Running the Rift by Naomi Benaron

Author:Naomi Benaron
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 2012-09-18T04:00:00+00:00

NINETEEN

JEAN PATRICK KNEW IT WAS FOOLISHNESS, but he suspected his lingering cold and Bea’s lingering absence grew from the same bitter seed. If he could chase sickness from his body, Bea would come back. Or if Bea came back first, she would sweep the aches and pains from his limbs, the congestion from his lungs.

The team had finished the warm-up—a series of lunges, strides, and butt kicks—and gathered to watch Coach struggle with something in the trunk of his car. He had his back to them, and no one could get a clear view through the dense eucalyptus that stood between them and the road above.

“It’s a body,” Daniel said. “A guy who cheated in Coach’s government class.”

A four-hundred-meter runner patted Jean Patrick on the back. “Oya! It’s a wife for this guy. Coach found her in the bush, and if Jean Patrick survives the workout, he can have her.”

The trunk lid banged shut. Coach rolled the object toward the edge of the road and shoved it down the slope. An immense truck tire careened down the embankment.

“Yampayinka!” Daniel said, and he let out a whistle. They all stood frozen, watching the tire’s unpredictable passage as it crashed through the trees. At the last instant, they scattered. The effort sent Jean Patrick into a fit of coughing.

Coach howled. “You guys have to learn to relax. If you remain calm, your mind will tell your body what to do. It works on the track, and it works in your life.”

The tire gyrated on the field. Its rotation slowed until it could no longer sustain the motion, and it toppled. Coach tapped it with his shoe. “Who’s first?” He pulled a harness from his bag and let it swing from his fingers.

Despite the beating from his cold, Jean Patrick couldn’t resist the challenge. “You want one of us to pull that thing?”

Coach held out the harness to Jean Patrick. “Did I hear you volunteer?”

“Wait. You mean, I race with that weight while the others run free?”

“Precisely. We’ll start with two hundreds and work up to eights,” Coach said.

Coach attached the lines. A crowd gathered in the stands. Just two days remained before Christmas vacation, and the students were boisterous, celebrations under way. Jean Patrick scanned the seats in vain for Bea. Since the evening two weeks ago when she had stood with him outside Jonathan’s gate, she had truly vanished from his life.

“Coach is finally going to kill you,” Daniel said, lining up beside him.

“We’ll see. And if you run in your usual slack way, you’ll be next.”

“Six two hundreds,” Coach shouted. “Tugende.”

At first, inertia got the better of Jean Patrick. The tire’s weight chopped his stride and sent him flailing. But by the third two hundred, persistence paid off, and he found a rhythm and stillness in his step that kept the tire straight and steady behind him. It was a matter of momentum; if he never quite stopped, if he conserved the tire’s linear motion, he could keep the other runners in sight.

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