Transition

by Henry Charles Mishkoff

  Jago would be furious, Jillian thinks, if he knew that I ran through the last three aid stations without stopping for a drink. But Jago isn’t the one busting his ass out here trying to make up half an hour on some goddamn phantom. So the hell with him.

  I feel good.

  I feel strong.

  It’s time to pick up the pace.

  “Well,” she says, “guess I better go meet the new girl.”

  “Jill, can you slow her down? Send her back to us?” Kristin looks straight ahead as she speaks, as if asking for help is painful and she can’t bear to make eye contact. “I would be greatly… appreciate.” She shoots a glance at Britte, who appears to be ignoring the conversation. “We both would be greatly appreciate,” Kristin insists, in a tone that implies that her sister had better not disagree.

  Britte snorts in disgust and shakes her head, but says nothing.

  “Yeah, well…” Slow her down? How? Tie her shoelaces together? Pull down her shorts? Jillian shrugs. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  And then she is pulling away, almost imperceptibly at first, but then the gap between Jillian and the twins grows wider and wider as Jillian eats up the road with strides that somehow appear to be both powerful and effortless at the same time, looking for all the world like God’s own golden running machine.

  1.1.4: Newton

  Just past the seventeen-mile marker, where the course turns east on Commonwealth Avenue for the final push into Boston, Jillian spots the new girl for the first time.

  She closes the quarter mile between them with surprising speed. That was way too easy, she thinks. The new girl must have gone out too fast, too hard. And now she’s paying for it, big time.

  Slowing her pace, Jillian falls in line behind her competition and sizes her up. Average height, maybe a tad short for a triathlete. A little on the stocky side, but muscular rather than fat; her calves bunch impressively with every stride. She sports a pair of beat-up sneakers, washed-out cut-offs, and a pale-blue T-shirt that’s soaked nearly transparent with sweat. An unruly mass of thick, carrot-red hair lies in matted clumps on her neck and back, half-heartedly restrained by a faded red bandanna.

  The examination complete, Jillian pulls up alongside her quarry.

  The new girl is running with her mouth wide open, sucking in air in a series of deep gasps, panting more than breathing. Rivulets of sweat line her face, cascading down from her hair, overwhelming her headband. Dull green eyes gaze hollowly down the road ahead, blinking spasmodically, as if from a nervous tic. She plods forward like an automaton, mechanically placing one foot in front of the other.

  Jillian clears her throat. “Hi, there,” she says, as cheerfully as she can. “Great day for a race, don’t you think?”

  No response.

  Uh-oh, Jillian thinks, this girl’s out on her feet. At the next aid station, I need to tell someone to get a medic to check her out.

  But then the new girl’s head swivels slowly toward Jillian, and a dim light kindles in her glazed eyes. A hint of a smile creases the cakes of grime. She tries to speak; her lips move, but nothing comes out. Trying again, she manages a weak “Hi”; then she turns slowly back to stare at the road ahead.

  Jesus, Jillian thinks, I’m running with a zombie. What’s keeping her going?

  And she’s about to speed up and leave the new girl in her dust when she remembers Kristin’s plaintive plea.

  Jillian frowns. Why should I help Kristin? I don’t owe Kristin anything. And Britte is such a pain in the ass – I don’t owe Britte a damn thing, that’s for sure. And I really shouldn’t be playing this stupid game anyway. I have a race to run…

  But then she starts to wonder just what she would do if she did want to make the new girl slow down. And as various schemes run through her head, her thoughts start to drift from wondering if she could do it to deciding how.

  What the hell, Jillian thinks, it’s for her own good. She’ll get hurt if she keeps pushing herself like this. So actually, if I can make her slow down – or, better yet, drop out – I’ll be doing her a favor.

  And it’s not like there’s any hurry, we’re only maybe six miles from the finish line, and nobody, least of all this walking dirtball, is going to beat me there…

  “I’m Jill Kendal.” She smiles as brightly as she can. “Sure am surprised to run into you all the way up here.”

  “Hi, Jill.” The voice is a little stronger, a little clearer, and the eyes that briefly glance at Jillian gleam with a tiny spark of life. The new girl clears her throat and shakes her head, as if she’s trying to awaken from a deep sleep. “I’m Sunshine.”

  “Sunshine?”

  The new girl only nods in response, as if the effort of speaking even those few words has been too great a strain.

  “How are you holding up, Sunshine?” Jillian tries to sound concerned. “You don’t look so good.”

  “Tired,” Sunshine admits. She speaks in short bursts, the words exploding between gasps for air. “But I’m… okay.”

  “I think maybe you ought to slow down. You’re not going to finish if you don’t ease off a little.”

  Sunshine shakes her head. “Doesn’t… matter.”

  “It doesn’t…”

  Struggling for breath, Sunshine holds up a hand; she has more to say. “Nathan says… not important… win or lose… or even… finish… doesn’t matter… Nathan says… do your best… that’s all… do your best… all the time.”

  “Nathan?”

  Sunshine just nods, as if that answers the question.

  Must be her coach, Jillian guesses. But he can’t be much of a coach if he let her go out so fast. If she had paced herself, she’d be a few miles back, but she’d be in much better shape right now.

  “You must be one hell of a swimmer to have strung out such a big lead,” Jillian says. “You must have been one of the first women out of the water.”

  Sunshine shakes her head. “First,” she insists.

  “First? You were the first woman out of the water?”

  But Sunshine shakes her head again. “Not… first… woman.” She waves a hand back and forth, erasing the thought from the air.

  What does that mean, she couldn’t mean… “You were the first person out of the water?”

  Sunshine nods.

  “You were the first swimmer out of the water? Period? Are you telling me that you beat all the men in the swim leg?”

  Sunshine keeps nodding, her head bobbing up and down like it’s on a spring.

  Jillian’s mouth actually hangs open in shock. She’s heard of a woman being third or fourth out of the water, but… first? Ahead of all the men?

  Even the pros?

  But she has no time to think about that. She has to pick up the pace. If she plays games with Sunshine any longer, the twins just might catch up to her.

  But just as she’s about to kick on the afterburners, the germ of an idea starts to grow in her brain. And instead of speeding off down the road, she begins to run just the tiniest bit faster. And without realizing it, Sunshine adjusts her pace to match.

  “You from around here?” Jillian asks, solicitously.

  Sunshine starts to shake her head, then seems to change her mind. “Sort of,” she says.

  “This your first triathlon?”

  Sunshine nods.

  “You in college?”

  Sunshine shakes her head.

  “High school?”

  Sunshine shakes her head.

  “Live with your folks?”

  Sunshine shakes her head again, and this time she manages to utter a single word: “Nathan.”

  “You live with your coach?”

  Sunshine shakes her head.

  “Nathan’s your boyfriend?”

  Sunshine shakes her head.

  She’s so young, but… “Your husband?”

  Sunshine shakes her head one last time. “Too fast,” she says. She looks at Jillian apologetically, as if she’s sorry that she’s not going to be a
ble to keep up with her any longer.

  “Aw, c’mon,” Jillian pleads. “Stay with me just a little while. Keep me company.”

  Sunshine looks doubtful.

  “Look, I’ll tell you a secret. You can run right through the pain and you’ll get to a place where it doesn’t hurt anymore.”

  Sunshine stares at her dubiously.

  “Really,” Jillian insists. “If you push yourself as hard as you can, after a while you get your second wind.”

  Sunshine considers the new information, but without much apparent enthusiasm.

  “That’s what I do,” Jillian explains, earnestly. “It always works for me. C’mon, I’ll show you.” And with a burst of speed, she pulls a few yards ahead of Sunshine, then slows and looks back over her shoulder. “Stay with me,” she pleads. “You can do it!”

  Sunshine shakes her head. “I don’t… think so.”

  “Sure you can.” Jillian beckons with her hand, waving an invitation.

  Sunshine shakes her head again, weakly. “I won’t… make it.”

  “You won’t make it if you speed up?”

  Sunshine nods.

  Suppressing a grin, Jillian pounces. “You mean if you run any faster you won’t finish the race?”

  Sunshine doesn’t respond. Her eyes flick from side to side as she considers the implications of what she’s hearing.

  “But you said that you don’t care whether you finish or not, didn’t you? And if you’re not going to finish anyway, you might as well stretch it out a little, just to see what you can do. C’mon, Sunshine,” Jillian beckons again, with more urgency. “You might surprise yourself.”

  “I don’t know,” Sunshine whispers, almost a low moan. In her eyes, Jillian can read the plea: Don’t make me do this. Please don’t make me do this.

  “Well, okay.” Jillian tries to sound disappointed. “I just thought that maybe I could help you do your best. You know, like Nathan wants you to do.” And just as Jillian utters the name “Nathan,” the strangest look flashes in Sunshine’s eyes, just for an instant, and then it passes. What was that about? Jillian wonders. I swear, she looked a little frightened there for a second…

  “Okay, look,” Jillian says, pointing down the road at a white cupola that peeks out over the tops of the trees. “There’s an aid station in front of that building. I’ll race you there, okay? Can’t be more than a quarter mile. Just to the aid station, then you can back off.”

  Picking up the pace just enough to start slowly pulling away, Jillian turns to survey the road ahead, resisting the temptation to glance back to see if Sunshine has taken the bait. She smiles when she hears the footsteps coming up behind her, and she slows a little to give Sunshine a chance to catch up. In her peripheral vision, she spots a blur of motion, and then Sunshine pulls up beside her, arms and legs churning furiously, puffing like a steam engine laboring up a steep hill.

  “Good girl!” Jillian shouts as Sunshine chugs past her.

  She shifts gears to take up the chase, but the strangest thing happens: The distance between them refuses to shrink. In fact, if anything, Jillian seems to be falling a little farther behind. It’s like a nightmare. She’s running as fast as she can. Her form is good. She’s doing all the right things. But she’s not going anywhere.

  And then it hits her: Sunshine is running faster than she is! Sunshine is actually pulling away.

  And just like that, Jillian is angry. There’s no way in hell this girl’s going to beat me to the aid station, she thinks. No fucking way. This two-bit, small-time scuzzball doesn’t even belong on the same course with me.

  Looks like it’s time to teach her a lesson.

  1.1.5: Newton

  Marc Oglesby is thinking that maybe it’s time to go home.

  If the weatherman had said that it was going to rain, Marc wouldn’t have come out at all. He had much better things to do on a Saturday morning than to lug his photography equipment all the way from Peabody to Newton, and if he had known that it was going to rain all morning, he would have stayed home. In his warm bed. With his warm girlfriend.

  Even though it’s no longer actually raining, the sky remains unrelentingly gray, and Marc finally realizes that the clouds are not going to break, and he’s not going to get any photos good enough to sell. The hell with it, he thinks, and he unscrews his camera from the tripod, which is an admission that his day is over. What a waste of time.

  “I think that’s Jill Kendal,” one of the volunteers says excitedly. Marc glances down the road. Two women are running toward the aid station, a blonde and a redhead, they’re maybe a couple of hundred yards away and they’re closing fast. They’re running down the middle of Comm Ave, one on either side of the double yellow line, like they’re in race lanes. Although it’s hard to tell for sure from this distance, the redhead appears to be slightly ahead.

  Marc’s seen a lot of triathlons, and he knows that nobody sprints this hard, not this far into the run leg. Something’s up, maybe something big. One of the volunteers might catch it on a cell phone camera, and sure, that might be good enough to post on Instagram, but Marc knows that he’ll be the only one with a salable shot.

  If he drags the tripod out into the road, he should be able to get a few good shots of the women as they race toward him. The race marshals won’t like it, but what are they going to do about it? Given the lack of decent light, the photos will probably be kind of drab, but he can always Photoshop them and brighten them up.

  Maybe this day won’t be a complete washout after all.

  He frantically sets up his tripod in the middle of the road, positioning its spindly aluminum legs so that they straddle the center lines. He shoves the camera down onto the bolt, tightens the screw, glances at his light meter, and frames his subjects as best he can.

  “Hey, buddy,” somebody yells at him from the aid station. Marc ignores him. The marshals aren’t going to step out into the road while a couple of runners are barreling into the aid station, and by the time they decide what they want to do, Marc figures that he’ll be packing up his gear and heading for home.

  The camera whirrs as he clicks off half a dozen shots in rapid succession. Which one of the women is going to reach him first? It’s going to be close. He watches as slowly, inexorably, the gap between the women shrinks, and now they’re oh so close, only a couple more quick clicks and they’ll be whizzing past him…

  1.1.6: Newton

  For a few seconds, they run side by side at a breathtaking pace. But as they approach the aid station, with a burst of sheer will, Jillian begins to edge ahead, ever so slightly...

  Just then, a volunteer thrusts out a cup of water, trying to make it easier for Sunshine to grab it as she hurtles past. The unexpected motion is a blur in Sunshine’s peripheral vision. It shatters her concentration. She swerves toward the center of the road, where the toe of her left sneaker snags the slender aluminum leg of Marc Oglesby’s tripod.

  Stumbling, she sideswipes the surprised photographer, who staggers backward. His arms flail wildly as his feet fly out from under him. He lands with a thud on the hard pavement and rolls to a stop. The tripod falls to the ground in a slow, graceful arc. The camera crashes to the blacktop, detaches from the tripod, and skitters along the road.

  “Help me!” Sunshine screams. She spins awkwardly toward the side of the road, struggling to regain her balance as she stumbles headlong into a terrified volunteer. The two women crash into a table, which collapses under their weight. The human mass sprawls to the ground and crumples into a heap. Bananas and oranges fly through the air. Cups of water and Powerade scatter in every direction.

  And Jillian Kendal runs through the aid station, a paper cup in each hand. She pours the water over her head. She downs the PowerAde in two quick gulps. Then she flips both cups carelessly back over her shoulders.

  She never looks back, not even once.

  After all, she has a race to run.

  1.1.7: Copley Square

  “I was led to belie
ve, Ms. Johnson,” J. Stanton Kennedy says, in his loftiest Boston Brahmin tones, “that there would be a hospitality vehicle of some sort – a trailer perhaps – that would offer a modicum of comfort in which to conduct our discussion.”

  “I am sorry, Mr. Kennedy, believe me,” Valerie Johnson soothes. “But this all came up so suddenly, your visit here and all. We did try to rent an RV, but there just wasn’t enough time.” Or money, she thinks. But he doesn’t have to know that. “And please, call me Val. Everybody does.”

  Kennedy shifts his weight as if he’s trying to get comfortable. He’s wearing a pinstriped navy-blue suit that Valerie assumes is custom-made. He sports a pale blue regimental stripe tie with a Windsor knot that fits snugly into the collar of his off-white button-down shirt – which, Valerie suspects, also is custom-made. It occurs to her that, no matter how much Kennedy shifts, he’s unlikely to ever feel comfortable on the hard, wooden bleachers.

  As Race Director, Valerie knows all too well that she should be coordinating the activities of her staff, keeping a watchful eye on the race and all of its intricately related activities. But just two days ago she had received an urgent call from the chairman of the American Triathletic Council: J. Stanton Kennedy plans to attend your race, Val. Please make sure that he’s well taken care of. Pull out all the stops. Give him the VIP treatment. We’re counting on you, Val.

  Kennedy looks up at the skies, and Valerie’s not sure if he’s worried about the weather or if he’s just bored. “If it starts to rain again,” she says, “we can duck into the admin tent, over in the Square. I thought you might want to sit out here for a while and watch some of the winners come in. But if you’re uncomfortable…”

  “I was here for the marathon last week,” Kennedy observes, as if to counter the suggestion that he’s incapable of feeling comfortable in such an undignified venue. He glances around, notes his position in relation to the library behind him and the Old South Church across the street. “In nearly the very same location, I believe. There were quite a few more spectators for that event, of course.” He smiles, and Valerie thinks that she spots a hint of a twinkle in his eye. “No disrespect intended,” he adds.