Sidetracked

by Diana Harmon Asher

  Maybe it’s just the nervous energy and all the stuff I’ve been holding in, but when she says “fartleks” I can’t stop laughing and neither can she. I’m so overloaded with fatigue and confusion and relief, it’s like ten starting guns are going off over my head.

  Heather holds out her hand. I remember that time in the woods back in September when she freed me from the thornbush. Now I take her hand and she pulls me up like I don’t weigh an ounce.

  “Come on,” she says. “Awards.” She starts off toward the group that’s gathering around the finish line.

  “So you’re okay with third place?” I ask her as I limp beside her. My legs still aren’t working so well.

  She thinks for a second, then says, “I like winning. But there are other things that matter, too. Sometimes they matter more. Today, that’s how it was. So, yeah. I’m okay with third place. I’ll get ’em next time.”

  Grandpa comes over and rumples my hair. I guess he was giving me some time with Heather. “Well done, Superhero. And Heather, you run like a gazelle.”

  “Ostrich, more like,” she says.

  “Is everything . . .” Grandpa looks from me to Heather and back again.

  “She’s staying,” I say, and I can’t help grinning.

  I see Mrs. Fishbein looking a little lost over by an oak tree. “Come here, Grandpa,” I say. “There’s someone I want you to meet.” Heather comes, too, and I use what’s left of my energy to hobble over to Mrs. Fishbein.

  “Joseph!” she says. “I never knew running could be so exciting. That Heber fellow seems to be a crowd favorite.”

  “Mrs. Fishbein,” I say. “I want you to meet my grandfather. He doesn’t like liquid soap or golf. But he likes Italian opera. Grandpa, this is Mrs. Fishbein, our librarian. She doesn’t like computers or scanners. She loves an island called Inishbofin.”

  Grandpa smiles and Mrs. Fishbein says, “It’s nice to meet an opera lover. I thought my parrot, Luciano, and I were the last ones.”

  “A Pavarotti fan, are you?” Grandpa asks.

  “Yes, are you?”

  “Well, of course,” he says. “Though my favorite might be Corelli . . .”

  “Ah. A Radamès to die for,” answers Mrs. Fishbein.

  “Aida thought so, too,” says Grandpa.

  I don’t have a clue who Corelli is, or Radamès, either, but they both seem to find this incredibly funny.

  We hear a whistle, and Coach T’s voice comes through a megaphone. “Seventh-grade awards ceremony, at the finish line. All seventh-grade teams to the finish line now, please! Eighth graders are waiting to run.”

  Grandpa and Mrs. Fishbein keep talking. I hear her say, “Kids don’t even know what they think until they text their friends.” And Grandpa says something about rap music and George Gershwin that makes her laugh.

  I look at Heather. She’s trying to hide a grin. I think it’s time for us to get going.

  “Grandpa, I’ll see you later,” I say. “There’s an awards thing over at the finish line.” He gives me a thumbs-up, but I don’t know if he really heard me.

  Heather and I make our way across the track to join the rest of the team.

  “Why do we have to watch the awards?” grumbles Sammy. “Brockton’s going to get all of them.”

  “Hey, they’re not all so bad,” I say. “One of them stopped to help me up.”

  “And the first ten finishers get medals,” says Brianne. “So Heather will get one.”

  “Yeah, be polite,” adds Victoria, and she gives Sammy a nudge, which he doesn’t seem to mind.

  Coach T and the ref are consulting a clipboard and a timer. Finally, Coach T looks up and calls out, “Okay, great meet today! Thank you all for coming to Lakeview. We’ll start with girls’ top ten finishers.” She calls out the girls’ names, and they go up for their medals. She tries not to change her voice when she calls Heather’s name, but I can hear how proud she is.

  There are two team awards, and the Brockton girls get first place and JFK gets second.

  When the boys’ medals are announced, I watch all the Brockton boys go up one by one. All except Trey. I get some satisfaction from that. There are a couple of JFK runners mixed into the top ten, one from Hampton, and one from St. Aloysius.

  Of course Brockton gets team first place, and one of their guys takes the medals and tosses them around like they’re hot potatoes. I’m about to go find Grandpa and Mrs. Fishbein, when I hear Coach T say, “Boys’ second place team medal goes to . . .” and then she calls out, “Lakeview!”

  We look at each other and nobody moves.

  “Come on up and get your medals, Lakeview!”

  Sammy moves first, sprinting over to Coach T, and then the others follow him, but I’m too amazed to move. How could that be? How could we be second? Out of all those teams, how could we have come in second?

  When the guys come back, everybody’s jumping around and giving high fives. Sanjit puts a medal in my hand. “Take it, Joseph, it’s yours.”

  I stare down at it. It’s not like those phony plastic medals that are painted gold and start to chip the day you get them. It’s heavy and it’s made of metal and it hangs by a red, white, and blue ribbon.

  I hear the ref call the eighth-grade girls to the line. Coach T is back with us, grabbing us all for a group hug.

  “You didn’t cheat to get us this, did you?” I ask her.

  “Joseph! How could I cheat?” she says. “We added up the numbers.”

  “But none of us were even in the top ten.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she says. “It’s the total score of the top five runners on each team. Some schools didn’t even have five. Kids dropped off, gave up. We let kids race, but without five, they couldn’t score as a team. Some schools had two fast runners, but the others were way back. Some guys quit when they saw the hill. When we added everything up, Brockton was first and you guys were second.” She holds up three fingers. “Girl Scout’s honor.”

  “And you were blazing!” Mark says to me. “Maybe we should thank that Brockton dude for making you go so fast.”

  Heather takes the medal and puts it around my neck. She’s already wearing hers.

  That’s when my mom and dad show up. Dad is catching his breath. He’s pointing up to the parking lot and pantomiming that he ran all the way.

  My mother looks at my medal. “Second place! Joseph! I never thought . . . we never thought . . .”

  “Oh, it was even more exciting than that,” says Coach T.

  Poor Dad looks like he might keel over. “I’m sorry”—gasp—“we’re late”—gasp—“the train was stopped.” That’s all he can manage to say, but I’m so happy to see them. They tried so hard, it hardly matters that they missed the race.

  “Take it easy, Dad,” I say. “You can come watch me run in winter, or spring. Grandpa saw it all. He’ll tell you about it.”

  “Where is Grandpa?” Mom asks.

  I point up to the tree where I left him with Mrs. Fishbein. Grandpa is leaning against the tree, looking so cool he could almost be a high school kid.

  “Who’s that with him?” asks my mother.

  “Mrs. Fishbein, the librarian,” I say. Mom looks at me like she wonders if I had anything to do with this. I’ll tell her sometime.

  “I don’t want to interrupt,” she says. “I think Grandpa can find his way home. Do you want a ride?”

  “Um, I’d kind of like to hang out here for a while, if that’s okay,” I say. “Stretch, cool down, watch the eighth-grade race. I can walk home.”

  “Of course.”

  “Just take care of Dad,” I say. Mom smiles, and after a bunch of hugs, I watch my father limp back to the parking lot.

  When they go, I hold the medal in my hand and feel its weight. It’s heavy and solid and real.

  I think about the Friedman Law of Worry: There will always be something you don’t think of. And that’s what will get you. But that’s okay. Because you’ll get through it and then so
mething else will happen. And something else. And you’ll get through that, too. And then one day there’ll be something you didn’t think of that gets you, and you’ll realize, it’s the best thing ever.

  I lie down on my back and look up at the sky. I feel my medal on my chest. I watch the clouds pass and I feel the afternoon breeze and the sun shines down on me. Joseph Friedman. Lakeview Leopard. Cross country medalist.

  Epilogue

  Ever since Heather punched out Charlie, he’s pretty much been leaving us alone. It sort of calls into question that “Use your words” rule everybody’s been telling us since nursery school. Still, a lot of other things can happen when you punch somebody in the face, so I guess it’s still a good rule of thumb to use your words, when possible.

  In PE, we’ve moved from soccer to softball to kickball, and sometimes badminton when the weather is bad. Badminton is the only one I relax in, because no matter how hard somebody hits that little birdie at you, it still can’t do too much damage.

  But today, Coach DeSalvo announces that we’re going to run.

  “Okay, ladies and gentlemen,” he says, as we gather on the track. “We have this new track, so it’s about time we used it. We’re going to run a mile today. Now, I said run, not race. I want everybody to be smart about this. Go your own pace. Now, we have a couple of cross country runners here—”

  Charlie coughs into his hand something that sounds like “nerds,” but Coach DeSalvo ignores him.

  “—so you might want to take a page from their book and take it easy. No sprinting. It’s four laps around. Save something for the last two laps. So, let’s line up, and when I blow the whistle, go.”

  As we line up, I remember that first PE class on the soccer field, when I first saw Heather.

  So much has changed since then.

  Heather is going to Hawaii in December, and when she comes home, she’ll be together with her mom and dad. Grandpa has actually gone to Sunshine Senior Living to visit Eddie, and last night the two of them went to the Metropolitan Opera . . . along with Mrs. Fishbein!

  Last week I got my research paper back and I got a B. I wrote about a marathon runner named Meb Keflezighi, who grew up in Africa, became an American citizen, and won the New York and Boston Marathons—after he broke his hip and could barely walk. One of my sources was a book that I found in the library that he wrote himself. Its Dewey Decimal number is 796.42K. Mr. Hernandez is a pretty strict teacher, but when I explained that Meb is just known as “Meb” and hardly anybody uses his last name, he surprised me and let me just write Meb instead of spelling out Keflezighi each time.

  As Coach DeSalvo puts the whistle in his mouth, I look around. The trees have leaves of orange and yellow and even some tips of red; the breeze has a winter chill. A squirrel pokes around under the bleachers. He’s digging furiously, trying to bury a fat old acorn. When the whistle blows, the squirrel takes off.

  So does Charlie. He’s about three kids away from me and he’s out like a flash. “See you later, dork,” he calls back to me. Billy and Zachary are right on his heels. They’re going really fast. I’d like to warn them, but then again, I wouldn’t.

  Heather bounds off, but not as fast as Charlie, who looks over his shoulder and smirks. I start slow. I’m still feeling it from the meet, and besides, I’m not out to prove anything.

  Coach DeSalvo is calling out, “Take it easy, boys, you have four laps to run,” but of course Charlie and his friends don’t listen. They’re sprinting through the first lap, racing each other, shoving and laughing. I know they’re going to pass me, and when I hear them coming I move to the outside of the track and let them go by.

  “Looking good!” I say cheerily. Charlie gives me a suspicious glare, but not surprisingly, he doesn’t have a lot of breath left to answer.

  Heather passes a second later and we exchange a glance. We both know it won’t be long now.

  Looking across the track, I can see that Charlie and his buddies are slowing down. They try to make it look like they’re just relaxing, but I know that’s not it. Heather passes them easily, and then she accelerates. I’m feeling pretty good, and I start to pick up my pace. The track feels solid under my feet, so easy after running over tree roots and up hills. I’m already looking forward to winter track, when we run indoors. I can’t imagine—a whole track inside a building! And spring track and field, running right here, and watching Heather throw discus.

  Now I’m gaining on Charlie and he’s rubbing his side. The stitch has struck. I try not to smile as I pass him and his buddies, who are stumbling along beside him. I watch Heather blaze around her last lap, a blur of limbs and energy and crazy, windblown hair. It’s no surprise that she finishes first.

  I don’t blaze, but I finish feeling pretty good, almost a full lap ahead of Charlie, who is clutching his side and limping along until he finally crosses the finish line and sits down in the middle of the center lane, trying to catch his breath.

  I realize that we could laugh at him. We could say, “Ha, ha, who’s a wimp now?” We could hold our arms up and jump up and down and sing, “We Are the Champions.” We could do a million things.

  I look over at Heather. She motions with her head, letting me do the honors.

  I walk over to Charlie Kastner and say, “It’s okay. You went out too fast and got a stitch. It happened to me, too, at first.” He’s looking up at me, and I know he wants to say something mean, but before he can, I reach out my hand. He looks over and sees that Coach DeSalvo is watching. So is everybody else.

  I guess there’s a line that even bullies know not to cross: the line that puts you into sore loser territory, where you become just a stupid pile of loser muscle. So when he takes my hand, he doesn’t pull me to the ground, even though he probably could. It’s not easy, but I manage to use some leverage and get him to his feet. I can tell his side is still hurting.

  “Have a banana,” I say. “For the stitch.” Then I add, “Potassium.”

  Coach DeSalvo comes over and puts his hands on our shoulders. “I’m glad to see you two getting along,” he says, “because Coach Papasian tells me Charlie’s going to be joining you for indoor track over the winter.”

  I look at Charlie, who doesn’t seem all that pleased with the arrangement.

  “Shot put, right, Charlie?”

  Charlie nods.

  I look at Heather, and she’s covering her face with her hands. When she takes them down, she’s grinning.

  It should be an interesting winter.

  Acknowledgments

  I’d like to start by acknowledging the teachers who started me on the road to becoming a writer: Ms. Akers, Ms. Johnston, Mr. Benjamin, Mr. Gordon, Mr. Giamatti, I am forever grateful.

  It was a happy day when Nicole James agreed to be my agent. And things only got better when Erica Finkel became my editor. I’m so grateful to the whole wonderful team at Abrams, and to Anne Heltzel, for finding that perfect word I was searching for. Thank you all for believing in Joseph and Heather, and in me.

  A thousand hugs to MacKenzie Cadenhead and Jessica Benjamin, my writing buddies, and to Alyssa Capucilli, who brought us together. I could not have made this book what it is without your advice, encouragement and, most of all, your friendship.

  My endless gratitude to the original Mrs. T, and to all of the teachers, coaches, teammates, parents, grandparents and friends who make us into superheroes. And a special thank you to Bobby Asher, and to all the crazy, devoted runners of the world, who continue to amaze and inspire me.

  Love and thanks to my mother and father, who gave me a childhood of safety, laughter, and kindness, and to my sister, Marcie, who blazed every trail, making each step of growing up a little easier.

  And finally, all my love to my husband, Henry, and our sons, Bobby, Benjy, and Adam. You make me feel proud and loved, and like the luckiest person in the world, every single day.

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