Addy's Race

by Debby Waldman

  Who was it?

  “Addy?” Mrs. Shewchuk was standing by my desk. How long had she been trying to get my attention? “Are your hearing aids on?”

  I gulped. Some people giggled. I couldn’t bring myself to see who. It was probably Emma, high-fiving Stephanie again.

  The hearing aids were on, but the fm receivers weren’t. Mrs. Shewchuk and Mom had said if I didn’t keep the receivers on I’d have to stay inside for recess. Did this mean I had to miss recess? I’d forgotten, that was all. And not even on purpose.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “What was the question?”

  “I asked about your summer,” she said.

  I wanted to say, “I told you about it last week at my program meeting, right after my mother told you about my first hearing test when I was three years old. The one where she sat in the testing booth and cried because I wasn’t responding to the beeps. Just like I’m going to cry if you make me stay inside for recess.”

  But instead I told Mrs. Shewchuk the highlight of my summer was a road trip to see my grandmother, and that we visited Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, Yellowstone National Park and Mount Rushmore.

  She moved on to Peter Connelly next. He sits behind me. When I turned to get a better look, Henry was smiling at me again, as if he felt sorry for me. Maybe Mrs. Shewchuk had told him he had to stay in for recess too, if he didn’t turn on his receivers.

  Chapter 4

  By the time the recess bell rang, I’d forgotten about everybody’s summer holidays except Stem’s. And obviously Mrs. Shewchuk had forgotten about the deal she made with my mother, because she let me go out.

  It figured Stephanie and Emma had been to a summer running camp at the University of Alberta and were training with the Tornadoes. At first I thought they said tomatoes, and I couldn’t figure out why anyone would train with tomatoes.

  Stephanie said it was the best running club in Edmonton, but she says that about everything she does. She has the best violin teacher, dance teacher and acting teacher. She was almost in a commercial for McDonald’s when she was six because she was the best actress, but they wanted a kid with brown hair, not strawberry blond. But of course, her hair was the best strawberry blond.

  Lucy and I headed for the door with Kelsey and Miranda on either side of us. “Do you think people believe Stephanie when she says everything she does is the best?” I asked as we stepped outside.

  “Only people who don’t know her well enough to know better,” Kelsey said.

  We leaned against the school, watching some grade four kids fight over a basketball. In the field beside the basketball court, the grade five and six boys played soccer. Tyler had the ball. He was fast.

  “Hey, there’s that new girl—Sierra,” Miranda said, pointing to the steps by the back entrance. “Sierra, over here,” she yelled. Sierra looked around, but not at us.

  “She seems stuck-up,” Kelsey said.

  “I don’t think she sees us,” Miranda said. But Miranda is hard to miss. She’s almost as tall as Lucy.

  “Maybe she’s looking for someone,” Lucy suggested.

  “Who would she be looking for?” Miranda said.

  “She doesn’t know anyone.” She waved her arms as if they were wings and she was about to fly away. “Sierra! Over here!” But now Sierra was looking toward the playground.

  “How do you know she doesn’t know anyone?” I said. “Maybe she has a brother or sister in a lower grade.”

  Miranda shrugged. “I was just guessing.”

  “Or maybe she didn’t hear you,” Lucy pointed out.

  “How could she not hear me?” Miranda said. “I was yelling as loud as I could.”

  I pointed to my hearing aids.

  “But she’s not hard of hearing,” Miranda said. “You are.”

  “I’m not the only one.”

  “What do you mean?” Kelsey asked me.

  “Mrs. Shewchuck was wearing two fm transmitters and that boom mic around her head.”

  “I wondered about that,” Miranda said. “The only time I’ve seen something like that is in a music video.”

  “My aunt has one,” Lucy said. “For the phone, so she can talk and do other stuff at the same time.”

  “Why would Mrs. Shewchuk wear something for her phone in school?” Miranda asked.

  “Who knows,” Lucy said.

  “How do you know it’s a boom mic for someone with hearing aids?” Kelsey asked me.

  She was right. I didn’t. It hadn’t occurred to me it could be something else.

  “Who do you think has hearing aids?” Lucy said.

  “One of the new kids,” I said. “I think Henry.”

  “Why him?” Lucy asked.

  “He looks like a nerd.”

  “What does that have to do with hearing aids?”

  Miranda said. “You wear hearing aids and you don’t look like a nerd.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “But he does. He reminds me of a kid from the audiologist’s.”

  “I think it’s her,” Miranda said, nodding toward Sierra.

  “Stuck-up Sierra?” Kelsey asked.

  “I don’t think she’s stuck-up,” Lucy said. “She just couldn’t hear us.” She looked at me. “You always say it’s hard to hear when it’s noisy.”

  “I was waving so hard my arms are sore!” Miranda insisted. “Even if she couldn’t hear, she could have seen me.”

  “I think we should go be nice to her,” Lucy said.

  “Me too,” I said.

  “Okay, fine,” Miranda and Kelsey said, but while we were talking, Sierra had disappeared. We didn’t see her again until we were back in Mrs. Shewchuk’s room. She was in her desk, hunched over her scribbler. That’s when I saw it. The transmitter, a pale-gold disc that looked like a miniature steering wheel, stuck to her head behind her ear.

  Lucy and I were hanging our coats. She noticed it at the same time I did. “What’s that thing?”

  “Shhhh!” I said.

  “What’s what?” Stephanie said.

  “Nothing,” I hissed.

  “What is your problem?” Emma asked.

  “Girls!” Mrs. Shewchuk said. “Stop chatting and sit.”

  I walked slowly to my desk, trying to check out the transmitter without being obvious about it.

  The only person I’d ever met with an implant was an older boy who got one when he was twelve. He spoke at a conference my mother took me to. He was an odd choice as a speaker because he couldn’t talk well enough for anyone to understand him. He hadn’t learned to speak until after he’d gotten the implant.

  I wondered how well Sierra spoke. Maybe she was quiet because she was embarrassed about her voice.

  Her hearing was worse than mine. If you’re so deaf you can’t hear with hearing aids, you get an implant. You have to have an operation. The surgeon puts electrodes inside your head and that colored steering-wheel thing outside. Everything is attached with magnets. I wondered what it would be like to have a head full of magnets. Would the inside of your skull look like a refrigerator door?

  Sierra caught me staring. I don’t like it when people stare at my hearing aids, and here I was, doing the same thing to her. I reached up and pushed my hair back. Look at me, I wanted to say. I have a hearing aid. Kind of like your implant. I gave her a friendly smile, so she’d see we had something in common. But she looked down at her notebook, avoiding me. Kelsey was right. Sierra was stuck-up.

  For the rest of the morning my mind tried to wander, but it was hopeless. Because of the fm, the only way to get the teacher’s voice out of my head is to turn off the receivers. And I couldn’t do that, because Mrs. Shewchuk was already watching me closely.

  I was so curious about Sierra. I wanted to talk to Lucy, but I couldn’t. That’s another drawback to being hard of hearing—having to sit at the front of the class. Not only could I not get Mrs. Shewchuk out of my head, I also couldn’t get out of her sight.

  I counted the minutes until lunch. When we were
at our cubbies, getting our lunch bags, I tried to see the steering-wheel thing again, but I was on the wrong side of Sierra. All I could see was hair.

  Then, as if she’d seen me staring, she stood up and said, “What are you looking at?”

  I had always thought “eyes in the back of your head” was another of my grandmother’s expressions, but maybe Sierra actually did have eyes in the back of her head. I was so startled, I jumped and landed on Emma’s foot.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Emma snapped. “You’re crushing my foot! I have running club today!”

  I wanted to say, So do I, but then she would say, You’re not on the Tornadoes. Running isn’t important for you!

  Arguing with a bad-tempered person is like throwing gasoline on a fire—another of my grandmother’s sayings. So is “kill ’em with kindness.”

  I didn’t want to kill Emma, but wounding her would be fun.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m clumsy.”

  Emma looked like a fish, her mouth open with no sound coming out. It was as if the message that the fight was over and she could stop yelling had gotten stuck between her brain and her voice. But if Emma said something else, I never heard, because Lucy was at the door and I had to follow her.

  Miranda and Kelsey caught up with us. “Can we eat with you?” Kelsey asked. Last year she and Miranda ate with their older sister Jackie. But Jackie was in junior high now.

  I looked at Lucy. “Sure,” she said.

  “Did you see that thing stuck to Sierra’s head?” Miranda said.

  “It’s a cochlear implant,” I said.

  “Isn’t that for deaf people?”

  I nodded.

  “She’s deaf?” Miranda asked.

  “I guess,” I said.

  “Where do you eat lunch?” Kelsey interrupted.

  I pointed to a clearing at the edge of the soccer field. “Over there.”

  “We used to eat near the condos,” Kelsey said.

  “Kelsey, can you stop talking for a minute?” Miranda asked. She turned to me. “I thought there were special schools for deaf people. Why isn’t she in a special school?”

  How was I supposed to know? Miranda played violin. Did that make her an expert on classical music? “She has an implant,” I said. “So she can hear really well.”

  “How do you know?” Kelsey asked.

  “People with implants hear better than people with hearing aids. My mother told me.”

  “Why didn’t you get one?” Miranda said.

  “They’re only for deaf people. The rest of us have hearing aids.”

  “But if you can hear better with a cochlear implant, shouldn’t you have one?” Miranda asked.

  Now I remembered why we didn’t eat with Miranda and Kelsey last year. Miranda asks too many questions and Kelsey talks nonstop. “I don’t know,” I said.

  “I’m going to go ask Sierra about her implant,” Miranda said, stuffing a half-eaten sandwich into her bag. Kelsey fished it out and began finishing it.

  “Don’t!” I said.

  Kelsey gave me a weird look.

  “Not you,” I said. “Eat whatever you want. I was talking to Miranda.” I gave Miranda my best stern look. “Don’t ask Sierra questions. Nobody likes to talk about their hearing stuff.”

  The look didn’t work. “You don’t like talking about it,” Miranda said. “Maybe she’s different.” Then she walked away, toward Sierra.

  “We should go with her,” Kelsey said.

  “You can,” I said. “I’ve gotten enough dirty looks from Sierra today.”

  “How about we watch from over there,” Lucy said, pointing to a corner of the school. “Come on.”

  We followed her. Sierra was on a bench, eating daintily from a container with a spoon. She reminded me of a life-sized American Girl doll at a tea party. Miranda had plopped down next to her. From where we were watching, Sierra seemed as if she was actually interested in Miranda.

  “Sierra’s laughing,” Lucy said.

  “Maybe she’s happy someone is talking to her,” Kelsey said.

  “I tried to talk to her,” I said.

  “You stared at her,” Lucy said. “You hate when people stare at you.”

  Why do people who are supposed to be your friends have to make you feel worse than you already do?

  “Oh my goodness,” Lucy said.

  Stephanie and Emma had squeezed onto the bench. They were smiling as if they were best friends with Sierra. Miranda looked as if she wanted to leave, but Sierra put her hand on Miranda’s leg to get her to stay. Then Emma tossed her head back and laughed, and so did Stephanie. The next thing I knew all the grade six girls were gathered around the bench fussing over Sierra and her perfect hair and her cochlear implant, and Kelsey, Lucy and I were stuck watching from our hiding spot against the school, alone.

  Chapter 5

  Most clubs don’t start till the second week of school, but Miss Fielding was in a hurry with the running club. She had scheduled a practice for the first day. I practically had to drag Lucy. She could spend a half hour putting her books away. She says it’s because she’s meticulous, but we both know it’s because she’s a dawdler. Not wanting to be in running club didn’t help.

  By the time we got to the gym, Miss Fielding had already started her presentation. She is tiny, like a gymnast. Her hair is as short as a boy’s because she shaved it last spring to raise money for cancer research.

  The first race was next Wednesday at Laurier Park. Miss Fielding said she didn’t expect any of us to win. She just wanted us to do our best, because the point of running club was to be fit and enjoy being outdoors in the fall. I wasn’t sure whether or not to believe her. Would she really not care if none of us did well?

  Stephanie and Emma cared. They high-fived each other as if to say Miss Fielding was going to be more than pleasantly surprised because not only were they going to win every race, they would also be heading to the Olympics when running club ended. Miss Fielding stopped talking and looked at them.

  “We’re in the Tornadoes,” Stephanie explained.

  “The best running club in Edmonton,” Emma added.

  “That’s terrific,” Miss Fielding said. “We can always use leaders to set good examples.”

  Lucy poked me. “This is going to be worse than I thought,” she whispered.

  It was bad enough Stephanie and Emma acted like they were better than everybody—it appeared it might be true. They were certainly dressed for the part, with their brand-new running shoes and tracksuits. As awful as it was to admit, they probably were the fastest girls in the school.

  If only Lucy and I could do something better than them, something public and that counted, like rescuing orphans from a fire or solving global warming.

  “It’s just a few days a week,” I whispered back. “And it’ll be finished by October.”

  “I might not last that long.”

  “Or maybe you’ll be really good at it!”

  She gave me a you’re-crazy look.

  Miss Fielding was talking about stretching. “We better pay attention,” I whispered as I tried to reach my toes, but they seemed very far away.

  “Why?” Lucy replied. “I’ll be dead before any of this happens. I can’t even run half a block.”

  “We’ll do a short warm-up run today,” Miss Fielding announced. “We have some volunteers to help out, so if you have to walk that’s fine. A volunteer will make sure you’re not alone.”

  The volunteers were junior high kids. Miranda and Kelsey’s sister, Jackie, was one of them.

  “I’ll run with the back of the group,” Miss Fielding said. She turned to a tall, strong-looking junior high girl, Sasha, and asked her to run up front. Then she said, “Stephanie and Emma, you run with Sasha.”

  Stem took off as if they’d been shot from a cannon. If I didn’t hate them so much, I’d have been impressed. Tyler, a bunch of grade five and four kids, and Miranda and Kelsey followed.

  Miss Fiel
ding was encouraging to me and Lucy. She patted Lucy on the shoulder and said, “Good job.” To me she said, “You have a nice ride.”

  “A nice ride?” I said.

  “Stride,” she said, more loudly. “You have a long stride.”

  Was I supposed to say thank you?

  “Jim Ryun wears hearing aids,” she said.

  Again, I had no idea what she was talking about. “Who?”

  “Jim Ryun. First American high school student to run a mile in under four minutes. In 1964.”

  Was she telling me I could run fast because I had hearing aids?

  “He lost his hearing when he was a kid,” she went on. “Measles.”

  “I was born this way,” I said. I guess that meant I wouldn’t be running a mile in under four minutes.

  Miss Fielding looked like she was going to say something more, but Lucy didn’t give her a chance. “I. Have. To. Stop,” she said. Her face was so red, I could practically feel the heat radiating off it. “My chest hurts,” she panted. “And my legs feel like logs.”

  “Let’s stretch,” Miss Fielding said. She bent Lucy over so her arms dangled near her feet like a rag doll’s.

  “I hate this,” she said, crumpling to the ground. “I can’t do it. I hate my mother.”

  “It’s okay, Lucy,” I said, helping her up. “We don’t have to run the whole way, remember?”

  “It takes time to build endurance,” Miss Fielding said. “In a month you will amaze yourself.”

  “But the first race is next week,” Lucy said.

  “Don’t put pressure on yourself,” Miss Fielding said. “You don’t have to do the race.”

  “I do,” Lucy said. It was hard to tell whether her body was heaving because she was fighting back sobs or if she was still out of breath. “My mother said so.”

  “If you’re not ready, I’ll talk to your mom,” Miss Fielding said. “But let’s keep walking so your muscles don’t get stiff.”