The Running Dream (10 page)

“Ohhhhh,” I groan, and sit up.

Mom kisses me on the head. “Would a shower help?”

I check the clock. It’s almost six. “I don’t have time.”

“Then I’ll start on breakfast,” she says, and leaves me to get myself together.

I stretch out my leg and start on my morning physical therapy. It’s become second nature to me. I used to do it because I had to, but now I do it because it helps me feel like I’ve still got a working body. Stretch, resistance, strengthen. I do both legs, both arms. I use towels, bands, and hand weights. It helps wake me up.

Next I do a quick sponge bath in the downstairs bathroom, fix my hair, then dress in a long-sleeved T, a hoodie vest, and my softest jeans. I pin the right leg up. It makes the situation more obvious, but really, there’s no hiding what I’m missing and it bugs me to have the extra fabric flopping around.

“You look great!” Mom gushes as I hop to the kitchen table.

“Good morning, sweetheart,” Dad says, and puts the newspaper aside.

Mom’s big on traditional breakfast, so there’s sausage, toast, and scrambled eggs, plus orange juice and milk. “Kaylee! Breakfast!” she calls at full volume. “Kaylee! You’re going to be late!”

I start on my breakfast and hope that Kaylee appears for more than her usual bite-and-run. I want to try to start over with her. Maybe tell her the picked-up-my-leg story.

But Kaylee doesn’t appear, and breakfast with Dad’s a little awkward. I don’t know why. We small-talk between pockets of silence, but it’s strange. It’s like he wants to say something, but he’s holding back.

Then, just as Kaylee’s footsteps are finally pounding down the stairs, Dad asks, “Do you think you’ll see your coach today?”

“Uh … I don’t know. I hope so.”

“Good,” he says, but there’s an edge to his voice.

I rest my fork and study him. “It’s not his fault, Dad. Kyro’s a great guy. Fiona says I might have bled to death if it wasn’t for him.”

Dad gives a solemn nod. “I know.”

“Then why are you mad at him?”

Mom shoots him a don’t-even-go-there look as Kaylee blasts into the kitchen. “You’re really going to school?” Kaylee asks.

“I’m trying it out,” I tell her with a smile.

She stops. “Do that,” she says, pointing at my face. “Do that right there and everything will be fine.” She hugs me and whispers “I’m sorry about yesterday” in my ear.

Dad uses Kaylee’s interruption to beat a speedy exit, and then the doorbell rings.

“Gotta run!” Kaylee says, gobbling down two bites of eggs and a swig of juice.

I ask Mom why Dad’s mad at Kyro, but she says, “It’s nothing for you to be concerned about.”

“
What’s
nothing to be concerned about?”

But it’s not Kaylee’s ride at the door—it’s mine. “Fiona! Come in, come in,” my mom calls, completely sweeping my question out of the kitchen.

“You ready?” Fiona asks, and she’s beaming with excitement.

Suddenly the butterflies are back.

So is the fear.

But I nod, take a deep breath, and stand.

I’m really sore from all my activity yesterday, and my armpits are chafed from my trip to Angelo’s. So after I brush my teeth and collect my things, I don’t put up much of a fuss about using the wheelchair.

“Just be queen for the day,” Fiona says, thinking she needs to convince me.

“It’s a big campus,” my mom chimes in.

“Fine,” I tell them.

So Fiona and my mom scurry to get me, my backpack, and the wheelchair into Fiona’s car. Mom gives me a kiss and tells me, “I’m so proud of you.”

I smile at her and close the car door, and as we pull away from the curb, I roll down the window and wave like I’m a queen on parade.

She laughs.

I laugh.

So far, so good.

I
’M NOT LAUGHING
when we pull into the student parking lot. Instead, my heart’s hammering inside my chest, and I’m desperate to go home.

I know I’m being irrational.

Still, I’m having a complete panic attack.

There are already swarms of people at school. Fiona and I had planned to arrive before seven-thirty, but it’s already seven-forty.

Everything takes longer with only one leg.

Everything.

“It’ll be okay,” Fiona says as she pulls up the parking brake. “Give me a minute. I’ll be around with your throne.”

I’m breaking out in a cold sweat. “We’ve only got ten minutes to get to class. Maybe we should—”

“We’ll be
fine,
” she calls as she zips around to the hatchback. She pulls out the collapsed wheelchair and says over the backseat, “Jessica, really, this is the best thing you could be doing. You’ll see. It’ll be fine.”

I manage to hobble out of the car as she opens up the chair and wheels it over to the passenger door.

“There you go!” she says, and I sit.

I’m not used to the wheelchair. It seems too small and too big, too precarious and too safe, all at the same time.

My left leg feels cramped by the footrest.

My right leg feels lost at sea.

The jeans leg is pinned up, and I suddenly want it down.

Maybe I won’t look like such a pathetic freak.

I undo the safety pins while Fiona gets our backpacks. “Ready, Your Majesty?” she asks, and when I nod, she straps on her backpack and rests mine in my lap. “Then let’s roll!”

The pant leg flaps as she hurries me toward the school entrance.

Flap, flap, flap
.

It bothers me.

Flusters me.

Then totally freaks me out.

“Stop!” I cry.

She keeps pushing as she asks, “What’s wrong?”

“STOP!”

She does stop, and comes around to face me. “We’re almost there,” she says softly. “It’ll be all right. I
promise
you it’ll be all right.”

I manage to choke out, “My pant leg is driving me crazy.”

She watches me pin it back up, then asks, “You okay now?”

I nod, but I’m not okay. I’m anything but okay.

I know it’s not my fault. I know I haven’t done anything wrong. I know it’s irrational. But still, I’m mortified.

Mortified to be me.

M
Y DOWNWARD SPIRAL IS INTERRUPTED
by Shandall Norwood. “Jessica?” she asks, coming toward us from the left. “Jessica!” she squeals, and charges at me, her arms spread wide. “Girl, you’re back!” she cries, smothering me in a hug.

Shandall is a sophomore, is fast enough to run the 100 for varsity, and is potentially deadly with a discus. When she hits her release right, the discus soars, but once in a while she gets turned around and sends it off in the wrong direction. All of us have learned to stand clear when Shandall’s spinning toward her release.

I return her hug and feel a bit calmer. “Good to see you too,” I mumble into her shoulder.

She pulls back and smiles, and then … what is there to say?

It’s not like I’ll be going to track practice.

It’s not like we have anything else in common.

“We’ve got to get moving,” Fiona says after an awkward few seconds. “Can’t have her tardy on her first day back!”

So Shandall waves and hurries off, and Fiona rolls me
across the parking lot and around the corner to the school’s entrance arch and onto campus. Fiona’s moving fast and chattering away. “We’re lucky we don’t go to one of those schools where everything’s, like, enclosed, and the halls are really crowded, and you have to go up and down levels to get to class.”

She’s right, but what I’m thinking is,
How will I do this in the rain?

We enter the courtyard, and as Fiona pushes me along the sidewalk, I see the first signs that she’s been a busy bee. On our right is the outdoor theater—a Greek-style semicircle of stepped cement seats going down to a stage—an area that the upper classes tend to dominate during lunchtime. Along the far wall are balloons and a large
WELCOME BACK JESSICA!!!
banner.

I smile over my shoulder at Fiona, and she leans forward and whispers, “Gavin helped me put it up.”

The warning bell rings as she hurries me along to first period. A couple of people wave and call hello, but mostly it’s people shortcutting across the lawns, hurrying to beat the next bell.

“You are the best friend ever,” I tell her. “I love the banner.” I twist around farther. “What time did you
get
here?”

She laughs like, Oh, you have no idea, and simply says, “Early.”

Liberty High is laid out like a wagon wheel, with the courtyard as the hub. In the old days the school was much smaller, but as time’s gone by, more and more portable classrooms have been added to the fields behind the school. Each
segment of the wheel is called a wing, and every wing is for a certain subject area and is named with a number. Math is in the 900 Wing, science is in the 800 Wing, English is in the 200 Wing.…

Not the most creative, but easy to figure out.

Fiona rolls me into a portable unit in the 200 Wing. It’s really just the educational version of a double-wide trailer, and like all the portable units, it’s got a ramp. A long, zigzag ramp that’s always annoyed me. It’s a time killer when you’re running late, a bottleneck when the release bell rings; and it’s noisy.
Clomp, clomp, clomp
, people come up it in the middle of class to deliver messages and whatnot. It always wrecks my concentration when we’re testing.

Plus it’s ugly. Painted wood, pipe guardrail … Some teachers try, but there’s nothing anyone can do to camouflage it. It is what it is.

And what it is now is my only way into the classroom.

This bothers me more than it should. When I was a freshman, my friends and I used to swing under the guardrail to get inside the classroom, leap over it to get out. It was just quicker.

Teachers scolded it out of us, or maybe we just grew up. But as Fiona rolls me up the ramp, I see my options as closed.

I can no longer catapult.

Or swing.

Or slide.

I can only roll.

Something about this makes me grab the wheels and push.

“Careful,” Fiona says. “Don’t get your fingers caught!”

“Just let me do it,” I tell her, but when she lets go, I
discover that pushing myself is not easy. The motion’s all forearms and triceps, and I don’t seem to have much strength in them.

I also can’t steer very well, and by the time I’ve maneuvered the chair to face the second half of the ramp, I’m holding up traffic. “Go ahead,” I grumble to the people waiting, and I let Fiona finish pushing me inside. And then I’m distracted by something I hadn’t even considered.

Where do I sit?

Am I supposed to get out of the wheelchair and hop over to my regular seat?

Should I stay in the wheelchair at the back of the classroom?

How am I supposed to take notes?

Ms. Aloi comes to my rescue. “Oh, Jessica!” she says, moving toward the back of the classroom. “It’s so good to see you! No one seemed to know when you’d be returning.…” She drags an empty desk alongside my wheelchair and says, “I’ll get them to deliver a table for you, but for today, will this work?”

“Sure,” I tell her, and try to smile like everything’s just dandy.

“Uh, Ms. Aloi?” Fiona says, signaling me to get out my English assignments sheet. “Here’s a list of the homework Jessica’s missed. She hasn’t been able to do it—I’m sure you can understand that. And now she’s overwhelmed by everything she has to catch up on, so we’re wondering which of these you’ll excuse her from.”

Ms. Aloi looks directly at Fiona.

Fiona holds her gaze. “She has six classes, Ms. Aloi.” She shakes the list a little and says, “They’re all like this.” Then she gives Ms. Aloi a pleading look. “There must be
some
leeway?”

Ms. Aloi takes the list and smiles at me. “We’ll work something out.” The tardy bell has rung, so she heads to the front of the class calling, “Good morning, everybody! Let’s welcome Jessica back!”

Everyone claps and whistles, and a couple of people even stand up.

Fiona grins and gives me a wink as she moves to her assigned seat. It’s a wink that means something specific:

You can make it.