10. Chapter 10
Chapter 10
Elise
F inally, it was nine p.m.—time to run. I gave grandma a hug, grabbed my keys and water bottle, and drove in the fading light to Clearfield’s track, a place that felt even more like home than the house I’d grown up in.
After some light stretching, Bessey and I started our warm-up lap. Bugs hummed and chirped from nearby trees as our feet padded along the track’s black surface. With the wide purple sky as a backdrop, I burst into a short sprint, grateful for the freedom after a day of being cooped up wearing an itchy dress in a stuffy room full of mourners, all with their eyes trained on me.
Dad's funeral had needed to happen, but after almost a year of waiting for it, a part of me believed it would never actually come.
The finality of his remains laying there in a closed casket while people shared memories of their time with him, everything in the past tense…
With no-one but Bessey to see them, I finally let my tears flow. They gushed out of me in such an intense wave that I crumpled to my knees on the grainy track surface.
Bessey licked at my face with desperation.
“It’s okay, girl.”
I drew her to me, wetting her fluffy mane of fur with my tears. She wrapped a paw around my back, and I cried all the harder.
Words from Dad’s life sketch spoken by Pete came back to me.
“Most devoted Dad I ever knew. All he did was talk about Elise on our mornin’ runs. When he wasn’t talkin’ about her, he was talkin’ about his team. He loved those kids like they were his own.”
An audience of sobbing former teammates, along with Pete’s own tears almost ripped the grief right out of me. But I’d held it in until this moment on this track paved with a lifetime of memories.
I’d climbed over every one of those benches when Dad brought me to practice as a kid. In fact, I’d taken my very first steps over there near the starting line. The photo sat in a box of Dad’s favorite memories.
Now it was just me here, surrounded by his ghosts. And all of them were shouting at me. Calling for me to do something with the years and years of training he’d given me. I may have lost that race, his race, but there had to be more.
Pushing off the gritty ground, I stumbled to my feet. I finished my warmup on wobbly legs.
“What now, Dad?” I breathed.
I’d asked the question at least a thousand times since that day, laying face-down in the dirt while hundreds of girls ran over or around me, my ankle too wrenched to do anything beyond crawl and then hop to the sidelines.
I’d never forgotten the reception I got when I finally scrambled over to where our team was camped, tear marks streaked across my dust-covered face.
“Don’t be so dramatic,” Sophie had laughed. “Just because you were having a bad race doesn't mean you had to go and fake an injury. The tears are a nice touch, but nobody’s buying it.”
Then everyone else had laughed right along with her. They were my teammates. I had literally fought, sweated and sometimes even bled alongside them. With the exception of Dad, Grandma and The Grans, I trusted them as much as anyone. And in my moment of greatest need, having suffered a humiliating defeat, with my dad missing, they had laughed at me. Laughed at my tears.
No one was going to do that to me ever again. I wouldn’t give them the chance.
So here I was on an empty track, broken, but still trying to dream. I needed to do something Dad would be proud of. Something that would show him all his effort he had poured into me, into all of his runners was worth it.
And I still had no idea what that was.
“Now what, Dad?” I looked to the edge of the track where he’d always stood calling out our times.
Once again, there was no answer. And once again, I settled into position, ready to begin another blistering training session. Ready to pour everything I had onto this track. All while waiting for the one thing, I wanted more than anything else. An answer from Dad.
One hand on my watch, I pressed the timer button and rocketed past the starting line. Bessey followed, leaping joyfully beside me, until I settled into my pace.
We kept up a good clip around the backside of the track and all the way into lap two. As I fought to keep up the pace heading into the final turn, my right pinky started to go numb, my body’s odd way of telling me I was pushing against my limits. I tried to relax, focusing on using my arms to drive my sluggish legs until I once again crossed the finish line.
I pressed the stop button on my timer and let my legs come to an awkward halt. Doubled over, I checked the time on my watch. A new personal best for the eight-hundred meters.
Awesome.
Only it was going to be super hard to keep the next six intervals near that pace.
Bessey was content to watch me run most of the rest of my intervals from the grass. She’d even fallen into a nap until the last lap of my sixth set.
Tail down, ears back, she crouched and barked at one of the cement barriers lining the walkway that led from the track to the school building.
I slowed my sprint and studied the shadows, but saw no-one. Instead of finishing my lap, I hurried to Bessey and scooped up my keys and water bottle.
Already headed off the track, I heard a familiar voice call my name. “Hey Elise, what are you up to?”