Page 8 of Past Tents

Clay outran everyone on the cross-country team, looking like a greyhound as he dashed down the ruddy trails toward finish lines countywide. It wasn’t effortless. I remembered seeing his cheeks puffing and his chest heaving as he passed by the crowd on the way up a set of switchbacks that went further up a hill before winding down to an open straightaway.

The image returned as I neared the track, and my heart rate inexplicably kicked up a notch. I had no intention of runningwith the team—perish the thought—but I’d changed into workout clothes anyhow.

“C’mon, Joe, kick it now. Last fifty. You’ve got this!” Clay’s deep baritone didn’t require a megaphone to resonate across the field. I could picture him crouched on the grass waving his arm to Joe as he finished his mile. Stopwatch in hand, Clay treated every workout like a race.

“Train like you race, race like you train,” he explained to his team, instructing them to fuel themselves the same way whether they had a track meet or just a workout.

I slipped underneath the bleachers and entered the track on the opposite straightaway from where Clay was timing his runners. After the milers finished, they walked in a circle, hands clasped on top of their heads, chests heaving, while Clay gave them feedback and fed them their stats he tracked on a clipboard.

While he was distracted with the team, I slipped onto the track and started jogging around the ellipse, heading toward the team. I planned to speed up the closer I got to Clay and leap across his field of vision like a gazelle.

Then I’d deliver the news about my unlikely supporting role on the retreat, and we’d have a good laugh.

Best-laid plans.

I pictured myself like the gazelle I wanted to be, picking up my pace as I rounded the bend on the track, feeling an ache in my legs as they woke up after I’d spent the day standing up and teaching. Despite my general grumblings about running for sport, it felt good to move my legs. Maybe there was something to it after all.

Glancing at the grass field in the middle of the track, I noticed how the carpet of green shone under the afternoon sunlight. No wonder Clay liked coming out here. While I usually spent extra time in the classroom after school, helping the yearbook committee with page layouts, Clay came out here every day, put on running gear, and got some exercise. It seemed healthier than my after-school routine. It didn’t take a medical professional to see that.

Maybe I’d invest in a better pair of shoes since the ones on my feet were the heavier white leather type that wouldn’t leave a mark on tennis courts. I wasn’t getting any kind of a speed advantage as the heavy soles slapped the dirt track.

Slap, slap, slap.

I channeled more big gazelle energy and pumped my arms, willing them to help me glide more swiftly down the straightaway of the track.

As I neared the team huddle, I heard Clay giving instructions for the next drill. His back faced me, so he didn’t see me coming. A couple of the students in the group watched as I drew closer, easily distracted from their coach by a moving object.

When I spied the hurdles set up in several lanes of the track, I pictured myself in the Olympics, running strong in the red, white, and blue. The voices of Clay and his students morphed into crowd noises, and I pictured myself easily clearing hurdle after hurdle, pitching one leg in front and bending my other knee to the side like I’d seen runners do on TV. It looked so artful, and here I was, tap-dancing down the straightaway, a graceful gazelle.

The image in my head propelled me forward, and I picked up my pace a tiny bit, ignoring the protest from my lungs. I ran a little faster, the huffing of breath now audible enough that a few more students turned their heads to find out its source, but Clay stayed focused on whatever inspiring instructions he hadn’t finished giving.

As I passed by the team huddle, I planned to leap into the air, legs extended in both directions in my best estimate of a ballerina’s jeté. I’d clear the hurdle and land with a hand-waving flourish.

Ta-da.

I extended my arms to both sides as I got ready to leave the ground, intent on flying past Clay’s field of vision at exactly the right moment, giving him a chuckle. Then I’d spring the chaperoning news. He’d blanch and convince Pindich to choose a less wilderness-phobic chaperone. If I went back to Pindich, he’d try to make me go to lunch with him, but if Clay asked, the odds were better for success.

The only problem was the hurdle was a lot higher than it had looked a few seconds earlier. I did my best leap, but I came nowhere close to clearing it.

Instead, I knocked it over, tripping as it fell.

My body continued its forward motion, even though my feet were only partially on the ground. I was more flying than running. Then stumbling, gaining air, careening downward and to the side.

As it was happening, I was aware enough of my surroundings to see mouths agape and hands held up in hopeless attempts to shield faces from the accident about to happen.

Clay turned his head just in time for me to see his eyes larger and rounder than I’d ever seen them, even through the magnifying lenses of his glasses. He wasn’t wearing them now, so I knew it was no mirage. He looked simultaneously terrified and confused. Which terrified me because Clay never looked confused.

Confident, yes. Cocky, yes. Confused . . . never.

But I was confusing. Still stumbling, still in motion despite my knees hitting the sandy track and my hands reaching down to arrest my movement. That put me semi-upright, careening forward, moving as if by hidden motor. But the worst of it was over.

Or so I thought.

With the team splayed out around Clay and the way students tended to fidget when they were wound up waiting to run around a track, they had blocked my field of vision.

Which meant I didn’t see the metal starting blocks sitting on three lanes of the track right beside the team huddle. Didn’t need to see them, it turned out, in order to trip on them as well and go flying even further.

My grand jeté looked more like a wagon wheel with electrocuted blond hair, cartwheeling to her certain death in front of the entire track team.

---