A Race Against Time Read Online Free PDF Page A

Then I went downstairs to the kitchen.
    Hannah had posted a note on the refrigerator telling me she had already left for downtown. She had volunteered to help cook and serve breakfast for the race organizers. The aroma of her homemade banana bread still floated around the room—and a loaf waited for me on the counter.
    Although I wasn’t scheduled to ride until three o’clock, I was still feeling jumpy and excited. So I decided to down a peach protein smoothie and a piece of Hannah’s melt-in-your-mouth bread.
    Bess picked me up in the truck she had outfitted for the two-day event. George and Ned were already aboard.
    “Hurry up,” Bess called to me. “We don’t want to be late for all the prerace stuff.”
    I jumped into the backseat, and we sped away.
    “So are we excited or what?” George asked everyone. “I am so ready to start this race! We’re going to leave Deirdre and her team coughing in our dust.”
    “I’m ready,” Ned said.
    “Me too,” I chimed in.
    Soon we were driving into the parking lot at the bank downtown. The starting line for the race was atMain Street and Highland Boulevard, right in front of the bank, on one of the busiest corners in town. All the streets in the area had been roped off for the race. Temporary bleachers had been erected on the sidewalks for supporters and fans, and a small stage constructed near the starting line.
    Red and gold banners billowed out from all the streetlights, and the storefront windows of all the downtown businesses and shops had handmade posters cheering on their favorite teams. Members of the high school pep band had staked out a spot in the minipark across from the bank, and the air was full of rousing music.
    George, Ned, and I unloaded our bikes in the parking lot and did a few warm-ups. I hate racing in brand-new clothes, so I’d worn my new gear for a couple of ten-mile rides earlier in the week. When I warmed up with a few stretches Saturday morning, my new shorts and jersey felt perfectly broken in.
    “Uh-oh, there she is,” Bess said. We all looked up as she alerted us. Deirdre was gliding across the parking lot, followed by a couple of guys.
    “Looks like her team got matching uniforms too,” Ned noted. “Black with blue stripes.”
    “Mmmm,” George said, “black and blue. Soundslike and omen to me—like maybe DeeDee will crash her hotshot new bike as much as she always crashed the old one.”
    “Okay, racers, can you gather over here for a minute, please?” Ralph Holman’s voice boomed across the parking lot. He was better at speaking through the bullhorn than he’d been at the microphone during the CarboCram the night before. “Just leave your bikes and come in closer,” he urged us.
    Mr. Holman was standing on the small temporary stage. Next to him stood an impressive, old-fashioned safe. It was black cast iron with shiny brass curlicues and leaf figures in all the corners. A man in a gray uniform stood on the other side of the safe.
    All the bikers and the supporters and fans who were there to see the start of the race jostled one another to get a better view of the little stage. I looked around at the other bikers, mostly to check out the competition. I knew most of them, but a few I’d never seen before.
    Two of the guys Deirdre had pressed into service were clustered with her, but one had drifted off somewhere. I recognized Malcolm, their truck driver, from school. He was very tall with long brown hair pulled into a ponytail at the back of hisneck. I’d never met the other one, but he must have been one of the Jensen brothers. His hair was sun-bleached almost white—at least I assumed it was from the sun.
    There were a few people I didn’t know at the edge of the crowd who were dressed in racing gear. One of them seemed totally out of place, because he was leaning against a tree and holding on to a bike with fat knobby tires, cantilever brakes on a straight handlebar, and three chain rings. I figured that he