Izzy Barr, Running Star by Claudia Mills

Author:Claudia Mills
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780374335793
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)

Izzy knew that Mrs. Molina didn’t really have the power to cancel third-grade Field Day. Not after Mr. Boone had been whipping everybody in the school into a frenzy of anticipation for the various Field Days for each grade all week. Izzy hadn’t seen Mr. Boone anywhere this morning. Maybe he’d be outside on the field doing push-ups or sit-ups while he waited for the third graders to arrive.

“Boys!” Mrs. Molina said, even louder this time, as one more shoe soared through the air. “Put your shoes on now!”

The boys scrambled to retrieve their kicked-off shoes.

“Does everybody have his shoes?” Mrs. Molina demanded as she stood scowling back at the class. “If I see a single boy without his shoes, that boy will be spending Field Day in Mr. Boone’s office. Am I making myself clear?”

She waited while the boys, except for Simon, bent down to shove their shoes back onto their feet and retie their loose laces.

Izzy saw that one boy was still missing a shoe.

It was Cody.

“Where’s your shoe?” Izzy asked in a low voice, dropping back to the end of the line to walk next to him.

“I can’t find it,” Cody said miserably. “And I can’t tell Mrs. Molina because if she sees I don’t have my shoe, she won’t let me run against Simon in the race.”

Izzy stared down at Cody’s shoeless foot.

“How can she not see that you don’t have your shoe? It’s not on your foot!”

“I know. She might not notice if I don’t tell her, but she’s bound to notice if I do, and then I can’t beat Simon.”

As if Cody could beat Simon wearing only one shoe. Besides, sooner or later, Mrs. Molina noticed everything.

It wasn’t Cody’s fault that he couldn’t find his shoe. All of the boys, except for Simon, had kicked off their shoes. It was Cody’s bad luck that he was the only one who couldn’t find his to put back on.

“I’ll tell her, and I bet she’ll understand,” Izzy said, sounding more confident than she felt. Mrs. Molina was often crabby. But on the morning of Field Day, with no time for math, and with the boys in her class kicking their shoes all over the hallway, she was even crabbier than usual.

Trailing outside behind the others, Izzy walked up to her teacher, who had sat down heavily on the bench at the edge of the playing field, while her class ran around whooping and hollering as if math had never been invented.

“Mrs. Molina?”

“Yes, Izzy?”

This was harder than she had thought it would be.

“Yes, Izzy?”

“It’s Cody.”

“What about him?”

“He can’t find”—she had already started the sentence, so she had to finish it—“his shoe. He looked for it everywhere, really he did, but he just couldn’t find it.”

Mrs. Molina’s gaze fastened on Cody, standing a short distance away, trying to hide his shoeless foot behind the other one.

Before Mrs. Molina could say anything, Izzy pressed on. “So I’m going to go back inside with him to help him look again, okay? If we don’t find his shoe, he can’t run in the race, and Cody has to run, he just has to.

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