with the other kids, although if I say that I shared more of it than Mary Ruth did and would have fared better socially if I’d been on my own, I’m not being mean, just honest.
All right, I’m being mean and honest. Mary Ruth Coe was a thousand-pound, sopping wet social albatross around my neck. Ifanyone besides me spoke a word to her, she went pop-eyed, beet-red, and mute, at which point I usually jumped in to answer for her, a task I resented, heartily. What made matters worse was that while I’m fairly sure it had never occurred to Mary Ruth to be a racist, she seemed especially nervous around the black kids on the team. Once, when the African-American team captain, a girl named Naomi Patton, asked her what other sports she played, Mary Ruth was so petrified that on top of the usual response, she turned to me, stricken, grabbed my forearm, and hung on like death, until I gazed wearily at Naomi, whose expression was already turning from friendly to cold, and told her that Mary Ruth had been raised on a regimen of mostly calisthenics, mostly in her backyard, from which she had rarely strayed. All of which was true, even though it wasn’t particularly nice of me to say it.
Luckily, Mary Ruth was a tragically bad runner, so once practice began, and her groans from the pre-workout stretching—the one time in the afternoon when she had no trouble vocalizing—had stopped echoing through the treetops, I considered my homeschooler solidarity duty done, took off like a rocket, and never looked back.
There were a dozen or so of us at the front of the group, and while we ran, oh gosh, we became something. Maybe we weren’t exactly friends, although I’m no expert on friendship. But we were easy with each other. We chatted or rather the others chatted about their lives—boys, parents, tests—and I listened but not in an uncomfortable, fish-out-of-water way, and I tossed in a comment from time to time. Sometimes, I even got a laugh. Most days, we sang songs from something called Mamma Mia , which turned out to be Coach Anderson’s favorite Broadway musical. I’d never seen it, of course, but when it comes to songs, I’m a quick study, and after a couple of weeks, I was belting out “Take a Chance on Me” with the best of them. As corny as it sounds, running together like that, our differences fell away. Maybe we weren’t friends, but we were teammates, which was close enough for me.
And meets were special, too, the “good lucks” at the start, the oranges and watermelon slices we ate afterward, spitting seeds into thegrass, the way we cheered each other into the finish, shouting each other’s names. At these times, cheering like that, I was not Willow Cleary or anyone in particular, nothing but another yelling voice. It’s odd isn’t it? How good that felt. I acted casual, at least I think I did, but I wanted to pack away every high five into my duffel and carry them around with me forever.
I ran with the team for two seasons, and then, in late August, just a week before our practices were set to start in what would’ve been my junior year if I were someone who went to normal school, my father and I were in a bookstore, and we saw Kelsey Banks, one of my teammates. Actually, I saw her first, in profile, and the second she turned around and saw me, too, in a flash, I also saw the writing on the wall. With Kelsey’s big blue eyes looking into mine, a smile already starting on her face, and my father two steps behind me, I was like Cassandra: I could see the future, every awful bit, and could not do a blessed thing to change it.
My first instinct was to run, to wheel around and go flying like a lunatic out of the store, but before I could, Kelsey was hugging me. Or doing her best to hug me, hindered as she was by her pregnant belly, which looked for all the world like a basketball stuffed under her shirt, the rest of her as girl-skinny as ever.
My father met my eyes, briefly, one hard, laser beam glance,
All right, I’m being mean and honest. Mary Ruth Coe was a thousand-pound, sopping wet social albatross around my neck. Ifanyone besides me spoke a word to her, she went pop-eyed, beet-red, and mute, at which point I usually jumped in to answer for her, a task I resented, heartily. What made matters worse was that while I’m fairly sure it had never occurred to Mary Ruth to be a racist, she seemed especially nervous around the black kids on the team. Once, when the African-American team captain, a girl named Naomi Patton, asked her what other sports she played, Mary Ruth was so petrified that on top of the usual response, she turned to me, stricken, grabbed my forearm, and hung on like death, until I gazed wearily at Naomi, whose expression was already turning from friendly to cold, and told her that Mary Ruth had been raised on a regimen of mostly calisthenics, mostly in her backyard, from which she had rarely strayed. All of which was true, even though it wasn’t particularly nice of me to say it.
Luckily, Mary Ruth was a tragically bad runner, so once practice began, and her groans from the pre-workout stretching—the one time in the afternoon when she had no trouble vocalizing—had stopped echoing through the treetops, I considered my homeschooler solidarity duty done, took off like a rocket, and never looked back.
There were a dozen or so of us at the front of the group, and while we ran, oh gosh, we became something. Maybe we weren’t exactly friends, although I’m no expert on friendship. But we were easy with each other. We chatted or rather the others chatted about their lives—boys, parents, tests—and I listened but not in an uncomfortable, fish-out-of-water way, and I tossed in a comment from time to time. Sometimes, I even got a laugh. Most days, we sang songs from something called Mamma Mia , which turned out to be Coach Anderson’s favorite Broadway musical. I’d never seen it, of course, but when it comes to songs, I’m a quick study, and after a couple of weeks, I was belting out “Take a Chance on Me” with the best of them. As corny as it sounds, running together like that, our differences fell away. Maybe we weren’t friends, but we were teammates, which was close enough for me.
And meets were special, too, the “good lucks” at the start, the oranges and watermelon slices we ate afterward, spitting seeds into thegrass, the way we cheered each other into the finish, shouting each other’s names. At these times, cheering like that, I was not Willow Cleary or anyone in particular, nothing but another yelling voice. It’s odd isn’t it? How good that felt. I acted casual, at least I think I did, but I wanted to pack away every high five into my duffel and carry them around with me forever.
I ran with the team for two seasons, and then, in late August, just a week before our practices were set to start in what would’ve been my junior year if I were someone who went to normal school, my father and I were in a bookstore, and we saw Kelsey Banks, one of my teammates. Actually, I saw her first, in profile, and the second she turned around and saw me, too, in a flash, I also saw the writing on the wall. With Kelsey’s big blue eyes looking into mine, a smile already starting on her face, and my father two steps behind me, I was like Cassandra: I could see the future, every awful bit, and could not do a blessed thing to change it.
My first instinct was to run, to wheel around and go flying like a lunatic out of the store, but before I could, Kelsey was hugging me. Or doing her best to hug me, hindered as she was by her pregnant belly, which looked for all the world like a basketball stuffed under her shirt, the rest of her as girl-skinny as ever.
My father met my eyes, briefly, one hard, laser beam glance,
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