Heroine(31)

They usually look to me for confidence, so I convey that, giving them an up-nod in the hallway, a reassuring “see you after school,” to Bella Center, who never, ever finishes a run without puking. Carolina is a little pale, too. She’s not a distance runner, and even though the most we’ll ever have to run during a game is 240 feet—in the case of a home run—Coach says she won’t play anyone who’s on the plate. Equipment won’t even come out of the lockers for four weeks; this is all about running. And I have to act like that’s something I can do.

Nikki is positively gray when I see her in study hall, which isn’t uncommon for the freshmen.

“Does she really chase you if you lag?” Nikki asks me, her feet at the edge of our shared table, knees pulled up to her chest.

“Only toward the end of practice,” I tell her. “Coach says there’s more in you than you think, and if there’s someone chasing you people tend to find that last energy reserve.”

“What does she do if she catches you?”

“Then the whole team runs an extra mile.”

“Ouch,” Nikki says, going from gray to white. “That’s . . . harsh.”

“That’s softball,” I tell her. “Oh, and don’t tell Coach you’re going to puke, either. She’ll tell you if you can still talk, you aren’t going to puke. Which is actually true. Same with passing out. If you’re really going to, you don’t get time to announce it.”

“Okay.” Nikki closes her eyes and rests her chin on her knees.

“You’ll be fine,” I tell her, and I mean it. It’s something I can see in her, a grittiness that might not be obvious in her small build, but can be spotted in her eyes. It’s what I see in my childhood pictures—pure determination.

“Really?”

“Yeah,” I say. “I know it sounds stupid, but just keep putting one foot in front of the other.”

To someone watching it might seem like I’m being a good team leader, calming the anxiety of a younger player. But really this is what I’ve been saying to myself for weeks, every time I get out of bed and want to crawl back in, each step across the parking lot to the school, then out again. It’s not Nikki I’m talking to when I say these things; it’s myself—keep putting one foot in front of the other.

Just today I’m going to have to do it faster.

“Ladies, two miles.”

It’s how my season has started every year since I hit high school, a greeting that Coach yells to our semicircle of stretching girls before even introducing herself to the freshmen. I know I’m about to experience pain, maybe even enough to punch through the protective fuzziness of the Oxy tablet I quickly bit in half and chewed before practice. But those words still send a spike of adrenaline through my veins, warming up my blood along with the black tarmac of the track as the sun eases behind a low-hanging March cloud.

“That’s eight laps,” Carolina says for the younger players, as we get to our feet. I reach down to pull up Nikki, whose color hasn’t improved.

“You’ve got this,” I tell her, pulling my heel up to my rear end, feeling the stretch of my quad. “Pace with me. Longer strides eat up the distance faster.”

“’Kay,” she says, and joins me with Carolina at the head of the pack.

“Shorter strides feel easier,” I continue as we take the first curve, the girls fanning out behind us already, weakest at the back. “But they make you take more steps than you actually need to. You’re working harder—”

“Catalan!”

Coach’s voice cuts from where she’s standing at the fifty-yard line, eyeing our progress.

“Yeah?” I shout back.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

I shoot Carolina a glance, but she shakes her head, as clueless as I am.

“Running.” I’m careful how I say it. Coach doesn’t care for smart-asses.

“No, you’re not.”

Shit.

I cut into the grass, headed toward Mattix at a slow jog. “Coach, I’m—”

“Fine?” she asks.

I stop in front of her, aware of Carolina’s back as she passes us, Nikki’s dark ponytail flopping between her shoulder blades.

“Yes,” I tell her.

“I decide if you’re fine, and I’m telling you to walk these laps.” She sees my face fall, though I try to hide it.

“Just for this week,” Coach adds in a lighter voice, one that won’t carry to the rest of the team.

I don’t argue, although everything inside of me screams as I step back onto the track. I take a lane on the outside, so that others can pass me easily. Soon even the slowest girls have lapped me, and I’m overhearing snatches of Nikki and Carolina’s conversation as they drift by.

Two times. Four. Six.

By the end Nikki is struggling and Carolina is talking her through it, even though her own face is red and I can hear the strain in her voice. Others slip past me, teammates casting me curious glances. I’m sure it’s odd to see Mickey Catalan walking.

And it sure as hell doesn’t feel right to finish last.

When I was ten we should have won first place in the county tournament, but it didn’t happen. That’s because of a girl name Lana Patrick, who now plays trumpet in the marching band. Lana was a good kid, the cute kind with two little blond braids and matching ribbons on the ends, a button nose, and a sweet voice that always said, “yes, sir,” or “no, sir,” to our coach, even though he was just somebody’s dad.