“They’re probably caught in traffic,” Bree said, shading her eyes from the afternoon sun. “Call them.”
Reaching for my phone, I heard the starter call out: “Take your mark.”
“Too late, here we go,” Bree said as the seven girls in the race moved toward the starting line. Jannie was in lane two, well back in the stagger.
“She told me at breakfast that she’s got no expectations,” I said, despite the fact that my stomach was doing flip-flops, the way it always does when I see one of my kids about to compete. “Her coach said this is just for the experience.”
“That why you’re practicing your ballet pose?” my wife asked.
“Just trying to see a little better,” I replied.
“Alex, you’re six three, you can always see a little better.”
“Set,” the starter said, raising the gun.
The gun went off and they sprang off the line, driving their arms and legs down the straightaway toward the first curve. Once around the track as fast as you can go, the quarter-mile takes speed, strength, and guts.
My daughter had gone to the starting line remarkably relaxed, but the second the pistol fired, the intensity exploded out of her with such force that it caught me completely off-guard.
So did her speed, which was evident almost immediately as she began to make up the stagger and run the curve. When they entered the backstretch, Jannie was barely third and boxed in by the second- and fourth-place runners. I wasn’t thinking strategy, just praying that she hadn’t blown her wind in that first hundred and ten yards.
But again to my surprise, Jannie ran with the older girls stride for stride down the backstretch, and she didn’t look like she was straining at all. Then they entered the far turn, still in that tight bunch with Jannie boxed in third, jostling with the elbows of the second- and fourth-place runners. I felt certain she’d stay boxed as they exited the curve and headed toward home.
Then the girl in second place, a senior from College Park, made her move, trying to get ahead of the leader, a senior from Eastern High. The girl in front sped up and gave no ground, but the give-and-take opened up a gap between the second- and fourth-place girls.
Jannie seized on the opportunity like a cagy veteran. She leaped diagonally through the opening. Showing strength and guts I’d never known she had, my daughter gritted her teeth, dug deep, and ran like there was a lunatic with a blowtorch chasing her.
She caught and passed the girl from College Park with sixty yards to go and ran neck and neck with the senior from Eastern, who was a
fighter, too. She held Jannie off until the thirty-yard line, where my baby girl hit the afterburners and broke the tape two full body lengths ahead.
Chapter
95
Bree and I went wild, or at least as wild as two bruised and injured people can, cheering and whooping it up along with hundreds of Jannie’s schoolmates who were stomping their approval on the metal grandstands and clapping wildly.
Down on the track, the coach was hugging Jannie. The other competitors in the race were eyeing her in shock and awe. My daughter was at least three years younger than them, a girl against women, and she’d blown their doors in. I still couldn’t believe it as Bree and I made our way down to the track.
Jannie came toward me with the coach in tow. She had tears in her eyes.
“Did you see it?” she asked.
“Every incredible second of it.”
“Fifty-four nine,” said the coach, an earnest guy in his late thirties who looked shocked. “Paul Anderson. Honor to meet you, sir, ma’am. Saw you both on the news the other night.”
Bree touched her facial bandages and smiled. “What’s fifty-four nine?”
“Why, her time,” Anderson said, beaming.
“That’s good?” I asked.
“Mr. Cross, that’s one-point-twenty-five seconds off the national high school record of fifty-three sixty-five, set back in 1979!” Anderson said. “It’s also now the school record!”
“That is good,” Bree said.
“At fifteen? In her first race?” Coach Anderson cried. “It’s ridiculous! And I’m telling you, that wasn’t the strongest I’ve seen Jannie run. Not by a long shot.”