Toronto Collection Volume 2 (Toronto Series #6-9)

by Heather Wardell

  Her eyes flashed with sudden fury. "Oh, and climbing through mud and up hills in July isn't?"

  "Well, it is, I guess." I'd signed a truly awe-inspiring waiver form for the race, removing their legal responsibility for everything from broken limbs to gangrene via the wire used on some of the obstacles. "But it's not the same."

  "No, because it's you."

  I looked at my outraged sister and had to tell her the truth. "Yeah. Because it's me. I just don't think you should push yourself so hard. Pick something easier, less crazy."

  She raised her chin. "I want to do something crazy. I never have. I'm sorry you don't agree but I don't care what any of you think. I'm doing it anyhow."

  She washed the last plate then tossed her dish cloth at the direction of its hook and stormed from the kitchen.

  I hung up the cloth and tidied the kitchen, wondering if I'd been wrong to say what I did. I thought Kim should take it slow but she thought she was at her happy pace. Did I have the right to tell her otherwise?

  Chapter Twenty

  "This is nuts, man," Stefan said as we stood in the blazing July sun staring at the finish line. "Totally nuts. No wonder the other MMA guys wouldn't do it. I'm the only crazy one, I guess."

  The nervousness in Jeanine's laugh tripled my own fear. "A guy who climbs into a ring to get pounded on thinks this is crazy? Then I guess it must be. And I'm extra-crazy for doing it."

  Andrew chuckled. "It looks worse than it is."

  "It had better," I murmured, watching runners from earlier heats scramble up a ladder made of chains then slide down a pole before dropping to their stomachs to drag themselves beneath low barriers through a pool of mud. All around us were mud-soaked people who'd already finished the Hero Hike, many sporting bandages and in one horrifying case a neck brace. I'd expected to be tired after, and probably a little scratched and bruised, but this? I'd never survive.

  "You'll be fine, Megan."

  I turned to Andrew. "You're a mind reader now?"

  He laughed. "When a face looks as scared as yours, there's no mind reading required. You're a tough cookie, you know. Tougher than you think. Just keep going and you'll be fine. It's easier than stopping and trying to start again. But you can do it. Trust me."

  I did trust him, and his words helped ease my terror. "Okay. If you say so."

  He smiled, and I smiled back, and Jeanine nudged him and said, "Should I do it now?"

  "Good idea."

  She dug through her backpack of clean after-race clothes and found a small envelope which she handed to me.

  "What's this?"

  "Open it," Andrew said.

  I did, and held up the Tim Horton's gift card I'd found inside. Did she want me to hold it for her or something?

  Jeanine grimaced. "Crud. You don't go there?"

  "Of course I do. I love their iced cappuccinos. I'm confused, though."

  Andrew said, "We were talking about your graduation thing and thought you should get more of a reward, so we figured you could reward yourself with a few drinks whenever you wanted."

  I looked down at the card, then back up at him. "You guys bought it for me?"

  "Well, they don't give 'em out," Jeanine said before he could speak.

  I turned my attention to her. "But..." I licked my lips, trying to find the words. "But I didn't do anything for you. You didn't have to do this."

  A hint of irritation snapped in her eyes, but it vanished in place of understanding and sympathy. She reached out and laid a gentle hand on my arm. "Megan. You poor kid. Look, we wanted to be nice. That's all. Don't try to figure it out, there's nothing to figure. Just take it, okay?"

  "I... okay." I still couldn't get my head around it, but she clearly meant it. There were no strings attached to this present. I took a deep breath then smiled at her. "I will. Thank you."

  "You're welcome. Use it to take care of yourself."

  She gave my arm a squeeze then let me go, and I turned to Andrew. "Thank you too."

  He smiled, his eyes warm. "Enjoy it."

  I would. I would sit drinking an iced cappuccino and enjoying the realization that my new friends didn't expect anything from me but that I took care of myself. Enjoying it, and trying to understand it.

  We stood silent for a minute, then Andrew said, "Okay, let's get our bags into the bag check and get warmed up. Only ten minutes to go."

  My nerves leaped but I took a deep breath and calmed them.

  Once we'd done all our pre-race tasks and were packed into the small start area with the other hundred-odd runners in our heat, Andrew said, "See you all at the finish," and gave me a particularly comforting smile.

  "You got it," I said, feeling strengthened. He thought I could do it and I was starting to think so too.

  We all high-fived each other, then the announcer gave us a countdown and set us off. Andrew grinned at me, said, "Enjoy your first race, Megan," and took off like he had rockets strapped to his shoes. Jeanine followed him and Stefan followed her and I stayed with the back of the pack.

  I trotted along, getting used to running with other people and feeling like I'd found a good pace, then heard shrieks and giggles coming from around the next corner. Confused, I kept going, and when I rounded the corner I understood.

  A pit of thick mud lay before me.

  Ropes marked the path, naturally right through the mud, and indicated what was off-limits. I saw most of the runners ahead of me choosing to sneak around the mud pit by going out of bounds, ignoring the volunteers saying, "Go through the mud," over and over, but I decided that cheating on the very first obstacle didn't feel right. I didn't want to cheat at all.

  I stepped into the mud, which was even thicker and stickier than I'd expected, and plodded slowly but steadily forward, giggling at the weird feel of it and the weirder sucking sounds my feet made as I pulled them out and moved them forward.

  When I'd covered more than half the pit, with a few die-hards slogging along near me and most of the others having taken the shortcut and left us behind, I stepped into an unexpectedly deep pocket of mud and lost my balance, landing on my hands and knees in the thick cushion of squelch.

  "You okay?"

  I struggled to my feet and looked back at the two guys who'd asked nearly simultaneously. "Fine, thanks." It hadn't hurt at all. "Dirty, but okay."

  One laughed, and the other said, "We'll all be dirty at the end, no worries. You've just got a head start."

  We escaped the mud together and they ran on ahead of me. I kept going, although I was panting harder than I ever had before and my feet felt like I was wearing concrete boots, until I reached the monkey bars that were the next obstacle.

  My mud-slicked hands didn't want to cooperate, but I scrubbed them off as best I could on my shorts and was soon swinging myself along. No grace and less style, but I kept moving.

  When I finished and dropped the short distance to the ground, I surprised myself by letting out a loud whoop. There was something so freeing about seeing something I didn't think I could do and then doing it.

  "Attagirl," a volunteer monitoring the obstacle said, pushing his baseball cap further back on his gray hair. "Kick its butt."

  "Yes, sir!" I snapped him a salute and took off.

  I was soon soaked with sweat and mud and the weird green goo of one obstacle's wading pool, and bearing some good cuts and scratches, but I kept moving. I thought of Andrew's suggestion not to stop and realized he hadn't needed to bother: despite how tired I was, I was having too much fun conquering each obstacle in my way to quit. Running through rubber tires, crawling in the pitch dark under a low tent, even clambering over a small airplane... I beat each test and pushed myself forward.

  While waiting to check my bag I'd heard someone say the final four obstacles were related to the elements of earth, fire, air, and water, so when I saw a huge mound of loose dirt that I needed to scramble over I felt sure I was getting close to the end. Good thing, too: while I was loving the race I didn't have much energy
left.

  A loud "Damn it!" startled me, and I looked to see two shirtless men standing on the sidelines in a small patch of shade. One was gasping for air, and as he swore again I recognized the scar on his mud-spattered chest. He'd had open heart surgery, just like Kim, although his scar looked less red and angry than hers so his surgery had probably been a few months earlier.

  The other man had his hand on the first one's shoulder, and as I neared them I heard him say, "Ben, there's no shame in stopping here. You've done a great job."

  I had to agree.

  Ben didn't. He shrugged off the other's hand and said, "I have to do it. I've run this damned thing every year it's been going and I will do it this year. Even if I have to walk it. Or crawl."

  My pounding heart hurt for him. I hoped he'd make it somehow, but I didn't hear his buddy's response because I was busy dragging myself over the pile of dirt, slipping down several times because I couldn't keep my footing but trying again and again until I made it to the other side.

  Though I tried to run again when I regained level ground, my legs were shaking so hard from the effort that I nearly fell. I slowed to a walk, but kept pushing as fast as I could. No stopping.

  The next obstacle, three lines of burning campfire logs I needed to jump over, scared me because of the heat I could feel even as I approached it but I made myself do it in case Ben couldn't. I'd have wanted someone to do it for Kim if she'd been in his place.

  Fear flooded me but I went for it anyhow, jumping probably far higher than necessary to clear the first line. The fire's heat smacked my legs as I jumped, but the flames couldn't reach me. Two more jumps, then I was past. I still couldn't run, but I was still moving. And I wouldn't stop.

  The air obstacle was the ladder made of chains and the sliding down the pole afterwards. Hauling myself up the ladder I felt like I weighed a thousand pounds, but the fun of sliding down the pole made it worthwhile.

  I stumbled along, aching and panting and more tired than I'd thought possible, toward the watery-mud-filled pit that was now the only thing separating me from finishing the race.

  I heard people shrieking my name and looked around to see Andrew and Jeanine and Stefan, covered in mud, clapping and waving at me.

  I laughed and waved back then threw myself into the mud pit and began slithering beneath the barriers.

  Halfway to the finish, an epiphany hit me hard.

  Kim and the skydiving. She was doing it for the same reason Ben was doing this race: to make her life feel normal, to prove to herself she was in control after all those years of being controlled by her disease. She wanted to claim her life, to make a definitive statement that she was her own boss.

  She deserved my support. But could I give it to her?

  *****

  A week later I sat, struggling to stay awake, at my parents' dinner table. That morning I'd done the first long run of the official marathon training program, and the twenty-one kilometers had been a challenge. I'd made it through but I'd been tired at five K and almost ready to quit at fifteen. Finishing it despite my pain, and receiving the congratulations of Andrew and Jeanine, had flooded me with happiness and given me a boost, but my energy had faded fast at lunch with Andrew and Jeanine until I'd actually nodded off over my soup. Throughout the afternoon I'd been swinging between alertness and a level of fatigue I'd never felt before, and at the moment my pendulum was squarely over 'when I blink my eyes don't want to open again'.

  "So after you climbed over the airplane, what happened?"

  I took a deep breath, hoping the oxygen would wake me up, and carried on describing the Hero Hike. "Well, I wiped the blood off my leg to make sure it wasn't too badly cut then--"

  "What blood?"

  I looked at Dad, surprised, then remembered he'd been outside with the neighbors when I arrived and showed my mother and Kim the results of the race, and hadn't come in until we'd all been sitting at the table. "That's right, you haven't seen my war wounds yet."

  I got up and pointed to the long deep scratch that ran nearly the length of my left calf. "It's from a rough part of the airplane when I lost my balance." I turned to show off the wicked bruise on my other knee. "I hit the ground pretty hard before crawling through the last mud pit. I didn't notice at the time because I was so tired. And here," I said, pointing to a series of criss-cross scratches on my elbow, "I must have done something but I don't know what. Oh, and I have a bunch of minor scratches and nicks too. Nothing serious, though."

  I took my seat again and Dad shook his head. "Craziness. Did the other people with you survive?"

  "Oh, yeah. Everyone has at least a few bruises and cuts, but we all made it through okay. Andrew even came sixth in his age group, which is pretty good."

  "Where'd you place?" Kim said.

  I laughed. "One hundredth out of one hundred and twelve. Nowhere near the top."

  "Are you still glad you did it?"

  I sobered, the sadness and hunger in her voice touching me. "Definitely. I wasn't in it to place. I just wanted to do it."

  I'd thought a lot since the race about Ben. He'd just wanted to do the race too, and I'd been delighted to see him afterwards with a finisher's medal resting against his chest over his scar and a look of fierce joy and triumph in his eyes. I wanted to see Kim with that same look, but I couldn't bring myself to encourage her to skydive. I'd feel so awful and responsible if she did it and didn't make it.

  "And today's run was for the marathon?"

  I turned back to Dad and nodded. "We hit half the distance today. Twenty-one kilometers. We'll build up to thirty-two. That leaves ten point two to do for the first time on race day."

  He shook his head. "Shouldn't you run it all beforehand?"

  I'd asked that too. "Most people don't, because it's too hard on the body. Takes too long to recover if you do that. We'll do the thirty-two slower so it'll be close to the same amount of time the whole race will take, and then theoretically all the other running makes up the difference."

  He gave me a half-smile. "Theoretically."

  I smiled back and nodded. "Andrew says the first goal has to be finishing. Even for him, that's the first goal, and definitely for me. Long-distance races can go wrong in so many ways."

  Brandon snorted. "And everyone says Andrew's so tough and such a fighter. Hardly, if he's already looking for a way to wimp out and quit the race."

  I stared at him. "What? That's not true."

  "Not true that he's tough? I can see that."

  I shook my head. "No, the other thing. It's not being a wimp to realize it's a seriously long distance and make sure you're mentally prepared for it."

  "By planning to quit?"

  I studied him without speaking for a long moment. I only did it because I didn't know what to say but to my surprise it made him squirm in his chair. Eventually, I realized I didn't want or need to defend Andrew. I knew what he meant, and I felt sure Brandon did too. Obviously he hadn't planned to quit his first fight, but as Andrew had said, "Sometimes life doesn't go your way, and you just have to accept it."

  Poor Andrew. Our eyes had met when he spoke and I'd known he was thinking of his late girlfriend. I didn't know how he was ever supposed to accept what had happened there, and I ached to fix it for him somehow.

  "Whatever, Megaroni." Brandon turned away. "Mom, dessert time?"

  She looked around and said, "I think so," then got up and began to clear the table.

  I got up too, and pushed myself through the first few steps until my poor legs relaxed enough that I could walk normally.

  Dad punched me lightly in the arm as I passed him. "You're walking like Frankenstein's monster, kiddo."

  I laughed. "This always happens after the longer runs. Anything over fifteen K and I can't walk for the rest of the day. I'll be fine by tomorrow, but thanks for noticing."

  He smiled at me, and I saw an unusual pride in his eyes. I'd seen it when he looked at Brandon, of course, and sometimes at Kim. But I wasn't sure I'd ever seen it
directed at me before, at least not when I hadn't been extra-helpful.

  I smiled back, feeling a little uncertain, and cleared the table with Mom and Kim. Dad never helped with kitchen duties, but since he took care of the three acres of grass and garden surrounding the house and had never once expected us to help with that I didn't mind.

  Brandon's lack of assistance, though, did annoy me. I actually opened my mouth in the kitchen to ask Mom why she let him get away with it, but caught myself before I did. There was no point.

  We brought in little glass dessert bowls filled to the brim with Mom's amazing pineapple mint sherbet and took our seats again. I took a tiny bite of my all-time favorite dessert then leaned back and let it melt in my mouth, sighing with pleasure at its taste.

  Brandon ate his in no time flat, done before I'd finished my third bite, then said, "I'm ready for seconds."

  Mom shook her head. "Sorry, we're all out. There's ice cream, though."

  Brandon looked around the table, and by the time his eyes reached me I was already pulling my bowl closer and wrapping a hand protectively around it.

  "Megan's got lots."

  "Megan's eating it all," I said, fighting the urge to cram it down my throat to keep him from getting it away from me.

  Brandon took a breath to give me a hard time, and I raised my chin and stared at him. "No," I said, before he could speak. "It's mine."

  He stared back, looking confused by my calm refusal. I was a little surprised myself; I certainly didn't want to give it to him but I'd never set such a clear stake in the ground in front of our parents before. No blustering or defensiveness, just a simple statement of fact.

  I heard Mom take a breath, no doubt to make me share, then Kim said, "I don't want mine. He can have it."

  That broke the spell and we all turned to her. "You like it, don't you?" I said.

  She shrugged. "I do, but I'm full."

  Brandon took her bowl before she could change her mind, and I savored my next bite of sherbet and tried not to see how sad and disillusioned Kim looked.

  When my mouth was empty, I had to ask, "What do your friends think about you skydiving?"