Claire dropped her shoulders and looked at her team. “What do you want me to do, then?” she asked.
He pointed across the field. “Distance runners are doing a five-mile loop.”
Several sprinters groaned.
“That sucks,” one of the guys muttered. Sprinters hated distance runs.
One of the girls mouthed the word sorry.
Claire stood and dusted off her shorts. “No, it’s fair,” she said to them. She turned to Chelsea. “You totally got this.” She extended her hand and fist-bumped the other girl.
“I can help you in English,” Leah offered.
Bennett and Cooper exchanged smiles. “That’s the kind of teamwork I like to see.”
Claire took a few steps.
“And, Claire?” Coach Bennett said.
“Yeah?”
“Keep pace and come in pushing the leaders.”
That she didn’t expect. The back of the pack was where she wanted to be.
She turned and had to double her pace to catch up.
“Let’s get to work.” Cooper’s words fueled her legs.
It didn’t take long, or much, to catch up to the back of the pack. Most were sophomores and freshmen and built like beanpoles. The boys weren’t shaving yet, and the girls had half a foot on the boys, which put many of them at perfect boob height.
She caught up with the first cluster, surprised them from the back. “Hey,” she said.
“What are you doing?” Terrance was the kid she’d run through her first circuit with. He settled for distance.
“I’m failing English,” she said, hoping to get them to talk, even a little.
“Really?”
“Currently. I mean, I won’t.”
The three other kids he ran with puffed out their chests, wore big smiles.
Okay, this won’t work.
She picked up her pace. “See ya.”
One of them said she was hot when he thought she was far enough away not to hear.
Up on a pack of girls. And that’s how they ran, in a pack and chattering. Which meant they weren’t in this run to do anything but finish it. “Hi.” Claire jumped off the sidewalk to push into their group.
She tried to remember even one of their names, and found her mind blank. Claire made eye contact with one of the more heavyset girls. “You’re, ah . . . I forgot your name.”
“Melissa.”
“Right, Melissa. We pass each other in, ah . . .”
“C building.”
“Right.”
“What are you doing?” Again, the questions came, the answers were the same.
The conversations were brief, but gave Claire what she was looking for. Before she sped up to the next group, she parted with “You know the guys behind you are just there to check out your asses, right?”
They all looked, laughed, and waved her off.
And so it went. As she inched her way to the leaders of the pack, she tried to make contact with all of them, especially the stragglers. The ones who ran alone, though there didn’t seem to be many of them. Once they left the neighborhood surrounding the school, and onto some of the busier streets, the stoplights gave her a decent chance to catch up. They were on their last mile and she was certainly feeling it. It wasn’t unlikely for her and Jax to go for long runs on the weekends, or hit an obstacle course for the fun of it, but she hadn’t done any of those things since the Auburn-Bremerton operation had begun.
She and Jax had made a pact that they weren’t going to be those women who lose their fitness level after they left Richter. And that course rivaled any boot camp Claire was familiar with. This five-mile run was telling her she and Jax needed to take it up a notch.
The last mile of the run she was up with the top varsity girls, who ran with purpose. Although they were still chatty.
“Good God, you guys do this every day?” Claire asked, pushing into the mix.
Her presence was met with surprise and a little less awe than from the younger classmates.
“This is a short run.”
“Yeah, sometimes we do ten miles.”
“That’s ugly,” Claire said.
“You must have pissed off Bennett.” The girl talking was in her World Affairs class. Brianna. And from what Claire had witnessed, she’d be the one to beat for the two mile on the Auburn team.
“Good guess,” Claire said.
There were three of them, and they all laughed.
“Do you run cross-country, too?” Claire asked them as a group.
They nodded.
“So you’ve been voluntarily running this shit for four years?” Claire’s head started to tick. Marie had dropped out of school three years ago. One of them may have known her.
“It’s an illness,” Brianna said, laughing.
“You guys are crazy.”
They chatted a bit.
“Have you always been on varsity, Brianna?”
She shook her head. “No, Bennett doesn’t put lowerclassmen on varsity if they can’t place with the older kids. Once I found my pace and strategy, I got better.”
“What’s that?”
“Stay at the top and skate until the last lap.”
Claire looked ahead. Only varsity boys were in front.
“They don’t count, huh?”
“Not at meets.”
Claire saw the school in the distance, picked up her pace. “What about out here?”
“This isn’t a race.”
“I’ll never understand distance runners.”
Claire moved faster and found the other girls right on her heels.
The four of them ran up behind the guys, who weren’t running to win, and pulled alongside.
“Hey,” Claire acknowledged them.
“What are you doing out here?”
“Dying,” Claire said between breaths. “Where is the damn finish line?”
“We come up the back side and stop midfield.”
Claire knew this was going to hurt, but she did it anyway.
“Well, shit.” She estimated they were a little more than a quarter mile to their destination, and she needed to make sure she ran with these guys again. “See you there.”
It took some serious concentration and effort to keep her legs moving. But she did.
And right behind her, so did the rest of the varsity teams.
Her chest was on fire, her legs burned, but she put her body into the race, and when she turned the corner and saw the field, she stopped thinking altogether.
The rest of the track team that was wrapping up their day stopped and watched. There were nine of them from the distance run stretched out and hauling ass. As a rule, the distance runners didn’t spend their endurance conditioning runs racing for fun. But there was laughter and jostling for first place. To make it better, some of the sprinters on the field started yelling her name, while others called out to their friends.
Two of the guys overshot her, as well as Brianna when they reached the fifty-yard line. By the time they reached the end of the grass, they were sucking in air like guppies out of water.
Claire walked in a circle, patting backs and giving high fives.
“You might want to save a little for the invitational,” Bennett said, coming up behind them.
Claire braced both hands on her knees. “Your fault,” she accused him. The sight of Cooper jogging over made her smile brighter. “You said to keep pace and come in pushing the leaders.” Claire extended her arms. “Mission accomplished.”