Moon Runner (2 page)

“Did you get Popsicles for snack?” asked Paige, pulling hard to open a bag of lemon drops, her black hair falling across her cheeks.

“Nope. I ran.”

“Oooh, I love to run!” Paige handed Mina a candy.

Mom looked at them in her rearview mirror. “I hope that isn’t something sweet I smell coming from the back seat.”

Mina closed her mouth tight around the lemon drop. She and Paige exchanged smiles.

“I used to hate running,” Mina said, shifting the candy to her cheek. “But today it felt fun.”

“You’ll probably win races,” Paige said.

“I don’t care about winning. That part doesn’t matter.”

“Take me running,” Paige said.

“Mmm. Maybe.” Mina pressed her forehead against the glass of the car window. When she imagined the run in her mind, she once again felt like a roadrunner racing along on tall, skinny legs, sometimes lifting into a low arc of flight. “Okay. Let’s run super early tomorrow morning when the moon is still up.”

As Mina and Paige approached the park near their house, a warm breeze swirled the fragrant smells of the springtime grass. The moon rested in the western sky, barely visible.

“We should stretch first,” said Mina. “Hold on here.” She guided Paige’s hand to the fence, then showed her how to loosen her calf muscles.

Paige imitated Mina, then announced, “I feel all stretchy now.”

“You don’t look stretchy enough. Let’s do windmills with our arms.” Mina swung her arms backward, then forward, tracing giant circles.

They set out over the damp, spongy grass. Mina breathed in the freshness.

“Now faster,” Paige demanded after they’d gone once around the field.

Mina quickened her stride, but not too much. Her little sister had to win this one.

“Look, Mina, we’re racing the moon!” Paige shouted, pointing to the crescent that seemed to travel alongside them as they passed the monkey bars.

“Who’ll win?” Mina asked.

“I will!” Paige declared and sprinted ahead. She rounded the curve and threw herself down, panting, at the spot where she and Mina had stretched.

“And you did win,” said Mina, crash-landing beside Paige.

“Yup. The moon is in the same old place. And I even beat
you,
Mina.”

They lay still together, the coolness seeping into their hot bodies. Mina stared up at the moon, so pale it almost looked transparent. She considered ways to record the morning run in her moon journal. “Don’t forget to explore movement in your journals,” Ms. Jenner had said. “Ancient peoples danced under the moon.”

Mina hoped that running under the moon would count.

A drawing of her and Paige? A poem? She hadn’t raced
against
the moon, she thought, but rather she’d let the moon guide her. That wasn’t a totally crazy idea. The moon’s gravity pulled on the ocean, creating the tides. It pulled on all liquids. And she was ninety percent water.

Ms. Jenner had said to put music into the journals. Mina hummed a tune, making it up as she went along. Maybe she’d write a song about running with the moon:
The white moon carried me faster, lifting me like a wave in the sea. . . .

As they ran during PE that afternoon, Mina watched Ruth, who was half a lap ahead of her. Ruth’s legs moved quickly while she kept the upper part of her body still. Her bent arms pumped back and forth.

Curious as to how it felt to move like that, Mina copied Ruth’s style.

And again, she swirled into her flying dream with the earth rotating far below. Her feet hardly touched the grass, and her body grew tall. The air felt like a silk scarf slipping across her skin.

She began to overtake Ruth. That surprised her. People said that Ruth Largness was the fastest runner in the school, including the boys. Just as Mina was close enough to reach out and touch Ruth, Coach blew the whistle and beckoned everyone close.

Coach separated the boys from the girls. He had five high-school students working as helpers. “Line the kids up against the wall, tallest to shortest,” he called out.

A girl named Addie, who wore a sweatshirt with
Girls Rule!
on it in glittery letters, took the girls to the wall by the cafeteria. “Stand back to back,” she commanded. “I need to separate you into groups.” Sometimes, she touched the tops of their heads with the flat of her hand, comparing heights. Finally, everyone got in order.

Coach gestured with his arm, making slicing movements: “Everyone on my right is in D group. You girls here are in C.” And so on, until there were four groups.

Mina and Ruth were in class C, with those of medium height.

Alana, a little taller, ended up in class B.

“Why did coach divide us up like that?” Mina asked Ruth.

“To make it fair. Taller people with longer legs run faster.”

The groups began to call names back and forth: “Shorties!”

“Beanpoles!”

“Shrimps!”

“Telephone poles!” Mina shouted along with Ruth.

A high-school kid with red hair took the boys to the high jump. The boy threw himself backward over a pole and landed on a big mattress.

“Look,” Coach called out to another group. “I’m going to show you the long jump.” He ran down the grass like an airplane getting ready to lift off. At the white line, he took a giant leap and landed in the sand. His floppy hat sailed off his head and fell onto the grass.

Mina and Alana giggled behind their hands.

Coach leaned down to pick up the hat. “Now, one by one, your group will try that.”

He led the class C girls to the grass, which he’d marked off with spray chalk for fifty-meter sprints.

The first girl took off while Coach clocked her with his stopwatch. Then he wrote something down on his clipboard.

Mina wiggled a loose tooth with the tip of her index finger.

As they ran one by one, a fifth-grade girl with satiny running shorts asked Coach to show the times he’d written on the clipboard.

He laughed. “This information is just for me.”

Mina was sure that Ruth would be the fastest. She not only had strong muscles, but she also liked to win.

Sammy stopped on the way back from the drinking fountain, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Don’t worry — you’ll do fine. You’ve got those long, chopstick legs,” he said to Mina. Together they watched Ruth at the starting line, deep into a lunge, ready to spring at the sound of Coach’s whistle.

The whistle blew and Ruth darted forward, every bit of her focused on the white stripe painted on the grass. Coach pushed the button on his watch when her left foot touched the finish line.

Without thinking, Mina found herself bending into the same crouch as Ruth. At the whistle’s shrill blast, she pushed off, the toes of her right foot digging deep into the grass. Her legs flashed beneath her. She lifted off the ground with each stride and shot toward the line, her muscles filled with fire. Only when she heard Coach’s whistle again did she realize she had arrived.

Waiting on Mina’s bed when she got home was a surprise from Mom — a library book about tree frogs. Mina picked it up and flipped through it. There were a lot of words. She sat down with it, though, and looked at the photos.

“Like it?” Mom asked, coming into the room.

“A little,” Mina admitted. “But it’s kind of hard.” In spite of herself, she began to read the captions under the photos. Not so hard after all. She concentrated and read more.

Her brain and eyes were working to travel across the pages, she thought, the same way her body had worked to cross the grass.

“A campout in my backyard would be so special,” Alana said over the telephone that night.

“Maybe,” Mina said slowly. She always made up excuses not to go on overnights. At home she knew what to expect.

Paige was watching a cartoon about three robots who kept getting into trouble. Poochie, Paige’s chocolate-colored mutt, sat on the couch too, yipping at the exciting parts.

“Let me guess,” Alana continued. “You’re going out of town. You’re getting a cold. How can you be so nervous about a stupid overnight? You’re a track star now.”

“A track star?” Mina asked.

One of the robots toppled down a hill. Poochie yipped.

“I know a secret about you. But I’ll only tell it if you spend the night.”

Mina shifted the phone to the other ear. A secret? What could Alana know?

“I think that’s a yes I hear coming.” Alana began to hum “For She’s a Jolly Good Fellow.”

Mina smiled. An overnight probably couldn’t hurt. It might even be fun. “Okay. Yes, but I have to ask my mom.”

“Yeah!” Alana shouted so loudly that Mina had to hold the phone away from her ear.

“I did not do my personal best,” Alana said as she and Mina set out walking to her house. “I guess I’m too much of a girlie girl for sports.”

Mina smiled. Ms. Jenner talked about personal best, especially when someone turned in a sloppy paper.

Alana held the Friendship Ball under one arm as she strolled.

They walked down the street lined with ornamental orange trees. Once Mina had tried to eat one of the beautiful fruits. It tasted bitter, but the blossoms still smelled like heaven. Mina stuck her nose into the white petals and sniffed.

“Watch out for bees,” Alana said. “My dad got stung on the cheek once doing that.”

At Alana’s, they set up the tent in the backyard, then laid out the sleeping bags. The light coming through the yellow nylon made their faces glow.

Alana opened a bottle of nail polish and Mina unzipped the tent flap to air out the strong smell.

Alana handed Mina the tiny brush, then held out her hands like two soft fans, the fingernails bitten off short.

Mina did fine until Alana’s second pinkie. The polish smeared. She tried to rub it off with a tissue, but the polish rolled up in a wrinkly mess.

“That’s okay. I’ll fix it later,” said Alana.

Mina spread her fingers. She was proud of her nails, grown out as long as Mom would allow. “Tell me the secret.”

Alana coated Mina’s thumbnail with red. “Well, I peeked at Coach’s list.”

“And?”

“You really want to know?” Alana moved on to the pointer finger.

Mina hesitated.

“It’s an important secret,” Alana insisted.

“Well, tell me, then.”

“When Coach wrote down the times, I saw your time and Ruth’s.” Alana took a big breath. “You beat her.”

Mina waited for Alana to break out laughing and say,
Just kidding!

But Alana wasn’t even smiling. She dipped the brush in the bottle and lifted it out, loaded with polish.

The inside of the tent bloomed with the smell of Fire Truck Red.

“How could you see what Coach wrote?” Mina asked. “He wrote too small. He hid the page.”

“Nuh-uh. I stood on the bench behind him and saw real good. Ruth’s gonna be surprised. She thinks you’re a girlie girl like me. She’s gonna have a fit.”

Ruth have a fit? Mina didn’t want that. She enjoyed soaring along like a bird caught on a current of air — but she didn’t care about winning. Ruth cared. Ruth had always won, and she should keep on winning. If Ruth had a fit, it might hurt their friendship. The Fellow Friends might become Non-Fellow Enemies.

Alana moved quickly from nail to nail. When she finished, she leaned over and blew on the wet polish. “Now our hands look extra pretty for cat’s cradle. Hold up your fingers,” she commanded, pulling a string from her pocket. “Don’t worry — the polish is dry.” She placed the string over Mina’s extended fingers, threading the outlines of the Walking Turtle.

For dinner, Mina and Alana drank Italian cream sodas flavored with raspberry and ate pineapple pizza, throwing the crusts to the birds. When it got dark, they lay back in their sleeping bags and listened to the crickets rasping their legs together in the bushes.

Just before she fell asleep, Mina felt a little homesick. To distract herself, she ran the fifty-meter sprint again in her mind, crossing the grass as though lifted by the breeze, the warm sunshine pouring through her.

Mina opened her eyes to yellow light playing across the walls of the tent and felt another sting of homesickness for her own bed, for Mom, Daddy, and Paige.

She unzipped her bag, crawled to the tent door, and scanned the sky. At first she didn’t see the moon because the sky was light blue, the sun up. Her yellow pencil wouldn’t be half bright enough for that blazing sun.