Chapter 125

“You would think it best to save your breath for running, but I often find screaming helps.”
—Mark Lawrence, Prince of Fools

LIVY AND I got to Donna’s about four o’clock. My parents had agreed to celebrate Sunday afternoon with me so I was clear for the night. I wondered what my girlfriends all had in store for me. Maybe I’d get to dip my wick in all of them. Well, a seventeen-year-old can dream, can’t he?

“Surprise!” they all yelled when I walked in the back door. I was puzzled. I knew they were all going to be there. What was the surprise? Then I saw her. Em stepped out from behind Rachel and walked toward me.

“Happy birthday, Brother,” she whispered as she closed to kiss me. And kiss! I was holding Em in my arms! I couldn’t believe it. I looked around the room while I kept Em held tightly to my chest. Joan had come down. And Cindy was here. It was the first time ever that all twelve of us were together in one place. I was overwhelmed and tears of joy were leaking out of my eyes as each of my girlfriends came up to give me a birthday kiss. Cindy managed to land this one on my lips but it was there and gone as fast as any kiss on the cheek.

“What... ? How did you manage to get here? How long can you stay?” I asked Em as she finished greeting all our girlfriends as well.

“Our pod!” Em said. “They decided we all needed to be together for your birthday.”

“We pooled our funds,” Desi said. “It wasn’t too bad. But poor Em had to drive all the way to Kansas City to get a flight.”

“At least it was only one stop and I got here early this morning.”

“How early?”

“Donna picked me up at two.”

“I just can’t believe you’re really here. Thank you all for making this the happiest birthday ever!”

I grabbed Joan and pulled her in for another kiss and hug.

“I’m so glad you came down, too. You have as long a drive as Em had to get to Kansas City.”

“Yes, but I got out of town at six and was here by eleven. And my babe was waiting here at Donna’s for me.”

“None of us slept much before Em got here. And not much after, either,” Beca laughed. “While you and Livy were on the bus to West Noble, we were all cuddled up asleep in each other’s arms.”

“Um ... What’s the plan now?” I asked, glancing toward Cindy.

“Dinner and birthday cake and presents,” Donna said.

“Don’t worry, Jacob,” Cindy said. “My parents are coming to pick me up at nine and everyone promised not to get naked or have an orgy before then.”

“Oh, God!” I moaned. I could feel the heat in my face. I knew Cindy knew all about us and that we were sexually active in the pod but I didn’t expect her to be so casual about it. At least she blushed a little.

Everyone but Cindy spent the night. For the first time, I think, in the history of her house, all four bedrooms were full. Em and I started out the night together in one of the upstairs bedrooms, but all night long it was like a game of musical beds. Only if there wasn’t an empty one when the music stopped, you just got in bed with whoever was there first. I didn’t make love with all my girlfriends but I did get to hold each of them naked in my arms and do a little kissing and petting. And some loving in a couple of instances. Nanette and Livy were especially demanding when they got in my bed. I was fine with that.

As promised, I took Em and went home for family celebration at noon. My favorite dish of Mom’s was beef stroganoff. Before you start thinking of gourmet meals, understand this is Indiana stroganoff, not New York or Moscow. It starts—like most Indiana gourmet dishes—with a can of cream of mushroom soup. I still loved it.

We had to take Em to the airport at four. Even with that, it would be well past midnight before she reached her dorm room in Salina.

Monday was the first day of the second grading period and the first day I decided to make my focus music and let subjects other than English and writing suffer. I didn’t just cut the classes or anything, but if I had errors in my accounting or a missing step in my chemistry lab experiment, I didn’t let it bother me. Most of the teachers took the upcoming test lightly since it was defined as a test of aptitude instead of ability, so they just stuck to their regular teaching plans. That would be different in the spring when we all took the NSRE again. They’d be teaching what they thought the questions on the test would be.

I ran a hard six miles Monday afternoon, not quite maintaining my 5:50 pace. Jock waved me on another lap and I really pushed to pick up some time on the last quarter mile. Then he waved me on again for another lap. And another. I noticed he was driving all the distance runners to keep going past the 10k mark. WTF?

When he finally waved me off the track, I stumbled a couple of steps and collapsed. A trainer got me back on my feet and started walking me around as he fed me sips of water.

“What was that all about?” I gasped when Jock caught up with me after we were all off the track. The other guys were being supported as they walked off the last mile we’d run. Jock called us all together.

“You guys have been running out of gas in the last mile,” Jock said. “You’ll do seven again on Wednesday and see if you can hold your pace together for another mile. That way, you’ll know you can do the 10k more easily in the last lap. Remember, semi-state next weekend is at The Plex with the run through campus and down by the river. You’ll be running a new course and that’s where we’ll run Wednesday. The new course loops down through Johnny Appleseed Park and the Coliseum on the west side of the river and then when you cross over to campus, you continue out and around Taylor University and Canterbury Green Golf Course. We’re close enough we can get a run in on that new trail so you should have a big advantage come Saturday.”

“Yes, sir,” we chorused and then started coughing and slugging down more water. He sent us to the showers.

I could have spent more time on my chemistry that night but I chose, instead, to practice for a couple of hours. Cindy and I didn’t have solos in the fall concert, but we’d be playing a feature slot in the holiday concert coming up in two months. I wanted every note perfect when LeBlanc turned his baton on me.

That’s the way the week went. We were all happy there was a teacher-parent conference day on Friday and no school. Cindy and I spent about four hours practicing our parts before I got to have time with Rachel for a date. I was looking forward to cross country being over so we could have later and maybe more vigorous dates but she came into the house with me after we’d just gone for a walk out by Eagle Swamp. We waved at our parents, playing cards on Friday night. They were often at it until after midnight.

“We’re going to shower and go to bed now,” Rachel said cheerfully. “Jacob needs his rest before the race tomorrow.” Our parents just said goodnight and kept playing cards. I definitely lived in an alternate reality.

There are definite differences between running a short course, like the one in Warsaw, and a long course, like the one at The Plex. On a short course, you can count out the markers and know how far it is to the next one. One lap, two laps, three laps. But on a full 10k cross country course, you couldn’t see the next milepost and were never sure exactly how far you were from the end. Of course, there were stripes painted on the ground every five hundred meters, but your mind can play tricks on you and you think you’ve already passed a marker that’s still way ahead.

The race had more competitors than any of our previous races. The 5k boys’ and girls’ runs had twenty teams of seven plus close to forty independent runners who had qualified from the four regions. That was a total of 178 runners. The coaches and IHSAA had agreed that schools would only field teams of five for the 10k instead of seven. They felt it would even out the competition. So the twenty schools fielded 100 runners plus twenty independents. If past experience was any indicator, there would be a mile or more between the first place and last place runners.

I knew I wasn’t the fastest runner in this field. The kid from Columbia City had beaten me last week and there was a guy from Penn who had run a thirty-four-minute 10k in the sectional. I figured if I could maintain 5:48 per mile, I could still be in the top three at thirty-six minutes.