Moon Runner Read online

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Acknowledgments

  “Here.” Mina handed Ruth the Friendship Ball. “It’s your turn now.” The ball was made of bits of multicolored yarn. Each day a different friend took it home and added to it.

  “The Friendship Ball is getting too huge,” Ruth said, holding the yarn as if it were a bowling ball, pretending to stagger. Her ponytail swung back and forth.

  “That’s because we’re all such good friends,” Mina said. She stooped to pick up a bit of yarn that had come loose and floated to the sidewalk.

  They were walking in the feathery shade of the mesquite trees, toward the entry of the pink two-story building of Elizabeth Morris Elementary. A warm desert breeze stirred Mina’s bangs. The March day would be hot.

  “My soccer team took first place on Saturday.” Ruth gave a thumbs-up. “We’re the champs now.”

  “Cool,” said Mina, though it seemed silly to care so much about chasing a soccer ball around a field.

  “Today’s the big day,” Ruth said.

  “What big day?”

  “Don’t you remember? Track. Coach said that all fourth and fifth graders would be starting this afternoon.”

  Oh, no, thought Mina. She must have forgotten on purpose. If kids goofed around whenever Coach was giving instructions, they had to run laps. So Mina always stood at attention. She hated running. It was easier to put up with basketball. She could sort of pretend to play without doing much. Last year, at her old school, she hadn’t had PE because the yard was too small.

  They slipped into the courtyard just as the Pledge of Allegiance started. Mina put her hand over her heart and carefully said the pledge. When that was over, she sang the national anthem, almost hitting the high notes.

  The other two Fellow Friends stood in front of her. Alana, who always wore black Mary Jane shoes with jeans shorts, turned around. “Here,” she whispered, sprinkling candy powder from a packet into Mina’s palm.

  Mina sucked the sweet grains from her palm, and they turned to sugary, spicy syrup in her mouth.

  Sammy, with his cowlick of blond hair, opened his cupped hands to show Mina a cricket.

  “Let it go,” she whispered.

  Sammy opened his hands wider and the cricket leaped off.

  They got into the line for Ms. Jenner’s class. As the kids moved up the steps to the second floor, Mina wondered if she should pretend to be sick so she could miss track.

  She noticed her reflection in the glass case full of school sports trophies: Mina Lee with straight black hair and narrow eyes. Mina Lee who cared nothing about sports or trophies.

  When everyone was settled in the classroom, Ms. Jenner took attendance, then read the lunch menu: steak strips, French fries, green beans, and pudding.

  Mina looked out the big window. The sky was a crisp blue, clear all the way to the horizon. The moon, almost invisible, still hung above the desert mountains. Without thinking, Mina sketched it in the margin of her notebook.

  Ms. Jenner had all her students keep moon journals. She was nuts about the moon. Instead of a globe of the earth, she had one of the moon. She had a bookcase full of moon picture books, moon poetry, books of moon facts and moon myths. She had pictures of moon goddesses and of the first men to land on the moon.

  Mina had done a report on the Chinese Moon Festival, which was held during the fall, when the moon was huge. Mom had come to school and helped everyone make round moon cakes with red bean paste inside.

  It was time for silent reading. Mina took out her mystery, Seven Steps to Treasure, and began. The book was too easy for her. It had drawings at the beginning of each chapter. “Can’t you read something more challenging?” Mom often said. Mom was a librarian, and reading was important to her. “You get cold feet when it comes to reading, Mina Lee.” But Mina liked her mystery series.

  The heroine had just found diamonds in the neighbor’s yard. The trunk was too heavy for Francesca to lift. So she looked around, then hid one diamond in her pocket.

  “And now, class,” said Ms. Jenner, when the twenty minutes was up, “you have an hour to work on individual projects.”

  At the computer, Ruth and Mina traded the mouse back and forth as they clicked through one screen after another, looking for the website on tree frogs.

  Once they got to the site, they oohed and aahed over the glowing creatures photographed in their jungle hideouts. They ran the mouse together, Ruth’s hand on top of Mina’s, scooting back and forth on the table.

  Mina had started fourth grade here in the fall. She hadn’t wanted to leave her tiny private school. She felt comfortable there and had had the same best friend since kindergarten. But the school only went through third grade. All summer Mina had worried about the plunge into the huge public school. Mostly she’d worried about making a new friend.

  But it turned out that friends hadn’t been a problem after all. The first day, a group of two girls and a boy had invited her to the shady picnic tables at lunchtime. Sammy wasn’t like the other boys she’d known. He was never bossy, and he liked to talk about things the way girls did. By the end of the first week, Mina had traded phone numbers with Sammy, Alana, and Ruth.

  In early October, Ruth had thrown a surprise party for Mina. The Fellow Friends had jumped out from behind the bushes wearing cone-shaped party hats. Ruth had read the official Fellow Friends certificates out loud: herself for being the athlete, Sammy for loving to collect bugs, Alana for being the best reader, and Mina for being the New Friend.

  They taught her the Fellow Friends Handshake: Shake with the right hand, patty-cake twice, snap, snap.

  Out on the patio, under the gigantic spreading black walnut tree, they sat down around a cake with Fellow Friends Forever on it. Because Mina was the guest of honor, Ruth handed her the knife. Mina had paused before slicing, not wanting to cut into the words linked together in cursive lines of frosting.

  Afterward, because the weather was still hot, the Friends threw water balloons at each other and drank huge glasses of red punch.

  PE was right after lunch. Coach Lombard waited in the middle of the field in his big, silly straw hat. As soon as everyone stood in formation, he named off the events: the high jump, the long jump, the softball throw, the quick sprint of the fifty meter, the exhausting five-hundred meter, the team relays . . . Mina noticed that as he talked, Ruth stretched her legs — first one, then the other — out in back of her, as though she couldn’t wait to get started on all the events at once. But listening to Coach made Mina feel like lying down in the grass for a long nap.

  “In two weeks, those of you who make the track team will be competing against the other schools in District 3 at Duncan Berring Elementary. Anyone who places first, second, or third at that meet will go on to the citywide meet. It’s called City for short.” Coach lifted his hat and smoothed his sweaty hair down with one hand.

  Mina pushed at some pebbles with her toe.

  “By the way,” he added, “not all of you will practice all the events.”

  Well, that’s one big relief, Mina thought.

  Coach blew his whistle and gestured toward the field. “Laps first. But take your time. I don’t want to see any showoff sprints. Pace yourselves so you can do at least three laps.”

  When Coach blew the whistle a second time, Ruth leaped forward as though no gravity held her down.

  Mina took a deep breath, started running, and felt li
ke a desert tortoise, storteling along with clunky, heavy limbs. Ahead, Ruth seemed to fly. How did she run so fast and easily?

  Mina had gone only half a lap, and breathing hurt. Maybe thinking about tortoises was a bad idea. There had to be a better animal. She imagined a roadrunner skipping along on tall, skinny legs.

  To her surprise, she felt lighter right away. She passed under the mesquite tree, whose long branches provided five strides’ worth of dark delicious shade. Her footsteps began to mark out a rhythm. She ran around the curve by the baseball diamond, toward the basketball courts. Why had she ever hated running? A lap wasn’t so far, after all.

  Roadrunner, roadrunner, she repeated to herself.

  The second time she crossed through the mesquite tree’s shade, she was sailing. Her legs carried her effortlessly. She passed Alana chugging along with red cheeks. Ruth ran half a lap ahead, and Mina began to gain on her.

  A warm, dry breeze lifted the hairs around Mina’s face as she ran. By the third lap, she remembered her favorite dream of flying off a snowy cliff and over a landscape speckled with pools of turquoise water. A half-moon hung like a promise in the daytime sky. In the dream, she’d glided, arms outstretched to hold the whole round Earth from one horizon to the other.

  “I did the coolest thing at school today,” Mina told her little sister when Mom picked them up from school.

  “Did you get Popsicles for snack?” asked Paige, pulling hard to open a bag of lemon drops, her black hair falling across her cheeks.

  “Nope. I ran.”

  “Oooh, I love to run!” Paige handed Mina a candy.

  Mom looked at them in her rearview mirror. “I hope that isn’t something sweet I smell coming from the back seat.”

  Mina closed her mouth tight around the lemon drop. She and Paige exchanged smiles.

  “I used to hate running,” Mina said, shifting the candy to her cheek. “But today it felt fun.”

  “You’ll probably win races,” Paige said.

  “I don’t care about winning. That part doesn’t matter.”

  “Take me running,” Paige said.

  “Mmm. Maybe.” Mina pressed her forehead against the glass of the car window. When she imagined the run in her mind, she once again felt like a roadrunner racing along on tall, skinny legs, sometimes lifting into a low arc of flight. “Okay. Let’s run super early tomorrow morning when the moon is still up.”

  As Mina and Paige approached the park near their house, a warm breeze swirled the fragrant smells of the springtime grass. The moon rested in the western sky, barely visible.

  “We should stretch first,” said Mina. “Hold on here.” She guided Paige’s hand to the fence, then showed her how to loosen her calf muscles.

  Paige imitated Mina, then announced, “I feel all stretchy now.”

  “You don’t look stretchy enough. Let’s do windmills with our arms.” Mina swung her arms backward, then forward, tracing giant circles.

  They set out over the damp, spongy grass. Mina breathed in the freshness.

  “Now faster,” Paige demanded after they’d gone once around the field.

  Mina quickened her stride, but not too much. Her little sister had to win this one.

  “Look, Mina, we’re racing the moon!” Paige shouted, pointing to the crescent that seemed to travel alongside them as they passed the monkey bars.

  “Who’ll win?” Mina asked.

  “I will!” Paige declared and sprinted ahead. She rounded the curve and threw herself down, panting, at the spot where she and Mina had stretched.

  “And you did win,” said Mina, crash-landing beside Paige.

  “Yup. The moon is in the same old place. And I even beat you, Mina.”

  They lay still together, the coolness seeping into their hot bodies. Mina stared up at the moon, so pale it almost looked transparent. She considered ways to record the morning run in her moon journal. “Don’t forget to explore movement in your journals,” Ms. Jenner had said. “Ancient peoples danced under the moon.”

  Mina hoped that running under the moon would count.

  A drawing of her and Paige? A poem? She hadn’t raced against the moon, she thought, but rather she’d let the moon guide her. That wasn’t a totally crazy idea. The moon’s gravity pulled on the ocean, creating the tides. It pulled on all liquids. And she was ninety percent water.

  Ms. Jenner had said to put music into the journals. Mina hummed a tune, making it up as she went along. Maybe she’d write a song about running with the moon: The white moon carried me faster, lifting me like a wave in the sea. . . .

  As they ran during PE that afternoon, Mina watched Ruth, who was half a lap ahead of her. Ruth’s legs moved quickly while she kept the upper part of her body still. Her bent arms pumped back and forth.

  Curious as to how it felt to move like that, Mina copied Ruth’s style.

  And again, she swirled into her flying dream with the earth rotating far below. Her feet hardly touched the grass, and her body grew tall. The air felt like a silk scarf slipping across her skin.

  She began to overtake Ruth. That surprised her. People said that Ruth Largness was the fastest runner in the school, including the boys. Just as Mina was close enough to reach out and touch Ruth, Coach blew the whistle and beckoned everyone close.

  Coach separated the boys from the girls. He had five high-school students working as helpers. “Line the kids up against the wall, tallest to shortest,” he called out.

  A girl named Addie, who wore a sweatshirt with Girls Rule! on it in glittery letters, took the girls to the wall by the cafeteria. “Stand back to back,” she commanded. “I need to separate you into groups.” Sometimes, she touched the tops of their heads with the flat of her hand, comparing heights. Finally, everyone got in order.

  Coach gestured with his arm, making slicing movements: “Everyone on my right is in D group. You girls here are in C.” And so on, until there were four groups.

  Mina and Ruth were in class C, with those of medium height.

  Alana, a little taller, ended up in class B.

  “Why did coach divide us up like that?” Mina asked Ruth.

  “To make it fair. Taller people with longer legs run faster.”

  The groups began to call names back and forth: “Shorties!”

  “Beanpoles!”

  “Shrimps!”

  “Telephone poles!” Mina shouted along with Ruth.

  A high-school kid with red hair took the boys to the high jump. The boy threw himself backward over a pole and landed on a big mattress.

  “Look,” Coach called out to another group. “I’m going to show you the long jump.” He ran down the grass like an airplane getting ready to lift off. At the white line, he took a giant leap and landed in the sand. His floppy hat sailed off his head and fell onto the grass.

  Mina and Alana giggled behind their hands.

  Coach leaned down to pick up the hat. “Now, one by one, your group will try that.”

  He led the class C girls to the grass, which he’d marked off with spray chalk for fifty-meter sprints.

  The first girl took off while Coach clocked her with his stopwatch. Then he wrote something down on his clipboard.

  Mina wiggled a loose tooth with the tip of her index finger.

  As they ran one by one, a fifth-grade girl with satiny running shorts asked Coach to show the times he’d written on the clipboard.

  He laughed. “This information is just for me.”

  Mina was sure that Ruth would be the fastest. She not only had strong muscles, but she also liked to win.

  Sammy stopped on the way back from the drinking fountain, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Don’t worry — you’ll do fine. You’ve got those long, chopstick legs,” he said to Mina. Together they watched Ruth at the starting line, deep into a lunge, ready to spring at the sound of Coach’s whistle.

  The whistle blew and Ruth darted forward, every bit of her focused on the white stripe painted on the grass. Coach pushed
the button on his watch when her left foot touched the finish line.

  Without thinking, Mina found herself bending into the same crouch as Ruth. At the whistle’s shrill blast, she pushed off, the toes of her right foot digging deep into the grass. Her legs flashed beneath her. She lifted off the ground with each stride and shot toward the line, her muscles filled with fire. Only when she heard Coach’s whistle again did she realize she had arrived.

  Waiting on Mina’s bed when she got home was a surprise from Mom — a library book about tree frogs. Mina picked it up and flipped through it. There were a lot of words. She sat down with it, though, and looked at the photos.

  “Like it?” Mom asked, coming into the room.

  “A little,” Mina admitted. “But it’s kind of hard.” In spite of herself, she began to read the captions under the photos. Not so hard after all. She concentrated and read more.

  Her brain and eyes were working to travel across the pages, she thought, the same way her body had worked to cross the grass.

  “A campout in my backyard would be so special,” Alana said over the telephone that night.

  “Maybe,” Mina said slowly. She always made up excuses not to go on overnights. At home she knew what to expect.

  Paige was watching a cartoon about three robots who kept getting into trouble. Poochie, Paige’s chocolate-colored mutt, sat on the couch too, yipping at the exciting parts.

  “Let me guess,” Alana continued. “You’re going out of town. You’re getting a cold. How can you be so nervous about a stupid overnight? You’re a track star now.”

  “A track star?” Mina asked.

  One of the robots toppled down a hill. Poochie yipped.

  “I know a secret about you. But I’ll only tell it if you spend the night.”

  Mina shifted the phone to the other ear. A secret? What could Alana know?

  “I think that’s a yes I hear coming.” Alana began to hum “For She’s a Jolly Good Fellow.”

  Mina smiled. An overnight probably couldn’t hurt. It might even be fun. “Okay. Yes, but I have to ask my mom.”

  “Yeah!” Alana shouted so loudly that Mina had to hold the phone away from her ear.