Tommy Mack was almost always picked. If he wasn’t, he just sat on the floor, watched the play and cheered when anyone on either side scored. If the sport involved running, I was almost always picked because I was fast, but I always worried I wouldn’t be. Being picked never made me popular outside the team either. When no one picked me for other sports, I hated it.
At least I had joined the school before the teams were set for track. In a couple of weeks we would have a tryout to set teams for the rest of the year because the away games were coming up. If we had a strong team, we would make the all-school finals. I wanted to be there.
I was up early and out running most days. Our house was on the edge of the town. At first I just ran in the neighborhood, up and down streets. Later, bored with that, the back alleys. I liked picking my way through all the old easy chairs and broken-down desks and bookcases people left there. Sometimes on my way back some of the better items were already gone, and I wondered who took them. It was a pretty good neighborhood, and it didn’t seem like anyone would take this stuff home. But you never knew. One thing I’d learned with all this moving about was that people weren’t always what they seemed to be. Maybe keeping a house here was all some people could do and alley freebies were a luxury.
As the days got longer, I would go out at sunrise and run on the wide margin of the road out toward the farmlands. The birds went wild in the trees and bushes as the sun came up. When I’d get home, I’d look up the ones I didn’t know in my mom’s bird book. It was the first time I’d lived where I could run outside the city as a regular thing. All in all, so far Astoria was turning out okay.
Chapter Five
Mom and Dad were happy with Astoria too. It was smaller than any place we had been in a while, but not small enough that everyone knew you by sight and would carry tales back home. It had no smelly factories, at least not ones that settled a haze over the whole place. Not like Holden, with the smell from the brewery, or that place that had the cookie factory near the school. I craved cookies every day that year.
Dad didn’t need to spend hours commuting, either. It was nice having him around more.
“Lord, I’m a changed man.” He said this about once every Saturday. He bought a really geeky bicycle and rode around the town a couple of times a week. Mom joined a reading group. She always joined something when we moved. A way to meet new people, she said, but I knew it was her way to fit in.
Ryan, as usual, settled in to some science thing or other. Already he was on a team to build something for the science fair. His projects bored me stiff, although they were as important to him as running was to me. He figured out new and different projects the way I figured out how to improve my time.
Dad said he didn’t know how long we’d be here when I asked him. Then I asked him if he could estimate how long. He was big on words like “estimate” and “probability.”
“No, sugar. Haven’t a clue. Maybe a couple of years.”
A couple of years seemed pretty good.
“A full couple of years?”
I really wanted to know. The truth was even though I liked it here, I was tired of putting all the effort into getting to know new places and finding someone to hang out with, only to move on again. Fifth grade had been the worst. We lived there a whole school year and then I had to leave my one true friend, Judy. We still e-mailed and chatted, but it wasn’t the same as being together.
Last town, Edsel, I didn’t even try. It was easier in some ways. I hung with the track team after meets. The rest of the time I went to class and otherwise stayed around home, read some books, texted Judy, and ran a lot with Mom because the two of us did a half-marathon together. Oh yeah, and the last month I dated that guy. But he didn’t count.
“Hope so,” Dad said. “I sure hope so. You never know, it could be a long while. But I can’t promise.”
That must have been what had him so cheerful. That and the bicycle. To tell the truth I could run faster than he could cycle. But he looked so happy sitting up straight, grinning like a maniac, his trousers tucked into his socks.
Mom got a job in the library shelving books. It was the first time she had done that. I took it as a sign that we were really settling in for a while.
Chapter Six
Jane’s mom had an old-fashioned record player and a lot of records bigger than dinner plates. The sound was fuzzy and sometimes the needle stuck and the same little phrase repeated over and over, starting halfway through the last syllable of the groove.
I lay on Jane’s bed. It was just me and Jane; Corinne was busy babysitting again.
“You could be a real knockout if you did the makeup thing,” Jane said.
“I do, sometimes.”
It wasn’t a lie, exactly. I put on a bit of lipstick, but not often. Jane eyed me up in a way that made me nervous.
“Yeah, I’m not saying you should, just that it would really work for you, you know. You’d look great. Really. Have any guy you wanted all over you, if that’s what you want.”
I had a vision of myself as a piece of food covered in ants. I changed the image to a flower covered in bees. I hated bees.
“Come on, let me show you.”
Jane reached under her bed and pulled out a shoebox that had about two-dozen little boxes of eye shadow, seven or eight tubes of lipstick, at least four different colors of rouge, and a few gooey mascara tubes.
“Holy crap, where did you get it all?”
“From what my mom throws away, or from Corinne. Some of it I get myself.”
She eyed me up like she was thinking of investing in stocks or something.
“Hey, come on, let me do you up. You’ll see how fantastic you can look. If you wanted to.”
“I’ve never seen you wear it.”
She lined up several bottles and tubes on the edge of the bed. She wasn’t talking about a bit of pink lipstick and mascara; she was going all out. I’d look like a clown and not fantastic at all.
“I do, sometimes, when it suits me. Come on. Sit up. I’m good at this. I do it for my mom and her friends all the time.”
I couldn’t quite get a picture of Jane putting make-up on her mom or any other woman. But whatever. I sat on the edge of the bed. She brushed my hair back and tied a scarf to keep it in place. Great, now I’d have a fringe that stuck straight out when she was done.
She stood back and squinted. Then she hummed. Finally, she nodded.
“Okay. I’ve got it. Stay still and do what I say.”
So I sat still and let her paint me like one of those paint-by-numbers pictures I had as a kid. She sounded like a make-up woman in the stores. She reckoned I needed a shadow here and a highlight there and I couldn’t quite tell whether she was being sarcastic. She asked me to open my mouth in a big “O” and slathered on oily lipstick that made my lips feel heavy and greasy when I smacked them together to even out the color.
She took a few steps back and looked at me, then dabbed and patted a bit more.
“Great. Just great. Now, go look.”
I didn’t look like me. I didn’t look like me at all. My eyes were huge and lighter, a strange pale amber color, and my lips stood out. And I had cheekbones. Well, it seemed like I did. The face I saw was years older and years younger all at once.
“Wow, weird. I look like I could be in a kiddie pageant.”
“Oh, you do not. You look really hot.”
I blew myself a kiss in the mirror, and we both cracked up.
“Oh, careful, your mascara will run.”
We cracked up again, and my eyes really did begin to water. When I looked in the mirror a second time I saw she was right; my mascara was starting to run. I studied my image, a strange girl/woman, me and not me at the same time. It freaked me out.
The evening was quiet when Jane walked me partway home. The stars were coming out, and even the neighborhood dogs had shut up. It was good to be walking in the almost dark with a friend, a friend who thought I could be fantastic.
&n
bsp; At the end of my street Jane gave me a hug. “You know, you are spectacular as you are. You know that?” she whispered in my ear and then walked away, her shirt blowing out in the breeze like a sail.
Chapter Seven
Lined up with the others, I waited my turn for the track team tryouts. Even though I could beat most people, and pretty much always place in the top two, I was nervous. Running was the one thing I could do. I was fast. Still, I always got nervous, trying out or waiting at the start line, even when it was just practice. I didn’t worry about it too much, because even if I felt like throwing up, it made me try harder.
Tommy Mack waited in line too, bulky next to the other runners, who were more like me, almost skinny. His body was solid and muscular. I could imagine him taking someone down in wrestling; he had that kind of body. For all that, he could run. He took off down the straight, head up, and arms pumping, but his legs just weren’t turning over as fast as they needed to. He didn’t make the team, but he only missed the cut-off time by a few seconds. I made it, easy.
Jane almost never came by after practice. She wasn’t into sports, she had said.
“What’s so great about hanging out with jocks?”
“Because I like it, and I can win races too. It’s what I can do.”
I didn’t say that at any new school I could usually get on the team, and it made it easier to feel like I belonged somewhere. Nothing like people cheering you on in the stands, plus I got medals and trophies and my name in the school newspaper and my picture on the wall if we won the championship. I got things that said “Caroline Nealon was here.” That I’d done something.
“Anyone would think that being a jock is all that matters. Who cares about global warming? Go pound someone in a game, and that’s all it takes. Idiots!” Jane’d said.
Sometimes Tommy Mack sat next to me as I watched the others run from the stands. He was quiet and didn’t say much beyond the odd comment on someone’s form, or their chances at the next meet. I wanted to talk about more than performance, but I could hardly ask him how he felt when he found his dad on the kitchen floor, and that’s what came into my head to say most often. Maybe that’s why he kept to himself; maybe everyone wanted to ask that. I looked for signs that people didn’t like him—signs that he was a loser of some kind, as Jane said, but I didn’t see any. He was always the same, friendly, but not sucking up to anyone.
Jane and Corinne came to meets now and again, and when I knew they were watching, I got jumpy. Well, maybe it was just Jane who made me jumpy. Corinne was cool. She was interested in everyone. When she had been a few times, she even began to pick up on the small changes runners made to improve their times.
The first time they came to watch me compete, we were up against a cross-town school, long-time rivals who had won the last three meets. When Jane showed up, I felt even more edgy than usual. “Loser,” I imagined her saying about me, just as she said about Tommy Mack.
The starter pop went off, and I was away. I was with the top five easily, just the right place at this stage to keep an eye on the other runners and see how much I needed to turn it up to win. I saw Jane in the stands as I passed the middle of the first stretch. She sat hunched over, her chin in her hands, her jacket up around her ears. Down at the first corner I caught two runners, passed them easily. I slowed down. I wouldn’t try to win this one. I would come in third. Respectable enough for the team, but not enough to set Jane off.
The runners behind me were close. As I passed them I listened to their shoes scuff the track, turning over faster. The sound grew louder as they closed the gap between us. A pain started somewhere in my chest as the competitor in me wanted to boot it; and this new me, the one who wanted Jane to like me more than I wanted to win, fought to keep the pace slower.
Two runners passed me.
I had one frantic, clear minute where I thought that nothing I did would be good, win or lose. At the next turn, I heard Tommy Mack.
“Go! Go! Go!” he yelled as I passed by.
It rang out like he was the only one in the stands. In spite of myself, I picked up the pace, and I flew over the last few hundred yards. I came in second. I looked down the track to see Jane’s reaction. She wasn’t even there. She was gone already. Everyone crowded around, all the team and my classmates, but despite the congratulations, I felt lonely.
“Way to go, you.” A girl I didn’t even know stopped me in the hallway the Monday after the race. One thing about a successful meet, it made me popular—for a while anyway. She gave me a high five. For a minute I felt ashamed. I had lost the race when I could have won it. I had let the team down even though none of them probably knew that.
Miss Eagan, the coach, knew it. She took me aside after our practice on Thursday. Mostly she was a “rah rah” coach who could wear you out with her enthusiasm. She shut the door on the last one out and took her time turning around to face me.
“So, Caroline, what happened?”
The small scuff marks on the gym floor stood out against the pale wood; I could almost hear the feet that made them.
“Dunno.”
“Carly, look at me. Look at me.”
I could hardly raise my eyes. Crying wasn’t my thing, but I was ready to bawl. I wanted to quit the team, quit the school. Hell, I wanted to quit life. Just opt out and hang out at home until later. Much later. When I was all grown up.
“Tell me.”
I shrugged and looked at the floor again.
“We have to talk about this, Carly. You could’ve taken that race. I know it and you know it. Talk.”
Tears slid out of my eyes. I squeezed them tight, but that made it worse.
Coach Eagan took me by the arm and led me to a bench. We sat side by side, her arm across my shoulders. Her perfume was light and fruity.
“Carly, it’s hard. I know it’s hard. But it’ll be better if you talk.”
“I was confused.”
I really wanted to tell Miss Eagan all about Jane and Tommy Mack and how I was nervous all the time. To say that I would be fifteen in a few months and wanted a birthday party with real friends, not just with Mom and Dad and Ryan. I was crying in earnest now, wishing I had a handkerchief because snot was pouring out of my nose.
“Why?”
“I wanted to win, I really did. But then I wanted…I don’t know.”
The big clock on the wall ticked. A floorboard creaked.
“Because you thought it wasn’t cool to win?”
“Sorta. Yes.”
“Carly, you need to ask yourself, are you pleased by what you did? Did it make you happy? That’s all you need to know. What others think, well, they have their own stuff. But running, doing your best, that’s your stuff. Yours.”
On the way home I felt as big as a bug. An ugly bug at that. I put in my earbuds, cranked the music, and ran.
Chapter Eight
The wall at the farthest end of the schoolyard had a nice ledge, exactly the right height to perch on. It was a good place to watch the scene. Corinne and Jane were in the cafeteria. Since the meet I’d kept to myself more, and I liked to be outside whenever I could.
I sat on the edge of the rough concrete and kicked my heels. A couple snogged in the shadow of a yew bush.
Tommy Mack came out the main double door, stepped out of the way of the last stragglers, and surveyed the yard. He began his rounds. He had no particular route that he took each day. He didn’t approach the same people first, nor did he always stop by the basketball players or the ones kicking the soccer ball. He didn’t speak to boys more than girls, nor girls more than boys. He didn’t spend any great amount of time with any one person or group, nor did he always join in any of the sports or conversations. He ignored the couples huddled together at the south end of the building out of view of schoolyard monitors.
Some days he talked to no one, but every day he kept moving. I watched his routine from my spot on the wall by the back fence, green with envy at how laid-back he was. How he didn’t nee
d to be included, but could be part of it just by his small chats.
I missed my old friend Judy. We e-chatted about the meets, and I told her about Jane and Corinne, but I never told her about that last race. And e-chats are not the same as having someone here. The two of us had become friends when we were ten, a long time ago. Back then, when we had lived in the same place, we’d had secret places where we’d hung out to read comics and talk about what we would do when we were grown-ups. We’d practiced kissing in her room, surrounded by the smell of stew and her mother’s baking.
As I watched that couple snog I tried to imagine kissing Tommy, but I couldn’t actually picture our lips touching. It just seemed, well, too odd.
Then he was there right in front of me, as solid and certain of himself as ever.
“Hi. Good race on Friday, Carly.” He extended his hand to me like a grown-up.
Oh man, what a baby name. I should never have told people I was Carly, should’ve said Caroline.
“Yeah. Thanks.”
“Here’s an orange. Hope you like it.”
He held it out to me, bright and shiny, the skin warm from his hand. When I took it he walked away, just as solidly and calmly as he had come.
I sniffed the orange. It smelled of summertime, sweet with a little tang underneath. I rolled it between my hands until the scent got right into my pores. Then I slowly peeled back the skin with my thumbs, and pulled apart a segment. I bit into it and juice spilled across my tongue.
Chapter Nine
We could hardly move through the aisles, it was so packed, like all the other kids in the city had the same idea as Jane and me. We were in the best second-hand shop ever. Some girl squealed when she found a pair of jeans that didn’t look that special to me.
Out of the corner of my eye, I examined the girls and the guys to find some style that might appeal to me and not make my mother faint. Some girls had long, long hair that curled down their backs, some had short hair and some had both, one side longer, the other shorn tight to the head. Some had nose rings and tongue studs, high heels and sneakers, all the usual. What was unusual is that I was interested. Not in tongue studs, but in the style.
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