The Heart Is A Lonely Runner

Well, this is a first from our branded content romance novel collection: a teenaged paranormal love story! Please enjoy these excerpts of The Heart Races Until It Rests by Annborny Hilledale.

Ellie met Henri while running.

She was not looking for love. When she’d quit the cheerleading squad to join cross-country, her boyfriend Brad, the quarterback of the school’s football team, dumped her because her running gear didn’t look “as hot.” She was relieved more than anything. She was a senior and she had decisions to make: did she want to go to Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Oxford, or one of the other ivy league schools she’d gotten into?

Really, Ellie wanted to got to a small liberal arts school and study poetry, but it wasn’t up to her. Both her mother and her father were founders and CEOs of very powerful companies, and they’d both fought so much about whose company Ellie would eventually take over that they’d gotten a divorce. The only thing they could agree on anymore: Ellie had to study business.

Her Polar Heart Rate Monitor beeped helpfully to let her know her heart rate had risen above her optimal zone. Ellie often ran too fast when she got anxious about the future.

She slowed down, which was when the boy appeared at her side. ‘Appeared’ because Ellie hadn’t seen him approach. “Good day!” he said with a smile. He looked about her age but also–Ellie couldn’t exactly describe it–almost sepia-toned? He wore a strange antiquated cotton shirt and cotton shorts and his shoes appeared old-fashioned, with almost no support. “The name is Henri. I’ve just begun to undertake the task of what I’ve heard referred to as ‘cardiovascular activity’ and I was wondering if you might allow me to accompany you!”

Ellie looked at her Polar Heart Rate Monitor again. Its easy-to-read screen let her know that she’d reached her workout goal for the day. “Sorry. I’m actually just wrapping up.”

Henri looked at his shoes, disappointed. “I understand,” he said.

“But tomorrow,” Ellie heard herself say. She didn’t know why. There was something interesting about him. “I’ll pick you up at your house and we’ll go for a jog. Where do you live?”

“Just past 229 Healy Street.” Something seemed to occur to Henri. “But upon a secondary thought, t’wouldst it be possible to meet right here?”

Ellie agreed. The plan was set.

For all his grandstanding about not understanding ‘cardiovascular activity’ Henri never seemed to get tired. They talked the whole way about classic poetry. Henri was very familiar and spoke about the poets in a funny way. Like with his look, Ellie couldn’t exactly place the strangeness of his tone except to say it seemed that he often spoke as if he knew the poets personally. She chalked it up to an affect, of which Henri had plenty!

“What is that strange jewelry you wear?” he asked at one point.

“This? It’s my Polar Heart Rate Monitor. Its convenient display makes it easy to track my total calories burned per session as well as provide a weekly training summary.”

“Is it expressly designed for this very activity?”

“Nope! It’s great for biking, circuit training, or even just walking. Here do you want to try it on?”

“Oh, that’s not necessary–” Henri started to say, but Ellie had already stopped and slipped it off her wrist. Had this all been a ploy to take his exceedingly pale wrist into her hand? Did she have a growing desire to touch him? Perhaps, but Henri seemed uncomfortable, and they ran the rest of the way in silence.

Later, when she uploaded the data easily to her free profile at polarpersonaltrainer.com by way of her Polar Flowlink, she noticed something odd. The data for her run was there, but around the time she put the watch on Henri, all heart rate readings went blank.

“Huh,” she said. “Must be an issue with the monitor.” But her Polar Heart Rate Monitor had always worked flawlessly before…

It kept happening. Each day, the Polar would continuously display her own heart rate, and when Henri would wear it for the second half of their run–something Ellie insisted on, as a means of testing its functionality–there would be no reading.

But she didn’t know how to tell him something was wrong. Just as they managed to remain in the optimal zone for burning fat thanks to the Heart Rate Monitor, so too did it feel as if they were always in the optimal zone for conversation. She could tell Henri anything and he seemed to understand: about her parents, about her college decision, or about her day at school (from which he was conspicuously absent).

Finally, one day she couldn’t help it.

“Henri,” she said. “I need to tell you something. I’m in love with you.”

“And I need to tell you something,” Henri said. “Ellie, I’m a ghost. The ghost of Henri Olson, a long forgotten poet who died in his teens.”

Ellie should’ve been surprised, but somehow she wasn’t. “So that’s why your heart rate never showed up.”

“Alas!” he cried. “But if it could, it would read a number so high, as just the sight of you sets me aflutter! You see, I have unfinished business, Ellie. I have never felt love.”

“Never?”

“You must understand: it was a different time when I was born. We weren’t worried about heart rates. If we could have such a glorious device as that Polar when I was growing up, it would not measure calories but risk of scarlet fever. In such a dangerous time, can one ever feel true love? I say no, despite writing so many poems about it. But with you Ellie, well I’ve been trying to deny it. To admit so much would be to finish my unfinished business…”

“Just kiss me,” Ellie said. She leaned forward with her eyes closed and their lips met. She tasted no salty sweat on his lips, despite that the Polar Heart Rate Monitor said they’d really been pushing themselves. But of course she wouldn’t. Ghosts didn’t sweat, not even beautiful ones.

In the moment before she could open her eyes, Henri whispered: “Ellie, I love you.”

Ellie found herself alone on the road.

The dean of the English department at the small idyllic Halpern College ushered Ellie into his office. She didn’t wear her Polar Heart Rate Monitor because she was afraid her rapid nervous heartbeat would set off an alarm.

“It’s quite unusual,” the dean said, “for a freshman to win our annual award for gothic poetry, but the imagery you’ve presented–of the final kiss, of riding your bike past his supposed address and finding a graveyard, all of it–it’s just so lovely. Such a wonderful imagination.”

“You could call it that,” Ellie said.

“So I’m pleased to say, as your reward, we will purchase any book for the library in your name. Now, don’t be afraid to take some time to think it over–”

“The Collected Works of Henri Olson.”

The dean cocked his head to the side. “I don’t think I’ve heard of him?”

“He died very young,” Ellie said, pretending to rub her eye to wipe away a tear. “But he–I mean, his poems–they were really quite lovely.”