The Section Five cross-country championship took place on the second Saturday in November. That was a couple of weeks later than it should have been, which could have been a problem in Western New York—but the weather cooperated, and we didn’t have to run in snowshoes. Briarwood was actually supposed to have hosted the meet that year. We would have gone there, but there’d been a massacre on campus near the end of the SZA, and nobody was getting anywhere near the school. So, we ran at Perinton instead.
It was a minimalist race. There weren’t any officials. There weren’t any timekeepers. There weren’t any coaches, or trainers, or parents, and there were only three runners—Tara, Devon, and me.
Nathan was there for me, and so were Micah and Jordan. I don’t think they understood what I was doing, but they’d come along to see the show. Devon had a couple of friends watching from up on the hill.
Nobody came for Tara.
She was waiting at the starting line when Devon and I got there, hands on her hips, face set in a permanent scowl.
“Hey,” I said. “We gonna do this?”
Tara’s scowl got even scowlier.
“Easy,” Devon said. “I promise not to stomp your ass this time.”
“Fuck you,” Tara said. She turned to me. “And fuck you too, Hannah.”
“Hey,” I said. “Why are you down on me?”
“Because,” Tara said. “Your outbreak-monkey dad turned my mom into a sex pig. She was bad enough before. She’s disgusting now. I’ve got to lock my bedroom door to keep her from sneaking into my room at night and molesting me. So, you know—thanks for that.”
“What are you talking about?” Devon said. “The whole nympho thing isn’t permanent, Tara. They’ve got pheromone blockers.”
“Yeah,” Tara said. “Mom won’t take them. She likes the pheromones.”
I had no idea what to say to that.
“So,” Devon said after a long, awkward pause. “Is this it? Nobody else coming?”
Tara looked up at her.
“Do we need anyone else? I mean, would they make any difference?”
Devon smiled.
“Nah. Just checking.”
If this had been a real meet, there would have been a chalked line, and cones, and starting boxes. It wasn’t, but we knew where the line would have been. Devon did a short stretching routine. Tara and I stood and waited. When she was ready, we stepped to the line, Devon on one side, Tara on the other, me in the middle.
“How do we do this?” Devon asked. “Just ready, set, go?”
I looked up to where my friends were, at the top of the hill over the soccer field.
“Jordan!” I called. “Come start us off!”
He climbed to his feet and sauntered down the hill. When he got to the edge of the field, maybe fifty yards away, he raised both arms over his head. The three of us tensed, our weight shifting forward. When his arms came down, we went.
That race was the strangest one I’ve ever run. I’d lost a bit of muscle in the dungeon, and pretty much all of my fat, and I was as light as I’d been before I hit puberty. I felt fast, almost like I was floating, but also delicate, and I remember thinking that if I fell, I might not get back up—I might just hit the ground and shatter into a million pieces.
I don’t know what the others had been doing, training-wise, since everything fell apart, but Tara started out in what looked to me like a dead sprint. She opened up a thirty-yard lead in the first half mile, and I actually lost sight of her when we went into the woods. Devon, on the other hand, seemed content to hang on my shoulder, at least at the beginning. I could hear her breathing behind me, could feel her hand brush my elbow when I shifted her way. Two months before, that would have made me nervous, but after so much time running alone, knowing she was there was almost comforting.
A mile in, we hit the first big hill. I’d been a good hill runner at a hundred and fifteen pounds. I was a better one at a hundred and five. Halfway up, I could hear Devon straining. When I crested, I risked a glance back. She was at least ten yards back, and struggling. She closed up most of the gap on the down, but I pushed even harder on the next climb. By the last of the three big ups, right around the end of the second mile, I was pretty sure I’d broken her.
Tara, on the other hand, was not broken. I could see her, off and on. She wasn’t stretching it out on me, but I didn’t seem to be making up much ground on her either. When we came back out of the woods, a bit more than a half mile from the finish, she still had twenty yards on me.
Here’s the weird thing, though—I really wasn’t hurting. I wasn’t slacking. I felt like I was pushing as hard as I could, but I wasn’t panicked, and I wasn’t in pain. Tara was starting to struggle. I could see it in her stride, and in the set of her shoulders. I knew then that I could take her. I stretched out my stride just a bit, just enough that my breath came a little deeper, and I swear it felt like I had her on a line, like all I needed to do then was to reel her in.
Her lead was fifteen yards when we came around the bottom of the hill. Jordan and Micah were screaming for me. Even Nathan was yelling something, though I couldn’t tell what. It was ten yards at the quarter-mile mark, and less than five when we came to the field. Tara was kicking by then, but her form was all wrong. Her body was too upright, her head thrown back, one shoulder dipping with every stride. She was dying. I rose up onto the balls of my feet. I was barely breathing hard. I was three yards back, then two, then one. I could have touched her when we made the turn onto the last straightaway. I could hear her half sobbing with every breath.
And then, with a hundred yards to go . . .
I eased off.
To this day, I don’t know why I did it. I didn’t feel sorry for Tara. I didn’t even really like her by then.
For some reason, I guess I just felt like she deserved it more.
We crossed the finish line with her a half stride ahead. I slowed to a walk and looked back. Devon was just making the last turn. Tara was doubled over with her hands on her knees, puking. I waited until she was finished, then offered her my hand.
Tara looked at the ground, then up at my face.
“You let me win,” she said.
I started to deny it, but then stopped before the first word was out. She wasn’t stupid.
“I don’t need your fucking pity,” she said. “I worked for this, Hannah. I wasn’t built for it.”
Devon came up to us then, sweaty and grinning. She looked at Tara, then at me.
“What’s her problem? She won, right?”
I shrugged.
Tara looked back and forth between us, then turned on her heel and stalked away.