift my path to avoid colliding with a tree