Addy's Race (10 page)

At the first practice after Lucy quit, Kelsey said, “Stephanie and Emma think they’re better than you, but you can beat them. Our sister said so too.”

They were being nice, but I wished people would stop saying I was a good runner. I’d only been in three races. What if sixteenth place was beginner’s luck?

I was faster than Kelsey and Miranda though—fast enough that I couldn’t run with them during practice.

So I ran alone until I caught up to Miss Fielding.

She was telling Stephanie and Emma how she used to run with the Canadian cross-country team and compete all over the world. Stephanie and Emma gave each other knowing looks, like they were going to make the Canadian team some day too.

“You ought to consider joining the Tornadoes, Addy,” Miss Fielding said. She turned toward Stephanie and Emma. “Aren’t you girls in that club?”

From the length of time it took to answer, you’d think she’d asked them what they ate for lunch the fourth day of grade two. Finally they mumbled something. Then they sped off as if they’d heard a starting gun.

“Not too far ahead, girls,” Miss Fielding called after them. She looked at me. “It’s better to keep a steady pace, like you’re doing.”

“I don’t think I’ll join a running club,” I said. “I don’t know anyone in one.”

Miss Fielding nodded toward Stephanie and Emma. “What about them?”

“We’re not really friends.”

“Well, you’ve definitely got a gift for running,” Miss Fielding said. “You should keep it up.”

During science class, we had to show Mrs. Shewchuk our sketches and a list of supplies. When she saw
dead hearing-aid batteries
on our list, she looked confused.

“For stars,” I explained.

“That’s a good idea,” Mrs. Shewchuk said. “Very inventive!”

“Addy wants to use tuna cans because we’re doing Pisces,” Sierra said.

“No, I don’t,” I said.

“You did,” Sierra said.

“Last week. Not anymore.”

Mrs. Shewchuk acted as if she hadn’t heard. “Can you think of a recycled item that looks like a fish?”

I looked at the floor to keep from getting angrier. “Soles from shoes?” I said.

“That’s creative,” Mrs. Shewchuk said. “With a bit of paint or trim, you can easily turn a sole into a sole.” She laughed at her own joke and moved on to Stephanie and Henry, who had been arguing about whether to use toy guns in their mobile of Orion the hunter.

“I thought we were going to use pie plates for fish,” Sierra said.

“I thought we were going to use them for stars.”

“No, we’re using your hearing-aid batteries.” The way she said it, you’d think I wore the hearing aids to make her jealous.

“We’re using yours too,” I reminded her. “And we can use pie plates for the biggest stars. If everything is the same size, it will be boring.”

“Girls, is everything all right?” Mrs. Shewchuk was standing behind me. I kept quiet. Let Sierra answer. She was the one with the problem.

“We’re trying to figure out how to add balance to our mobile,” Sierra explained.

“I’m sure it will be lovely,” Mrs. Shewchuk said.

“You don’t know how lucky you are,” Sierra said after Mrs. Shewchuk had walked away.

I didn’t understand.

“Your batteries die, and all you have to do is throw them away and get new ones. I have the kind that you throw away
and
the kind you have to charge. My mother complains that they’re so expensive and always says, ‘You think I’m made of money!’”

“At least nobody ever asks to borrow them,” I said.

“Huh?”

“In grade three, Mr. Needleman—the custodian— came into class and asked me for a battery. It was so embarrassing. Stephanie and Emma kept calling him my boyfriend.”

“So what? They’re mean. But hearing aids are easy. If something happens to my implant, I have to go to the hospital.”

“Really? What’s that like?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s never happened. But it could.”

I thought, So could a stampede of unicorns down Whyte Avenue. “But you like your implant,” I said.

“What made you think that? I hate it. I’m a freak.”

“No, you’re not. I am. I’m like somebody’s grandmother. Nobody our age wears hearing aids.”

“Nobody any age wears implants,” Sierra said. She was about to say something else, but Mrs. Shewchuk walked by, and Sierra turned back into her I’m-more-important-than-you self.

“Do you have a hot glue gun, Mrs. Shewchuk?” she asked. “We need to attach fishing line to the batteries.”

“We do?” I asked. What I really wanted to know was,
If you hate your implant, how come you’re always
giving speeches about it?

But it was too late. We were done pretending we had anything more in common than a science project.

“It was so weird,” I said to Lucy on the way home. “One minute she was saying how lucky I am to have hearing aids, and then Mrs. Shewchuk came by and she was Little Miss Perfect again.”

“Maybe she changed the subject because she felt stupid,” Lucy said.

“About what?”

“Making a big deal about how her implant is great and costs so much when, really, she hates it. Maybe she’s afraid you’ll tell everyone. Maybe people made fun of her at her last school. Maybe that’s why she moved.”

Sometimes Lucy’s imagination runs away with her.

“Okay, maybe that’s not it,” Lucy said. “But don’t you think it’s kind of interesting that you thought she thought implants were cool, and it turns out she’d rather have hearing aids?”

“She didn’t say she’d rather have hearing aids. She said I’m lucky I do. But all I want is to be able to hear like you do. Like a normal person.”

Lucy was quiet. If only having normal hearing was as easy as saying, “I quit.”

Chapter 16

The morning of the next race, I was emptying my backpack at my cubby when Henry pointed to my fm. “Do you use that at night?”

“No,” I said. Why did he care what I used at night?

“Can I borrow it? For my radio club? We’re meeting tomorrow. I bet it has really cool electronics.”

“Um, no,” I said. Did he think it was a show-and-tell toy?

“I’ll take good care of it. I promise.”

Sierra walked up behind us. “You can borrow mine, Henry,” she said. “I’ll come with you. I can answer any questions.”

“Really?” he said. “That would be so cool.”

I had to walk away before I said,
You hate your
implant, but you want to talk about your
fm
to a bunch
of radio club geeks?

“Did you hear that?” I asked Lucy as we waited for Mrs. Shewchuk to take attendance.

“You mean Sierra offering to go to Henry’s electronics club?”

“Yeah. What’s wrong with her?”

“She likes attention,” Lucy said.

“Then she should like her implant. Look at all the attention she gets from it.”

“That’s because she talks about it all the time,” Lucy said. “If she acts like she likes it, people think she’s important. If she says she hates it, they feel sorry for her.”

I hadn’t thought about it that way. And it was exactly what made me not like her. Also the way she acted as if she was an expert on everything.

But Sierra did know some things. She took the soles Mrs. Shewchuk brought us that morning and began snipping until they looked more like fish than shoe parts.

“Here,” she said and handed me a black Sharpie marker. “Watch me, and do what I do.” She drew spots and lines and
voila!
A fish!

“You’re really good,” I said.

“I know.”

I would have just said thank you. But as my grandmother says, it takes all kinds.

We spent the rest of the period finishing the mobile. It looked way better than I’d expected. Everyone’s did. Sarah and Lucy’s had musical notes, and Ursa Major was made from bent paper clips. Stephanie had convinced Henry not to use guns, so their mobile had bows and arrows made from tooth-brushes, twigs and fishing line.

Next week we would present oral reports. Naturally Sierra wanted to read ours, but Mrs. Shewchuk said we had to take turns.

“These are paired projects, and I want to hear from everyone,” she said. “You all have something important to say.”

The race that day was back at Laurier Park. Because we’d already been there, we didn’t have to go over the course, but Miss Fielding did a walk-through anyway. “It’s a good way to warm up,” she said.

“Besides, not everybody’s been on the whole course,” Emma said, smirking.

“Emma, did you say something?” Miss Fielding asked.

“Just that it’s a good idea,” she said.

I don’t think Miss Fielding believed her, but what was she supposed to do? Call her a liar? That’s when I remembered Joanne’s advice about using anger to fuel adrenaline.

Should I thank Emma? The thought made me laugh.

“What’s so funny?” Stephanie demanded.

I smiled but didn’t answer.

“Come along, girls.” Miss Fielding waved us toward her. “Let’s do this so I can get you to the starting line. I don’t want you in back again.”

Kelsey and Miranda babbled during the entire walk-through. They talked about their oral reports and dance recitals and whether 3d-tv was better than hi-def. After they couldn’t agree whether Taylor Swift should get a tattoo, I said I had to turn off my hearing aids to save the batteries.

“Oh, of course,” Miranda said, as if I’d said something important, which, I guess, to her it was. But it was more polite than saying, “I have to turn them off because listening to you is killing my brain cells.”