Cross-Country Summary & Analysis

From Rebecca’s search for seeks out “linked hands, connections, [and] answers” on the internet, the reader can infer that she is going through a challenging emotional time, and that her instability during this difficult period in her life leads her to using the internet as both a comfort and a distraction.

Judging by the text messages Rebecca’s friends have sent here, it’s clear that a breakup is what’s left Rebecca feeling vulnerable and alone. Her friends’ trite phrases only function to make her feel worse, as she is critical of that type of empty advice. She has no interest in turning to her friends for comfort because this would mean having to rehash the events leading up to the breakup. While Rebecca isn’t ready to talk about it, she is ready to see if there is a better explanation for why she and her ex broke up.

Like Hansel and Gretel leaving a trail of crumbs behind them, anyone who uses the internet leaves traces to find: browsing history, ill-timed photographs, and name mentions on social media and in publications. Rebecca posits this information as free reign in order to downplay the potential unease and sense of privacy invasion that might accompany Googling oneself or someone else.

By preemptively forwarding his mail to a new address, Rebecca’s ex-partner leaves her with no room for doubt about whether they will have contact post-breakup. He clearly has no intention of speaking to her again, let alone getting back together.

Cyberstalking is depicted as something Rebecca is “reduced” to, demonstrating her feelings of helplessness amidst her grief. Rebecca’s ex has given her no excuse to contact him again, and she uses this to imply that she has no other choice but to search for him online. Rebecca furthers justifies this to herself by claiming that peeking into her ex’s online life isn’t as bad as in-person stalking.

Rebecca experiences conflicting memories about her ex, demonstrating the difficult emotions that one often feels in the midst of a breakup. She now has to conceive of her ex in terms of who he was during their relationship alongside the pain he’s caused her, and it’s difficult to hold such disparate versions of a person at one time. Rebecca simultaneously misses the sweet way he used to speak to her while remembering how he decisively dumped her—nostalgia for their relationship intermingles with the reality of his absence in her life.

Rather than deal with the pain of her ex-partner’s absence head-on, Rebecca sifts through search results for her ex’s name. By inserting herself into his life through her delusions of why he may have stepped back from academia (when it’s not even clear that he’s done so), Rebecca finds some comfort in believing, even if just for a minute, that he’s as shattered by their breakup and she is and that it’s impacting his life too. Given that Rebecca feels like she’s “drowning” as she does this, the reader can infer that cyber-stalking her ex in this manner is not only an invasion of his privacy, but is harmful to Rebecca as well, as it isolates her and prevents her from moving on with her life. 

Rebecca’s meager dinner demonstrates her unwillingness to adjust to being single again. Instead of cooking a meal for one, she resorts to eating microwaveable noodles from a cup. Unable to move forward yet, Rebecca relies on her fantasies to curb her fears of living as a spinster in “habitual loneliness.”

Kennedy presents the disparity in the reception of different types of grief as unacceptable. Even though Rebecca’s ex-partner is still alive, the loss of their relationship is a kind of death in itself, and the finality of their breakup makes her ex effectively “dead” to her since he cut off all contact. Therefore, she deserves to receive loving support from friends and family. 

Rebecca wants to play out these potential explanations for her breakup, as they provide a distraction and play into her delusion that she can create more definitive closure than her ex gave her. The internet provides this “endless possibility” because the information it houses is ambiguous and potentially infinite, leaving Rebecca with a glut of results to sift through and plenty of room to fantasize.

Seeing her ex-partner’s name on a sports roster plants the seed from which Rebecca’s self-delusion grows. Though her fantasies about her ex’s motivations have no basis in reality, Rebecca paints a picture for herself of what his life might look like without her, though it is questionable whether it’s healthy or ethical for a person to have access to that information about an ex after a breakup. 

Instead of feeling sorry for herself in her current disheveled state, Rebecca amusingly tries to empathize with how her ex-partner must feel about his lackluster running performance.  She draws a parallel between binary code her ex once told her about and how it feels when a relationship ends: “a conglomeration made up of nothing and one.” Where there once was a relationship is “nothing,” and she now must adjust to being “one” on her own again.

Rebecca’s real reason for wanting to join a running club is to have contact with her ex. However, she doesn’t divulge this embarrassing truth. Committed to her fantasy, Rebecca tells Julie that she wants to join for a new challenge, yet she adds more obstacles to achieving her new goal by stating that she has to buy new shoes before she can hit the pavement. This suggests that although Rebecca thinks she wants to reconnect with her ex, following through with her fantasies would be too intimidating and painful.

In her fantasies of cross-country races, Rebecca has the confidence and skill to overtake her ex. Over-estimating her running aptitude, Rebecca relies on these delusions to help her come to grips with her ex leaving her. In her head, she even subtly insults her ex by mentioning his unpublished thesis, suggesting that she is perhaps motivated by revenge and spite rather than a genuine desire to rekindle a relationship with him.

This passage demonstrates that Rebecca is at least partially aware of how far-fetched her fantasies really are—she has no intention of actually buying running shoes to start this new exercise regime.

Rebecca’s memory of her ex complaining about the concert forces her to consider all the ways in which the breakup might be a good thing. Her ex-partner’s flaws are presented alongside Rebecca’s fantasies about him, indicating her struggle to integrate the facts about who her ex really is and the version of him that exists only in her delusions.

Rebecca finds some solace listening to the country group’s music, which gives her another topic to ruminate over besides her endless loop of cross-country running fantasies. She figures that these women, powerful with their “juicy fruit lip stick” and “in-your-face eyeliner,” aren’t spending 24 hours a day in pajamas, lamenting the loss of a past lover. Rebecca’s acknowledgement of this suggests that she is becoming increasingly aware of how self-destructive her recent behavior has been.

Rebecca’s thoughts shift easily from the women from the band back to her ex-partner—clearly, her memory of his poor attitude on the night of the concert isn’t enough to dissuade her from obsessing over him. However, in this particular iteration of her cross-country running fantasies, Rebecca’s improved physical prowess allows her to beat her ex in the race. By “mak[ing] him eat [her] dust in this race, Rebecca gets to play out how it would feel to be the one with power in their breakup, to finally beat him, however that may look. 

Rebecca doesn’t know the first thing about cross-country running. After all that time spent refreshing her ex’s running results online, she didn’t bother herself with researching anything about the sport. This is what indicates that cross-country running functions symbolically in this story as an escape from grief—it doesn’t matter what activity Rebecca ascribes to her ex as long as there is room for her to project her fantasies about him onto it. However, by calling to remind Rebecca about work on Monday, her boss serves as a reminder that she can’t afford to devote any more time to these useless fantasies.

In her most unrealistic fantasy yet, Rebecca imagines her ex-partner reaching out to reconcile. Consumed by this revived hope for their relationship, she swears that she can hear her phone ring. While these fantasies might have provided some temporary comfort while she grieves her breakup, ultimately, it’s clear that these imagined scenarios hinder her ability to move on.

The strength of her fantasies overpowers Rebecca’s logical side—she has been following the running results not of her ex, but of a child who shares his name. She recalls that her ex hated playing any sports, so she should have concluded much earlier that he would never have joined a running club. Finding out that she’s been following another person’s running results jars Rebecca from her cycle of self-pity and self-delusion. Expressed through vivid descriptions of running, Rebecca’s fantasies come to a shrieking halt and she is forced to face the facts: her relationship is over and there’s nothing she can do to change it.

Finally sick of her own self-indulgent fantasies, Rebecca shuts down her computer and heads out for a drink. Rebecca realizes that she can no longer justify entertaining her implausible, imagined scenarios, and that it’s time to stop grieving the end of her relationship. Whether or not she’s truly ready to do so is unclear, but pulling herself out of the harmful cycle of cyber-stalking and self-delusion is a crucial first step.