Chapter 13: 13. The Girl Who Grieved

After the West End tournament, I quit track. I had given it enough thought to know I was finished with running. The sport had become tainted to me. I never thought my own story would include two track tournaments where I first won Pippa and then the other where I lost her for good. The truth was I hadn’t lost, I had given up.

I began to think about Pippa and her Carlotta again. Was this Pippa with Bastien a new incarnation of that character she sometimes exhibited after we saw Hitchcock’s ‘Vertigo’? In that movie, Jimmy Stewart’s character of Scottie believes he’s lost his girl forever as a result of Carlotta possessing Kim Novak’s character of Madeleine. Scottie breaks down, becomes clinically depressed and is sent to a sanatorium, almost catatonic. Following his release, Scottie frequents the places that he and Madeleine had visited, often imagining he saw her.

I was committed to not suffering Scottie’s fate. I had given into that depression after Pippa and I first split up. Pippa had moved on with Bastien and she had said she wanted me to move on. Quitting track was me moving on.

Everything I knew had been caught up in running and not all of it was forthright. I had run the Harrier at Pippa’s invitation. She had only asked me to run because she was sizing me up for a meeting with her at the avocado house. It had been a form of deception. I had only joined the track team at first because Coach Russell had invited me and I had wanted to say no and then decided I needed to show up for tryouts because he thought I wouldn’t. That was another instance of where I had not been truthful about my motivation.

I had taken running on as a sort of therapy to get me through my frustrations with Pippa before and after our breakup. That had been the only positive aspect. I had sullied it again when I became Steve Wilson after meeting Pippa’s mother while running past her house. I had also used running as a taunt when I ran through Pippa’s neighbourhood while I was training for the Tri-Mile event. I had thought running was the only relationship I had left that I understood but I’d managed to tarnish that too.

Deliberately losing the race against Bastien was the tipping point in my decision to give up track. I hadn’t been honest about my reasons for running the Tri-Mile and not competing for the sport of it marred any respect I had for myself as a runner.

Ben understood everything. He had seen how I had been conflicted about wanting to beat Bastien for all the wrong reasons. After the race, I explained the only way I could win was by losing. I admitted I had become the villain in the piece while I had been painting Bastien with such evil broad strokes that even Ben had begun to believe my hatred
had been well-founded.
Coach had taken my quitting better than I had expected. Ben had retrieved my jersey after I had thrown it down in front of Pippa. He gave it back to me and the next day I went to Mr. Russell’s office to turn it in.

“Are you sure about this Carter? You’re one of the best runners we have. Do you want to think on it some more?”

“No Mr. Russell, I don’t,” I replied. “I’ve been running for all of the wrong reasons. I need to clear my head and focus on other things.”

“Things like that girl?” Mr. Russell asked.

“Anything but that girl, sir. I’m not running that race anymore. The race never seems to end and there are way too many competitors.”

Mr. Russell looked confused but took the jersey I offered.

“The opportunity will always be there if you want to come back.”

“I know that. I just need to get myself on the right track for a while.” I hoped he would excuse the pun.

The image of me as a runner was not one I could easily shake. Walking by the display cases in the main lobby I could see the Long Relay trophy from that past spring. It was strange to stop and look at it because there was always my reflection in the glass reminding me of how things had fallen apart only months after being triumphant at the All City.

I could not give in to feeling sorry for myself. I had felt that way after Pippa had dumped me that night in her garage and it had spiralled into determined hatred which had become my sole obsession. I had to move on. That’s what Pippa wanted from me and that’s what I was prepared to do.

I had been extremely hard on Pippa with the jersey incident and my harsh words. I wished I could take them back or somehow let her know I was sorry. I chose not to obsess over that either. I had to put everything behind me and find some way to back to the middle.

School moved on and so did I. Pippa didn’t approach me and I had no reason to engage with Bastien. He had been triumphant in the Tri-Mile and I let him have his glory whether he had earned it fairly or not. As expected, the rank of female followers swelled initially after his win but diminished after it was clear Pippa was not prepared to make any room at Bastien’s side.

I focussed on my studies and being a better me. I began to write more and none of my stories had princesses or ogres or related in any way to my previous relationship. My mind began to clear and I stopped reflecting on everything that had come before. Ben was still my friend and I had a school year to finish and some thoughts to be given to what came next.

The first thing I did was to take back my name. I had been Jeff Carter for a long time before I had met Pippa. Then I had become Pink and then Steve Wilson. Somehow the name Jeff Carter had taken on a negative connotation when Pippa began to use it again after our split. My own name cut through me whenever she had addressed me by it. I had been trying hard to get her to call me Pink again as if that nickname was a badge of honour. It’s funny how my full name was even used to express disappointment, anger, or frustration by my parents. I was only addressed as Jeff Carter or Jeffrey Allen Carter whenever I needed to be disciplined. I had also bristled at the use of my full name when I had been first called to Mr. Russell’s office after running the Harrier and I thought I was in some kind of trouble. It was about time I started recognizing my name as something other than a punishment.

High school is a tough place to be when you’re trying to rebuild yourself. I recalled how it had been a tough place to be just starting out. I was in grade twelve and I could reflect back on the first two years as uneventful. I had been fine with uneventful. I had been fine with the middle. I didn’t have a lot of friends and certainly not anyone I felt extremely close to. I didn’t realize what I had been missing until my third year and everything that had happened with Pippa.

I don’t think I’d ever been in love before Pippa and I don’t remember I’d even had any crushes before her. Girls were just girls when I was in elementary school and I could have cared less about them. Some of them had moved on to other schools and some continued on to my high school. The ones who moved on with me were of no interest. If I hadn’t given them due attention in the early years then I didn’t think they were worthy of any further consideration. There was also a new crop of females in grades nine and ten whom I had never seen before. These too failed to pique my interest.

When Pippa came along I didn’t know what hit me. Sure she was new to the school but there had been others. There had been other friendly girls and other pretty girls but she was different. I didn’t know what it was at that time but I’ve continued to stress how I loved her the first time I saw her. In our story that was important. It wasn’t like she had continued to impress me over a period of time and then I began to have feelings for her. It was something more than that. It had been more than love at first sight. It might be cliche to say she was the whole package or the real deal but those are the words that came to my mind.

Pippa wasn’t just someone new. I could describe her looks or her voice or her self-confidence but it was something else on top of those traits. I didn’t know her darker history before we met but that might have been part of it. She had come to our school for a new start and she had been trying to be a new person. I think I fell in love with the person she was obviously trying not to be. Here had been this girl who had breezed into our school and my life and immediately she was trying to be all things to all people. That might not make entire sense but it was the best way I could describe her. Right from the beginning I was drawn to this new Pippa but I also wanted to know where she came from and who she’d been before. To me, she had been a puzzle I needed to solve.

Later on, after I began to experience the layers to Pippa, I was still trying to figure her out. She was this new girl at my school whom I loved but she was also this new girl she was trying to be. Sometimes her new persona was Carlotta and those were the times when I felt she was the most honest with me and with herself. Now she was moving away from that. She was with Bastien and pretending to be her old self until it stuck. I’m not sure I understood it all but that was the story she told me and it was time I got on with my own narrative again.

The fall advanced into winter and I kept moving forward. Ben and I spent time together when he wasn’t with Sandra. I kept my bargain of not probing him for information on Pippa or her new relationship. For his part, Ben would deliberately steer away from anything he thought might remind me of my former relationship. We talked of running but I didn’t run with him. He encouraged me to take it up again but he also knew how I had associated a number of bad memories with that activity.

Winter gave me an excuse not to even think about running. Throughout the fall I had considered just running for myself but I couldn’t find the motivation. Pippa had been all of my motivation before but I remembered a time when practicing for the long relay had been my primary focus and I had been happy. I had only been friends with Pippa at that point and I had been excited to compete. Ben and I had become fast friends and we both had been pleased when we were chosen to participate in the All City. That was the pleasure I wanted again out of running but I wasn’t ready. Running hadn’t been me when I had first started at our school and, like Pippa, I was trying to get back to the person I had been before. If running came back into my life then it would have to be for me and not because I was running out any frustrations over a girl.

Running eventually did come back to me the following spring and so did Pippa. It is an easier and gentler tale to tell about getting back into running than describing the circumstances of Pippa’s return.

The new year of 1979 had approached quietly while I had been learning to be me again. Classes had ended for the Christmas break and I was looking to a long two weeks of not having to see Pippa every day. We only had the one class, in which she paid me no attention, but I couldn’t help seeing her around the school and sometimes in the company of Bastien. I often wondered how their relationship was progressing. I also wondered if she could really give him up when he finally left at the end of the school year.

In January the long relay trophy went to Collegiate for the rest of the school year as per the agreement between coaches. I started a new term of subjects and Pippa was in three of my four classes. It was getting harder and harder not to see her as often. She deliberately sat as far away from me as possible but then that’s what I had been prepared to do if it meant moving on from her.

In January, my brother Rod moved out. He and Rhonda had found a place together. My parents weren’t happy about it but he was working full-time while she was attending college. She was supplementing her income with weekend evening work at the Texaco. I visited their apartment once. It was a shit-hole. Well, the building was a shit-hole on the outside but there had been a fresh coat of paint in their apartment. It still smelled like paint when I went there. All in all, they were happy together.

After Rod left, I immediately took over his bedroom because it was larger. Mine had been closer to the stairs and I could hear people either going up the stairs as they came in or coming down the stairs to the basement. Rod hadn’t left much behind so I moved it all into my old room. This included some exercise equipment that had been tucked away at the back of his closet. I hadn’t known he’d gone through an exercise phase. More likely it had been a fad that passed and had been indulged by my parents.

I wasn’t interested in the various barbell weights but a mini exercise machine caught my eye. It was a small standalone unit that had stirrups on either side for your feet. There was even a mechanism that you could adjust for tension. All I had to do was sit on a chair or the edge of the bed and hook in my feet and pedal away. I thought this was useful to keep my legs in training during the cold or rainy months.

The pedalling device was how running gradually came back to me. I set myself a goal of cycling my legs each evening for about thirty minutes and gradually eased that up to an hour of exercise. I found I could read or do homework at the same time and get a good workout without having to venture out into inclement weather.

March came in like a lamb. Usually, it was the other way around with that month pouncing in on us like a lion but that early March brought some reasonably warm temperatures. After the initial melting of the winter snows, the pavements began to dry and I thought again about running. All of the exercise I had put in over the previous two months had made my legs good and strong. I was itching to get outside and see if I still had the stamina for jogging.

I waited until a warm dry Saturday and I started out just by walking around my neighbourhood. I knew the streets well and I wanted to scope out a good route before testing out my legs again in a sport I had abandoned in the fall. I had walked probably about thirty minutes away from my home before I decided to run back. I didn’t want to attempt a round trip yet until I was sure my motivation was correct. I had been focussing on the exercise and found that my mind no longer dwelled on all of the bad associations I had once had with running.

My first run was normal enough but I found my legs were ready to move. I had been a distance and endurance runner and now I found I had developed speed. I recorded my time that day in a notebook so I could track my progress. On subsequent similar runs, I found my time continued to improve. I would set a personal best and then I would have to scratch it out in my journal and record a new one.

I was happy running had come back to me or I had come back to running. I didn’t share this information with Ben. He was still on the track team and outdoor practices had started again. I wasn’t in it for the competition and I wasn’t using it to substitute for anything else in my life. There were no frustrations to be worked out so I ran just to run and I ran to feel like myself again.

My mind was clearer than ever. I had focussed on Pippa for so long it was difficult to know when I had stopped thinking about her. She was still there but it was in the background. I no longer tried to catch glimpses of her or even wondered if she was trying to do the same with me.

When I did see her, I focused on feeling nothing when it came to her. If there was going to be a girl in my life sometime in the future then I’d be ready. I wasn’t going to be obsessed with anyone unless she was mutually obsessed with me. As far as I was concerned my future could hold off on that for a while. I had been there and I had done that. I had the remainder of the school year to go and another ahead of me. That was going to be my focus. I would also have to find time to consider what I would do after high school. That could wait a little bit but I wasn’t going to let anything get in the way of those plans again.

I had taken to using the rear entrance of the school so I would avoid having to see Pippa. I could take a side street and still get home or to school with hardly any extra time. In early March, due to the reasonably warm weather, I had started to see Roger riding his motorcycle around the school. I didn’t know what was happening with him because I was no longer in the loop and had deliberately cut myself off from information relating to Pippa or her family. I had only seen Roger that one time he had first shown up with his motorcycle and I had become jealous when he rode off with Pippa. Roger was obviously back again at the school for Pippa but he had never met me officially so we had no cause to interact.

At this juncture, I need to document Pippa’s return to me. I have hinted that it is not an easy or gentle aspect of her story. There are aspects of it today that seem unreal. We were separate persons living separate stories which had diverged from one another. I had not expected a new chapter in our relationship.

It was a Saturday morning in mid-March and I was out for a run. This had become my routine on weekends. Winter had felt long and getting back out on the streets and exercising had become important to me. It gave me a chance to reflect on anything from the previous week and to prepare for the upcoming days.

I was gone from home about an hour before I returned. I was immediately met by mother at the front door.

“That friend, of yours, Ben, has called every ten minutes. He wouldn’t leave a message. He insisted that I have you return his call as soon as you got back.”

“Okay, Mom, thanks.” I didn’t know what was so immediate with Ben. Sometimes we’d talk on the weekend but more often we left our conversations for when we’d see each other at school.

I called up Ben and could immediately hear the anxiety in his voice.

“Where have you been, Jeff? I’ve been calling for an hour.” His voice was quivering and I could sense something troubling.

“I was out.” I didn’t want to share with him I was out running. I had yet to tell him I was dabbling in the sport again.

“Listen, this is going to be rough, Roger’s been killed.”

“What? How?” My mind was flooded with the same panic I had detected in Ben.

“Last night, an accident with his motorcycle.”

“I just saw him yesterday. He was riding his bike around the school. He must have…wait how’s Pippa?” My thoughts were swirling. Had she been with him?

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“She wasn’t with him. He had offered to take her for ride but she said no.”

“How is she otherwise?” I asked. I couldn’t imagine what she was going through.

“She’s in rough shape,” Ben replied. Sandra hasn’t been able to speak with her but Sandra’s father said Pippa’s whole family is taking it very hard.”

“What can I do Ben? There must be something I can do.” I didn’t know how to feel. I had convinced myself I had moved on from her but the depths of my concern at that moment told me I wasn’t entirely over her. My first thought was to be at her side. I was still her friend after all. I had been someone who loved her. I still loved her. We just weren’t together anymore.

“I don’t know man, it’s all messed up. There’s going to be a visitation at the funeral home and Sandra wants me to go with her. I only met Roger in passing. Hey, do you want to go with us?”

I had to think about that one. There was something about the intimacy of a wake that disturbed me. I had only been to two funerals and they had both been for elderly people. I had been very young when my great-grandmother on my father’s side had passed. I think it had been my first site of a dead body and still I didn’t understand that great-grandma wasn’t sleeping. I wasn’t much older when my second great-grandmother passed away. My mother was away on a trip to Nashville with an aunt. I remembered three things about that funeral. It had been Easter and my father had served us partridge. My dress pants at the time had been handed down from Rod and they were too long. My father had stapled them up. The last memory was of a mini soda machine in the lounge. For the life of me, to this day, I can’t remember what my mother’s grandmother looked like but I still can vividly recall the three selections in the machine had been Pepsi, some kind of orange soda, and grape.

Roger’s death was different. Here was a situation where a young life had been lost. I didn’t think I could handle that family atmosphere. Thinking of Pippa’s family, I wondered how it would be with her father. He had lost his son. He would want to be around his family. How was Pippa going to handle that?

“No, I don’t think so,” I finally answered Ben. “I don’t think Pippa would want me around. She’s with Bastien now.”

“Didn’t you hear? They’re not together anymore.”

This was news to me but then I’d been avoiding her and I guess I hadn’t noticed Bastien was no longer part of her story.

“I didn’t know. She’s not with me either and you hadn’t shared that information with me until now, Ben.”

“You told me not to!” Ben exclaimed defensively. “Sandra told me not to tell you either. Don’t shoot the messenger!”

“Hey, I wasn’t…” I began before changing tracks. “Back to the visitation, she wouldn’t want me there. She’s got enough to deal with.”

“I think the funeral’s on Tuesday during the day. What about that?”

“I’ll think on it, Ben. You know I want to be there for her but I don’t want to add to her problems. I’ll talk to you about it on Monday.”

After I got off the phone I went to my room to think about Pippa for the first time in a long time. I loaded up my turntable with the Elvis record I had bought for her birthday but had been returned to me. I lay in my bed and listened again to that opening track. The opening lines of ‘I Want You, I Need You, I Love You’ brought a lump to my throat. It had seemed so long ago I had played the album last and cried over my lost relationship. Now, it was different.

Roger’s death would change Pippa again. How could it not? She once talked about being best friends with him and how it had all been different after the incident with her father. She had been still close with her brother but living in different houses had put a strain on their relationship. Both had harboured resentment for the other. Pippa felt Roger had blamed her for the split between their parents and she resented Roger for not taking her side. She had described their sibling bond as complicated. With Roger’s passing, she might never forgive herself for harbouring any negative feelings toward her brother.

I wanted to cry over Roger’s death but I hadn’t known him. I couldn’t even weep for Pippa. We'd been apart for many months and I had tried to build up a resistance against any feelings I still might have had for her. Sitting alone in my room and listening to Elvis offered no comfort. I couldn’t be with her. I couldn’t be with her when she might have needed me more than ever.

I spent the weekend conflicted. I wanted to be with Pippa to support her and yet the stirring of old feelings were convincing me I just wanted to be back with her for all the old reasons.

I spent more time running the neighbourhood both days. I had trained myself to run without thinking about Pippa. I couldn’t stop those thoughts from flooding back in. I knew I should have felt something for Roger but it wasn’t in me. Pippa pushed everything aside and was forefront in my thoughts. By Monday, I persuaded myself that attending Roger’s funeral, if nothing else, would let her know I still cared in my way.

I didn’t sit with Ben and Sandra at the services. Ben had invited me to be with them but Sandra was part of the extended family and that would put me too close to Pippa. I wanted her to see me but I knew it would also be difficult for her and she might wonder why I was really there. Instead, I slipped quietly in and sat near the back.

I could see the grieving family at the front. Pippa and her mother stood together and someone whom I could only guess to be her father stood off at a respectable distance. All of them wept openly and I found myself moved to tears at the sight of their grief.

There were a number of younger people like myself spaced throughout the congregation. I wondered if these were students from Collegiate where Roger had still attended. I recognized a few of them as Collegiate athletes from the All City the previous year. Roger must have been a very popular person.

My eyes would drift back to Pippa and my heart ached to see her mourn so openly. I had no experience with this and my own tears continued to stream. I tried to be inconspicuous in wiping away my tears but I also realized they were appropriate in the circumstances. I bowed my head and tried to will good thoughts to Pippa. I imagined her finding strength and comfort in them.

Shortly before they closed the rear doors to begin the service, I felt someone take a seat beside me in the pew. I glanced to the right and realized Bastien was there and was sliding closer to me.

“I believe we have arrived for the same intention,” Bastien whispered.

I didn’t know if I should answer him. I held no anger for him because I had moved on from that but it didn’t make me feel any more comfortable having an old rival sitting so close to me.

“I’m here to show my respect, probably the same as you,” I replied. Here we were, two exes of the same girl no longer competing but trying to prove we were noble if nothing else.

“Assuredly,” he said. I was still rankled by his perfect diction. I tried not to show it.

I thought about trying to say something witty but realized a funeral was not the place for a competition of words. I bowed my head again as much to ignore him as to avoid showing him the tears I had shed.

Bastien didn’t speak again and the services started shortly after that. I kept my mind off him and on Pippa and Roger and their family. I was being respectful and if Pippa saw me sitting with Bastien then maybe she would sense I had grown and moved on. She had wanted me to like the guy and I thought not digging him with my elbow would prove I had matured.

After the services had ended and the casket had been wheeled out front to a waiting hearse, I quietly left. I had to slide all the way down the far side of our pew as Bastien made no effort to move on his side. I wasn’t sure why he lingered but somewhere inside me, I felt sorry for him. He had had feelings for Pippa and something had happened and he had suffered the same fate as I. We both had lost a connection with Pippa and could only now watch her from a distance. I had at least mourned for Roger, in my way, but I believed that Bastien was only mourning the relationship he had lost.

I lay awake long that night thinking again of Pippa and wondering what I could do for her. My encounter with Bastien had made me think more about the previous summer and the stolen moments over her bicycle. Had Bastien fared better than I in that department? I had tried not to watch the two of them when they were together at school. If there had been open displays of affection between the two then I had chosen not to see them.

I fell asleep contemplating Pippa. She had told me about how she wanted to move on. Was this even possible for her after Roger’s death? I woke at one point thinking I could hear her call my name. It was like that sometimes. I would hear something in a dream and imagined or wished it in my waking world.

Pippa was not at school the next day which was probably to be expected. I didn’t look for Bastien. I had moved on past any concern for him.

That night I dreamt again of Pippa and awoke believing she had been calling my name. I lay in my bed listening to the silence of the night. There was a faint scratching noise somewhere. I recognized the sound. I had made the same noise once when I was outside Pippa’s window and I had been trying to attract her attention.

I went to my window but I could see nothing. My window was at ground level and if there had been something or someone there I knew I would have seen some sign of it. I fell asleep listening for that noise to come again. I didn’t hear it.

The next morning, before leaving for school, I checked outside my window thinking I could find a clue. I know it was foolish because there had been nothing there the night before and I was just working myself up trying to think it was real. I didn’t notice a thing but then I expanded my search and saw footprints in the still-damp lawn outside my old window. How long had those been there? They might have been fresh but they could easily have been days or weeks old. I filed it away determined against building the mystery into something that was not.

Pippa was still not at school that day either. I couldn’t begin to think how she could return to school. I remember how she thought all eyes had been upon her when nasty rumours were flying in her last days at Collegiate. It might be a new school but who could blame her if she thought everyone would be staring and whispering about the girl who grieved?

I talked to Ben briefly to see if he had any news of Pippa. He had none. I told him about the mysterious noise and prints outside my house. He asked me how much sleep I had had in the past few days. I had to admit that since the news of Roger’s passing my nights had been fitful and I certainly wasn’t well rested.

It helped to talk about Pippa even if wasn’t anything concrete. I didn’t share everything with Ben but he helped convince me I had to try and stop thinking about her or it would begin to adversely affect me. I understood but my thoughts of Pippa were constant. I wasn’t sure if she did return to school but seeing her at least back into that daily routine would ease my mind.

I went to bed early that night because I was tired. Too many recent nights of too little sleep were catching up with me. I tried to put Pippa out of my thoughts but too many things reminded me of her.

Around midnight I was awoken again to the scratching noise. I started for my window and then remembered the tracks had not been outside this current bedroom. This was Rod’s old room. The prints had been outside my old window. I thought about going into that room and checking there but decided to go for the source. I ran up the stairs and quietly opened the front door. There was someone crouching outside my old window and scratching at the screen. I couldn’t make out who it was.

“Who’s there?” I asked. I know it was stupid. Confronting a stranger in the dark is never the smart thing to do.

“Pink.” That’s all she had to say. I had known it would be her. I had hoped it would be her. It had been her voice I had heard two nights before. They were her footprints in the grass. Of course, I thought, it made sense. She had only been to my house once when she had walked me home and had asked me to be nice to Bastien. That was the day I had proposed that stupid deal. I recall how I had pointed out the window on the right and had said it was mine. She had remembered but she also hadn’t known I had relocated to the bedroom on the left.

“Pippa, what are you doing here?” I knew that singular question would start the journey of a thousand more.

She ran to me and put her arms around me. She was shivering. The days had been warm but the nights still held a chill. I gestured her inside and down the stairs to my new room. I had signalled her to be quiet as we entered my house. I took a blanket from my bed and wrapped it around her.

“Pippa, what are you doing here?” I asked again.

Her face was pale and I could see the tracks of many tears she had tried to wipe away.

“Hold me Pink, I’m so cold.”

I put my arms around her and held her until her body calmed. She looked a fright. She’d had no coat and her shoes were wet from having crossed a damp lawn. Her breathing began to slow and she was quiet for such a long time that I thought she had fallen asleep.

She lifted her head and brought her face close to mine and then kissed me. I had forgotten the feel of her lips on mine. There was a time when we had been together I thought I would remember forever every kiss that passed between us. Strong was that first kiss in the infield at the All City and even stronger had been the one at my locker which first signalled her love for me. The rest had blurred together with so many outside the Texaco and some in the dark outside her house. I couldn’t recall the last kiss between us but it had been before I had confessed Steve Wilson and I were one and the same. Whatever was behind this kiss in my room was something new and something different. It spoke volumes but it might as well have been in another language for the little I understood.

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