THE LAST MEET, LAST YEAR
Ella
I love running. I know that makes me weird. I know that running is literally the last thing most people want to do.
But I’ve loved running since I was five years old. Chasing Dad down at the track while he zoomed through 400-meter repeats in shorts that showed way too much leg. Bolting after Mom as she charged toward the finish line at one of her countless marathons. And, after, when they divorced and I was thirteen and pissed, running gave me time to breathe.
It doesn’t hurt that I’m also really good at it. But I’d love it even if I sucked.
And, up until literally two seconds ago, running loved me back.
That was when I’d sprinted out of the covered-bridge portion of the 6A state girls’ varsity cross-country race, hot on the heels of a Durango Bay senior I’d admired for the past two years. I was in step with her, a tall girl in softball cleats from Mitchell High drafting behind us. We had one mile left and a big hill to climb, and I was alive.
My lungs were crying out, blood in the back of my throat, legs flying. Every sense in my body was absolutely screaming for mercy at the same time as my brain was pushing to go harder, faster, to stay with the girl I wanted to be.
Which was when she tripped me. On purpose.
I stumbled forward, bumping into the senior’s shoulder, my left leg lunging out ahead of me, trying to catch my weight.
But my left foot didn’t plant squarely on the grass.
Instead, it rolled. My ankle rolled. My entire body rolled. I tumbled onto the slick course as the girl behind us tried to hurdle my body and totally misjudged. Her gassed attempt at a leap fell short and she stomped with the full brunt of her weight straight on the laid-out inside ridge of my left ankle.
I heard the crunch of bone on tendon on spiked sole as I belatedly threw my arms over my head to protect it from getting squashed, too.
Then the pain was there—hot and white and so very furious.
And I was alone with it. My competitors gone.
Cowbells were clanging. The crowd was cheering. And somewhere Coach Royce and Jenks were waiting to see me make it up that hill and to the finish line, a mile away.
I tried to stand.
My ankle couldn’t do it. It was straight misery, bleeding and limp, and even the pressure of my shoe and sock against it was too much.
I couldn’t go that last mile. I couldn’t even go an inch.
I fell to my knees.
And as my parents’ voices separated from the crowd, mixing together in shared worry for the first time in a very long time, I knew my season was over.
My first time qualifying for varsity state. My first DNF.
My brain told me I had the next two years just as my body told me to give up and cry.
THE FIRST PRACTICE, THIS YEAR
Cade
Running is punishment.
No one can convince me otherwise. My entire athletic career, running has been a threat.
Not listening? Run a lap.
Talk back? Run five.
Embarrass the whole team by getting shit-faced at basketball camp and racking up a minor-in-possession charge?
Run an entire season of cross-country.
Just like in practice, one person screws up and the team is punished.
Okay, so Coach J didn’t pitch it to the guys like that. Nah, all he did was strongly imply that if you wanted to be a varsity basketball player at Newburg High, you’d better get your ass signed up for the cross-country team, of which he’s now the coach. Pre-season conditioning was the guise, but I knew that the player who needed to sign up most was me.
I can’t fix the smudge on my permanent record. I can’t fix the way Maizy dropped my ass the second I wasn’t as perfect on paper as in prom photos. But I can fix this. Or at least give it an honest try.
Because basketball is my life.
And so here I am on the track infield, sweating it out under the afternoon sun of the first day of school, listening to Coach J fumble his way through running terminology like the basketball coach he is. We’re clearly divided: basketball players on the right, actual runners on the left.
“I know y’all weren’t expecting Coach Royce to hightail it to South Bear Prep, but I’ve got you.” He sneaks a look at his phone, where I know he’s jotted stats in a notes app. “This is the year that we make a State run—”
“That’s not true.”
Every muscle in my body tenses as a girl’s voice cuts straight through Coach J’s stated goal for the season. Coach J may give off Foghorn Leghorn vibes, but that Southern-fried accent and jolly nature is not something to be tested. Cut him off and you might as well chop off your own hand.
Yet the speaker keeps going.
“The team didn’t qualify, but Jenks and I did, individually.” She gestures to the boy next to her, all floppy hair and 5 percent body fat. “And he placed seventh.”
She says that like it’s a good thing.
In my world, placing seventh in a tournament is grounds for laps. Lots of them.
Coach J smiles and I know she’s in trouble. “You must be Ella Curry.”
The girl nods.
She’s right up front, dark hair tied into twin French braids held back by a thick white headband. It makes her look like she couldn’t decide between being all business or one of my sister’s American Girl dolls.
Right now she’s all business.
And she’s about to get the business end of something, all right.
Coach J’s motivation to say yes to this coaching gig may have been 90 percent getting his basketball players to run five days a week pre-season, and 10 percent the extra cash to maintain his Jordans collection, but he doesn’t do anything without research. If Coach Royce didn’t leave him with details on last year’s team and incoming talent, he would’ve scoured the web himself and added it to that file on his phone.
He stares her down with that smile, his tone still cloying, but there’s a razor blade hidden in all that honeyed sauce. “And remind me how you did at that race, Miss Curry?”
The girl shifts, and for a moment I can see her face. It’s freckled and tan from what I assume was a summer in running shoes, but even that noise can’t cover for the flush flooding her cheeks. “DNF.”
I don’t know what that means, but my bud Martinez clearly does, leaning over to whisper, “Did not finish.”
Oh.
Coach J continues, his smile showing teeth now, as sharp as the cutting setup she stumbled into while challenging him.
“It’s true that we had two individuals make it to State last year, with wildly different results. Jenks, man, congrats.” He acknowledges the floppy-haired kid. “But I’m much more interested in what we can do together. Cross-country is a team sport that looks like an individual one. As a team, we collect a score. That score is based on the top individual times, but everyone who races contributes. Sometimes we win, sometimes we place, and sometimes we don’t finish.”
The girl’s head dips at this, a braid sagging over her shoulder. I almost feel sorry for her, but she totally asked for it.
“As long as we work together, try our best, and”—here he glances at the basketball kids for the runners’ benefit, but I swear he’s looking straight at me—“take this seriously, we’re going to have an excellent season and go to State as a team.”
There’s some tepid applause—it’s not exactly enthusiastic, but it’s enough for Coach J’s ego to garner a smile. “All right, team, let’s warm up. Jenks, show everyone how it’s done.”
The floppy-haired kid bounds up, clearly thrilled to be singled out even though this is absolutely Coach J not wanting to do it himself.
“Eight laps, Bulldogs!” He says it like that isn’t two miles as our warm-up.
Punishment indeed.
THE FIRST MEET
Ella
This is bullshit. Absolute, unfiltered, full-strength cow DUNG.
That’s all I can think as I stand at the last hill, cheering after placing fourth in the girls’ varsity race—aka the first race of six on a Saturday morning doubling as our first meet of the season. They’re medaling ten places out, and I’ve got a new, shiny piece of jewelry thudding against my sternum, my race bib crinkling under its weight each time I move to clap and cheer.
And despite medaling in the first race, at our first meet, my new, dumbass coach met me at the finish line with a “Not bad, DNF,” before nearly spilling his coffee to collect on the doughnuts one of his basketball players offered him as penance for skipping the bus and then arriving an hour late. He’s C team and races last, but still.
I didn’t get my hopes up when Coach Royce abandoned us. Cross-country is basically invisible as a competitive sport. No one comes to our meets, or even really understands what we do. Race on grass? Like, grass-grass? Yet I still didn’t expect the school to just hand the keys to the team over to the basketball coach with a smile and a wave. Even they have to know Coach Jackson—I refuse to call him Coach J—isn’t doing this out of the kindness of his heart.
This is about basketball. Pure and simple.
There are plenty of rules about how many hours of pre-season conditioning a coach can mandate. But if his athletes sign up for a no-cut sport that is 100 percent the cardio training they won’t do on their own? No rules against that.
Worse, the proof is in the pudding, because despite Coach Jackson’s vocal exclamations that this is a team sport—including at my very embarrassing expense on the first day—and therefore is to be taken seriously by all participants, only five basketball players showed up this morning.
The scoring here is like golf, with the lowest total winning. Meaning, if you place first in a race, you get one point. The top six finishers from each team in each race score. So if your sixth runner sucks wind, it kills your overall score in both the race and the meet.
With the basketball kids in play, we’d have fifty people spread across the six races—divided into girl/boy and three categories: that is, varsity, junior varsity, and C team. But because they didn’t show, our team is stretched so thin that every individual finish in each race counts toward our total.
And right now, because I’m stationed on bullshit mountain, I’m trying to clap home last year’s junior prom king/forever Bulldog starting point guard Cade Brockton as he walks up the final hill.
He’s been passed by three guys in the last ten seconds, but his hands are on his hips as he doesn’t even attempt to run.
“Come on, Cade! Go, go, go!”
Cade does not go.
This, despite the enthusiasm in Jenks’s voice that is way more than he should have the energy to give. He won the boys’ varsity race—he should be pissed that we’re witnessing one of the most popular boys in school tank our team score because he gave up.
Still, Cade’s chin tips toward the call of his name. But instead of soaking up Jenks’s unwarranted enthusiasm and using it to power his way up the hill, Cade looks like he wants to punch him. Like he’s embarrassed anyone recognized him, doing this silly little sport in his silly little Bulldogs shorts and singlet. And now another runner is chugging up the incline with mechanical, staccato steps that pass Cade easily.
Maybe I have something to prove, but I don’t want to see our chance at a team placement slip away, so I decide to poke at that flash of anger—if Cade’s going to walk, he’s going to have me in his pretty-boy face, loudly informing everyone in earshot exactly who this too-cool-for-this-shit asshat in the Bulldogs singlet truly is.
“Come on, Cade Brockton!” Cade’s glare whips in my general direction. Walking backward, I smile about as nicely as Coach Jackson. “Do my eyes deceive me, or is big-shot varsity baller Cade Brockton walking this final hill? In a JV race?”
Another kid rounds the bend to the incline and starts charging up it. In T-minus ten seconds, he’ll be the fifth to pass Cade on bullshit mountain.
“I must be hallucinating, because there’s no way an All-City, All-State point guard would walk! He’s too much of an athlete for that!” The fifth kid officially passes Cade. “GO GET HIM, Cade Brockton!”
Cade scowls, and at the top of the hill, with the finish line and Jackson clearly in view, starts running.
I hate him.
Either he conserved all his energy by walking, or Cade actually remembered that he has fast-twitch muscle fibers in his legs, because he turns on the jets. He chases down three of the kids who passed him, and finishes neck and neck with the fourth. He uses some sort of court-approved “hip check”’ move to buy enough space to squeeze in front of that kid in the finisher’s chute, which means in the end he made up four of the five places he’d lost.
Jackson gives him a high five for his trouble, and doughnut guy lobs an apple fritter at him like he deserves a prize. Cade snags it out of the air with the ease of an alley-oop, and they all laugh.
This boy who didn’t even try gets praise and sugar while I’m shackled to a nickname I “earned” by trying so hard that I busted my ankle?
Bullshit.
Cade
“It’s Ella, right?”
The words are out of my mouth before I realize I’ve chased her down, bobbling my water cup and the ridiculous baseball-size apple fritter Martinez chucked at me before I could say no. My voice is winded and I swallow, still breathing hard from my sprint to the finish, the taste of blood acrid in the back of my throat.
She whips around, scowl at the ready, probably knowing it would be me—her arms are wound defensively over her chest, the race bib still pinned to her singlet crinkling under the weight of the medal she won. I grin—I don’t know why.
“Yep.”
I’m not sure what I’d planned to say after I chased her down. I can’t yell at her for yelling at me for walking. Even though I knew I’d catch those dudes at the end, I technically should’ve run the whole way. I gesture with the doughnut toward where the stragglers are struggling up that dumb hill. “What was that back there?”
Her lips flicker. It’s not a smile, really. And it certainly doesn’t meet her eyes—the same chocolate brown as her hair, which is yet again in French braids held back by a white headband. “I was cheering on a teammate. It’s the polite thing to do.”
I laugh and try to cover the scoff etched in it with a well-timed bite of my apple fritter. It helps the blood taste dissipate, but only a little. “Polite? You were being kind of rude.”
“What?” She raises a brow, sharp and slicing, even as her tone remains light. “By detailing your athletic accomplishments as motivation?”
“That’s not what you were doing and you know it.” She rolls her eyes and pivots—toward where the girls’ C team race is about to start. “Ella—”
“Look, I sort of just assumed varsity basketball players would appreciate their accomplishments touted anywhere they go. Like how they play ‘God Save the King’ whenever he steps over a threshold.”
I snort. “I’m proud of my accomplishments, but not when they’re weaponized.”
“Only a boy with the title of prom king would have the audacity to whine about how his own accomplishments hurt him.” Ella laughs, her quaking shoulders swinging her medal like a pendulum. “Thank you for gracing our little, boring, not-a-big-deal sport with your subpar performance today, Mr. Basketball.”
I step closer until we’re toe to toe—she’s actually kind of tall for a girl. “Why is it that you know so much about me and my accomplishments, anyway?”
White teeth flash, the scent of mint gum wafting into the air between us. “Are you new to high school? Or can you just not see that well from your pedestal jacked all the way up to the eaves of Newburg High? When you’re popular, everyone knows all about you. Even if they don’t want to. When you’re not, no one knows a thing about you—even your name.”
Ouch. Not fair, not accurate, not going to stand for it.
“That’s not true, Ella Curry,” I say, making a point that I did know her name, I just didn’t want to come off weird because I’d never said a syllable to her before. I’m not going to mention I remembered her last name because she shares it with my favorite NBA player. “I’m not new to high school, but I am new to this. After the way that went”—again I gesture with the fritter and add a shy smile—“I could use your advice—it’s harder than I thought.”
It’s obvious that the whole tail-between-my-legs thing won’t work on Ella. But I do want some tips—I should be better at this. And Coach knows it, too, showing it by insisting I do JV instead of C team.
After a second, Ella nods. “Sure, I have some advice.”
I change my stance, ready to accept her runner’s wisdom. She grins, full on, and it feels like the tide is turning—she sees I’m not a vapid ass—
“Maybe expend your energy actually giving a shit?”
“I—” I fumble as her punch lands.
“Based on your performance today, I’d say that apple fritter gives more of a shit than you did about that race.”
On instinct, I pivot and shoot the pastry twenty feet in a perfect rainbow arc toward the closest trash can. When it swishes in, I know I should feel bad for literally throwing away two of Martinez’s hard-earned dollars, but she’s right—again.
She’s also not done.
“You do realize that some of us care about cross-country, right? Like actually love it and enjoy it? I know that’s impossible to believe because it’s not big and flashy. I know you don’t actually want to be here, but some of us do. I do.” Her voice is breaking, and I both can’t look away and feel like I should. “If you’re going to be my teammate, you have to at least try. And not just when Coach ‘It’s a team sport’ Jackson has eyes on your sorry ass.”
I don’t know what just happened, but somehow, I’ve both tapped a vein and been stabbed in the back. Ella’s angry. At me—at more. I raise my hands in surrender.
“Look, my performance was pathetic—I went out too hard, walked the last hill, and sprinted only when Coach J saw me. Guilty.”
One of her long braids slides across the fine curve of her collarbone as she considers me, freckles gathering together as her mouth lilts.
“What can I do to be better?”
Her attention flits to the starting clock countdown—thirty-nine seconds until the C team girls’ gun.
“Run fast.”
I’m about to protest because that’s the most annoying advice ever when she adds, “Run with me. At practice. No excuses, no complaints, no walking.”
“Deal, Ella Curry.”
I offer my hand. Another surprise—she humors me and takes it.
“Now,” she says, terminating the briefest handshake ever, backpedaling, “if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go cheer on my teammates. It’s the polite thing to do.”
AFTER THE FIRST MEET
Cade
Coach J may have seemed chill Saturday, but I knew it was an act. Something he slipped on as a first impression for a new community of opposing coaches and the handful of nervous parents who huddled near our team tent, necks craning and eyes squinting to find their kids among the sea of runners.
For them, he put on a show.
For us, that show was over on Sunday morning.
Coach J: “From now on: Mandatory bus rides to meets. All basketball athletes will do an extra mile after XC practice for each team member who missed the meet. One mile a day until we have everyone accounted for. Miss this week’s meet, and you’ll add to that total for everyone. GO BULLDOGS!”
That last part is an automatic sign-off. It’s also a challenge. And a fuck you.
Or at least that’s how I read it.
TRAINING MONTAGE
Cade
“Brockton, DNF, looking good.”
I do not look good.
I look gassed.
My shirt came off a mile in because I’m sweating so hard. It’s in my eyes. Weighing down my shorts. Dripping into the insides of my ears, JFC. I must get this sweaty on the basketball court, but somehow it doesn’t feel this way.
We’re at the turnaround point in Monday’s out-and-back 4-miler. It’s a coffee shop parking lot, where Coach J idles with his pickup truck and three giant jugs of water.
I nearly sprint there, my hands trembling as I attempt to extract a paper cup off the top of a stack. The water is glorious, and I gulp it down so quickly it spills out the side of my mouth and dribbles onto the blacktop. Still, I inhale more, and attempt to fix my T-shirt, which is hanging out the back of my waistband like a really sexy tail.
I’m struggling with tightening the drawstring when Coach J chin checks toward the distance.
“Your ride’s leaving, Brockton.”
Shit.
Ella didn’t stop for water. She didn’t stop at all. The last thing I remember, actually, is her making an audible UGH when Coach greeted us.
I trash the cup. “Hey, wait up.”
She doesn’t.
I chase after Ella like she’s a ball about to go out-of-bounds—leaping off the curb, onto the sidewalk, and into the grass. Down the street, I spot Jenks’s bouncing form, high-fiving a three-pack of varsity girls as they approach the turnaround.
Maybe she wants to catch him. She could.
When I get to her, I’m breathing hard, and the liquid I just inhaled is sloshing more violently than I expected. “There’s no harm in hydration, Ella Curry.”
Ella peels her dark eyes away from where she’s glaring at the cracks in the sidewalk like they’ll jump up and get her. “No water during a race.”
It’s hot. Ninety-degrees-in-the-afternoon hot. And we’re running a mile more than the 5K we race. Like an idiot, I double down. “Surely you’re thirsty.”
She snaps her gum. “Nope.”
All the water in my stomach jumps. I’m going to cramp. I start to stare at the sidewalk, too. Maybe that’s how she does it. Just concentrates so hard that she can’t feel the struggle of her lungs, or the press of the heat, or the thirst that must nag her if she’s even 10 percent human.
The varsity girls approach—and I plaster on a grin and give them high fives to go with Ella’s automatic words of encouragement. After they pass, I clearly hear Maizy’s name and accompanying giggles. I don’t want to think about Maizy and everything else that fell apart after basketball camp, so I swallow and find my voice.
“How do you make this look so easy?” It’s a compliment aimed at Ella, because despite every interaction I’ve ever had with her, I’m good at doling those out. I didn’t win junior prom king by being an asshole.
Ella pauses at a stoplight, settling her hands on her slim hips. Finally, she actually looks at me. I kind of like that she doesn’t have to crane her neck. “It’s the same way you make a three-pointer look easy, I guess.”
I smirk. “Well, I do hold the school record for most threes in a game.”
Add that to your stats pile, Ella Curry.
The light changes and Ella checks her watch as she breaks into a run to cross. “We’re on pace for a negative split. Let’s pick it up.”
I don’t know what that means. I just know it’s going to hurt.
It does. A lot.
But I survive my first practice at Ella Curry’s pace.
I’m actually pretty fucking proud of myself for sticking with her—we did make a negative split, which means our last half was faster than the first—until I remember that for me, practice isn’t over.
When the other kids are dismissed and gone, Coach J lays into us about personal responsibility, accountability, and “there’s no I in team.”
It’s literally the PG version of the very heated, very private conversation Coach J and I had after my incident.
And even though I went to the race, even though I showed up and did the thing—though not well—it’s hard not to feel like every single one of those words is aimed at me.
Ella
Cade stuck with me the whole time through negative splits on Monday.
Tuesday, he regretted it.
He didn’t say that, though. No, too cool for that. But his stride shouted everything loud and clear.
Stiff and tentative. Shorter than usual. Less bouncy.
I know what it’s like to push the pace—and how I feel the next day. Screaming quads, abbreviated steps, maybe a stifled groan when dropping into my seat at the start of each class.
Not to mention that when I left the locker room with Hannah and Sophia, the basketball kids were still on the track, doing laps. More proof Jackson’s using our entire season as forced conditioning.
Still, because Cade’s more stubborn than I’m probably giving him credit for, he ran with me the whole way Tuesday. After the turnaround—at which he did not guzzle water—his muscles started to warm up. His gait smoothed out, blood circulating to all the achy parts.
They ran laps Tuesday, too.
Wednesday, he finds me before warm-up, where I’m plastered to the stadium wall, taking extra effort to stretch my left ankle. I don’t have to wrap it anymore, but it’s been cranky for a year since I went down at State and it’s always begging for special attention.
“What’ll it be today, Ella Curry? Five-minute miles? A tempo run?” He leans in, conspiratorially. “Fartleks?”
Someone used Google.
I snap my gum and side-eye him. “I’m not related to Steph, you know. You don’t have to say my whole name like it’s important to acknowledge the Curry family line with each interaction.”
Cade shoots me a disarming smile. It’s the kind he can give as an all-star point guard, junior prom king, and a white male who totally 100 percent believes that flashing that grin will get him what he wants.
So when he says, “You act like I’m just an automaton in a letter jacket,” I arch a brow.
“You’re not?”
Another grin. “I happen to be a sentient being who knows plenty about the general population at Newburg High, Ella Curry.”
I squint. “Really? Prove it.”
“Fine. Bring it.”
His whole body loosens—ready to react, execute, disseminate whatever I have coming. I blink up at him with an innocent expression. “What’s Jenks’s last name?”
He sputters. “I, uh, it’s not Jenks?”
“That’s his first name, Cade.”
He’s stumped. Then a little smile slides across his face. “Wait, are you guys a thing?”
I’m not even going to dignify that with an answer. He should know better than to pry, given all the rumors about him and Promise Ring Princess Maizy Abbot.
So instead, I answer his first question, pointing to where Jackson has arrived with a golf cart and the vestiges of a Newburg High home meet.
“Course marking.”
Cade
“Jenks Vaughn.”
I greet Ella with my new knowledge. Her eyebrows jump toward her headband. I saw her in the hall today with her hair down—it’s actually pretty curly. There’s no way to tell that when it’s in braids.
We’re walking with armfuls of flags—the kind the city uses to mark your yard before it’s safe to dig. Only these are the same powder blue as our cross-country uniforms and plastered with a jowly Newburg Bulldog on each side. Apparently today we mark the course, tomorrow we run it, Friday we simulate a race. Saturday is the real thing.
Next I point to the crowd of varsity boys and girls spinning off in different directions across the sprawling Newburg campus and name them one by one. When I’m done, I turn to Ella and smirk. “And you give rides home to Hannah Chao and Sophia Zapata.”
I don’t know what I expect, but it’s not Ella biting her lip as she sinks to place a flag in the grass. I jog ahead and plant the next flag twenty feet away—per our detailed instructions from Coach J. When she catches up, that little hint of approval has twisted to sarcasm. “Look at you, prom king, displaying interest in your teammates. Can your basketball buddies do that trick, or is it exclusive to you?”
“I’m working on them.”
Newburg is the only city school with a campus big enough to host its own meet on its grounds instead of at a park. We step into one of the treed sections—hedge apples and black walnuts are everywhere. We’re supposed to clear this crap so we don’t stumble.
Ella knocks a bright green hedge apple away with her foot. “Are you? Or is Coach? He’s had you guys stay back two nights in a row.”
She noticed that? Great.
“Punishment. For missing the meet.”
I beat her to the next hedge apple, scoop it up, and with my best shooter’s arc, send it rocketing toward the fence lining school property. The thing explodes on impact, blazing green matter splattering all over the grass. It’s gross but satisfying.
“It’s all punishment, actually.”
Then, without judgment or expectation, Ella Curry’s big brown eyes meet mine and she asks the one question no one has bothered to ask me before just yelling at me or breaking up with me or giving me the silent treatment along with the heavy-handed implication that I’m a major disappointment. “What happened?”
Then I tell her about basketball camp. All of it. Every last shitty detail.
It feels good. I don’t know why.
Ella
I hate that Coach Jackson has made the sport I love into a monthslong punishment.
I’m not surprised. But I do hate it.
And most of all I hate that he’s punishing Cade.
He made a mistake. He’s got the blemish on his record and heaps of guilt to prove it.
And all that adds up to me lining up next to Cade Brockton, all-star point guard and actual real human being, for his post-practice punishment laps.
Cade cocks a brow at me, a little quirk to his mouth.
Then Jenks abandons his water bottle and comes bounding over. Hannah and Sophia and the other varsity kids, too. Cade watches all of them line up, that quirk splitting into a real grin as he takes us in, and then spots Jackson on the sidelines.
I expect Coach to yell at us. To send us to the locker room. He doesn’t. Instead, Jackson just nods and revs the golf cart, pointing the remaining supplies toward the groundskeeper’s shed behind the stadium.
I run with Cade in silence, behind Jenks, who’s happily leading the whole pack—of course. He didn’t ask me what I was doing. Maybe he will later. But right now, he’s just happy to get in an extra mile. Always is. Just pleased as punch to put one foot in front of the other. Which is exactly what running should be.
On our last lap, I notice three of the JV basketball guys walking. Cade and I pass them and slow to a high-fiving stop after crossing the line. But then the JV kids stop, too. And something tender inside me snaps.
“You’re not done.”
The biggest kid, Kye Williams, smirks at me. “Mind your own business.”
“Whoa, man—” Cade starts, but I don’t let him finish, putting a hand on his arm and speaking for myself.
“If you’re on this team, your business is my business.”
Because it is.
“Is there a problem here?” Jackson is back, stepping onto the track. Out of the corner of my eye, I spot Jenks, frozen with his water bottle, watching as Coach turns to me, the troublemaker. “DNF?”
I can’t help it—I cringe at the use of my dumbass nickname. That anger of mine flares as I stare at the boys. If my favorite sport has been reduced to punishment, they’re going to freaking take it.
“We lapped them—they’re not done.” I face Coach, not softening my fury. It’s in my eyes, my stance, even in the way I’m winded after such an easy mile. “As you constantly point out, I know a thing or two about not finishing. And they didn’t.”
“Shit,” I hear Cade mumble a half second before he steps in front of me, now the one holding me back as he snags my wrist. His hand is warm and protective and nearly knocks my breath away because I can’t remember the last time someone touched me like this.
“Ella’s right,” he says, and I’m kind of shocked. So are the basketball boys, whose lips drop open in unison, betrayed. “They have one lap left.”
Coach Jackson glances first to me, then to Cade, who nods—firm. Unwavering. With me.
I vaguely realize this is what a teammate does.
Jenks and I have run together forever—our parents are friends, or more accurately now, his parents are friends with my mom—but I guess I never thought of him as my teammate until it was a goal. And now Jenks is on the sidelines shifting his weight on nervous feet, and Cade is standing here. With me.
He does give a shit.
And apparently so does Coach Jackson, who sternly hands down another layer of punishment in the form of my favorite activity.
“It’s two laps now.” The boys’ shoulders fall with a groan. “Give me lip, and it’ll be three.”
Cade
Thursday, as we line up to run the home course, Ella greets me with a little stick of gum. Trident Original.
“It’ll help with your thirst.”
And it did. For 3.1 miles, I didn’t think once about my water bottle.
Ella Curry is a genius.
And thanks to training with her all week, I stay glued to her shoulder the whole way. Some of the course is single-track, and I let her go ahead, like the gentleman I am. And because she’d probably throw an elbow and bruise my kidneys without a second thought if I tried to pass her.
My time is minutes better than my first race. Minutes.
That night, as Martinez and I exit the locker room, showered, exhausted, and pointed toward my car and the ride home I promised him, a wily grin spreads across his face.
“You’ve spent a lot of time in the woods the past two days with DNF.”
“Don’t call her that.”
He rounds my bumper. “Ooh, touchy. Does Maizy know?”
“Does Maizy know what?” I arch a brow. “That you’re about to walk home?”
Big palms go up like he’s expecting a chest pass. “Dude, okay.”
Ella
On Friday, I arrive at practice to bad news.
Really, really, really bad news.
Jenks is sprawled on the infield, holding his right knee, writhing in pain. Varsity kids surround him, a cluster of basketball boys off to the side.
“Where’s Coach? Somebody get Coach!”
But then I spot Jackson, sprinting over from the football practice fields, the athletic trainer they keep on-site barreling in with him, medical bag thumping against his belt.
“What happened?” For a moment, I think I ask the question in my head, but then I realize it’s Cade, shouldering up to the basketball boys behind me.
The really tall doughnut kid—Ollie Martinez—answers. “He was warming up and, I don’t know, his ankle rolled, he rolled, and then he came to a stop, clutching his knee.”
Shit, I think.
“Shit,” Cade says.
An hour after we learn that Jenks will be out three to four weeks with a sprained knee—which will totally screw up his chances of securing that scholarship to McArdle State as a junior—I’m shoving a forkful of pad thai into my mouth like it’s going to make today disappear.
It doesn’t.
Instead, I just manage to flick grease droplets onto my phone screen as a text comes through from a number I don’t recognize.
Ella Curry, it’s Cade.
How’d you get my number?
Popular people are magic.
Fuck you. What do you want? I’m trying to eat my feelings about Jenks.
There’s a pause. The little typing dots dance, disappear, dance, disappear.
When the message finally pops through, I drop my chopsticks.
Coach put me on varsity tomorrow. To cover Jenks’s spot. Promise to yell at me?
“Everything okay?” Mom asks from across the table. “Is it Jenks?”
I shake my head. My fingers hover a second before they finally beat out exactly what I need to say.
Fine. But the second I see you walking, I’m abandoning your ass and leaving you to suffer in silence.
I think that’s it and I drop my phone, a little smile catching before I can stop it. I shove another wad of noodles in my mouth before Mom notices. My phone buzzes again.
What are you doing after you eat your feelings? Wanna meet me at the game?
The game—the football game. In the same stadium where Jenks went down. Football isn’t my thing. I don’t even know who we’re playing. Instead of all that, I say: Aren’t you going with Maizy?
I expect the typing dots to dance and disappear again as he types. Instead, the dots come and the message pops straight through, no careful rewording.
We’re not together.
Then more.
Don’t believe everything you know about the popular kids, Ella Curry.
THE HOME MEET
Cade
“GOOOO ELLA!”
Ella’s whole face is flushed, her freckles crowding as she grits out an expression that might be a smile. Or a grimace. I’m not sure.
The finish line is in her sights, and she’s like a bull, charging toward the cowbells ringing and the parents and teammates cheering as a girl from Grey Mountain tries to catch her. I don’t know if Ella likes her own medicine, but I’m going to drown her in it.
“Ella Curry’s gonna win this race!”
That definitely gets me a little smile. I jog along, picking up Martinez and the JV boys she roasted as I go. They’re cheering, whatever they’re saying getting lost in a general chant of “Go Bulldogs!” And just so the crowd knows it, I shout her name again. “GO ELLA! Sub-18!”
More people catch on, joining me, as she turns on the gas, the Grey Mountain runner too late with her finishing kick as Ella’s lead only grows.
She hits the finish line, braids flying, shoulders reaching forward for the chute. Then Coach J’s honey-and-corn-bread accent crackles over a loudspeaker. “Winning the girls’ varsity race with a course record of 17:51, Ella Curry!”
Maybe now he’ll stop calling her DNF.
I should’ve been C team. I was the last Bulldog to finish as JV. And now, a week later, I sneak one last glance at Coach J as I toe the line for the boys’ varsity race, our conversation from Friday night ringing in my ears.
DNF hauled your carcass around this week, but I saw the effort, Brockton. Backhanded compliments are Coach J’s specialty. You’re taking Jenks’s spot this week. Prove to me you care when you’re not chasing DNF’s tail.
Another challenge. Another test. But I miss it all together, stuck on something else.
Ella. Her name is Ella, Coach. And she’s your team leader now with Jenks out.
I struck before I realized the iron was hot.
I know not to talk back. I’ve warned others not to do what I just did. But I’m already burned, so I strike again. If you insist on calling her DNF, call me MIP. I deserve it way more than she does.
Ella didn’t choose to roll her ankle and limp off course at State—I looked up what happened. Coach J probably did, too. It was as much a fluke as Jenks’s injury.
But I chose my mistake. I raided Dad’s beer fridge, smuggled it into the camp dorm, got shit-faced. Me. I was the minor in possession. I earned the MIP. Me.
Coach stares. He leans down. I’m tall, but he’s taller. My shoulders push back. Worry about your choices, not mine, Brockton.
The next choice I made was to ask Ella to the football game.
And when she says yes, when she meets me, I know that even if I place last in every race for the rest of the cross-country season, I’ll have won the whole damn thing.
Here and now, the starting gun goes off.
Ella
Cade Brockton is a whole new runner. Or maybe this was how he always was, but now we understand each other.
His stride is strong. His steps are confident—he knows the course and it shows. He knows what he’s doing.
The first hill’s done. First mile, too. Two big, gradual climbs left, two miles, too.
From an incline, I spot him surrounded by a pack of boys. They’re coming up on a single-track portion. We practiced this. We talked about it last night between sharing Twizzlers and popcorn and detailed explanations of what the hell we did to beat South Bear Prep 17–16. (Okay, Cade explained it, I only shared my ears.)
If he’s going to get ahead, he needs to do it here.
I hold my breath, a whisper coming out on the last dregs. “Come on, Cade. Now.”
Cade cuts outside. He stomps over rough grass. His gait churns faster, eyes on the coming trees, encroaching on the course.
Faster. Faster.
Then he’s a full stride’s length ahead. He slips in front of the pack with fifteen feet to go, and sprints. Behind him, bodies jostle, curses and literal gobs of spit flying, as guys try to elbow their way into position.
“Yes! Go Cade go!” He can’t hear me through the brush, but I yell anyway, my feet automatically moving so I can top the hill before he emerges.
Cade clears the trees and the second incline with it. Then we’re both thundering down the back side. He’s using its momentum to carry him into the final climb, just like I showed him.
“Cade Brockton! Mr. Basketball! Three-point school record holder! GOOOO!”
I’m running as fast as he is now, dodging around people on the sidelines. There’s a good crowd—basketball groupies clutching Starbucks. They know his name, but I shout it anyway. “Hey, Cade! Beat me to the top!”
There’s a knot of guys still behind him. He knows I’m thinking he’ll get passed on the final hill. Cade’s eyes lift to mine. Cheeks red, and sweat glistening, he smiles.
With that winner’s spirit I knew he had, the same stuff he couldn’t—wouldn’t—tap into last week, Cade Brockton meets me stride for stride, churning up the incline at my pace. Though I’ve already raced, though I’ve got a medal hanging heavily around my neck, I sprint as fast as I can, knowing he can match it. My quads burn, the taste of blood licks at my throat, and air is a precious resource right now.
Then we’re over it.
And suddenly Cade is charging toward the finish line, the cowbells, and Jenks, clapping so hard he loses a crutch to the line of rope meant to keep spectators clear of the last hundred meters or so. There’s a guy in Durango Bay red in front of Cade, pounding toward the finish line and the clock that flashes 17:58.
“Get him, Cade!” I scream. “GO GO GO!”
He’s sprinting—and then, just as he did in the first race, he draws up that basketball hip check and bounces the Durango Bay kid to the side to claim one more precious place.
My heart is in my throat, pounding with happiness and exertion and relief. And even after that, even after this week and last night, it jolts like it’s been struck by lightning when Cade’s eyes find mine beyond the finishers’ area.
He squints, a smile in it. “It’s Ella, right?”
I can’t help it—I laugh. Everything about this moment is unexpected perfection.
My first varsity win. His first varsity race. And miles and miles to go.
And so, with a hopeful laugh, I give him the do-over he just offered me. “Wanna go cheer the JV girls with me?”
“Of course,” he says, snapping the gum I gave him and falling into step beside me. “I hear it’s the polite thing to do.”