Chapter One: Thursday One THURSDAY
I don’t look like a runner. I look like a rag doll trying to launch myself toward the finish line on rubbery legs that weren’t made for this.

But my legs were made for this, so I keep going.

The wind blasts against me, picking up for the home stretch. This is about the time my thighs and calves have melted into wobbly blocks of Jell-O, and my arms have numbed completely, my form long gone.

Of course there’s a wind when I can’t feel my feet.

I just want the misery over.

I chance a look at the sky. Dark clouds glare at me. Storms are pretty typical in April, but… is that a tail?

My hearts rams in my throat. I hate tornadoes. I’ve never experienced one, and I don’t live in a place that sees them often, or, like, ever, but that doesn’t stop my brain from whispering, I think that is a tail. You better run for your life.

Which makes everything harder. Running for your life is too much pressure. And I’m actually running toward the possible tail, or the imaginary one, however you want to see it, since it’s straight ahead and so is the finish line and the end of my torture.

I can hear Coach Mac yelling from here. The wind’s not against her. It snatches her words, twirls them across the football field, and delivers them right to my ears.

“Pick it up, Leta, or I’ll add another!”

She’ll have to make me crawl another. My legs won’t make it through one more four hundred.

I try to pick it up. I really do. But when I cross the finish line and bend over, gasping—just what Coach Mac tells us not to do (“Doesn’t let enough air get to your lungs, ladies!” she says)—and Coach Mac calls out my time, I wonder the same thing she asks:

“What’s wrong with your feet today, Leta?”

What’s wrong with my feet?

I’ll tell you what’s wrong with my feet: Track shoes are expensive, which means Mom can’t buy a new pair every time mine wear out, which means I run miles and miles in my track shoes, which means all the miles someone else ran in these track shoes before me (because they’re not brand-new, they’re secondhand, that’s the way we have to do things in my family) along with my miles add up to slow slow slow

SLOW!

Coach Mac has me running the four-hundred-meter dash. It’s not quite long enough to wear regular running shoes. It’s more of a long-distance sprint, which calls for the special metal-spiked shoes that are supposed to help a runner’s toes grip the track so they can run super fast.

Some of us don’t run super fast. At least, not every day. I’d like to remind Coach Mac of that, right now, when she’s looking at me like I’m some alien who stole Leta Laurel’s body and is now pretending she can run. Sometimes we’re tired. Sometimes our feet don’t work. Sometimes we have terrible shoes.

I’m practicing today in my track spikes because our next meet is Saturday. Coach Mac likes us to spend our last practice before our meets in the shoes we’ll wear for our race.

The spikes on track shoes should be sharp. Mine are so dull you might mistake them for one of those thimbles Mom wears when she’s sewing the hem of my pants, which have to be let out every month or so. Every time I bring her another pair for her magical alteration skills, she says, can I please stop growing? I tell her I’d really love to, have you ever been taller than just about every boy and girl and person and teacher in your school? I passed her up by the time I hit fifth grade, so I already know that answer.

Growing is a problem, because Mom just bought me these track shoes six weeks ago and already they feel tight against my toes.

But I won’t tell her that. Anything that costs money makes Mom get that anxious look on her face. And I don’t like making Mom more anxious than she already is.

When I first handed Mom the track practice schedule, she beamed at me and said, “You made the team!” She looked so happy, I didn’t have the heart to tell her everybody made the team. Our school’s too small not to take everybody who wants to run track—and even then, Coach Mac isn’t above begging more girls to join with promises of monkey bread breakfasts before meets and free pizza on the way home. That’s not why I joined, but it’s probably why half the girls are on the team. Not a lot of money around these parts, and free pizza is free pizza. And have you ever tried monkey bread?!

When I told Mom Coach Mac assigned me to the four-hundred-meter dash, her face fell like a shot-put ball in the hands of a weakling. Even she knew what kind of shoes you need for any race that ends in “dash.”

The most expensive kind.

“Let me see those shoes,” Coach Mac says.

I wonder what she’d do if I pretended she wasn’t talking to me. But since she’d probably make me run another four hundred and my legs are already fried, I stop and lift up a foot.

“Give me the shoe, I mean,” Coach Mac says, rolling her eyes.

I almost say, “But it’s really stinky,” but I decide she gets what she deserves. I pull it off and hand it to her.

She wrinkles her nose before turning it over. She clicks her tongue and shakes her head. “Well, now I see why my star runner can’t seem to do more than lumber like a deranged giraffe.”

She doesn’t mean that. Does she?

A couple of girls giggle. They’re no friends of mine. They’re girls who can afford the sort of shoes that should make them faster, if they had any kind of running talent.

That’s mean. I shouldn’t say it. But at least the words stayed in my thoughts instead of hurtling out of my mouth.

“It’s the wind,” I mumble. I’ve never liked running against the wind. Why can’t our school build an indoor track?

I know why. It’s because all the athletics money goes to football. Surprise, surprise. It’s not fair, but it’s also not unusual. You pick any school in Texas, and it’s the same “football is king” story.

Good spikes would help against the wind. I know this. I stare at the ground.

“Get yourself some new spikes before this weekend’s meet,” Coach Mac says.

Doesn’t she know that’s easier said than done? Track spikes aren’t in the budget.

Unless Dad magically decides this week is the week he’ll start sending Mom some money from his out-of-state job way up in Michigan, which doesn’t seem to pay much. But since he hasn’t done that in three years, I think it’s probably unlikely.

I do believe in miracles. Just not that kind.

“Yes, ma’am,” I say anyway. And my chest pinches up tight, which is what happens anytime I think about Dad and the silence and what it might mean.

Coach Mac hands back the shoe, but not before wrinkling her nose again. “And try some baking soda inside.” She waves a hand in front of her nose, like she’s trying to get rid of something foul. A dead skunk in the middle of the road when it’s ninety-nine degrees out and the air conditioner is blasting on high so the dead smell gets caught in the car and you’ll never get it out. The fumes from the boys’ bathroom at school, which doesn’t have a true working door and gifts everyone who passes with an unexpected (but should be expected) whiff. One of Amelia’s Spam farts when we’re trapped in a car with two windows that don’t roll down.

I almost tell Coach Mac the smell was there before I ever wore the shoes in the first place, but that would give away a secret I don’t want to tell. I’m just glad she didn’t notice the giant layer of superglue I applied to the flapping sole this morning. Which does not seem to work as well as it advertised.

I sigh and wriggle my foot back into the shoe, feeling a little like one of Cinderella’s ugly stepsisters.

How’s a girl supposed to run in shoes that don’t fit, shoes that flap, shoes that can’t grip any better than the seal on one of those off-brand sandwich bags Mom has to buy because they’re cheaper and we’re on a tight budget?

You know how I know about the terrible, no-good, very bad seal of those off-brand sandwich bags Mom has to buy?

Because the day I decided to take a leftover egg salad sandwich to school instead of the usual PB&J was the same day I stuck that sandwich in one of those off-brand sandwich bags and straight into my backpack instead of my lunch bag.

There’s a reason I left my lunch bag at home. I got tired of bringing my old rainbow unicorn lunch bag from fourth grade, when I’m in eighth grade. I mean, I still love rainbows and I sleep with a stuffed unicorn, but those are things people don’t have to see. You know?

I decided to take matters into my own hands and use my backpack as a lunch bag.

Sometimes you make terrible decisions you wish you could take back. This was one of them.

Anyway. I zipped the bag closed. But it didn’t stay zipped closed.

Oh no.

By the time lunch rolled around, egg salad had smashed into every crevice of the only new thing I got to kick off my eighth-grade year: a purple backpack.

And you know what? The bad day didn’t end there. Of course it didn’t. It followed me home.

I tried to wash my backpack free of its egg salad, but the only thing I washed it free of was its perfect purple color.

Now I walk around with a backpack that’s more pale lavender than perfect purple.

Turns out backpacks on the clearance rack aren’t made to be washed.

There’s another reason I might be slow that has nothing to do with my track shoes, but I don’t like to think about it.

Puberty.

Coach Mac starts every track season talking to us about puberty. I’ve heard her speech two years in a row, so I practically have it memorized.

“Young women throughout history have gone through puberty, and that means changing bodies,” she tells us. “And sometimes it also means slower run times for a while, until you get used to your new, changing bodies.” She squints at us during this part, like she’s trying to see which ones of us will believe her and which ones won’t. I don’t know if she can actually tell, but I always try to make my face say I believe everything she says. Because I do. She’s one of the smartest people I know, besides Mom and Pop.

“Your bodies, however they look during the changing, do not tell the future of your running career,” she also tells us. “Things will settle into their proper places, and you’ll find your stride again.”

I think she might have been talking about boobs when she said, “Things will settle into their proper places.” They throw off your whole center of gravity for a while. I’ve heard.

Coach Mac also regularly tells us things like “Don’t worry about your weight, girls. Make sure you’re eating enough food to fuel your body. Do not EVER stop eating because you think lighter is faster. It’s not. It’s a myth, and my girls are too smart to fall for myths.”

She’s very passionate about that.

She’s very passionate about every part of running, actually. She’s the only coach I know who buys sports bras for anyone who needs them. “No person should be excluded from track just because her family can’t afford a good sports bra,” she says. I’ve taken a couple from her, since I know Mom doesn’t have the money for expensive sports bras, only the cheap ones that need constant adjusting. Who wants to adjust a bra while they’re running in front of other people?

Track shoes and track spikes aren’t included in the community treasure chest, though, so we’re on our own for those. Track shoes are too expensive for Coach Mac to give away. But I’m not sure why she hasn’t thought of the cost of track spikes. Maybe because they’re not that expensive for most people. Or because we don’t need to replace them often—most of my teammates are still wearing the same ones they wore last season; mine just came old, so they’re already close to stubs.

Or maybe it’s because I’ve never mentioned I need help getting them.

I don’t mention it because it’s kind of embarrassing. No one wants to admit their family can’t afford new track spikes. When you admit you can’t afford ten extra dollars, people look at you a certain kind of way. I learned that back in third grade, when I told my teacher I didn’t have a foldout poster board for our wax museum project because my mom had to buy groceries that week. Some kid said, “My poster board only cost two dollars,” like that made a difference. Two dollars will also buy two bags of beans.

Anyway. Back to puberty. Why does it always have to come back to puberty?

Coach Mac used to be a professional runner, so she also starts every season teaching us how to monitor our periods. She hands us all a pocket-size calendar and says, “Look, girls, no one talked to me about this when I was your age. But it’s important to know where you are in your cycle and adjust your training to best suit your body. Your period is your business, and I would never, ever share that information with anyone else. But I’m here to help anytime you need it.”

If we don’t want to track our period, she says that’s our choice and our business too.

“Not everyone has predictable cycles, especially in the beginning,” Coach Mac says. “But they can be important indicators of your running health.”

What she means is, we can monitor our periods to make sure we’re not getting into what she called RED-S.

“It’s a condition we don’t want to play around with,” she tells us as often as possible. “I saw far too many of my colleagues end their careers too early because of it.”

Basically, she says if we start our periods and they’re pretty regular and then we run a lot and get too thin because of the running and then go months and months where we don’t have a period, it can sometimes—but not always—mean we’re not eating enough to run as much as we run. And that can lead to holes in our bones, which makes them easier to break.

I think she told us that last part to scare us a little. And it works—at least for me!

Coach Mac isn’t just making all this up, either. I googled it, and RED-S is a real thing. It can end running careers, just like she said.

Being a girl is complicated.

So I monitor my period every month. So does everyone else, I think. And if we need to talk to Coach Mac about something, she takes us into her office, closes her door, and lets us ask our questions, however personal or ridiculous, and she never tells another person. It’s like having a big sister or another mom or a friend who’s a little bit scary sometimes.

I don’t think there are many coaches like her, but I’m pretty sure there should be more.

Although, she’s not perfect. She once told me, in the middle of practice, while the boys jogged past, “I got another sports bra for you to try, Leta. I found a smaller size.”

I ran super fast that day, trying to outrun my burning face.

I still took the bra.