Alice Bliss - Laura Harrington [21]
Mrs. Grover is good at doing things that really matter but nobody notices. Like being nice to eight-year-olds, or running the community drive to collect children’s books for the nursery at the YMCA, or supplying the local kindergarten with craft supplies after all the budget cuts eliminated just about everything except construction paper and snub-nosed scissors. All the kindergartners love Mrs. Grover’s feathers, which she collects all year long on her walks through the Mendon Woods, or around Pond View Reservoir, or out by the lake.
Today, right before practice starts, Stephie and a clutch of older girls pass Alice and the other runners on their way to the student parking lot. Alice knows that Stephie, whose new friends call her Steph, as though two syllables are just too much trouble, would not be caught dead running. Stephie is paler than usual and she’s wearing one of those push-up bras and a short skirt. When Jeremy Baskin, a senior, catches up to her and runs his hand over her ass, Stephie looks over her shoulder at Alice. But she’s too far away now, and Alice can’t tell if that’s defiance or fear.
Alice turns back to the track. Ginger, the redhead, tosses her a baton on the fly as she sprints past her. They run, one forward, one backward, tossing the baton back and forth. Ginger’s hair is cut almost as short as a boy’s, she has strong legs and big feet, and she never looks down when she runs, she only looks up. She plays with the baton like Ellie would, and, with her energy and her quickness, she lifts Alice into a world where running is play.
Alice finds herself fantasizing about being the school’s top tenth-grade 400-meter runner, not that there are a lot of other tenth-grade girls giving up cheerleading or softball to be on the track team. The idea that she might have talent at such a simple thing is amazing. Henry just rolls his eyes when she talks about running sprints while B.D. screams at her: “Breathe, breathe, breathe!”
But nobody needs to scream at Alice to run or to breathe. When she’s running she doesn’t want to stop, she just wants to keep going. She feels something she’s never felt before; she feels powerful and strong, she feels like no one can hurt her. Being outdoors, getting into a groove, the freedom and the repetitiveness of her stride; she doesn’t know what it is, exactly, but something settles in her head. Running for time or for distance, on the track, on the roads, through the woods, getting lost, falling, the hard runs, the easy runs, all of it, every minute of it, she’s living and breathing in another world. It is an escape so profound she finds herself longing for school to end and running to begin.
Alice arrives home to find Mom and Ellie waiting in the car.
“You’re late,” Ellie says.
“Late for what?”
“I have a surprise for you girls,” Angie says, as she pulls out of the driveway.
“Daddy called!” Ellie crows.
“And I missed it? Are you kidding me?”
“An incredibly quick call,” Angie says.
“Like five minutes. Super fast.”
“He’s moving to a new base. And it’s normal for mail to be slow.”
“Write me, he said to me; and to Mom and to you, Alice. He wants letters. Lots of letters. I’ve already written him two times and drawn four pictures.”
“Where are we going?” Alice asks.
“You’ll see,” Angie says.
“Did he say where he is?”
“F.O.B. Falcon,” Ellie says.
“For the time being,” Angie adds.
“What’s F.O.B?”
“Forward Operating Base.”
“Everything has an acronym in the army,” Ellie says. “Like they’ve got their own special language. F.O.B. and TNT and HQ and IED.”
“What do you know about IEDs?”
“They keep inventing new ones: VBIED: vehicle borne IED; SVBIED: