Marie sputtered, but Aubrey stepped forward. “It’s obvious. From the fried-food fest I saw at Lori’s to the pancake breakfasts this town gorges on every weekend.”
“They served turkey sausage and fruit last Sunday. That was new for the pancake breakfast.” The sound of my own voice surprised me.
Aubrey waved her hand, dismissing me. “My dieters are drinking protein shakes and cutting out carbs.”
“That isn’t sustainable for most people, and you know it.” I moved away from where I was holding up the wall.
Aubrey refused to look at me. She turned to Marie. “Harrisburg has a combined running and walking mileage of five hundred miles on our treadmills. I doubt Truhart has even gone a single mile yet.”
I raised my voice. “Of course they have. And they have done it in the real world, outside of the gym.”
Andrew snorted. “Because there isn’t anything in this place except for Santa’s ass!”
“Who’s to say that just because you spend thousands of dollars on gym equipment it’s better?” The ladies stepped aside and made room for me right in front of Marie. Andrew could make fun of me and the gym. But Santa’s ass was the last straw. “Just because we choose unorthodox ways to keep fit doesn’t mean we are going to be any less successful.”
Marie bit her lip. “Lily, you have a point. But I need more than that to take back to the grant committee. Your program isn’t quite what they were expecting.”
“It’s better. And we can prove it,” said Edge.
Aubrey grabbed Marie’s arm. “This is pitiful. Come on. Let’s go before they convince you that Truhart is the Paris of the Midwest, like the festival they were planning last summer.”
Regina turned purple. “It was a nice idea. Our trees are like the Eiffel Tower and our lake is like the Seine.”
Andrew snorted. “Oh my God! Do you see what I mean? They’re all batty.”
Marie stepped away from Aubrey and gazed around the room at the Triple C’s. “How are you going to prove your program is as good or better?”
“A challenge!” Edge declared.
“Yeah!” the ladies said, nodding their heads.
“What? That’s crazy!” Aubrey said.
I almost agreed with Aubrey. While I was completely supportive of our methods in getting fit, there was no way we could compete with the professionals in Harrisburg.
“The Great Warrior Memorial Day Weekend Challenge,” Edge said with his finger in the air.
Elizabeth added, “It will be a perfect way to start the summer.”
Marie looked doubtful and slumped over her clipboard. “That gives you less than a month to get ready.”
“We’ll be fine,” Addie assured her. “Nobody loves a good last-minute scramble like Truhart. Remember how we planned the Truhart Timberfest in practically one month last summer? And how all the Halloween decorations were ruined by that storm right before the House of Horrors opened in October?”
“And Charlotte’s wedding. Don’t forget that!” said Addie Adler.
Corinne put her arm around Addie. “It’ll be like old times.”
“Umm, exactly what are we challenging here?” I didn’t mean to dampen their enthusiasm. But I couldn’t imagine how a warrior challenge would play out.
“We’ll have an obstacle course just like American Ninja Warrior.”
Marie clapped her hands. “Oh, I love that show.” For the first time since she walked in the door earlier, she looked excited.
“And we can have a nutrition quiz of some sort,” Elizabeth said.
“Yeah. With a cook-off,” said Marva.
Andrew was sweating the way he had during the arm-wrestling match. “This is ridiculous. Your chef would serve chili fries while ours would make kale and quinoa.”
Regina narrowed her eyes. “We know about quinoa, Aubrey. For goodness’ sake. And where to find it at the Family Fare, thanks to Lily!”
“You could have the same ingredients available to both chefs and see who cooks the most delicious meal,” Corinne said with a sparkle in her eye.
Aubrey snorted. “I can see it now. Your chef would probably throw everything in a blender and call it a smoothie.”
Marie’s face dropped. “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea.”
Corinne put her hands on her hips. “Our chef can do vegan!”
Marie made a note on her clipboard. “Warrior chef. I like it.”
Andrew wiped his forehead with his good hand. He really needed to get that gland issue checked out. “If we are having a competition, you need to make it about weight loss.”
“Fine.” Edge spoke with amazing confidence.
As a fitness instructor, I knew that wasn’t the point of any competition. “It shouldn’t be based on weight loss. It should be about lowering your BMI,” I said.
“Weight loss, BMI. Either way, we’ll win,” said Aubrey. For the first time, I wondered if she truly had the skills to be a fitness trainer. She was rude and a bully. And she also didn’t respect the importance of “good” weight loss.
Marie looked like she had just been saved from a root canal. “I think this is a great idea. I’ll take it back to the grant board for approval. I don’t think it will be a problem.”
Edge put his arm around my shoulder. “So Lily stays.”
“For now.”
Andrew mumbled something to Aubrey. It sounded like, “Now they’ll lose for sure . . .”
Edge marched to the front door and tore off the sheet of paper announcing the closing of the gym. He threw it across the room toward the trash, and Andrew jumped out of the way to keep his precious pinky from being smashed.
“No changing your mind, Marie. Without Lily we are lost.” I loved how sure he sounded. I wished I had the same type of confidence.
“Where are we going to have this competition?” I asked. Was I the only one who was concerned with the details of this crazy challenge?
“Memorial Day weekend at the county fairground,” suggested Edge.
“Aren’t a lot of people gone then?” asked Marie.
“Not in Truhart. This is where tourists from downstate come on Memorial Day weekend. A Warrior Weekend Challenge will give them even more reason to head to the great north,” said Regina.
Aubrey nodded. “Fine with us. We get twice as many tourists on that weekend.”
Addie Adler finished putting her garter on and stepped back in her shoe. “What does the winner of the competition get?”
“Money?” Corinne asked hopefully.
“I’m afraid we don’t have that kind of budget,” Marie said.
“A prize!”
“Ha! Maybe the loser has to put Santa’s ass in the center of their town with the words kick me across it,” jeered Andrew.
Marva shook her finger at him. “That’s not nice. Even we wouldn’t do something like that to the kids. Imagine seeing people kick Santa. You are a very rude young man.”
Trying to keep another confrontation from happening, Marie ushered Aubrey and Andrew out the door before he broke his other fingers on Marva’s tongue-lashing that followed him out the door.
LESSON SIXTEEN
Vary Activities
There were a lot of reasons why the challenge was a bad idea.
I ignored them all.
Instead I focused on the upside of things. With the change in the weather and the newly issued challenge, my walkers were motivated to move. They walked and walked and walked. They still stopped at garage sales, but they were obsessed with finding old workout equipment. Infomercials must be all the rage in Truhart, because every exercise fad that was featured in the past twenty years became the hottest garage-sale pick around. Two ladies drove to Harrisburg for their walk. They found a Bowflex at a yard sale. Corinne Scott bought a second ThighMaster at a church rubbage sale in Gaylord. Not to be outdone by the “latest trends” of the past twenty years, Gladys Stubbs fished two sets of Shake Weights out of the landfill.
But Addie Adler took
the prize. She had Edge pull her old vibrating belt out of the attic of the Amble Inn. When I told her that vibrating belts were a fitness fad that had proven to be useless in losing weight, she disagreed. She insisted that she had lost twenty pounds using that equipment when her nieces and nephews were young.
“It’s true, Lily. I remember her using it when she babysat us.” Edge shook his body back and forth. “I just wish she had put us all down on the ground before she used it!”
Edge made himself the official chief of the obstacle-course team. Instead of calling themselves ninjas, they called themselves after an old term for lumberjack, the River Hogs. They held “tryouts” in order to choose the four women and four men who would compete. East Elementary School’s playground became the center of the obstacle course, with a warning from the principal that if they broke the equipment they had to pay for it.
Hopeful participants gathered for the tryouts, attracting quite a crowd of kids in town. Edge hung ropes from the swing set and demonstrated stepping from swing to swing without falling off. Many locals I had never met showed off their upper body strength on the monkey bars. They climbed to the top of the super-dome climbing structure as fast as they could and then leaped across the sloped stepping stones that Edge built. Corinne’s brother, who owned Auto Doc, had promised to make log rolls out of PVC pipes and old casters. All in all, the course was quite impressive.
I sat on a bench, clutching my fleece around me, and watched as people competed for a spot on the team. It was a brisk day, but you would never know it watching the warriors. They tossed off their sweatshirts and were covered with a sheen of sweat within the first half hour.
Elizabeth Lively ended up being quite agile on the rope climbs. When she finished her run-through, her fiancé, J.D., gave her a proud high five.
“Are you sure you don’t want to try out?” she asked him.
He shook his head. “It wouldn’t be fair since I work for the county sheriff’s department. I feel I should be a neutral party in this challenge.”
“Do you think any of the officers who live in Harrisburg feel the same way, J.D? Come on. You live in Truhart,” Edge griped.
But J.D. wouldn’t budge.
“At least help us train, J.D. You had to do some of this stuff at the police academy.”
J.D. agreed, but Edge was still bitter that his friend would not join the team. “Be careful on the rollers,” I called out. The last thing we needed was someone else with an ACL tear in Truhart. Edge had just finished showing everyone how the makeshift course should be navigated at a faster time, and came to stand next to my bench. “This stuff will be easy for them by the end of next week.”
“I don’t care so much about that. I just don’t want anyone to get hurt.”
“Nahh. They’ll be fine.”
“Are you sure you know what the course is going to look like?”
“Marie gave me a list of the obstacles. She got a local contractor to build it in return for free advertising. This is as close as we can get to training without using the real deal. We should be fine.”
Edge held out his arm until it was right under my nose. “Check out these muscles.”
I waved my hand under my nose. “Are you trying to win the BO competition?”
He looked insulted. “You know you want me. Take a look at these biceps.”
I caught sight of Rocky Stone straining on the monkey bars. “Come on, Rocky. You can do it!”
Rocky had lost almost ten pounds since he started “working” at the gym. I was so proud of him. So was his mother. She and I had spoken on the phone several times and she told me she had never seen Rocky so determined to lose weight. He claimed he had more energy and more motivation than ever.
“Look at this, Ms. Shue! I can do a chin-up!”
I wasn’t the only one cheering him on. The new principal at the high school had come out to watch. We both agreed that we needed to find a way to combat the bullying and help reach kids who wanted to lose weight like Rocky.
On the other side of the course, Edge was making notes as he watched two of his friends race across the balance beams. Edge had barely looked Rocky’s way. I wandered over and glanced at the notes he was making.
He pulled them closer to his chest. “Are you peeking at my notes?”
“I’m just wondering how you’re picking the team. There are a lot of people here. Are you going to have to make many cuts?”
He swept his gaze around the playground. “A few of the guys aren’t sure they have the time to train. So, I might add them as alternates. Otherwise I think I know my team.”
“Is Rocky on your list?”
He straightened his baseball hat and lowered his voice. “You know he can’t really compete, don’t you?”
“I know he isn’t in shape yet, Edge. But look at him. He is working so hard. The experience of moving toward a goal with a team would be so good for him.”
Edge cast me a sideways glance. In the sunlight, I could see the red in his beard. His T-shirt was molded to his chest by the layer of sweat he had worked up demonstrating the equipment. He looked quite different from the first day I met him. Flannel shirts were man camouflage, and should be outlawed for single men. How had I ever thought he was anything but hot?
“I just don’t want to see him get hurt. And I have to be fair about it.”
I pulled out a feminine tool I had never used before. I lowered my chin and pressed myself against him. “Please. Can you make him an alternate? As a favor to me.”
He let out a long, tortured breath. “What are you going to do for me?” he asked in a gruff voice.
I pulled his head down and whispered exactly what I would do for him.
“Can we do it now? We can use the backseat of the truck.”
I pushed him away. “Go back to your notes, Coach.”
“What notes?” He readjusted his sweatpants.
I walked away, letting my hips sway, which was possible now that my knee was healing. Finally! My leg brace was off today. Doctor’s clearance. Thank God!
Before I was out of earshot, Edge called out, “Hey, Lily!”
When I turned around, he winked. Then, in a schmaltzy macho gesture, he formed his fingers into a V and pointed them back and forth at his eyes and mine. “You and me at my place later.”
I walked past Elizabeth, avoiding her speculating gaze. We weren’t much of a secret. No one seemed to care. In fact, everyone seemed happy for us.
Just yesterday, Louise had stopped me at breakfast.
“Lily, you’re an adult. So is Edge. I’m a light sleeper.”
I wanted to bury my head in my eggs.
She pinched her lips and put a hand on my shoulder. “I would hate to see you hurt. Turn on the driveway lights when you sneak over to Edge’s.”
When I told Edge, he practically rolled on the ground with laughter.
This morning after he escorted me back across and the street, he looked up and waved at his mom, who stood at the window. I collapsed on his childhood bed and put the pillow over my head. As I recovered from my embarrassment, I thought about my life before coming to Truhart. Up at dawn. The rigid workout schedule. Coming home to a lonely meal and falling asleep to the sound of the television in the background, spending my one day off each week at my mother’s house, listening to her tell me how wonderful my brothers’ lives were. Even the times I had made it out to an event that might include a celebrity or two, were dim compared to my life now.
It made absolutely no sense.
But, like the way our secret was no longer a secret, I was learning not to care about logic or what anyone else thought.
* * *
“Are you sure you didn’t pull a muscle, Edge?”
He grunted from where he lay across my lap on his new couch. “It’s just a little sore.”
Little sore? The man had winced every time he used his fork at dinner. It was only the first week of practice for the new team. I couldn’t help worrying about inj
ury. I dug my thumb into a spot on his neck and kneaded away the knot. “Maybe you should ease into this a bit. Give your muscles time to recover.”
“Nope. We’re warriors. No pain, no gain, as the saying goes, right?”
“Actually, Edge, that isn’t a very good saying. I want you and the River Hogs to go a little slower. You need to work up to the obstacle course. You should be rolling with the foam rollers before the work-out, and strength training in the gym to supplement your training at the playground.”
“Rolling is for wimps.”
“You are absolutely wrong. What do you think I am doing right now? A roller is a poor man’s massage.”
He leaned his head back and kissed me. “Then I must be a rich man.”
I pulled my lips away. “I have to insist that you slow things down a bit. I don’t want anyone hurt.”
He sat up and turned to face me. “We have like three weeks to do this, Lily. We don’t have time to work up to it.” He made air quotes with his fingers when he said the word work. I didn’t like the way he was ignoring me.
I poked him in the chest. “Hey! The last time I checked, I was still the trainer in this town. I want you to hold your next practice at the gym so you can train in a safe environment.”
“And when would you have us practice on a real obstacle course? The day before the challenge?”
I stood up and made my way into the kitchen. He was getting very pushy for a man with no greater ambition than scooping ice cream. When I first met him, I thought his only form of exercise came from lifting a bowl of chips. Now I realized he had the propensity to be a fitness maniac. I wasn’t sure I liked it, to be honest. Part of me wanted the lazy buffoon back. Even the whipped cream was gone from his refrigerator.
He must have sensed my mood because he got up gingerly from the couch and came over to me. “Sorry, Coach. You’re in charge here. I get it. I just can’t stand the thought of Aubrey Vanderbeek holding this over my head.”
“What is it with you two? Was your high school fling a bigger deal than you told me?”
He grabbed an apple and leaned back against the counter, shuddering. “I told you, our dating was only in her dreams.”
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