The cloud rotated above me. Tree limbs flew through the air like shrapnel.
“Jeez!” I grumbled, pulling my cap down tightly over my head. “Take it easy!”
The cloud changed shape, flattening out like a pie plate. Sand fizzed across bedrock and dirt filled the air.
“Enough with the wind machine!” I cried.
It was in that moment — as I said those five words — that I realized the voice belonged to the Wind.
Yes, I know. It sounds stupid now. But at the time, I was convinced that I was having a conversation with the Wind. At the same time, I knew it was only a hallucination. I kept hearing my dad’s voice saying, “Things get pretty strange after thirty-five miles.”
I bent down and dug through my pack for some food and popped a handful of jelly beans into my mouth.
When I looked back up, something had appeared in the sky. It flew toward me like a giant bird, swirling on the updrafts and downdrafts. Eventually it came close enough that I could tell what it was. I reached my hands out and pulled it down to earth.
It was a pair of camouflage pants, size 42 and badly stained. Something was hiding in one of the back pockets.
I pulled it out. It was a folded piece of paper. Someone had written on it. It was my handwriting … WAIT!
“Hey!” I shouted. “Where’d you get this?”
Wind said nothing, but the yellow eye glistened. It was a song I’d written the year before.
The generals who are at the top
Never get a scratch.
When soldiers come back, sad and torn
They send another batch.
It was my anti-war song, “Man Versus Man.” I’d written it back in the fall. But then I’d lost it.
“Who’d you steal this from?” I shouted.
Wind didn’t answer. I held the waistband of the pants and shook them out. They were pretty disgusting, coated in mud and grime. A roll of Fruity Juicers popped out of the front pocket. I unwrapped the waxed paper and tossed two candies into my mouth. The taste reminded me of afternoons at my house — Dad making toast soldiers for me and Ollie after church. The sound of hot cross buns popping out of the toaster.
Wait a second — how could a candy remind me of all that?
Just a hallucination, I reminded myself.
I crumpled up the wrapper and sat down with my back against a rock. Pillowcases of cloud swirled above the trees.
“Have you seen my shadow?” Wind bellowed.
“Your shadow?” I coughed. “You don’t have a shadow! You’re the Wind. You’re, like, shadow-free.”
Wind blew through the trees, moaning with grief. It sounded like a freight train blowing its horn late at night.
I thought to myself: Why doesn’t Wind have a shadow? Everything else has a shadow — doesn’t it? Kids have shadows. So do animals. And bicycles. So do cars, mountains, parents.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “Maybe I’ll get lucky and find it. I’m running through the forest anyway, so I’ll do some looking.”
The octopus cloud lightened to the colour of buttermilk, and spots of blue appeared here and there in the sky.
“Just one question,” I shouted. “How will I recognize your shadow if I see it? You’re always changing shape. I don’t know what you really look like.”
But Wind didn’t answer. It had already jetted off. It was probably stealing baseball caps from kids in Saskatchewan by now.
I swallowed some of my yams. The sky continued to brighten. The waves in the beaver pond softened.
What the heck just happened? I wondered.
Some daring frogs began to croak. I stood up, feeling like I was waking from a dream. Then I ate my last sweetpotato wedge and started running.
Thirty-five miles down. Sixty-five to go.
THE BANDIT
Mile 38
Okay, so 100 miles may not sound like such a big deal. But do you know how far it actually is?
It’s exactly 160 kilometres. Which is about the distance from Vancouver to Hope. Or from Toronto to London. Or from Montreal to Saint Boniface.
One hundred miles is the distance between:
Edmonton and Red Deer
Calgary and Fort McLeod
Halifax and New Glasgow
Fredericton and Miramichi
Charlottetown and Moncton
Victoria and Port Alberni
Kelowna and Kamloops
Sudbury and Blind River
Hamilton and Owen Sound
Regina and Chaplin
Winnipeg and Carberry
Medicine Hat and Lethbridge
Moose Jaw and Swift Current
Whitehorse and Skagway
I could go on, but basically, if you get in a car, hop on a highway and drive for 2 hours — that’s 100 miles.
Not many people enter 100-mile races, and of those who do, about half DNF. That’s how tough this race is.
SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS: DNF stands for Did Not Finish, right?
QUINN: Yeah. They post it beside your name on the race website after you crash and burn. Most runners I know are embarrassed to get a DNF, but they shouldn’t be. There are ten billion ways you can implode in this race. You can slip on a wet rock, trip over a tree root, or watch your leg get swallowed by a rabbit hole. If you twist an ankle, like I almost did, congratulations — you just ended your race!
You can eat too much food and wind up with cramps. Or you can eat too little and run out of gas. If you drink too much water, you could even die from a weird condition called hyponatremia. That doesn’t happen very often, luckily.
There are other ways to screw up on the trail: You can wear too few clothes and freeze to death. Or you can wear too many and overheat. You can wear the wrong shoes and wind up with blisters. You could wear the wrong kind of shirt, one that chafes against your nipples. Ever had bloody nipples? It hurts like —
SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS: Okay, I get it! It’s a really tough race.
QUINN: Exactly. So it’s not surprising that I made one tiny mistake.
SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS: What happened?
QUINN: Nothing much. Except … Well, it’s kind of a miracle that I survived.
SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS: What could be worse than getting bloody nipples?
QUINN: Running out of water.
At first I thought that my back was just sweaty. The sweat trickled down my skin and soaked the waistband of my shorts. But then I noticed that my legs were wet too. Wait a second, I thought. I don’t sweat that much!
My hydration pack had sprung a leak. All 3 litres had dripped away. It must’ve happened at the beaver pond, I figured, when I sat down against that rock.
Why did I sit down with my back to a rock? Why didn’t I take off my hydration pack first?
Stupid-Stupid-STUPID, I thought. Ultra stupid.
It was 31 degrees and as humid as a sauna. The next rest stop was 7 miles away.
I opened the pack and peeked inside. I had maybe 3 millilitres of water left in there.
Want to know the definition of screwed — 3 millilitres of water is the definition of screwed!
I drank those 3 millilitres and considered my options.
I could keep moving and hope to reach Grace Point. Of course, I’d probably get heatstroke and fry to a crisp before I got there.
I could sit down in the shade and wait for another runner. They might give me a gulp or two of water, but probably not much more.
Or, I could drink the water from Hither Lake. It looked clean, and I’m sure it would have tasted great, and for 2 or 3 miles, I’d probably feel fine. But then my stomach would start to grind, and my intestines would turn to liquid. And for the next 2 days I’d be exploding from both ends.
It’s called beaver fever and it’s like the flu, only worse. The beavers poop in the lake; that’s what makes you sick.
Idiot, I thought. Why hadn’t I noticed that my water pack was leaking? If I’d noticed sooner, I could have conserved my water, instead of sucking
it back whenever I felt thirsty.
I walked for 20 minutes, hoping another runner would come along. Of course, no one did. What happened to the Dirt Eater, I wondered? Maybe Kneecap was right; maybe he’d dropped out of the race.
My throat felt as dry as a chalkboard eraser. The water in Hither Lake was looking more delicious all the time.
I pulled out Kneecap’s phone. I started texting my mom. But what could I write that wouldn’t freak her out?
Another sign: Mile 39. In the last 2 hours I’d run 4 whole miles.
Four miles in 2 hours. That meant I was going 2 miles an hour. Lame!
I sighed and sat down in the shade beneath a tree. And then, thank God, the bandit came along.
At first I thought he was talking on a headset, but when he got closer I realized that he was just mumbling to himself. He was hunched over and looked like a human comma. His face was deeply tanned — the colour of an old boot.
He looked up and saw me. “Hello there, Mr. Scheurmann,” he said.
He wore a floppy hat and a baggy T-shirt that said IT’S NOT LUCK across the front. He had to be as old as my grandpa.
“Hi,” I said. “How do you know my name?”
He stopped running and put his hands on his hips. “You’re Tom’s son, right?” he asked. I nodded. “I heard that you were running the race. Not many kids your age out here, so I figured it had to be you.”
His sunglasses were massive. As big as a car windshield. He seemed to be looking at a spot above my left shoulder.
“Did you fall?” I asked.
His legs were caked with mud. A bloody gash ran down his right forearm. “Oh yeah,” he said. “I was trying to keep up with a very fast runner girl.” He smiled to think of it. “We could probably still catch her if we tried.”
“Did she have a bear bell attached to her shoe?” I asked.
The old guy nodded. “Now that you mention it, she did,” he said.
“That’s not a girl,” I said. “That’s Kara.”
“Well now, of course she’s not a girl to you — she looked to be in her forties or maybe fifties — but that’s plenty young for me.”
His body shook as he bent over and laughed. His laughter sounded like water gurgling down a drain.
“Do you have any extra water?” I asked.
He took off his hat and ran his hand through his grey hair. “You ran out? Out here?”
I felt my face go hot. The old guy stood up straight. Well, not exactly straight. Straighter. He looked at me for a few seconds and then shrugged off his knapsack.
“Lucky thing I came along,” he said, unzipping his pack and pulling out a wineskin. “Take a gulp of this.”
It wasn’t water, but it was cool and delicious. “Whoa,” I said. “That’s intense.”
“My own secret recipe,” he said.
It was like drinking a Christmas tree. It was like swallowing a thunderstorm on a hot summer night.
“A lot of antioxidants in that,” my visitor said. “Rosewater, mint, basil — it’s real good for your kidneys.”
I drank and drank while the old guy told me about himself. I couldn’t stop.
“I used to play for the Edmonton Royals,” he said. “You’ve probably heard of me … Kern Gregory, Number 1? The Holy Moly Goalie from Muskogie?”
This seemed to matter to him a great deal, so I lied and told him that his name sounded familiar. He’d done me a huge favour, letting me drink from his wineskin, so I figured I owed him one.
“Hydration’s the most important thing,” Kern said, “both in hockey and in running. You can train all you want, but if you don’t keep hydrating, you’re toast. Hey, you don’t look so good, if you don’t mind me saying. Take another hit of the magic water …”
He pushed the wineskin back at me. The more I drank, the more I wanted. Suddenly I felt like I was going to throw up. Luckily, it turned out to be a belch.
“Whoa there,” said Kern. “Take it easy.”
I wiped my mouth and took a few deep breaths.
“If it’s any consolation,” he said, “everyone out here feels just as lousy as you do. You don’t run a hundred miles without getting beat up. But we didn’t sign up for a luxury cruise, now did we?”
That laughter again. The guy loved to laugh.
I gave him back his wineskin. I’d drunk at least half of the magic water, but Kern didn’t seem to notice.
“Feeling better?” he said. “That’s good, that’s good.”
My fanny pack made a trilling noise.
“Is that a phone?” Kern asked.
“Yeah.” I pulled it out and read the text. Another GO QUINN GO! from Ollie. Only, he’d misspelled it. He’d typed GF QUINN GF! To me, it looked like GOOF QUINN GOOF!
“Can I borrow that for a second?” said Kern.
“Sure,” I said, handing him the phone. “Can I have a little more water?”
“You’re still thirsty?”
“Actually …” I told him about my hydration pack.
“Jeez!” Kern said. “Why didn’t ya say so?” He reached into his knapsack and pulled out a plastic jar with a tube attached to one end.
“What’s that?” I asked.
He grinned. “It’s another brilliant save by the Holy Moly Goalie from Muskogie! This, my dear boy, is a water purifier!”
He plucked my empty water bottle out of its holster. Then he walked down to the edge of the lake. “This’ll take a few minutes,” he said, and I watched as he filled up the plastic jar. He pumped the water through the filter and into my bottle and then he dropped in a purifying tablet and shook it up.
“We’ll let that sit for a few minutes,” he said.
I stared at my bottle, now full of delicious, almost-drinkable water, while Kern tapped and double-tapped the screen of Kneecap’s phone. “My daughter’s running this race too,” he said. “She’s somewhere ahead of us, and I’m curious how far she’s got.”
I sat in the shade and looked out at the lake. I felt like the luckiest person in the world. A water purifier. What were the odds? I’ll bet no other runner had brought one of those along.
Kern squinted at the screen. “She’s passed Grace Point,” he said. “Hey, she’s doing all right.”
“Why aren’t you running with her?” I asked.
Kern frowned. “Too slow for her,” he said. “Besides, I’m not even supposed to be in this race. I never got around to registering.”
That explained why he didn’t have a number. “You’re a bandit,” I said.
Kern said nothing, but pointed at my bottle. “That should be safe to drink now,” he said.
I drank half the water down and instantly felt better. Kern walked back to the edge of the lake. He filled the purifier a second time and began pumping the water through the filter.
“You know what I love more than anything?” he said, looking out at the lake. “I love seeing the sun come up two or three times in the same race, and knowing that I haven’t been to bed once.”
He refilled my bottle for the second time. “There ya go,” he said. “Don’t drink that one too quickly. It should be enough to get you to Grace Point. It’s only six more miles, but we’ll stick together just in case. They should have an extra hydration pack that you can borrow.”
We ran together for the next hour and a half. Kern was slower than me, but I didn’t mind going at his pace. He told great stories, which made the time pass more quickly and distracted me from my aches and pains.
“Bruce said that every race has a surprise,” I said. “I guess that leaky water pack was my surprise, eh?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Kern. “That was just a little malfunction. I think the real surprises are the things we learn about ourselves.”
We came to a tree that had fallen over the trail. I ducked under it. Kern took his time climbing over.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
Kern reached into his pocket and pulled out a granola bar. He broke it in two and
passed one of the halves to me.
“Most people don’t even know why they’re out here,” he said. “They don’t know if they’re running to something, or running from something.”
I thought about this for a few moments. “What if someone isn’t doing either?” I asked. “What if he’s, you know, just running?”
For the first time since we’d been together, Kern turned and looked me right in the eyes. “Then they’re blessed,” he said.
Blessed, I thought? What does that mean, blessed?
All of a sudden, Kern began to laugh.
“What’s so funny?” I said.
“I don’t know!” he cried. “I’m just feeling giddy. Everything seems funny when you’ve run forty-three miles!”
The trail markers led us down the side of a steep ravine. I flew right down, but Kern took it more slowly. When he got to the bottom he told me to run on ahead.
“We’re almost at Grace Point,” he said, pulling out his compass and stepping off the trail. “I can’t stop there since I’m not registered, so I’m going to go backcountry for the next couple of miles.”
“Want me to grab you some food?” I asked.
“Nah, I’ve got a dozen sandwiches in here …” He patted his knapsack as if it were a pet. “Just don’t forget to ask Bruce for an extra bladder for your hydration pack. Oh, and if you happen to see some of those cookies with the red jam in the middle …”
“You like those things?”
“Who doesn’t?”
Ummm. Just about everyone.
I promised Kern that I’d grab him a dozen. It was the least I could do after he’d saved my life.
But they didn’t have any of those cookies at Grace Point. Not that it would have mattered. I didn’t see Kern again until after the race.
GRACE POINT
Mile 45
I left Kern behind and followed the trail to the edge of Hither Lake. Waves crashed against the beach, and strips of snow-white foam bobbed on the water like dotted lines on a highway. I ran along the shore, following the pink flags, and 5 minutes later I cruised into Grace Point station. Hip hop was blaring from a pair of speakers, and volunteers were mixing jugs of powdered sports drink.
A round-faced man in a Japanese kimono sat me down on a plastic chair.
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