by Abby Cooper
She flicked her eyes to me for half a second, pushed her glasses up on her nose, and then turned back to Kaya.
“Well, I have science, so see you later.” And then she waved again and was off.
At least now I didn’t have to struggle to figure out what to say to Kaya.
“That was weird,” I said as we kept walking.
“I don’t know,” Kaya said. “I thought it was nice.”
“Uh, were we just talking to the same Viv Carlson?”
Kaya laughed. “She’s not that bad.”
I was about to say something about all the people throughout history who didn’t seem that bad who then ended up doing some seriously bad things, but when we turned the corner and saw Rafael waiting at our meeting spot, I completely forgot what I was going to say.
I burst into a big grin. His face was just regular—it wasn’t chipmunk-y or anything—but something about it still made me feel all warm and giggly.
“I have something for you,” he told me.
“You do?”
I bit my lip and tried my very hardest not to giggle.
He pulled something out from behind his back. “Ta-da!”
I frowned. The something was paper.
He handed one piece to me and another one to Kaya.
“I printed out our permission slips for the triathlon in the computer lab this morning,” he said. “We have to turn them in to ZOOM Athletics by April first, so that gives us almost a month to fill them out. Sophie, since you live the closest, can you drop them off?”
I nodded and glanced at the paper.
ZOOM presents
Chicago Kids Mini-Tri
April 7th, Ages 11–14, 8 A.M.
Adult Tri, 7 A.M.
Bridgemont Beach
The top three finishers in each age group (kids and adults) will receive a $500 gift card to ZOOM Athletics and be featured on Channel 23 at 10 A.M.
“Why yes,” Rafael said as he watched us read. “Your eyes are not deceiving you. A five-hundred-dollar ZOOM gift card could be yours! And yours! And mine!”
But I couldn’t think about that. “Channel 23,” I whispered. This was my chance! Channel 23 used to be Mom’s channel. I could finally make up for what I’d done. I probably couldn’t make Pratik go out with Mom again, but I could totally get her back in front of the camera.
Maybe if I got to be on TV, even if it was just for a few minutes, she could come on TV with me. After all, important things usually require a parent. Mom had to sign a paper when I got my ears pierced. She had to say okay when I went to a friend’s house after school, and she usually took the El train or the city bus with me if I was going somewhere outside of Wicker Park. So if I got on TV, the TV people would probably want her there, too.
And maybe if she got on TV, the TV people would remember how good she was and they’d give her her job back.
Kaya jabbed me in the ribs. “You okay?” she asked. “Are you seeing … one of those things?”
“What things?” Rafael asked.
I gave Kaya a look and she wrapped some hair around her fingers. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to tell Rafael about the bubbles … I just … well. Hmm. Maybe I didn’t want to tell Rafael about the bubbles. What if he thought I was nuts?
“Hey, tell us why you’re so excited about the ZOOM gift card,” Kaya said to him. “Please?”
“Nice try. I’m not some little kid where you can just go and change the subject and I’ll start talking about something else and forget that you guys are being secretive about something.” He kicked the floor with the toe of his sneaker. “Although…” his face broke out into a grin. “Okay, fine, since you asked nicely. ZOOM Athletics has those awesome ShiverStoppers wool gloves. All different colors and patterns. They’re so warm and soft, it’s actually unbelievable.”
“Why don’t you just go buy some?” Kaya asked.
“Are you kidding? Those things run like a hundred bucks per glove. My parents would never let me spend that kind of money on gloves, even if it’s basically for the safety of my hands. Seriously, they’re like sticking your hands into their own warm mini-clouds of joy.”
Kaya and I exchanged a look, and I could finally let my giggle out without it being weird.
Rafael’s face turned serious.
“I don’t think we should just train for this race,” he said. He put his hands out and looked off into the distance all dramatically, like he was George Washington posing for his official White House portrait in 1797. “I think,” he said slowly, “that we should try to win it.”
We all looked at each other as we headed toward our classes. Yesterday, I would’ve laughed at the idea of trying to win. And not just a little giggle laugh. More like a hold-your-sides-fall-on-the-floor-maybe-start-snorting kind of laugh. But now that Channel 23 was involved, and I could really make things right … maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing to try.
“That’s impossible,” Kaya said. “But I’d probably never be scared of swimming again if I knew I could do it faster than everybody else.”
“We should totally try to win it, then,” I heard myself say. “For that, and for the chance to be on TV.”
And for Mom, I said in my head.
“And for the gloves,” said Rafael. The hallway was emptying out. We raced to our classrooms, and as Kaya and Rafael entered theirs, I heard him yell, “For the gloves!”
Holy chocolate pancakes. Not only was I doing a triathlon, but I was actually going to try to win one, too.
What was I getting myself into?
14
SPINNING
“Who are we?” I asked When I met Kaya and Rafael at the front desk of the Wicker Park Athletic (WPA) Club later that afternoon.
“The bike riders!” Kaya and Rafael shouted, like I’d made them practice a thousand times before I even let them into the gym.
“What are we going to do?”
“Bike!” Kaya yelled at the same time as Rafael shouted, “Not die!”
I giggled, but it felt like a fake, Viv Carlson-ish type of laugh. I was trying my very hardest to stay focused on my friends and not on what had happened before I got to the gym, but that was pretty hard. I’d told Mom where I was going and what we were training for, and she’d just stared at me the same way she stared at everything else—like she was looking, but she didn’t really see.
“Have fun,” she had said in a robot-zombie kind of voice. Then she turned back to Microbiology Monthly, a magazine that no way was more interesting than her own daughter and her triathloning.
But it was fine. She just didn’t get what a huge deal this was turning into.
The day of the race, though, that was when it would hit her. I could totally picture it: she’d be having a normal, mopey day, and I’d be like, “Mom, come with me,” and before she realized what was happening, I’d be doing a whole triathlon, winning it, and getting us both on TV. Before she knew it, she’d find herself saying, “Wow! That was amazing. You’ve totally reminded me, Sophie, that I used to love races. And having fun.” And then her boss would appear and say, “Speaking of having fun, how about starting by taking your old job back?” And then Mom would wrap me in a big hug and say, “I’m so happy,” and look at me like she used to. And then Pratik would appear and wrap both of us in a hug and then we’d all go out for pancakes and live happily ever after.
“Hi. Um, Sophie?” Rafael snapped his fingers across my face, and I blinked a bunch of times. Okay, I was getting way too far ahead of myself. Before that whole thing could happen, we had to win the race. Which meant I had to teach Rafael how to bike and we all needed to know how to bike really, really well. Which meant I seriously had to pay attention.
“Sorry,” I said. “Just thinking. Anyway, come with me, guys. We’re going to a super cool place.” I stood on my tiptoes and glanced at the room I wanted to take them into. No one was going in or out, so it was probably still empty like it had been when I checked before my friends got here.
&n
bsp; They finished signing and followed me through the lobby. It was so awesome that all our parents belonged to WPA, and now that we were twelve we could use their memberships and come by ourselves.
I grabbed the door handle and sucked in my breath. My official practice plan wasn’t quite as detailed as I’d made it seem to Kaya when I’d spoken up in class. Right now, the name of the plan was “Cross My Fingers and Hope This Works Out.”
The sign next to the door of the room read SPIN STUDIO. I’d found it when I’d been roaming around, looking for bikes we could use that would be good for beginners like Rafael. At first I thought “Spin Studio” was a fancy way to say “The Twirl-in-Circles Room” (which was something I knew he’d love—even though we didn’t hang out in rock shops anymore, the guy still liked to twirl), but when I looked inside, I discovered that spinning actually had everything to do with biking. There were hundreds of bikes—or at least, like, thirty—lined up in rows across the room. The place reminded me of a dance club right out of movies I’d seen on TV. I half expected a disco ball to come down from the ceiling and a pop song to start blasting from invisible floor-to-ceiling speakers at any second.
“This. Is. Awesome,” Rafael said as he looked right at me. There wasn’t any exercise happening yet, but my hands felt sweaty and my heart was beating fast. He seemed to have forgotten that we were here to ride bikes, because he definitely didn’t think biking was awesome.
A bubble formed over his head. She is awesome.
I stopped breathing for a second. Maybe he wasn’t thinking about the bikes at all. She who? She me? Must be. He thought I was awesome?
He thought. I. Was. Awesome!
And that felt, well … awesome.
Why could I suddenly not think of any other words? Why had my brain turned to mush? Why could I not stop asking myself questions in my head in a really excited kind of voice?
Maybe it was time to officially admit that I thought he was awesome, too.
And if I thought he was awesome and he thought I was awesome, what did that mean? With Demarius, I’d been like, I like you, and he’d been all, Okay, later. And then we’d hung up the phones and lived awkwardly ever after.
But this was different. This time, the guy might like me back. And what happened then?
I guessed we could figure it out later. For now, we could ride fake bikes.
“There’s no class in here for another half hour,” I said, pointing to the schedule next to the giant mirror on the wall. “So I thought we could borrow these bikes till then.”
Rafael studied them. “Are these things glued to the ground?” He grabbed one and acted like he was pulling on it as hard as he could, and Kaya laughed.
“Don’t!” I told him. “I think they probably have a you-break-it-you-buy-it policy around here. Anyway, aren’t these great? We can work our way up to the real thing. This will be nice and easy.”
Kaya looked at the bike like it was a math problem she was trying to figure out.
“The bikes are different heights,” she said. “We should probably find the shortest ones. Unless anyone knows how to adjust them.”
We all looked at each other and shook our heads.
“Right. So maybe these?” Kaya pointed to a few that seemed lower to the ground than the others. She tightened her helmet around her neck, and Rafael and I put ours on, too. Wearing a helmet for this felt a little dorky, but I knew the extra safety would make Kaya feel better, even if she already knew how to ride a bike.
We each took a seat on a bike, and it was hard not to jump right back off. I’d forgotten how uncomfortable these things were. There had been so many great inventions throughout history, but no one had created a bike seat that felt like a pillow.
“Well, this has been a fun-tastic time, my friends, but I have to get going. I just remembered, I have a previous commitment with something not painful.” Rafael leaped off his bike like the seat was made of hot lava.
“Not so fast, mister.” Kaya put a hand on his shoulder and practically pushed him back on. “It takes a minute to get used to it. Just hang on a little longer. Before you know it, you won’t even notice.”
“I seriously doubt that,” Rafael said, but he sat back down. Then he looked at me and rolled his eyes in a joking way, like, Do you believe this girl? I smiled and rolled mine back. I know, right?
He kept on looking at me, and then Kaya looked, too, and it was almost like they were waiting for something. Which was maybe because they were.
“Oookay,” I said, doing my best to pretend that there was more to my training plan than coming into the room, getting on the bikes, and trying to find the secret disco ball that had to be around here somewhere. “So. These are bikes. They have seats, and pedals, and lots of other bikey things. Pretty sweet, right? Did you know that they were invented in 1816? Because they were.”
My mind went totally blank. How did you teach someone to ride a bike, anyway? Especially someone who thought you were awesome and made your heart poundy and your mouth giggly and had a serious look of concentration on his face that was also weirdly kinda cute?
“Maybe Rafael should put his feet on the pedals,” Kaya offered.
I snapped my fingers. “Yeah! I was just going to say that.” I stretched my legs out to where the pedals were. They were kinda hard to reach.
“I’m doing it! I’m riding a bike!” Rafael yelled. He was already pedaling faster than I thought was even possible on these things. If this was the race, he’d be talking on TV by now, and I’d be back by the starting line … alone.
“Way to go!” I finally got my feet on the pedals, but every time I moved them, it was like pedaling in quick-sand. They felt really twisty, too, like they were going to get tangled up and crash any second. Which was silly, since I was barely even moving. I thought this would be easier than riding a real bike, but it turned out that it was harder—at least harder for me.
A big lump formed deep in my throat. If anyone came in the room, it would look like Rafael and Kaya were teaching me to ride a bike—and that they weren’t doing that great of a job.
“We should try to stand up,” Rafael said, after a few more minutes of him and Kaya being amazing and me being, well, not.
I rolled my eyes and took my feet off the pedals. “Yeah, okay. Then let’s do headstands on the handlebars.”
Rafael looked like he was considering it. “No, I’m serious. We’re basically masters of biking now. And anyway, the bikes are stuck to the ground, remember?”
I did remember. But I also remembered that sitting on the bike—and trying to make the pedals move—was hard enough.
Kaya smiled and stood up like it was nothing. “This is fun,” she said. Rafael stood, too. “I’m on top of the world,” he shouted. They high-fived each other and looked at me, like they were waiting for something again and I was taking way too long to give it to them.
This time I knew exactly what they were waiting for, but that didn’t mean I knew how to do it.
But if they could do it, I could, too, couldn’t I? An Adventurous Girl would. And if I was serious about winning the race, I had to give my old self a real chance to make a comeback. And it didn’t get much more real than standing up on a bike that you probably shouldn’t stand on.
I took a deep breath and stretched my legs until my knees were slightly bent. Slowly and carefully, I arched myself up and over until I was almost as high up as Rafael and Kaya were … just in time for them both to plop back down on their seats.
“Really? I just got here.” I leaned forward and grabbed the handlebars to steady myself.
Kaya giggled. “I’ll come back!” She stood up again and waved to me. Then she sat back down. And got back up. And went down. And got up.
Rafael started doing the same thing.
“Race you guys,” he said as he bounced up and down like a kangaroo. “First one to nowhere wins!”
“Come on, Sophie,” Kaya said. “Go faster with us!”
I sighed and d
ared myself to stand up again.
They both went up and down and up and down, faster and faster and faster. They looked like human rocket ships, about to take off and go flying to the moon. I forced myself up, then down, then up. My breath was heavy and my heart thumped a zillion miles a minute, but I kept going even though each movement felt like lifting an elephant. Up. Down. Pedal. Bike. Up. Feet. Hands. Down. It was hard on my body, but tough for my brain, too. There was so much to remember.
“You got it,” Kaya said, so I tried to go even faster still. Up! Down! Up! Down! Down. Down.
Down …
And then, somehow, I didn’t exactly know how, I was on the ground.
“Ow.”
Kaya and Rafael slowed to a stop.
“Um. Did you just fall off a bike that wasn’t moving?” Rafael asked.
“But we were moving,” I said. They got off their bikes and stood next to me. They were both sweaty, but it didn’t even look like real sweat. They were glistening. My sweat was smelly and theirs was sparkly and nothing was fair about anything.
“I’m so glad we had helmets on,” said Kaya. “You could’ve gotten really hurt.”
I groaned. I was really hurt. Maybe not on my head, but just about everywhere else. I sprawled out on the ground next to my terrifying stationary bike of doom, then rolled over so I was on my stomach and closed my eyes.
The room went totally quiet. Maybe everybody had left. Maybe they were too embarrassed to be in the same room with me. I lifted my head and opened my eyes. Nope, Rafael and Kaya were definitely still there, and they had funny looks on their faces, like they’d been caught doing something bad. Behind them, staring, was a huge crowd of people.
Including the one and only Viv Carlson.
* * *
“Are you okay?” she asked in her fake-nice Viv Carlson voice.
Right. Like she cared.
“I’ve been teaching spinning for twenty years and I’ve never heard of anyone falling off one of these. I wonder what she was doing wrong,” some lady said. She had to be Viv’s mom, the “group fitness instructor,” whatever that meant. She had the same orangey-brown hair and annoying singsongy voice as her daughter. Her skin was unbelievably tan, like she’d just dipped her body in a giant carton of orange juice.