ally stern German, the mile machine. I’ve never shown her anything but my own poker face, but I always assumed her to be unemotional all the way to the marrow of her bones.
I cried not a week ago, which isn’t particularly notable, but my breath still stutters in a hitch when I think about it at the end of the first lap. I growl it away, which makes Melody from the University of Illinois glance over at me from where she hangs at my left shoulder. Greta is maybe four meters ahead, her stride absolute perfection, and I twist my own throttle up a notch to start closing the gap so I might have a chance. Melody drops off my shoulder.
For the next lap, I reel Greta in until I am maybe two meters behind her. Our split time is fast but not fast enough to blow me up. This is exactly the position Coach McMillan wants me in, but then my unruly mind turns to my sister—incredibly graceful hurdler and nationally ranked heptathlete with shelves of trophies and heaps of medals, and now? One year out of college and just two years to the Olympics, and she calls it quits, gets engaged to a pale computer-science type, applies to grad school, and decimates her collection of running shoes until she’s left with a single pair of all-purpose trainers she uses for four-mile jogs three times a week.
I mean, really, what am I supposed to do with this about-face?
languages are his thing and shrugs off my wonder.