Challenger Deep by Neal Shusterman Read Free Book Online Page B

decide to try out for the track team, to keep my mind from being idle, and to reconnect with my fellow human beings. My father is overjoyed. I know he’s secretly marking this as a turning point for me. The end of my anxious days. I think he wants it so badly, he doesn’t seem to notice that I’m still anxious—but him thinking that I’m okay makes me feel like I am, too. Forget solar energy—if you could harness denial, it would power the world for generations.
    “You’ve always been a fast runner,” he says, “and with those long legs, I’ll bet you could be a hurdler.”
    My dad was on his high school tennis team. We have pictures of him in ridiculous Adidas shorts that leave nothing to the imagination, and a headband holding back long hair, most of which has since washed down the drain.
    “The coach wants us to walk or run everywhere,” I tell my parents. Now I walk to and from school each day. My feet develop calluses and sores. My ankles hurt all the time.
    “It’s a good kind of hurt,” my father tells me, then he quotes some sports guru, saying, “Pain is weakness leaving the body.”
    We go out to buy new, expensive running shoes and bettersocks. My parents say they’ll try to make it to my first meet, even if they have to take off from work. This would all be fine, if it weren’t for one thing. I’m not actually on the track team.
    I didn’t lie about it—not at first. I really did go out for track, but I only went to practice for three days. As much as I tried, I just wasn’t feeling it. Lately there’s this subway-like bubble of isolation around me, and when I’m in a place filled with camaraderie, like on a team, it’s only worse. Don’t be a quitter my father always told me. That’s how I was raised, but is it quitting when you never really joined?
    So now I walk after school, instead of run. It used to be that walking was just a way to get from place to place, but lately it seems to be both the means and the ends. It’s like that urge to fill an empty space with drawings. I see a vacant sidewalk, and I have to fill it. For hours at a time I walk. The calluses and aching ankles are all from walking. And I see things. Not so much see, but feel. Patterns of connection between the people I pass. Between the birds that swoop from the trees. There is meaning out there, if only I can find it.
    I walk for two hours in the rain one day, my hoodie soaked, my body chilled to the bone.
    “I should have a talk with that coach of yours,” my mom says, fixing me some hot tea. “He shouldn’t make you run in this kind of downpour.”
    “Mom, don’t,” I tell her. “I’m not a baby! Everyone on track does it, and I don’t want to be singled out!”
    I wonder exactly when it was that lying became so easy.

34. Behind Her Back
    “Caden, I have fer you a challenge,” the captain says, “to prove whether or not you have the mettle for the mission.” He puts his large hand on my shoulder and squeezes so tightly that it hurts, then he points to the front of the ship.
    “See there? The bowsprit?” He indicates the mast-like pole that pokes out at the front of the ship, like Pinocchio’s nose after the second or third lie. “The sun has aged it and the sea has weathered it. It’s high time the bowsprit was polished.” Then he puts a rag in one hand and a tin of wood polish in the other. “Get to it, boy. If you succeed without perishing, you shall be a part of the inner circle.”
    “I’m fine in the outer circle,” I tell him.
    “You misunderstand,” the captain says sternly. “This isn’t a choice.”
    Then, gauging my continued reluctance, he snarls, “You’ve been to the crow’s nest, haven’t you? You’ve been partaking of its odious libations. I can see it in your eyes!”
    I glance to the parrot on his shoulder, and the parrot shakes his head, making it clear I should keep my mouth shut.
    “Don’t lie to me, boy!”
    And so I don’t. Instead I say, “If you want