Addy's Race (5 page)

“Why don’t you catch up with the rest,” Miss Fielding said to me, pointing off in the distance to where the running club was heading into the river valley.

Could she see inside my head too, like Mrs. Shewchuk? I looked at Lucy again. Her hair was matted to her forehead and cheeks. “I’ll stay,” I said. “Friends stick together.”

When I said “friends,” Lucy gave me a pained, wheezy smile. “You should go,” she said. “It’s okay. I’m so slow.”

“Uh-uh,” I said. “I probably couldn’t keep up anyway.”

I had never lied to Lucy before. I wondered if she could tell, but she was grimacing again and I was pretty sure it was because her lungs hurt, or whatever it is that hurts when you run more than you want, or can.

Dried leaves covered the path, which was wide enough so we could run side by side. The sun washed through the canopy of trees. A light breeze cooled the air.

“Do you want to keep going?” I asked, hopefully.

Lucy nodded. “I just don’t know for how long. My chest still hurts.” She took a deep breath and squeezed out two more words. “Let’s go.”

We headed into the river valley, but the rest of the club was out of sight. I meant to stay with Lucy and Miss Fielding, but it was as if I forgot where I was and who I was with. I glided down the path and couldn’t hear anything except my feet on the packed dirt and dead leaves.

The first cross-country meet was next Wednesday, one week away. The farthest I had run without stopping was four hundred meters. Miss Fielding told us the race at Laurier Park would be twelve hundred meters.

I wondered if I should practice on the weekend, but with who? Mom didn’t like to exercise. Dad worked all weekend. There was no way I’d ask Lucy.

I wondered if Stephanie and Emma practiced together. They wouldn’t call it practice though. They would call it
training.
Training was important. Everything they did was important. Being friends with Sierra was one more important thing. Because everyone knew cochlear implants were more important than hearing aids.

What I didn’t get was why Sierra wanted to be friends with them. If I had been her, the new deaf kid in a school full of hearing kids, and there was a girl with hearing aids, especially a nice, friendly girl, I’d want to talk to her. We would be friends because we had something important in common.

Birds of a feather flock together. That was another of my grandmother’s sayings. I guess Sierra had never heard it.

I was starting to get hot and a little tired, but I wanted to run at least to the bridge at the end of the path. Then I could turn back without having to see Stem. It would be bad enough watching them zip past me at Wednesday’s race. At least today I could get back to the school before them and pretend I was better, even if it meant sort of cheating by turning back early.

The wind sounded strange. It seemed to be wailing, even though there was only a slight breeze. Then I realized it was a siren. I couldn’t tell if it was an ambulance, fire truck or police car. It never occurred to me the wailing could be a person.

Then I saw some teenagers running toward me, and I realized Lucy and Miss Fielding weren’t behind me. I turned around and around, but all I saw were the teenagers passing me as if I were invisible. Where was Lucy? Where was Miss Fielding?

I ran as fast as I could back up the path. That’s when I saw Lucy, flat on the ground surrounded by Miss Fielding, two strangers and a yapping, out-of-control dog. One of the strangers turned out to be a medical student on her afternoon run. The other was an old bald man whose crazy dog had run into Lucy, knocking her over and twisting her ankle. If I had a dog, I’d keep it on a leash. A short leash.

Lucy was trying not to cry. The bald man was wagging his finger at the dog, yelling, “Bad, bad Custard!” If Lucy hadn’t looked so awful, I would have laughed. Custard. What kind of name was that?

The medical student was looking at Lucy’s ankle. “It’s probably just a sprain, but to be sure you should take her to a clinic,” she said to Miss Fielding.

I crouched next to Lucy. “Does it hurt?” I asked.

She nodded.

I squeezed her hand. “I’m sorry. I guess I was running too fast,” I said.

She looked at Custard, who was jumping around so wildly I was surprised he hadn’t pulled the bald man over. “I should probably thank him.”

“Don’t look
too
happy,” I said. “Your mother may think you fell on purpose.”

She sniffled loudly and wiped her nose. “Oww,” she moaned. “It really hurts.”

“That’s good,” I said. “You fooled me. Can you get up?”

“I’m not kidding,” she said. “It really does hurt. Almost as much as running.”

Lucy stayed home from school the next day. The medical student was right—she had a slight sprain. Lucy’s doctor said she shouldn’t stand on it for at least two days. By Sunday it wasn’t nearly as swollen, but it still hurt and she needed crutches. Joanne wanted her to buck up, run through the pain. That’s what Joanne would have done.

“Did you know the week before I was to run in my first triathlon I tripped over your tricycle in the front hall and sprained my ankle?” she said as she hovered over us. We were in Lucy’s family room, watching ABC Kids.

“Yes, you told me on the way home from the clinic, remember?” Lucy said.

Joanne’s eyes were all sparkly. “Well, I didn’t tell Addy.” She looked awfully happy for someone who was about to tell a story about how she was almost crippled on the eve of her debut as a champion triathlete.

“Mom, I’ve heard it a million times,” Lucy said. “I can tell Addy. Later. Right now we’re watching tv.”

When she left, Lucy rolled her eyes and asked if I’d go to the garage and find the tricycle so she could trip over it and reinjure herself, at least until running club was over.

“Do you want to run in the race?” she asked.

I shrugged.

“I think you should,” she said. “I won’t be there, so you can go as fast as you want.”

“I’m not that fast,” I said.

“You’re faster than me,” she pointed out. And then she laughed and said, “Everybody is faster than me.”

Joanne came back carrying a brand-new water bottle with
CamelBak
stamped across the bottom in white letters. It looked expensive.

“I bought this for Lucy, for the race, but since she won’t be running, I thought I’d give it to you for luck.”

“You should save it. She’ll be better by next week.”

I tried to make Lucy take the bottle, but she pushed it back at me. “Besides, I don’t know if I’m going to run. Maybe I’ll wait so we can run together.”

“Of course you should compete!” Joanne said.

“You’ve been training.”

“For two days,” I said. “I don’t think that counts.”

I held out the bottle, but Joanne pushed it back at me like Lucy had.

“I’ll buy Lucy another one,” she said. “It’s nice to have something new for a race—as long as it’s not new runners. Did I tell you what happened when I tried to wear new runners in my first half marathon?”

“You got a blister so bad you couldn’t wear shoes for three weeks,” Lucy said.

“Oh, I guess I did tell you,” Joanne said.

If I repeated myself as much as she did, I’d be embarrassed.

“Sorry about that,” Lucy said when her mother went back to the kitchen. “You don’t have to run just because she gave you a water bottle, you know.”

“I know.”

“But if you do, I’ll come and watch.”

“Really?”

“Of course,” she said. “If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t even be in the running club. It’s the least I can do.”

Chapter 8

Have you ever seen pictures of factory farms, where all the chickens are squashed together in cages, pinned in by other baby chickens and completely, thoroughly unable to move? That’s how I felt at the Laurier Park starting line. Except it wasn’t future Kentucky Fried dinners surrounding me, it was grade six girls— hundreds of them pressed together.

Facing us, about twenty meters from the starting line, was a man in a blue Adidas tracksuit. Miss Fielding explained that he was the starter. When he said
ready,
set, go
, the twelve-hundred-meter race would begin.

I had never seen so many runners together. What if I got knocked over? Would I be able to get up? Or would the other girls run right over me?

Running in a race without Lucy was a bad idea. I should have waited until she got better. We could have been smushed and crushed together. If you’re going to go down, better to go with a friend. That sounds like one of my grandmother’s sayings, but I made it up. Just now.

I tipped my head toward the sky and leaned back, as if I was going to do a backbend. If I could look at the sky, maybe I wouldn’t feel so—what was the word?
Claus
,
clausto
—claustrophobic. Fear of small spaces. Just as the word popped into my head, I felt a hand on my back.

“Stand straight and face front, Addy,” Miss Fielding said. “The race is about to begin.”

Ahead of me, the backs of Stephanie’s and Emma’s heads were so close I could feel the air shift every time their ponytails swung back and forth. They moved in unison, like windshield wipers in a rainstorm. Like perfect windshield wipers that wouldn’t be trampled because, of course, they were in the front row. They could run away from everybody before they got knocked to the ground.

When Miss Fielding had lined us up, she had said, “Fastest in front. There’s not enough room for everyone to stand side by side.” Then she pushed Stem ahead of everyone else.

All of us wore blue-and-white Mackenzie shirts, but nobody looking at us—Kelsey and Miranda were in the second row next to me—would think we were on the same team. Stephanie and Emma were stretching as if they were warming up for the world championships. Kelsey was hopping up and down to see how many people were behind us, and Miranda was trying to talk to me.

“Addy? Have you ever run in a race before?” she yelled.

Emma turned to see what the fuss was about.

“Addy’s never run more than one hundred meters at one time,” she said. I could tell she was thinking there was no way I would make it to twelve hundred.

“It’s okay if you walk, you know,” Stephanie said, as if she were talking to a kindergartner who had gotten lost on the way to the bathroom. “Lots of girls can’t run that far. You’ll have plenty of company.” She looked at Kelsey and Miranda.

I tried to think of something clever to say, but before I had a chance, a loud voice said, “Okay, girls!” It must have been the man in the Adidas tracksuit, but I couldn’t see him any longer because more girls had filled the front row and were completely blocking my view.

I couldn’t hear him very well either. A collective yell rose up around me. A lot of girls jammed their fingers in their ears. I guess the yelling bothered them too. And then there was a horrible loud cracking noise like a car engine backfiring, and the row of girls ahead of me swept forward.

I had forgotten about the starting gun. Why hadn’t Miss Fielding reminded me? Lucy was lucky she was on the sidelines. I wished I was, but the girls behind me were pushing me forward.

That’s when I started to run as fast as I could. If I didn’t, I’d be like those people who get flattened at soccer games in England or Brazil, or wherever soccer is called football, and there are stampedes at the stadiums.

How long would it take to run twelve hundred meters? Jim Ryun could probably do it in three minutes. But me? Would it take ten minutes? A half hour? I should have run around the block yesterday and timed myself so I’d know.

My legs felt heavy. Now I understood why Lucy hated running. But I couldn’t quit. I had to get to the finish line, and running would get me there faster.

Where were Stephanie and Emma? Probably at the finish. I pulled a corner of my shirt up to mop my face, and when I was done, I realized I was alone. Where was everyone else? Was I lost? Was I last? I was going to be the last one over the finish line, the biggest loser, the one everyone claps extra loud for because they feel bad for her.

I thought about hiding in the bushes until the grade five girls’ race started. I could get lost in the middle of them and blend in. But I’d have to sit through the grade six boys’ race first. I could imagine my mother at the finish if I didn’t show up. She would probably have the RCMP, police helicopters and sniffer dogs out after me. She’d be wailing, “Her batteries must have died and she can’t hear me!”