~ Track Star ~
“We have reached the girls’ living quarters, destination of Harmony and Kristine,” Connie said as the elevator slowed to a stop.
The room was now empty except for a woman folding towels. A few long white couches were placed around the open area with stacks of books on end tables beside them. Book shelves filled with more books or games were placed against some of the walls. Hallways led off to our left and right.
“This is the west wing girls’ living quarters,” Harmony said. “I’ve never been to the east wing, but I bet the girls’ quarters are about the same over there. We’re down the hallway right in the middle there, second door on the left.”
Second door on the left, gotta remember that. But once I saw the door, I knew it wouldn’t matter if I forgot which door it was or not, because I would never have trouble finding it. A painting of the Eiffel Tower stretched from the top of the door to the bottom, and tiny handbags had been hung all around it.
“Sassy did that,” Harmony told me. She reached for the doorknob. “She was the first one of us recruited, and it’s never bothered Nadine or me, so that’s our door.”
“I love it. Did she make those bags herself?”
“Yeah, she—She’s already here. What are you two doing here?”
Sassy and Nadine were sitting on the bottom bunk on the right side of the room, looking at a magazine together. “Miss McCree said we were excused from first period. That way we can all go to physical fitness together,” Sassy said.
I walked over to them so I could stare at the larger scale painting of what I’d seen on the door that began at the top bunk above them and went right up to the ceiling.
“I’m going to be a fashion designer in Paris someday,” Sassy said. “I can’t wait to open my own line of shoes and accessories. Are you into fashion, Kristine?”
“I don’t know. All I’ve had to wear since my mom died is what was donated to the orphanage. Fashion’s never really been an option.” Although if it had been, I’m not really sure it would have been my thing. I care about my appearance, but comfort seems more important than the latest fashion trend. And I couldn’t see how it mattered here, anyway, since everyone wore the same thing.
“Most orphans have that problem. I was lucky enough to get a big back-to-school shopping trip once a year with the foster mom I had two years before I came here. She was okay.”
“So you plan on leaving North Haven when you turn eighteen?”
“Yeah, most kids do. It’s a great place, but I wanna see the world and have a family of my own someday.”
“Are you all leaving?”
“This place doesn’t offer what we want to do,” Harmony said. “I want to take care of animals and I love to sing. There’s no place for either of those professions here.”
“And there’s no waves or sandy seashores this far up north,” Nadine added. “You wouldn’t believe how much I miss Cali and waking up every morning to go surfing.”
I noticed the shiny blue surfboard standing against the wall next to the wardrobe at the head of their beds and the poster of a guy surfing inside the swell of a house-sized wave next to that.
Turning around to look at the bunk beds on the other side of the room, I saw bars with music notes painted beside the one up top. In this room with three personalized spaces, the fourth bed space seemed empty. That would be mine. It would be fun to figure out how to decorate it, I thought.
“What happens when we’re eighteen, then? We never see each other again?” I asked. That didn’t sound like a family at all. Just when I’d found one and gotten ready to let myself get really close to these girls, which was something I’d never done before, it felt like it was all getting taken away.
“Absolutely not!” Harmony said from beside me. All three girls reached out for each other’s hands, but Sassy and Harmony reached for mine. “We’re sisters and best friends forever, no matter what. We’ve made a promise to each other to keep in touch and make time to get together every single Christmas for the rest of our lives, no matter what. Even if we all live in different parts of the world, we stick together.”
“Harmony’s moving to So Cal with me when we turn eighteen,” Nadine said. “Sassy’s heart’s set on Paris, but you could come with us. We could begin adult life together.”
“So Cal?” I asked, since I’d never heard of it before.
“Southern California.”
“Oh...” It sounded perfect, and I was relieved to know I was being accepted into their lifelong circle, but I still didn’t want to leave North Haven. In a way, I felt more attached to it than them, at least for now. “Thanks, but I really want to stay here.”
“That’s what I thought when I got here,” Harmony said. “But you might grow out of the idea after a couple of semesters. Don’t get me wrong. I love North Haven. But spending forever here would get old eventually.”
“It’s okay,” Nadine said. “She’s got three years to decide. And the offer will always stand.”
“Thanks, Nadine. I’m glad you guys want me for a sister.”
“Us, too,” Sassy said. She and Nadine stood up so all three of them could wrap me and each other in a hug.
My three forever sisters...I could truly feel their love, and it was the best thing I’d felt so far.
* * * *
Half an hour later, the four of us were walking out of our room. “You have six classes every day,” Harmony was telling me. “Each one lasts for forty-five minutes, beginning at seven-thirty. Then you have fifteen minutes to get to the next one. Lunch is at ten-thirty, but you’ll be with me through the last three days of this semester. You don’t need to worry about getting mixed up.”
“Girls,” someone called. We turned around and saw Miss McCree walking up the hallway toward us. “Headmaster wanted me to let you know that Kristine should go to art class with Sassy for third period. Since lunch comes after that, you can give her back to Harmony then.”
“Is that just for today, or the rest of the week?” Sassy asked.
“The rest of the week, I think. He wants Kristine to meet Miss Rivers since he’ll be enrolling her in one of her classes next semester.”
“Okay, see you later.”
We crossed the main room and got in an elevator, which took us up to the fourth floor where all fitness and sports classes were held. We walked into the biggest gymnasium I’d ever seen. It was sectioned off by colored tape into courts and field areas with different sports equipment and adults in each one. There were a lot more kids than I’d been expecting, with girls on the left side of the room and boys to the right.
“See ya, guys,” Nadine said before she ran off toward a group in the soccer area.
“Everyone has fitness training second period,” Harmony said as we moved through the open space between sectioned areas. “Headmaster figures it’s good to do it early in the morning, but not right after you eat breakfast. Sometimes everyone trains together and sometimes kids split up into their sports and do their own thing. Nadine plays soccer, but Sassy and I always do general fitness.”
“Unfortunately, we don’t have any real athletic talent,” Sassy said. “Our talents lie elsewhere.”
“Do you play any sports?” Harmony asked me.
“I play volleyball okay. Nothing special, though.”
“Then you can stick with us. We always train with Coach Beckham, and all the new kids get put with him anyway.”
“Besides, everyone who’s competing has to practice every night after class and on weekends until the Winter Competition. So we’re kind of lucky,” Sassy told me.
“Nadine likes it, though,” Harmony said.
I noticed Hunter in a group of four kids stretching beside a wall. “What’s Hunter doing?” I asked.
“He’s one of the smartest kids here, so he’s in the academic competition. It’s kind of like Jeopardy with two teams, four players on each one.” Harmony lowered her voice. “It’s the most boring part of the competition.” We laughed together.
“What about Roman?”
“He’s the captain of the North Haven Snow Riders.” She turned to walk through two basketball courts. “See, there’s Snow Racers - they race on snowmobiles through obstacles for a couple of miles to be the first to get to the finish line, and then there’s Snow Riders - they ride on snowmobiles too, but their goal is to be the last one standing. They start in different places, so no one knows where anyone else is, and they use whatever they find in the terrain to knock the others off. As soon as your body leaves the snowmobile, you’re out. We have the advantage in this game, because we always wear white. The Cinders wear black, so they stick out pretty badly against the snow.”
We stopped beside a window and Harmony pointed outside. A few stories below, I saw people in padded white suits and helmets riding around on white snowmobiles. I could barely see the tail of one sticking out from under a thick tree and a girl moving toward it, completely unaware. It looked like she would be knocked off easily.
“I think that’s him,” Sassy said, pointing to a third rider with a long branch in one hand, who was moving toward the tree from a different direction a lot faster than the other rider.
Right before the girl reached the tree, Roman disappeared under the branches and a different body flew out from under them. When he shot through the other end of the undergrowth, the girl reached out to high five him and then they were going in opposite directions.
“Wait. How’s he supposed to go to that volcano thing tonight if he has practice?” I asked.
“His coach’ll probably give him the night off to show around a new student,” Sassy said. “He’ll be paying for it for days, though.”
I flinched when a brassy voice said, “You must be Kristine,” right in my ear. A man with meaty arms that looked strange compared to his scrawny legs now stood beside me.
I nodded.
“Hey, Coach Beckham,” Sassy said. “What are we doing today?”
“That depends on Kristine. Do you want to run through some tests to see if you have any physical abilities we can use in the competitions?” he asked me.
“Not really. It would be a waste of time,” I said, hoping he would let it go. “I don’t have any abilities like that.”
“Then we’ll stretch and run some laps.” We followed him to a group of ten girls who were standing in an open field area.
After stretching, Coach had us line up against the wall at the starting point of a three-man racetrack. Two of the walls were lined with a series of tracks on the floor. Three groups went ahead of us, and then it was Sassy, Harmony, and me. We lined up with Harmony in the middle and me closest to the wall.
“Just run to the fifty mark and back, girls,” Coach said before he blew his whistle.
We smiled at each other as we took off, none of us really trying very hard. Harmony leaned forward and ran faster. Sassy and I did the same. And then we were racing.
My feet pounded against the ground as I pushed myself as hard as I could. Both girls disappeared behind me. I was winning! And we weren’t even halfway to the fifty mark. When I reached it and let my feet slide as I turned on the spot, I realized how far ahead I was. I might even reach the starting line before they got to the fifty. I felt a surge of satisfaction.
But what if they’re not even trying? That had to be it. I felt silly. So I let myself slow down and jogged the rest of the way. Everyone was staring at me, which made me extremely self-conscious.
“You’re really fast,” a girl said in a British accent when I got to the end.
“Thanks.”
When Sassy and Harmony reached us, Coach said, “Twenty leg lifts, twenty squats, twenty crunches. Kristine, come with me.”
As we walked, I wondered if it was possible to get in trouble for making such a fool of myself. We kept close to the wall until we reached three girls who were jumping from one foot to the other, picking up their knees as high as they could each time.
Coach went up to the Japanese woman watching them nearby and whispered with her for a few seconds. She blew her earsplitting whistle, which was even worse than Coach Beckham’s, and waved the girls over.
“Rose, you’re racing against Kristine,” the woman told the tallest girl, who had shiny red hair pulled back into a bun. Then she turned to me. “Rose is our fastest runner. If you can beat her, you’re on the track team. We desperately need another sprinter. No offense, Adora, but you’re really built for the long runs.”
“Is okay, Coach Ling. I know I am bad sprinter,” one of the other girls said in another accent.
“I’m sorry,” I began. “I don’t really want to join a team. I just got here.”
“We can talk about that after you race with Rose. Join her at the starting line, please.”
I really didn’t want to do it, but I followed the super-thin redhead to the nearest starting line.
“It would be pretty crazy if you beat me,” Rose said. “I don’t want to sound like I have a big head or anything, but I’ve never been beaten.”
“Then it’s probably not going to happen today. I was just racing with my roommates and I’m pretty sure they were going really slow so it looked like I was going fast.”
“Maybe, but Coach Beckham’s trained to weed out fresh talent. He knows what he’s doing.”
We turned at the finish line and waited.
“All right, girls, to the fifty line,” her coach called out. Then her terrible whistle was ringing in my ears and I was pushing myself as hard as I could. I didn’t want to join the team, but I did want to win. Rose pulled ahead of me for a second and then I pulled ahead of her.
Instead of focusing on where she was, I zoned in on the fifty mark and concentrated on pushing every part of my body to carry me to it as fast as it could. Everything else bled together until all I saw or thought of was the big white fifty up ahead. All I could hear was my own heart beating.
And then I was there. I slowed down and looked back as Rose reached it second. I couldn’t believe it. I beat the fastest girl in North Haven, and I’d never even been in a race. It felt great, exhilarating, like I’d just won an Olympic gold medal.
“You beat me.” Rose stopped and stared at me in amazement.
I shrugged, feeling totally out of breath. “Weird.”
Both coaches were running toward us, looking way too excited. Maybe I should have let her win. “That was amazing,” Coach Ling said. “You have to join the North Haven Tracers. We need you.”
I glanced at Rose to make sure she wasn’t angry about the praise I was getting, but she smiled and nodded. “But if Rose has never been beaten, what do you need me for?”
“Something could happen to her, Heaven forbid. She could twist an ankle or come down with the flu. And if you haven’t even been training for this...imagine what you could do once you’ve had a little training.”
The other track girls were just reaching us and everyone was watching me expectantly.
I didn’t want to let them down, but I also didn’t want to spend every night and weekend day training to go race in front of two schools, which was enough to make me cringe inside. “I just got here this morning...Maybe next year?” I hated how disappointed everyone looked, but I really didn’t want to do it.
“Are you sure? These girls are a lot of fun and you could help guarantee this school the point awarded to the fastest sprinter in the Winter Competitions.”
“It’s a big deal to compete,” Rose said. “Not every student gets that opportunity.”
“Sorry,” I said.
“Please, I’d love the competition.”
“Let’s not pressure her,” Coach Ling said. “If she doesn’t want to join our team, no one’s going to make her. But if something does happen, could we count on you to step in for Rose?” she asked me.
“Sure.” But that wouldn’t happen, because what could go wrong?
“Let’s get back to our group then,” Coach Beckham said to me.
We rejoined the others and Harmony grabbed my arm. “You beat Rose Jennings. You beat her. I can’t believe it. Are you running track?”
“No, I don’t really want to join a team, at least not yet.”
“But you beat Rose Jennings. She’s the fastest girl there is. You’re a track star, Kristine.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “Thanks, but I don’t know about all that.”
“Everyone grab a jump rope,” Coach yelled. “You’re going to jump double time for the next ten minutes. Make sure you put plenty of space between you and everyone else.”
So we each grabbed a rope from the pile at the far corner of our square and the rest of second hour was too hard to even think about talking to either of my roommates. It didn’t take long to wear myself out completely. It felt great to have beaten the fastest girl at North Haven High...but man...physical fitness was not my thing...