I peeked through the bushes. It was a bright, sunny day so I could see clear across the football field, to the running track on the other side. The bleachers were full of family and friends.
A practice day. A chance to show those other kids I know my stuff.
I wasn’t expecting to make my debut at a different school - that would be ridiculous. I was a Fairfield Ox, through and through, my parents were Oxen and my big sister was an Ox. Of course they’d expect me to make the team.
They didn’t expect me to miss the trials earlier in the summer. Who gets Covid in June, anyway?
Last week was the ‘back to school’ night for the Fairfield High School, and I had come in all full of bluster. Except, the only person who knew me there was the coach, since she had worked with my sister. Everyone else didn’t know me from a hole in the wall.
They cornered me in the locker room.
“So, what makes you think you are good enough to make this team? I don’t care WHO your sister was. Unless you beat our times at trials. Nobody gets in to the team.”
It was three of them, all in matching pigtails and “Kickoff with the Ox” shirts. The coach had treated me like her long lost daughter, pointing me out, saying how great my whole family was. She even wrapped her arm around my shoulders. No wonder they hated me already.
“Who do you think you are, breaking into OUR team!” they said.
—--
I shrugged off the memory and stood up, stretching as if I planned to be stretching in a bush fifty yards from the track, at a school I didn’t go to. Once I was sure nobody was looking, I strolled over to the practice area, looking for a place to slide into the group. I grabbed an old jersey top I saw discarded under the bleachers, the black horned beetle logo visible.
I could take it. I could. I could put it on and pretend to be a member of the team. There are hundreds of kids here.
Maybe they wouldn’t notice one more in their midst?
Earlier in the locker room, the girls were pushing. “There’s no way you are a good runner. We need to beat the Thunderbacks this year. We can’t take any chances with a newbie. You’ll just slow us down”
“The Thunderbacks?” I said. “Their school is our competition? The Beetle training grounds are near my dad’s new place.”
“Really?” Suddenly they were all ears. “Have you ever watched their practice? They are supposed to have a secret training method. Coach was just talking about it the other day, how she wished she could figure out how they were winning every year. Apparently their coach flaunts it in her face. See that empty trophy case?”
“Yeah.”
“Coach has been working for years to fill it. Just once with the state championship. She thinks they have some kind of special water they drink.”
“Yeah, um. Sure.”
“Could you show us? Maybe, get us in?”
Three pairs of eyes looked at mine.
“I dunno. Maybe I can skip school tomorrow and sneak over to Dad’s place. I’ll get some of the special water for you.” I was joking around but the tall one snapped it up.
“So there is special water? Whatever. It’s a plan. Find out something for us, newbie.”
How could I say no?
“Someone will recognize her.”
“Yeah. It’s like Coach said, she looks just like her sister. The FAMOUS runner. Wait, hold on. You can borrow this.”
The smallest of the three dug into her locker, and handed me a bag. I looked inside and asked, “What is it?”
“It” turned out to be a curly blonde wig, the exact opposite of my straight black hair. Nobody would think I was Charlie Cho’s younger sister with this on.
Of course, nobody would expect to see a third-generation Chinese immigrant with blonde ringlets, either.
—
So here I was, now, dropping my lunch under the bleachers and throwing the Thunderbacks jersey on over my tank top, trying not to dislodge my wig in the process.
I tried not to tug on the wig or think about how hot I was wearing two jerseys as I walked casually over to a group of girls standing near what could have been the starting line of the track.
I tried to blend in, not standing at the back or the front of the line.
The Thunderback’s coach arrived. “All right, settle down, dweebs,” she said. “If you want to join the team, you’ll have to show me and all of the other coaches you’ve got what it takes. Line up, double lines. Now.”
I tried to find a good place, not in the front or the back, and waited. Someone handed me a spoon. I didn’t say anything, since clearly everyone else knew what the spoons were for.
Suddenly the line was moving, and we were all bunching up. About forty kids all pushing and shoving. I felt a spoon poke me in the back.
“Move it, Goldie,” said a voice.
I turned but didn’t see anyone trying to catch my eye. I did notice that the bleachers had gotten a bit more empty, everyone else had moved on to watch a different section of the track, I supposed.
Then I was near the front. I felt everyone’s stares on me. A tall skinny black boy held a stopwatch. “Ready?”
I nodded.
“Go!”
I ran. Everyone else was running too, some in lanes next to mine. I wasn’t expecting to run and my hamstrings got tight just as I reached the first hurdle.
Except it wasn’t a regular hurdle. It was a chair. It was huge. Enormous. It took up two lanes. How did they even get this out here? The person to my right just went around it, so I did the same and then tried to sprint ahead.
The next hurdles were again, chairs. I jumped and screamed at the same time. Then the next and the next. Since they were chair-shaped I was freaked out every second that I would trip and fall.
I was going to make it.
Then my toe nicked the last chair.
I heard it fall with a crash and I went sprawling. As I stood up, I looked back to the bleachers. A dark shape was standing where I had dropped my lunchbox earlier.
A bear. What was a bear doing here? It couldn’t be an actual bear, could it? Maybe a mascot?
I brushed myself off and went to the finish line, wondering about the bear and the chairs. Another boy wearing a cap clicked a stopwatch. “One fault!” he shouted. “Move along to station two!”
I looked back to the bleachers again, but the bear (or whatever it was) had gone. A nudge from the kid behind me, and I found myself again in a line with a bunch of kids. We pressed forward and suddenly I was looking at a row of gigantic metal tubs, like the old-fashioned kind folks used to wash their laundry in. It was filled with some kind of tan lumpy stuff.
Porridge. They had porridge. So that’s what the spoon was for! I scooped up a spoonful and tried to do what everyone else was doing. We were bringing our portions quickly to other kids, who would take our spoons and move on to the next kid. A final bucket waited at the end of the straightaway.
A relay race, sort of. Except we were relaying porridge.
I accidentally dropped some on my leg and yelped. Ow, that’s hot!
What kind of training was this?
The final section of the track was taken up with kids who were pushing beds. Now we had bed races? This is ridiculous! Sitting on the beds were adults, perhaps teachers, maybe.
There’s no way I will fool a teacher. I don’t belong here. They will know it, right away.
I turned around to leave. Maybe if I just snuck out between the bleachers?
That’s when I saw it. The bear. It was there, it was really there. And the bear was looking right at me.
How come nobody else saw it? I didn’t scream. If I screamed, I’d be caught. I didn’t know what else to do.
So I grabbed a bed and ran.
On the back of the bed, weirdly enough, was my dad.
What was HE doing here?
“Dad!” I screamed as I pushed the bed along the track. It was difficult, the bed wheels were not meant to go on asphalt, but soon we were moving at a good clip.
“Dad, what are you doing here?”
“I work here, pumpkin. What are YOU doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be in school today?”
“No…I mean yes…hah hah”
It was hard to push a bed and run and talk to my dad and at the same time I needed to tell him about the…
“Pumpkin, slow down. Why are you here? I meant to tell you…I just got this job and…”
“Dad!” I shouted. “Bear!”
“What?”
“Bear!”
Dad’s eyes got really wide and that’s when I knew, he saw it, too. I pushed and ran.
We were ahead of everyone. That could be because I’m an excellent runner. I’m in really great physical shape. Everyone knows it.
Or it could be because everyone else had panicked and run in the other direction and now it was just me, pushing my dad around a track, trying to outrun a bear.
Dad kept pointing and shouting, but I couldn’t hear him. He was saying something and I tried to understand.
“Gun!”
Was he saying run? Or gun? Who’s got a gun? Is someone going to shoot the bear?
My wig curls got in my eyes. I ran. I heard the bear’s breath and any second now it would get me. Any second now. I ran and I felt like my lungs were going to explode.
Then I felt a sharp pain in my leg, and everything faded to black.
I opened my eyes and found myself lying on the ground. My leg hurt, My side hurt. My head hurt. No, that was just the wig. It was tangled around my ear and tugged on my scalp.
I heard my dad’s voice.
“Pumpkin? You ok? You gave us a bad scare, there.”
“Bear.”
“What? Oh yes, they got him. Animal control was following him from the next county, and they got him with the tranquilizer dart. Of course they hit you, first. If you are hurt in any way, I will sue their ass.”
“Dad.”
“Yeah?”
“What kind of a crazy training course is this?”
“The Gauntlet. It’s meant to be an obstacle course, to train the Track & Field athletes. They change it every year to keep it a secret from the other schools. You sure you are all-right?”
“Yeah.” I thought about the course, the chairs, the porridge, and the bed. Then I tugged at my wig, pulling it finally off. “Only I’m glad there was only one bear, instead of three.”
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