On the Road to Find Out (20 page)

I was so busy listening to her I didn't think about how far we had gone or how fast we were going.

“Ricardo brought me to a playground and made me watch the children dashing around. ‘Remember how it feels to run like a kid?' he asked. I didn't. I knew how to train, how to make myself run when the weather was crappy, knew how to do two workouts a day and nap in between. Until I met Ricardo, I'd never slept in on a weekend morning, never lounged around in bed with the Sunday paper and sipped coffee.

“After the trials, everyone thought I quit racing because I had failed. I didn't give any interviews, didn't tell anyone about my blisters or talk about the fact that I had chickened out. Ricardo encouraged me to run with him—at an easy pace—and on those runs he would ask me what I wanted, what I cared about. I hadn't ever thought about anything other than winning. I wanted to learn to love running. I had a natural talent, and I'd taken it as far as it was going to go. I had been able to find out how resilient I was. I could get through the bad spots. What I wanted to recover, and Ricardo helped me do this, was the joy, the delight you see in those kids on the playground.”

I snuck a peek at her. She looked lighter, like a kid.

“So we came up with the idea for the store. I wanted to be able to serve the runners who were serious, for whom shaving minutes off a marathon time was a big deal. Ricardo wanted to help people learn to enjoy running. Getting to the start line of the Olympic trials marathon was my big achievement. He said I needed to remember that. I wanted to help others get to the start.

“A couple of weeks after the trials Ricardo gave me this”—she touched the necklace—“and said, ‘If you had won gold at the Olympics, you would have taken the medal and locked it away in a safe somewhere. But after the trophies have been awarded, after the times have been posted, what matters is feeling that there is more to come. That you have more to do. You're a link in a chain. Connect to other people and connect them to each other. That will last.'”

After Walter died, I thought I had no more tears left in me.

I was wrong.

Joan said, “I found joy in running, and I found a job that was perfect for me, and I found my partner in life. Even after I lost him—” And she stopped.

She turned and looked at me hard, and by then both of us were silently crying. “—I knew as much as it hurt, and it hurt more than anything I have ever experienced, I would be able to keep going. Running taught me that. Running got me through his illness and his death. It keeps me going still.”

 

8

I studied for the AP exams that were coming up next month because it was easier to “Analyze the cultures of the Mediterranean region during the period circa 200 CE to 1000 CE” or to “Select a single pivotal moment in the psychological or moral development of the protagonist of a bildungsroman and write a well-organized essay that shows how that single moment shapes the meaning of the work as a whole” than it was to think about anything else.

Mom wore the face that said
I'm worried about you
, and she tried to get me to talk about which college I was going to pick. I had until May 1 to make a decision. That didn't leave me much time to decide where I wanted to go.

But the truth was, I didn't want to go anywhere.

Or do anything.

A couple of times Mom suggested getting another rat. I shut her down fast.

Jenni tried to get me to go out with her and the stud muffin for pizza, invited me along when the Brittanys went to the movies, and even once offered to run with me.

Dad suggested we make our pilgrimage to the bookstore.

I said no to everything.

When I showed up at the store, Joan left me alone. She'd always have mindless and absorbing work for me to do: counting, unpacking, checking, restocking, vacuuming. She left gifts for me: one of those water-carrying belts with four small bottles, a pouch to hold my keys, a container of Kool-Aid-like drink. She said they were overstock and maybe I could use them. While my parents would have bought me anything I needed, the things Joan gave to me I treasured.

I thought about the story she'd told me on our run and wished I could be more like her, but I didn't have her strength, her endurance. I didn't think I could keep going.

 

9

Two weeks after Walter died I filled the bottles with water, poured in some of the powdered electrolyte mix, and strapped the belt on. I hoped not to run into Miles and Potato—I didn't want to have to explain what had happened—and I didn't.

I had become a creature of habit during the short time I'd been running. I liked always going the same way, always knowing how far I'd traveled and how much farther I had to get back. There were certain landmarks I looked forward to passing. I knew I'd usually be cold or creaky until I got to the capitol, but after that, I'd be warmed up and feeling loose. For some reason, I always held my breath when I ran by the power plant.

I hadn't done much exploring. My neophobia was acting up.

Since nothing felt good anyway, since there was no Bengay balm for the ache in my heart, no ointment to take away the sting, I decided that instead of turning around at my usual point, I would keep going.

The boulevard follows the Kanawha River. As I got farther from downtown, the path had more cracks in it; tufts of grass and spring flowers pushed their way through the asphalt. Then it got narrow until it was no longer paved and was just a dirt trail. I kept running. The earth felt good under my shoes. I couldn't go as fast—less traction, more friction, some physics principle at work—but I didn't care.

Even though the ground was uneven, instead of looking down as I normally did, paying attention to where my feet were landing, I held my head high. I thought about Walter, about how he was always looking up. His approach to the world was, “Hey, what's that?” never, “Oh crap, now what?” He got excited whenever I brought anything new home. Especially paper bags. I think he loved the sound he made when he ran around in a paper bag. He also liked to climb on my running shoes whenever I got back from a run. Sometimes he'd just settle into one of them and sleep there.

I could see the 35th Street bridge in the distance. The trees were bursting with light green buds and white flowers. I could smell the dirt, heavy and rich.

I ran easily. I noticed how many birds were flitting around in the trees and I heard the sounds of the river. I felt fluid, strong. I picked up the pace, pumped my arms harder, made my lungs and legs and heart strain.

I got to the bridge and ran up the curly stairway that twisted to the pedestrian walkway. I ran across the bridge, feeling the heave of the cars as they zoomed by.

I hadn't brought a watch and had no idea how long I'd been out. I thought I should drink, but I wasn't thirsty.

I kept going.

There was no one around. It wasn't like running on the boulevard. On this side of the river I felt completely and totally alone.

Dogs barked in the distance, which made me think about Walter. Silent Walter. Walter, who never complained, never worried, was always in a good mood, even when he was old and sick. Walter, who hid his discomfort until he couldn't anymore. The vet had said rats have incredible capacity to handle pain. Walter, so sweet and gentle and so tough, so very tough. Once, early on, not long after I'd gotten him, he had fallen from my shoulder. I was terrified he had broken something. He shook himself off and commenced grooming.

I couldn't stop thinking about him, and a slideshow of pictures flashed through my head. I saw him when I first got him, the only time he was ever timid. I'd put an empty tissue box in his cage and he hid in it. He'd pop his head up, like the Whac-A-Mole game at the fair. I'd pet him on the white diamond on the top of his head and he'd duck back down. Seconds later, he'd pop up again. It turned into a game called Toaster. I'd hold my hand over the opening on the box and he'd stay down until I took it away. Then I'd remove my hand and say, “Ding!” And he'd spring up like a perfectly toasted bagel.

We also played Tarzan, where he'd grab on to a pencil I'd hold out parallel to the ground and would swing from it. “What a great ape,” I'd say to him. “You are the very small King of the Jungle.”

On my hands I had tiny scars where he had accidentally scratched me. I loved those scars. I hoped they'd last forever. Thinking about that, worrying that the scars would fade, that I would stop being able to remember him, made me start to cry.

Running and crying was more difficult than just running. I could see the downtown bridge ahead and was surprised at how much ground I'd covered.

Then I couldn't run another step. My legs wouldn't go. I could barely swing my arms.

I slowed to a walk, and then just had to stop. This must have been what Nikki meant by “hitting the wall.” I could not take another step.

I sat on the bank of the river and took one of the bottles off the belt. I glugged down a slug of jock juice and coughed it all back out. I kept coughing.

For a long time I sat on that rock and cried.

I didn't know how I was going to make it home.

I didn't feel like I could take another step. I barely had the energy to raise the bottle to my mouth. I was breathing hard, just sitting and not moving.

I thought about Joan, and about Miles, and about that runner Pre, their hero, who said he could take more pain than anyone.

I drank another bottle, more slowly so I didn't cough.

I got up and forced myself to run.

 

10

I usually just picked my way through dinner and then went right up to the guest room. Mom had tried to find ways to keep me around after we'd finished eating, like asking me questions.

You can imagine how well that worked.

But after dinner one night Dad called out, “What's a three-letter word for
goof
?”

“Err,” I said, without really thinking.

He nodded. “Six letters for ‘It has eyes that can't see'?”

I thought a minute. “Potato.”

“Right-o.”

“‘Derisive look,' begins with
sn
?”

“Sneer.”

Mom had settled on the couch with a copy of
Vogue
. The TV was on PBS, and a show started that I couldn't help but watch. It was called
What Are Animals Thinking?

It profiled a bunch of scientists working on animal cognition. Researchers in Germany did a cool and simple experiment to find out whether dogs cared about fairness. A guy asked a dog for her paw. She gave it to him. He asked her about thirty times and each time, she gave it to him. Then they brought in another dog and the guy asked that dog for his paw. The second dog gave the guy his paw and the guy said, “Good dog!” and gave him a treat. Then he asked the first dog, and when she gave him her paw, he didn't say anything or give her a treat.

They went back and forth like this for a while. The second dog got props and treats every time he gave his paw, and the first dog, sitting right next to him, doing the same work, had to watch and get nothing. After a short while, the first dog went on strike. If she could talk, she would have used the rallying cry of kids everywhere: “It isn't fair.”

I hadn't meant to stay downstairs, but this show was really interesting.

There was also a segment about bonobos, which are like small chimps. The guy who talked about the experiment was a professor at Duke, and he seemed super-young and had crazy hair and I thought for a minute maybe I should have gone back on my anti-Duke stance and applied there, because I could totally imagine myself being his star student.

As soon as they heard the word
Duke
, both my parents looked up and started watching. Mom said something about the Lemur Center at Duke being the home of the largest collection of prosimian primates anywhere in the world. I knew this because I did a report on lemurs in middle school. I resisted the urge to say,
No shit
.

The absolute best part of the show was about rats. At the University of Chicago, researchers did a study that showed rats have empathy. On the one hand, my response to this was:
Duh
. Anyone who's ever spent time with a rat knows that. But they were looking at it scientifically.

They set up an experiment where two rats, cage-mates, were put into a bigger cage—they called it an arena. One of them was free to roam and the other was put into a clear plastic tube. The rat in the tube was not happy, and the other guy could tell. Once the free rat got comfortable in the arena, he learned how to open the door to let the “restrained” rat out. Then the scientists put a bunch of chocolate chips in the arena. The free rat had to decide whether to release the tubed rat or to chow down. Most of the time, he would release his friend. When he ate the chips, he left some for the other guy.

When the restrained rat got free, the rescuer would chase him around the cage, jumping on him and doing a victory dance.

The woman who did the experiment watched a video of the rats with the TV host and you could see on her face how proud the researcher was when the free guy opened the door for his imprisoned friend. She practically did a fist pump.

My mom said, “I never realized.”

Dad reached over and rubbed my shoulder. “I miss him too,” he said.

 

11

I continued to refuse to discuss my college plans with anyone. My teachers, especially Ms. Chan and Mr. Bergmann, asked what I was going to do, but I said I didn't know.

Sam Malouf, who won a scholarship to Northwestern, kept saying, “Where'd you get in, Rat Girl? Going to pahk your cah in Hah-vid yahd?” He was mad that I had beat him out for valedictorian.

I caught my mother and Jenni whispering together a bunch of times. I heard “her” and “she” and “decision” leak out from around corners and under closed doors and I knew they were talking about me.