Dusting

by Kim Morris

Sydney noticed her missing toe after the hilly race. She slipped on her flip flops, looked down, and saw that the small toe on her left foot was gone. A pale pink patch was there instead. She stared at it for quite some time, as though it really was there and the problem was with her eyes. When it didn’t appear, or miraculously regrow, she took a look around her to see if it had left—walked away on its own, perhaps in disgust, perhaps in anger. But no, there was no tiny toe trouncing across the gravel parking lot, no toe by the registration table, no toe standing at the start/finish waiting for the official to finish reciting the rules for the men’s race so it could cheer its little toe cheers.

She was sitting in the driver’s seat of her car, her legs sticking out of the door, her right elbow against the bottom of the steering wheel. In the car next to her, she could see Keira, maneuvering expertly under a towel while changing out of her kit. Across the aisle from Keira’s car was Mandy’s car and Mandy, who had her head stuck in the trunk, Gatorade bottles flying out like jumping fish.

The question was: what did Sydney need with the small toe of her left foot anyway? Allegedly, she needed it for balance, but she figured she could make up for this with her right small toe and by implementing a training program with extended core work.

“Ready?’ Keira was walking over to her, pulling at her running shorts and shaking out her legs. Keira was stocky, wide hips, legs that looked thick and beefy. She had a perpetual smile and short hair with long bangs that she was constantly flipping out of her eyes.

Sydney immediately pulled her knee up to her chest and placed her hands over her left foot. She grabbed a sock from the floor of the car and threw it on.

Mandy sauntered over to them. Mandy was a curvaceous brunette, the kind of woman no one believed was an athlete since she looked like she should be splayed across an ad for lingerie. She had a long nose and full lips that were a lip-gloss pink all on their own. She had a laugh that carried across miles.

“Let’s go,” Mandy said. She was squinting over at the podium and then looked down at Sydney, who was staring at a neat pile of pale pink dust directly under where her foot had just been dangling out of the door frame. “Hey,” Mandy tapped Sydney on the shoulder, “buck up, winner. First place is a good thing.”

Sydney looked up at Mandy then over at Keira. She hoped they didn’t notice the pile of dust. She thought about next week, the intervals, the core work, how she would skip the recovery day and do some endurance work. She forced a smile and walked over to the podium with her teammates.


To Sydney, training took too long. Building up muscle and strength over weeks and weeks, month after month. Besides being completely unfun, it was also too slow, and she was too good to go too slow.

Sydney: long and thin, small ankles and wrists, high cheekbones, piercing brown eyes that are naturally set at squint, tiny ears, a permanent smirk. Tan in an outside all day every day kinda way. Easily annoyed and not one for conversation.

Underneath, she is: a toe tapper when she sees her mother at bike races, the space and emptiness of years of untalking filling up fields of distance between them; a frequent user of port-o-potties, where she can cry unabashedly, and walk out with red eyes that people assume come from the smell; a little girl in arrested development, stopped in time at the moment her dad walked out, smiling, waving as though he would see her in mere minutes, his cigarette flinging from his hand to the grass in the front yard, landing next to her toppled tricycle.

At 23, Sydney has a rigid set of rules by which she lives. It is all about being first. First place means attention. It means you get to stand on a podium in front of others, even if it is only a box at a local race. Then you get to smile and talk about how you did what you just did. And people listen. Afterward, people walk up to you and shake your hand and pat your back and they say things like, "Good job," and "Way to go." And they listen.


Woodburn Criterium. It’s two laps to go and Sydney realizes she can’t feel her fingers. She’s got Mandy’s wheel and she knows that she’s supposed to do something, she has the sense that she’s being set up to do something, but she can’t quite remember what it is. The jerseys around her are loud, bright colors and she recalls a moment when she could recite the sponsors of every team that is currently surrounding her, but now, she can’t. It’s just a sea of colors, the loud whir of bike tires spinning, and the occasional grunt from a racer.

The next thing Sydney knows, she is past the finish and people are clapping and yelling and Mandy is next to her smiling and they are cooling down and Sydney can’t for the life of her remember how she pulled off that sprint.

“Once again,” Mandy says and knocks her knuckles into Sydney’s arm. Sydney watches Mandy’s arm come at hers. It’s moving in slow motion, her own arm looks like it’s quivering like jelly. Sydney follows Mandy’s fist to her arm, then looks down her arm to her hands, which are shaking under her gloves. The pink patches where her little fingers used to be almost look normal and it takes Sydney a moment to realize that she should have four fingers and a thumb, not three fingers and a thumb. Sydney lets out a yelp.

“Yeah, I know,” Mandy says, sticking her water bottle back in its cage, “you are having a great season.”

Sydney looks at her like Mandy’s head is on fire and at this point, Sydney would not be surprised if Mandy’s head exploded. But it doesn’t. The only one losing body parts is Sydney and Sydney is starting to wonder if maybe she’s really losing her mind.

They are cleaning themselves up in the parking lot. Sydney’s medal swings from the rearview mirror of her car. She is looking down at her bike before putting it on the bike rack. Across the down tube and gathering along the chain stays she sees a fine dusting of pale pink dust. Bits and pieces of pink dust are also gathering on the bar ends and on her cranks.

“Mandy,” she calls over her shoulder. She is trying to keep her voice calm but she can hear the shaking in it.
“Yeah?” Mandy is buried under the front seat of her car, digging for something.
“Listen, um,” Sydney stops herself.
“What, Syd?” Mandy yells. She is still buried under the seat of her car.
“Syd,” Keira says, she is prancing over to Sydney’s car, looking flushed and happy, as always, “listen, that guy from Cycling Times is over there. You gotta go talk to him. He wants a quick interview. It’ll be good for the sponsors. And I’m trying to get that ass from Photo Express to sponsor us for next year and it’ll look really good if I can show him an interview with you.”

Sydney is holding her bike by the saddle and staring at Keira like she can’t remember who she is. Keira is bubbling. She is having fun. Fun is a hard concept for Sydney to understand.
“Syd,” Keira touches Sydney’s arm and looks into her face. “What’s up?”
“Listen,” Sydney starts, “I think that something’s not right.”
Keira looks down at Sydney’s bike. She crouches down and stares at the drivetrain. She plucks at the chain. She stands up. “I’ll take a look at it. You go talk to the reporter. Seriously. Go.”
“That’s not it, Keira,” Sydney says. Already Keira is walking over to her car where Sydney knows she is getting out the magic box, so called because of the magical tools that fix their bikes from what everyone usually assumes is complete destruction. Sydney wants to scream. She wants to cry. She wants to talk about what’s happening to her. But she can feel her throat tightening at the thought of actually forming the words that she wants to say. She considers that she may very well have a disappearing larynx. That would make giving an interview difficult.

Keira is popping open the trunk of her car. Mandy is still fishing around under the seat in her car, where Sydney knows that she is cleaning out empty plastic bags that used to hold peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. The Cycling Times guy is standing by the ClifBar tent. Sydney can hear the whir of tires swell up in her head. She rubs the space where her pinkies used to be. During the interview, Sydney notices only one thing: the reporter keeps asking her questions about herself and the race, but he never once makes eye contact with her. He never once looks into her face at all.


Criterium championship. Fast. Plan was set weeks ago. Practices executed perfectly. Everyone in top form. Sydney can feel the weight of expectation on her shoulders. She is not wearing gloves. No one notices her missing pinkies. She’s been wearing flip flops for the last week. No one’s noticed her missing toe, either.

Ten laps to go and Sydney starts moving up in the field. She is passing blurring colors, whirring chains, Cannondales, Bianchis, Cervelos. Keira is her lead out today. The lap counter says five to go and Sydney can’t find Keira. She can’t find Mandy either. She can feel her legs, hard and smooth, pushing the pedals of her bike easily, like she is her bike. Three to go. She is too close to the front, she knows that, but she can’t seem to slow down. The wind on her face feels refreshing. She can smell fresh cut grass. She can smell burgers grilling on someone’s grill. The sunlight makes a lace pattern through the tree leaves. A little girl on the sidewalk along the race course pedals her pink bike furiously whenever the field shushes by. Sydney gives up on the lead out. She gives up on tactics and strategy. It’s as though a switch has been flipped and her bike obeys.

She is a half lap ahead of the field. She takes the corners fast, leaning into them so that her pedals are only centimeters from scraping the street. Last corner is a 90-degree angle that she rips through. Sprint to the finish, the line passes under her like it’s moving towards her, she keeps going, faster, until she feels like she’s airborne, until she is airborne, until she is taking off from the runway that was once a quiet residential street turned race course. She is flying through the clouds, damp whiteness covering her face and legs, a cool mist tinged with the slightest bit of sunshine. Beyond the clouds she can see blue effortless sky. In her heart she can feel a blanket of relaxation.

In the interview with Cycling Times, Mandy and Keira will try to cover up their worry and their concern. They won’t discuss where Sydney went or how; they won’t discuss the frustration they felt when she jumped the gun on the lead out. They won’t discuss the sinking feeling they felt when they saw her speed down the road adjacent to the race course after she crossed the line. They definitely won’t discuss the pale pink dust that flew back at everyone in the field—the dust that covered their faces and their chain rings and continued to fall from their helmets days after the race where Sydney disappeared.