“My mom said she’s going to take me to see the University of Southern California the first week in May. As long as I don’t have any finals then.”
“Seriously?”
Rudy nodded. “I didn’t even ask, she just offered. I think we’ll probably go see UCLA too, while we’re there.”
“Where is USC again?”
“It’s in LA.”
“Oh.” I paused. “That’s pretty cool.”
“I wish you could come with me. Actually, you probably could. Do you want me to ask my mom?”
Of course I did. College was still fairly inconceivable to me, but I could definitely picture Rudy and me studying together under palm trees on the beach in California.
“That’s the week before districts,” I said.
“Yeah, you’re right. We wanted to go before the semester ended, but maybe I can get mom to move it back.”
We? We wanted?
“Maybe.” I grabbed a handful of popcorn and shoved the whole thing in my mouth.
“Okay, guys, listen up.” Coach Kline was yelling above the rumble in the track and field conference room. Someone had left a stereo on, and rap music echoed through the room below the high-pitched sound of girl chatter. Some guys in the back of the room were laughing like hyenas, trying to do back flips off of the back wall.
“Hey!” Coach let off one sharp whistle blast.
I looked up from where I sat on one end of a wooden bench, tying my shoe. The noise stopped abruptly, except the music.
“Will somebody turn that crap off?” One of the boys shuffled across the room. “Thanks.”
“So, we’ve got districts this weekend, but I hope you were all well aware of that already.” He paused. “I won’t keep you long because I want you to get the most out of practice this week, but I’ve got a couple quick things. First, I want to congratulate you all on a spectacular conference meet Saturday. As a team, we had fourteen season bests and seven personal bests, and that’s exactly what we need to see going into the end of the season. Individually, I want to congratulate our conference champs, Keegan Lowry in long and triple jump, Justin Jones in the 400, the boys 4X2 team, Whitney Polentry in the 1600 and Jillian Matthews in the 100 and 300 meter hurdles.”
I sat up straighter when he looked at me.
“The girls team finished fourth overall, and the boys were second. You did nice work, just remember to keep it up. I know prom’s coming up, and graduation for all you seniors,” (a few hoots went up from the back of the room), “but don’t lose focus just yet. I need everyone to work harder than ever at practice this week. Seriously, I want 110% from all of you. We’ve got the potential to put a lot of athletes through to sectionals, so don’t sell yourselves short.” Coach Kline smiled. “Now, get out there and run like you’re on fire.”
Outside, it was a prime Missouri spring day. The trees in the school courtyard were blooming big white flowers, and I could hear the low buzz of a lawnmower and smell the cut grass somewhere in the distance. The sun was soft and light on my bare arms and legs. I wondered what it was like for Rudy and Mrs. Golden thousands of miles away at USC. Probably amazing, I thought.
“Hey.” Luke, my hurdles practice partner, caught up to me on the track. “So, my dad was checking out a track website last night and he said your times from Saturday are the third best in the state this year.”
“Really?”
Coach Sampson called for high knees, and Luke and I picked up our knees with the rest of the runners.
“Yeah. I didn’t even make the list.” He smiled sheepishly. “I’ll just be happy as shit to medal this weekend.”
“I’m sure you can medal.” I breathed deep as we went into lunges. “What was the website?”
“MSHSAA something. Why? You going to go home and Google yourself?” He wiggled his eyebrows at me.
I elbowed him in the gut and he lunged away from me, clutching his stomach dramatically.
“I’m sure you’re very familiar with Googling yourself,” I said.
“You’re so funny,” he spit back.
That night after practice, I spent hours searching Missouri high school track websites for my own name. Luke was right – or rather, his dad was. I had one of the best times in the state. And I was mentioned a lot on the forums, anonymous people speculating on whether or not I had a shot at winning the state championships, talking about college track and field even. I devoured it all, my chest swelling a little more each time I came across my own name.
I didn’t remember I had two pages of Spanish verb conjugations due the next day until I was lying in bed, about to fall asleep. Without Rudy’s help, I was up until one in the morning finishing the worksheets.
She’d return from California in just two more days.
We were lucky the district meet was being held at Ogden that year (but with a track facility that had been completely redone only five years earlier, complete with the addition of more than five-hundred extra bleacher seats, it was hard to understand why they’d even alternate the location at all). I, for one, was thrilled. I loved to have a big Ogden crowd watching. I loved to hear my classmates chanting my name and getting slapped on the back when I finished my races and to see the younger kids, junior high kids who would go to Ogden in a year or two, looking up to me in admiration.
To say the track was packed that Saturday would be an understatement. It was overflowing, even when Rudy and I arrived, an hour before any of the races would begin.
It would also be an understatement to say I did well that day. Honestly, I’m not just being arrogant when I say I obliterated the competition that day. I won both of my races with times half a second better than my personal bests, even against the stiffest competition I’d seen all year. I was walking on clouds, grinning the entire day.
Mr. and Mrs. Golden took Rudy and me out for Mexican food after the meet was over, and we gorged ourselves on chips and salsa in our warm ups and our wind-blown ponytails while Mrs. Golden showed us pictures she’d taken of our races.
When I got home, the lights were out and neither of my parents’ cars was in the driveway. I waited until morning to tell them I was going to sectionals.
Rudy didn’t have a lot to say about California other than telling me the schools were huge. They got lost three separate times at UCLA. When I asked her if she wanted to spend four years getting lost on campus, she shrugged it off. “I’ve got another year to decide, right?” Amid the chaos of the end of another school year, I didn’t have much time to contemplate Rudy’s college visit anyway. I wore pink lipstick to match my black and pink prom dress. I got one A, four B’s and two C’s on my finals (the A was in art, where I made a self-portrait out of magazine clippings as my final project). After the sectional track meet, our team numbers dwindled even further. Rudy’s relay team didn’t make it through to state, and neither did Luke. I stayed late at practice doing drills with Coach Kline until the sun started to set.
Ogden’s graduation ceremony was held the Thursday night before the state track meet. Each year, the staff hauled white metal folding chairs out onto the football field, where they were placed in neat rows angling in toward the portable stage that sat on the ten-yard line. The boys wore navy robes, and the girls’ robes were white. You could identify the top twenty-five percent of the graduating class because they wore red cords around their necks.
Rudy and I sat in the stands with Deena and we listened as the principal spoke first, then the school board president, then a local businessman. Each year, the class valedictorian was the last to give a speech; this year, it was a guy with glasses who spoke so softly I could hardly hear him, even with the microphone pressed up to his lips.
In the last minutes of sunlight, everything on the field – the soft grass, the feathery tassels hanging from every graduate’s hat – glowed, all awash in sepia tones. I still felt the warm hug of afternoon on my shoulders, but the beginning of spring’s evening chill whispered against my neck. Next year, we would be the on
es who occupied those seats on the field, a stadium of proud eyes cast down upon our heads. I swallowed the soft lump in my throat and turned my gaze away from the stage to Deena and Rudy. Deena was picking at her index finger, her brow furrowed in concentration, using her thumbnail to shave off flecks of chipped blue polish. Beside her, Rudy stared ahead, her dark lashes shining golden in the twilight. Her eyes were solemn, and the corners of her lips turned up slightly in a sad smile, but she wasn’t focused on the stage or the blue and white army of robes spread across the field. I tried to follow her line of sight, down the bridge of her nose and off across the field into the distance, but regardless of how I tried, I couldn’t see what she saw. When I looked back down at the stage, the valedictorian speech was over and the boy with the soft voice was carried to his seat by a smattering of applause. The ceremony pressed forward.
Afterward, we went down to the field with the rest of the crowd, searching for friends in the mess of smiles and squeals, arms and legs and camera flashes under the bright lights of the field. When we found Caleb, I kissed him on the cheek.
“Congratulations!” I gave him my warmest smile. I hoped I had
been forgiven.
“Thanks.” He returned my smile.
He was going to school in Indiana in the fall, miles and miles away.
Even on my wedding day, I never felt as nervous as I felt that Friday at the state track meet in Jefferson City. I got lost in the knot of people swarming the track, and I was on the verge of a panic attack, my eyes welling with tears, when finally I found a man in a white official’s polo who directed me to the tent where I could sign in. I pinned the paper bib to the front of my jersey, and I could feel the metal of the safety pins against my stomach. During the prelims for the 100, I clipped three hurdles. In the 300 I was slow getting out of the blocks, but I made the finals in each event, which meant I would race again the next day.
Rudy came to watch me on Saturday too, though I wasn’t allowed to ride with her. I spent the long bus ride sleeping or listening to my iPod, trying to ignore the tingly sunburn that had developed on my forehead from the day before.
Coach Kline gave me a quick pep talk before my first race, and then he disappeared into the hulking concrete stands, a navy-capped head among thousands of other bobbing, multi-colored heads. I was well rested and irritated with my performance in the prelims. Now that I’d spent a day there, the setting felt familiar. I was calm. I placed third in the 100-meter hurdles, and I stood on the wooden podium with seven other girls as we received our medals, and I just knew I would win the 300 hurdles. Right there, when they hung a bronze medal around my neck, I swear I knew I would do it.
My shoulders were tense as I stood behind the blocks before the last race of my junior season. I didn’t realize just how tense until afterward though, when I finally relaxed and felt my muscles melting as the nervous energy left them.
“Runners take your mark.”
I positioned my spikes against the back of the blocks and my fingertips at the edge of my lane. Lane three out of eight.
“Set.”
In unison, eight butts rose into the air.
At the sound of the gun I was off, flying around the curve of the track, over the first hurdle, then the second, then the third. This time, I really didn’t look behind or beside me at the other girls. For once I wasn’t competing against anyone but myself. I knew I’d won the moment I crossed the white finish line, and I grinned so hard my face hurt. I threw my arms in the air then immediately lowered them, embarrassed by my own excitement.
The top of the podium was glorious.
And then, we were seniors.
THE END
12
Senior Fall
I spent the first lunch period of my last year of high school sitting in the yearbook computer lab with Rudy while she edited photos from the first week of fall sports practices. One of the privileges of being a member of the reigning class was that we were free to roam the campus during our lunch hour.
“Did you see the new girls’ gym teacher?”
“Huh uh,” Rudy grunted, her eyes fixed on a zoomed in portion of a football player’s leg. “Why?”
“She looks as young as us. I guess if she just graduated college, she could be only four years older than we are though.”
“True. I bet that’s weird for her.”
“Yeah.” I bit into my sandwich and mustard squirted out onto my new skirt. “Shit. Are there paper towels in here?”
“Over there, by the sink in the old dark room.”
I licked my finger and dabbed it against the yellow blob. After a few minutes of soap and water application in the dark room, I emerged with just a big wet spot left on the pink linen.
We had agreed to dress up for the first day of school, as was Ogden’s senior tradition, but Rudy had already thrown on a sweatshirt over her blouse. The air conditioner was blasting cold air, and the room was an icebox.
“Did it come out?” She asked.
“Yeah, mostly.” I abandoned the offending sandwich and opened my bag of chips instead. “What’re we doing this weekend? I heard Taylor Kerts is having a party.”
“I might have to take pictures at the debate team’s first match.”
I frowned. “I thought you had other people to do most of that? Don’t you just delegate now?”
At the end of the previous school year, Rudy had been elected the photo editor of Ogden’s award-winning yearbook. It was an honor, of course, but I thought she was taking the job a bit too seriously.
“Yeah, but this early in the year I want to make sure the photogs know what they’re doing. You know?”
“I guess.”
She cocked her head at me and smiled.
“Come on.” She shoved me playfully. “I’m sure I’ll be back in time to go with you to Taylor’s.”
“Watch your shoving. If you make me get something else on this skirt, I’ll have to kill you.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“I’d have to. It’s non-negotiable.”
She socked me in the shoulder.
“Well, you can have all my crap when I’m dead. I’ll write you into my will.”
In late September I was sitting beside Deena in Anatomy, my last class of the day, when the intercom clicked on and the voice of the student body president came on over the speaker.
“Good afternoon, Ogden Academy faculty, staff and students,” he began. The student body president was a boy in our class who, in my opinion, didn’t seem particularly noteworthy for anything other than his voice. He had a voice made for radio, syrupy and smooth. I have no idea what he’s doing now, but sometimes when I’m watching a commercial I become convinced it must be that guy who’s doing the voiceover.
“As you all know, next week begins the annual Ogden homecoming week.” He paused, and a small cheer rang out over the school. You could hear it through the walls in adjacent classrooms. “And this isn’t just any homecoming celebration. This year, we’re celebrating the 50th anniversary of homecoming at Ogden, which means it will be bigger and better than ever!”
One of the shaggy haired boys sitting in the back of my classroom hooted, and our teacher, a petite older woman who wore pantsuits, narrowed her tiny, angry eyes at him.
“So, here’s the information you need. The class spirit competition will begin Monday with hippie day, so make sure you look groovy, guys and gals. Tuesday is nerd day and Wednesday is camouflage day, so dress in your hunting best. Thursday is celebrity look-a-like day and Friday is spirit day so don’t come to school if you’re not decked in navy and white.” He took a deep breath. “Thursday night is the big spirit bonfire, so be there at 7 p.m. or be square. Friday morning we’ll have the spirit assembly, and we’ll all be released after lunch at 1 p.m. The homecoming parade departs from the front parking lot at 1:30 p.m. and the big football game kicks off at 7 p.m. Friday night, with the coronation ceremony at halftime. Now, what you’ve all been waiting for.” I’d be l
ying if I didn’t admit that I was holding my breath, and my heart rate picked up in anticipation of what I knew was coming next. “The homecoming queen candidates are as follows: Deena Orr,” (beside me, Deena squeaked audibly), “Teegan Westings, LeAnn Tyler, Rudy Golden and Jillian Matthews.”
To say I was completely shocked wouldn’t be absolutely truthful. This moment had been buried in the back of my mind since the beginning of the school year, and it had slowly begun to emerge as homecoming grew nearer. I had imagined my name being considered as a candidate – the football team nominated and decided upon the five senior girls – but I had also imagined it was unlikely to happen. And if it did, I thought, it would mostly be a testament to Rudy’s likability, that it could be so great it would spill over to me.
I was surprised. Not shocked, but genuinely surprised. In my surprise, I had missed the end of the message. The bell rang and around me, my classmates shot out of their seats and out the door.
“Congrats, girl! This is so exciting.” Deena grabbed my forearm and squeezed.
“Yeah, congrats to you, too,” I smiled.
“We should all go shopping for dresses together this weekend. LeAnn and Teegan, too. I’ll talk to them.” Deena’s excitement was so palpable it was practically oozing out onto me. I wanted to get away from her as soon as possible before it permeated my skin.
“Sure. I’ll talk to Rudy about it.”
“Awesome!” We walked into the hallway and she squeezed my arm again. “I’ll call you guys, okay? I’ll see you later!”
She hugged me and headed off down the hallway, almost bouncing.
Rudy was waiting for me when I reached my locker.
“Congratulations, candidate,” she smiled.
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