Girl Runner by Carrie Snyder Read Free Book Online Page A

him happy.
    “Ready then?” he says, suddenly cheerful, clapping his hands together once and rubbing the palms in anticipation; perhaps I have read his expression entirely wrong. “Let’s put you through your paces.”
    And here I am, paced so many times around I’ve lost count. Do I regret my boast? I do not. This is a different kind of running, and if I am to master it, I will need to suffer. I understand instinctively, and lean into it. I lean against the pain until I tear right through, coming around the last curve, legs lifting as if of their own will, not mine.
    He waits for me at the finish, and he swings one arm in a wide circle to indicate I am to take a second lap. “Let’s see a full eight hundred, little lady!”
    Little lady! Ha! My brain is deprived of oxygen, cut down to the basics. I will trounce this extra lap.
    You’re too serious , I hear a voice telling me. You’re too tall. You’re no fun. You can’t dance. It isn’t a man’s voice. It’s a woman’s. It might even be my own. You’ve never been kissed.
    Would I like to be kissed? Why should I? I’m not like other girls.
    I pour myself into the last turn. I can’t actually feel my legs, yet they are rising and falling more smoothly than they have all practice. The choice seems to be to keep running or to drop dead on the ground, and I am aware of this man waiting for me at the finish. I think, he’s waiting for me. He is waiting for me. It is possible I mistake his attention for affection. I hear him, feel him, willing me to finish strong.
    Yes, he is a good coach.
    I could cruise into the last few strides, but instead I run it right out.
    He’s gone a bit blurry. My head fills with blood as I stop abruptly.
    “Next time, let’s see you staying more compact through the shoulders. Less swinging, less movement here.” He moves his own elbows. “Do you understand?”
    I bend over, heaving, hands on knees. What I understand is that I might get sick. Don’t get sick, please, Aganetha, don’t get sick.
    And that’s when I see her.
    I glimpse her in motion, in my peripheral vision. She must have come out through the back factory door and she is approaching across the bare field toward us, her step as light and natural as my own. I turn my head and there she is, running toward me. I have never met another girl runner, have never seen another girl running except at picnics and fairs, races that are too easy to win, against girls who are in it just for fun, as a lark, on dares, silly girls, I think them. Girls who pretend not to care, or who care so little that they need not pretend.
    The girl comes right up to me. I am still considering whether or not I will be sick, and I’m afraid to stand up too quickly.
    “What have you done to her, Mr. Tristan?” the girl scolds, but she’s laughing. She pats my shoulder. “I see you’ve met our taskmaster. Don’t let him break you, even if he tries.”
    I reel upright. The girl sticks out her hand. “I’m Glad.”
    Girls don’t shake hands—we ought to curtsy to one another—but, then, neither of us is wearing a skirt. My tightly belted trousers belong to my brother George, who has told me to cut them off, but I haven’t. It is 1926. There are no clothes made particularly for girl runners.
    “Pleased to meet you,” I say, accepting her hand. She pumps it up and down.
    She is dressed as I soon will be: in short black pants cut quite high above the knee, and a dark red shirt with a V-neck and short sleeves—black and red being the colours of the Rosebud Ladies’ Athletics Club. ROSEBUD is written in white fabric letters, embroidered fast with black thread, across the front of the shirt. On her feet are lightweight shoes with rubber soles, and white socks that she wears rolled down to her ankles. Her hair is cut to her chin and she shoves a hank behind one ear.
    “You must be Aganetha Smart. The new girl.”
    “Oh—I haven’t made the team, exactly,” I mumble. I’m soaked in sweat