The Running Dream (24 page)

“So? How can she say she’s part of the team when she’s always skipping out or not showing up? It’s, like, cheating.”

During the day, though, I bump into Gavin three times, and Merryl is nowhere to be seen. So I start wondering if maybe I’ve been too hard on her—maybe she really is sick.

Then at lunch Fiona and I are heading toward the courtyard when we run into Gavin
again
. “Hey there,” he says, looking maddeningly handsome.

“Hey,” I say back. “How’s Merryl feeling? I heard she was sick.”

“Yeah,” he says. “It really knocked her out.” He falls into step beside us. “Are you guys eating lunch in the courtyard?”

“Uh, no,” I tell him. “Actually”—I look at Fiona—“I want to see how Rosa’s doing.” I pull a goofy face. “For some reason Ms. Rucker thinks us passing notes in math is a
bad
thing, and I really need to catch up with her.” Which is true. I haven’t had much of a chance to talk with Rosa since that morning on her porch.

Fiona gives me wiggly-faced signals, but I ignore them.

“You can go ahead,” I tell her. “I’ll catch up with you later.” Then I turn down the walkway to Room 402.

But Fiona follows.

And so does Gavin.

“Go on,” I tell them. “You don’t have to come with me.”

“Who’s Rosa?” Gavin asks.

“She’s a freshman,” I tell him.

“She’s got cerebral palsy,” Fiona whispers.

“She’s my
friend
and a math genius,” I tell them both, and give Fiona a scolding look. “She’s been great to me through this whole thing.” I stop and shoo them with my hands. “Go. I’ll catch up with you later.”

But they don’t go.

They follow me.

The Room 402 gang is surprised to see all of us. “Wow,” Mrs. Wahl says, “lots of company!”

Billy and Trent seem a little uncomfortable with the invasion. They turn back to their lunches and avoid looking at us. But Alisha and Penny don’t mind—they especially seem to like that Gavin’s there.

Fiona and Gavin hang out while Rosa and I joke around. The rest of us have lunches from home, but Gavin doesn’t, so I ask him, “Don’t you want to go get something to eat?”

“No,” he says. “I’m good.”

So I slip him half of my sandwich.

And half of my SunChips.

And half of my apple slices.

When lunch is almost over, we say our goodbyes to the Room 402 gang, and on the way down the ramp, Gavin whispers, “Can you really understand her? I could only catch a little of what she said.”

I nod. “It was hard at first, but now I’m pretty good at it.
It’s like a dialect—it takes some getting used to, but you eventually figure it out.”

At the bottom of the ramp he turns right toward the courtyard and we turn left toward the 900 Wing. “Catch ya later!” he calls.

And he seems to be smiling at me.

T
UESDAY MORNING IN FIRST PERIOD
, Ms. Aloi reads the announcements like she does every morning. Most of us doze through it like we do every morning.

Until she reads, “Attention, juniors and seniors. The prom is right around the corner! This year’s theme is Hollywood Nights, and formalwear is required. Tickets will go on sale Friday in the activities office. Fifty-five dollars per person, or one hundred dollars per couple. This event is open to juniors and seniors only!”

Fiona and I look at each other, and I roll my eyes.

Like anyone’s going to ask me to the prom?

Like I could dance?

Besides, a prom dress and a pipe leg would feel ridiculous together.

Immediately after the prom announcement, Ms. Aloi reads, “All students! Be sure to watch Channel Seven news tonight—a very special program featuring our fantastic track team and their Help Jessica Run campaign will be broadcast. Tell your friends, tell your family, and tune in at five, six, or eleven!”

Ms. Aloi smiles at me. “I’ll be sure to do that!”

A little chill runs through me as I realize that Kyro’s almost certainly the one behind the announcement, and that he’s probably also e-mailed it to every contact he has in the county.

He has no idea the news crew talked to my dad.

Fiona tells me not to worry, but I can’t seem to concentrate on anything else all day. During math Rosa slips me a note that says,
I’ll be watching the news!
and for some reason it makes me write back a long, scribbled note about being worried and why I’m worried, and how I don’t even want it to air.

She writes back,
The truth is always OK
.

I’m studying her message, thinking about what she’s written, when I hear, “H-hm.”

I look up and see Ms. Rucker standing beside me with her hand out.

“I’m sorry,” I say lamely. I start to put the note away, but she stays there with her hand out. So I plead, “It’s personal.…”

Her hand stays out.

Finally I turn it over to her and watch as she strolls to the front of the class, her long nose buried in my note.

A
T FIVE O’CLOCK
Mom’s setting the recorder so Dad can watch the broadcast when he gets home. Kaylee is sitting cross-legged on the couch, texting her friends, and I’m sweating bullets.

“Relax,” Mom says soothingly as she takes her seat next to me. “It’s going to be all right.”

“You sound like Rosa,” I mutter.

“Who’s Rosa?”

The Channel 7 news
Live at Five
graphics and music come on. “I’ll tell you later,” I whisper, and my heart starts hammering madly in my chest.

The camera zooms in on Marla Sumner and her coanchor, Keith Franks. “Good evening,” Keith says. “Tonight at five: What would you do if your teammate was tragically injured on the way home from a meet?” Footage of our track meet with Hartwell appears on the screen. “We’ll show you what a Liberty High School team is doing to help their fellow runner get back on the track.”

“That’s you!” Kaylee squeals.

It’s gone in a flash, but it’s hard to mistake me for anyone else when I’m wearing shorts.

“But first,” Marla says, and then dives into another story.

And another.

Then there are commercials and another story.

And another.

And the weather.

And more commercials.

And before every commercial break, they run a little teaser segment about the track team.

And me.

“They’re not gonna show it until the very end,” Kaylee grumbles, texting the whole time.

Then all of a sudden Marla Sumner is looking right into the camera, saying, “Finally at five: the story of the Liberty High School track team and the extraordinary efforts they’re making to help one of their teammates run again.

“You may recall our coverage of the tragic bus accident that took the life of one young runner, Lucy Sanders. That accident also took the
limb
of sixteen-year-old Jessica Carlisle.”

The TV switches from Marla in the newsroom to me walking across the infield. It’s shot from behind, and it’s strange to see myself from that angle.

What I notice most is that my gait is still uneven.

“Hours before the accident, Jessica set a league record in the four-hundred-meter race,” Marla’s voice says over the footage. Then the picture switches to Kyro on the field, talking into the news microphone. “She’s incredibly talented,” he
says. “A tremendously gifted runner. Now that she’s back on her feet, we want to get her back on the track.”

“A seemingly impossible dream,” Marla’s voice says, “only if you haven’t seen the latest advancements in running prostheses.”

Over a graphic of a running leg, she goes on to describe how single- and double-leg amputees are able to compete on “sleek carbon-graphite running blades that absorb impact and store energy much like an Achilles tendon.”

“Wow,” Mom whispers. “She’s done her research!”

“But with this dream,” Marla’s voice continues, “comes a price tag. With fittings, fabrication, and ongoing adjustments, a leg like this costs around twenty thousand dollars. But that’s where all four divisions of the Liberty High School track team come in.”

Suddenly my friends are on the screen, waving, angling for face time, hamming it up. “She just wants to run again!” they shout in unison.

Then Marla’s voice-over is back. “But how can a track team raise twenty thousand dollars?”

There’s a tight shot now of Mario Reed and his friends. “We’re doing bake sales and car washes!” they shout. Mario looks right into the camera. “But we could sure use some help!”

The shot switches to Annie and Giszelda, who are introduced as “dynamo hurdlers and the best of friends,” and while Annie and Giszelda start verbally tag-teaming, the camera pans over to me cheering on Shandall as she fires down the track. “Look at her,” comes Annie’s voice.

“She’s amazing!”

“Like I would be brave enough to be out here?”

“On that ugly pipe? No way!”

“Like any of this was her fault?”

“Nuh-uh!”

“Kyro says we should always find ways to help others, so that’s what we’re doing.”

“Big-time!”

Marla’s voice is back now, talking over muted footage of me being interviewed on the infield. “Jessica also seems to have adopted some wisdom from Coach Kyrokowski about the whole matter.”

Suddenly my voice cuts in. “He tells us that life isn’t about what happens to you, it’s about what you
do
about what happens to you.” Then I’m out again, and Marla’s voice-over returns. “And although she’s trying hard to
do
something about her situation, running again will not be an option if she doesn’t get a prosthesis designed specifically for running.”

“I tried running on this leg the other day,” I’m saying as the camera zeroes in on my pipe leg. “It was awful. Just really clunky.”

All of a sudden the outdoor shots are done and they’re back in the studio. Keith Franks says, “If you want to help Jessica run again, you can.” A graphic with contact information appears on the screen as he continues, “There’s a fund set up for her, and it’s obviously a good cause. Donation information is also available on our website, where we make it easy for you to make a difference.” The contact graphic disappears, and Keith says to Marla, “That is some story.”

Marla nods. “And there’s so much more to it. Jessica’s family is drowning in medical bills because she wasn’t insured, and the insurance companies are in gridlock over who should foot the bill. The Carlisles have had to take out a second mortgage on their house, her father’s working fourteen hours a day … and this is just for her basic needs. It’s a nightmare.”

“But it sounds like the track team is doing what they can to help.”

“It’s an amazing group of kids, it really is.”

“Well, that’s it for us,” Keith says into the camera. “We’ll see you again next time. Thanks for watching
Live at Five
!”

Mom turns off the recorder and says, “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

Kaylee snorts. “Are you kidding? It was great.” She’s back to texting, but she takes a second to look at me. “You’re a celebrity!”

“Oh, right,” I laugh, but seeing everything my team is doing for me condensed into a three-minute broadcast has made me feel good.

Really, really good.