Lost at Running Brook Trail by Sheryl A. Keen Read Free Book Online Page B

exert this much energy in a long time. Not even gym class was as excruciating. As for those classes and all other sporting activities, she would try to get out of them, often blaming painful periods that she didn’t really have on her inability to participate.
    “Aerobics in gym class is coming in pretty handy now.” Miriam grabbed more branches from Elaine and used them as climbing tools for the grade.
    Maybe for you, Susan thought. Not to mention Miriam played soccer. How anybody would want to run up and down for 90 minutes was beyond her. Susan had seen Elaine playing tennis. She seemed good at it too. As for Kimberly, Susan didn’t know if she played any sports, but she was waiflike enough to just float to the top of this slope.
    “That and walking to and from school every day.” Elaine held up her right palm. “Let’s take a little breather; this hill has teeth.”
    “I’ll second that motion,” Susan said.
    “Why do you walk to school every day?” Miriam’s mother picked her up daily. If her mother was going to be late, she would practice soccer or hang around the library until she came.
    “My parents moved to where we live now so that my brother and I would be close to where we go to school. They want us to walk. They say there’s no excuse not to walk if you live three or four blocks away. My brother and I hear lots of stories about how much they used to walk when they were young. They’re happy with their decision because they see all this research on the news about obesity and how physical activities in schools are failing children and blah, blah, blah.”
    “Even in winter?” Susan lived a ways away from school, but even if she lived two blocks away, she couldn’t see herself walking for even a block.
    “You simply bundle up.” Elaine held some plants apart as if she was ready to go on again. “Let’s finish this.”
    “When my mom picks me up, we go home together. Are your parents at home when you get there?” Miriam took more branches from Elaine, with Kimberly and Susan repeating the same motions. Every time the gathering of the branches would reach Susan, everyone would have to slow down and wait.
    “When I was younger, my father stayed home with me all the time, but now that my brother is seventeen, he’s supposed to be responsible. He gets home before I do. But many days one of my parents is home, usually my father.” Elaine could see a semblance of open space coming up in the distance.
    “Your father stayed home with you?” Kimberly was drenched in sweat. The air had gradually become cooler, but the elevation had taken its toll.
    “Yes, he did,” Elaine said. “Soon we won’t have to do this anymore. I think I can see a clearing of some sort in the distance, and the ground seems to be getting flatter.”
    “And he didn’t feel bad?”
    “About what?”
    “Staying home.”
    “Why would he feel bad?”
    “That your mother had to work and he had to stay home.”
    The bushes thinned out and the path grew clearer.
    “It’s not like he was forced to. They decided, I think based on the fact that he had more flexibility in his job as an information technology consultant and she was the manager of a bank. They wanted one of them to be home with us, and he decided that he would do it.” Elaine had always felt close to her father, and she believed part of it was because he had stayed home. He wasn’t just a man who came home and asked what was for dinner. He had made them dinner countless times. He still did.
    “So he was happy?” Kimberly was glad to be on flat, even surface again. The hill had eventually eased away.
    “Why do you keep asking as if he shouldn’t be?” After the strenuous negotiation with the slope, Elaine was a little winded. “He’s one half of my parental equation. An equal half.”
    “Halves are equal parts,” Miriam pointed out.
    The trail now continued into a grassy area that looked like a wilderness. They all hoped they wouldn’t be wandering