The Hunt. Jennifer Sturman

what?” Peter asked, still jogging in place as I rested my hands on my knees and struggled to feed air into my burning lungs.

      “No, I’m not running up those.”

      “We’re almost home. You’ll feel great afterward.” I scowled at his chipper tone.

      Two women with legs the size of tree trunks sprinted by us and charged up the steps. “Marathons weren’t enough of a challenge, so I started training for an iron man,” one was saying to the other.

      “My first iron man was a total rush,” the other replied.

      “I’ll meet you at the top,” I said to Peter.

      He ran up and down the steps several times as I made my way up them just once. “That’s obnoxious,” I told him as he pranced by me yet again, but he pretended not to hear. He was stretching when I eventually crested the final flight.

      “Is this your passive-aggressive way of trying to get me to break up with you?” I asked as we walked the remaining distance to his parents’ house. Or, to be more accurate, as Peter walked and I limped.

      “You loved every second.”

      “If that was love, you should have some serious misgivings when I say I love you.”

      “You know, you’d probably feel better if you hydrated before you ran.”

      “I did hydrate.”

      “Rachel. Diet Coke is not hydration.”

      “You say tomato.”

      “Maybe you should admit it. You have a problem.”

      “I don’t have a problem. What’s my problem?” I asked.

      “You’re addicted to Diet Coke.”

      “Yes, but it’s not a problem.” We’d reached the house, and I contemplated the steps leading up to the front door. They seemed steeper than they had the day before. A bald man passed by walking a Great Dane, and Spot appeared at the bay window and started to bark, but the Great Dane trotted on, oblivious.

      “You couldn’t last two days without Diet Coke,” said Peter.

      “Why would I want to?”

      “What if I dared you?”

      I looked up at him and was alarmed to see he wasn’t joking. “That’s not fair,” I said. Peter knew how I felt about dares—specifically, that you didn’t turn them down unless you were comfortable being branded a wuss.

      “You mean, you’re turning down a dare?”

      I considered my options. I didn’t really have any, given that I didn’t want anyone to think I was a wuss, at least not about something like this. “No,” I said reluctantly, “I’m not turning down a dare.”

      “Forty-eight hours, then. No Diet Coke. In fact, how about no caffeine?”

      I gasped. “No caffeine?”

      “No caffeine. You wouldn’t want to do this halfway, would you?”

      “Yes, I would. I absolutely would.”

      “No caffeine,” he repeated firmly.

      “Why are you doing this to me?” I asked, forlorn.

      “Because I want you to live a long and healthy life.” He consulted his watch. “It’s ten o’clock. You only need to last until ten on Tuesday. It will be fun.”

      It was the second time that day Peter had declared something terrible would be fun, and it wasn’t even noon.

      Little did I know just how much less fun the day would get.

      

      At least Peter had been telling the truth about brunch. I believe strongly in eating frequently and in large quantities, but the Forrests made me feel positively ascetic. There were scrambled eggs and crisp bacon on china platters, warm scones and croissants in a basket, sliced melon and berries in a glass bowl, and a pitcher of fresh-squeezed orange juice.

      Of course, nothing goes with bacon quite as well as Diet Coke, but I tried not to think about that. I’d read somewhere that it took smokers three days for their physical addiction to nicotine to pass. Caffeine couldn’t be nearly as addictive as smoking. I was starting to feel a little shaky and had the beginning of a headache, but I assured myself the cravings would last only a few hours at the most. When Susan offered me a soda, I politely demurred and asked for herbal tea instead, feeling superlatively normal. But even with a generous dollop of honey, the tea lacked the stimulating kick of Diet Coke. I glanced up at the clock. Only forty-seven hours to go.

      We ate in the cozy breakfast room, chatting about the party as we passed around sections of the paper. We were discussing potential outings for the day when I heard my cell phone ringing from up in Peter’s bedroom. Years of Winslow, Brown partners phoning at odd hours had instilled a Pavlovian response to that sound, and I jerked up automatically. But, as my mother frequently reminded me, it wasn’t polite to take calls during a meal. That never dissuaded me in the presence of my own family, but while it was one thing to be impolite to my mother, it was another thing entirely to be impolite to somebody else’s, particularly Peter’s. I sat back down.

      “Don’t you want to get that?” Peter asked.

      “It can wait,” I said.

      “What if it’s work?” he asked.

      “It can still wait,” I said again. Officially, I was on vacation, having taken off the Friday and Monday surrounding the weekend, and I’d put in a superhuman effort before I left to make sure I was fully caught up on the deals and projects I had underway. Nobody from Winslow, Brown should be calling, but that didn’t guarantee anything. People in my line of work adhered closely to the saying that time-is-money, and the partners tended to view my time as their money. Not a single one of my vacations had gone uninterrupted since I’d started at the firm.

      “Are you sure, dear?” asked Susan.

      “I’m sure,” I said, resolute.

      The ringing finally stopped, but a moment later Peter’s own cell phone trilled from upstairs. He twitched. “Do you want to get that, honey?” his mother asked.

      “If Rachel can wait, I can wait,” he said stolidly.

      Peter’s phone had barely stopped ringing when mine started ringing again. Then his started ringing again, too.

      “Somebody must really want to get a hold of you kids,” commented Charles. We were all silent as we listened to the alternating rings from two floors above. I gripped the seat of my chair with both hands to keep myself at the table.

      But no sooner had our cell phones stopped than the Forrests’ home phone began to ring. “I’ll get that,” said Susan, just as both Peter’s phone and my phone started up again. She reached for the extension on the wall with one hand and started clearing plates from the table with the other, and Charles rose to help her.

      I took this as a cue the meal was over and rushed up the stairs to answer my phone, calling over my shoulder for them to leave the dishes to me. Normal future daughters-in-law probably delighted in post-meal cleanup.

      I grabbed my BlackBerry a second after it stopped ringing. Peter was more successful, reaching his own phone just in time. He would undoubtedly attribute his success to hydration, even though I’d beaten him up the stairs.

      “Hello? Oh, hi, Abigail,” he said. “It’s Abigail,” he mouthed to me, as if I couldn’t figure that out from his greeting. Perhaps he thought caffeine withdrawal was impeding my mental processes. Based on how I was starting to feel, this wasn’t entirely out of the question.

      I began scrolling through my message log. There were several missed calls, some of which must have come through while we were out on Peter’s little adventure in sadism. The most