Addy's Race Read Online Free PDF Page B

you should,” she said. “I won’t be there, so you can go as fast as you want.”
    “I’m not that fast,” I said.
    “You’re faster than me,” she pointed out. And then she laughed and said, “Everybody is faster than me.”
    Joanne came back carrying a brand-new water bottle with CamelBak stamped across the bottom in white letters. It looked expensive.
    “I bought this for Lucy, for the race, but since she won’t be running, I thought I’d give it to you for luck.”
    “You should save it. She’ll be better by next week.”
    I tried to make Lucy take the bottle, but she pushed it back at me. “Besides, I don’t know if I’m going to run. Maybe I’ll wait so we can run together.”
    “Of course you should compete!” Joanne said.
    “You’ve been training.”
    “For two days,” I said. “I don’t think that counts.”
    I held out the bottle, but Joanne pushed it back at me like Lucy had.
    “I’ll buy Lucy another one,” she said. “It’s nice to have something new for a race—as long as it’s not new runners. Did I tell you what happened when I tried to wear new runners in my first half marathon?”
    “You got a blister so bad you couldn’t wear shoes for three weeks,” Lucy said.
    “Oh, I guess I did tell you,” Joanne said.
    If I repeated myself as much as she did, I’d be embarrassed.
    “Sorry about that,” Lucy said when her mother went back to the kitchen. “You don’t have to run just because she gave you a water bottle, you know.”
    “I know.”
    “But if you do, I’ll come and watch.”
    “Really?”
    “Of course,” she said. “If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t even be in the running club. It’s the least I can do.”

Chapter 8
    Have you ever seen pictures of factory farms, where all the chickens are squashed together in cages, pinned in by other baby chickens and completely, thoroughly unable to move? That’s how I felt at the Laurier Park starting line. Except it wasn’t future Kentucky Fried dinners surrounding me, it was grade six girls— hundreds of them pressed together.
    Facing us, about twenty meters from the starting line, was a man in a blue Adidas tracksuit. Miss Fielding explained that he was the starter. When he said ready, set, go , the twelve-hundred-meter race would begin.
    I had never seen so many runners together. What if I got knocked over? Would I be able to get up? Or would the other girls run right over me?
    Running in a race without Lucy was a bad idea. I should have waited until she got better. We could have been smushed and crushed together. If you’re going to go down, better to go with a friend. That sounds like one of my grandmother’s sayings, but I made it up. Just now.
    I tipped my head toward the sky and leaned back, as if I was going to do a backbend. If I could look at the sky, maybe I wouldn’t feel so—what was the word? Claus , clausto —claustrophobic. Fear of small spaces. Just as the word popped into my head, I felt a hand on my back.
    “Stand straight and face front, Addy,” Miss Fielding said. “The race is about to begin.”
    Ahead of me, the backs of Stephanie’s and Emma’s heads were so close I could feel the air shift every time their ponytails swung back and forth. They moved in unison, like windshield wipers in a rainstorm. Like perfect windshield wipers that wouldn’t be trampled because, of course, they were in the front row. They could run away from everybody before they got knocked to the ground.
    When Miss Fielding had lined us up, she had said, “Fastest in front. There’s not enough room for everyone to stand side by side.” Then she pushed Stem ahead of everyone else.
    All of us wore blue-and-white Mackenzie shirts, but nobody looking at us—Kelsey and Miranda were in the second row next to me—would think we were on the same team. Stephanie and Emma were stretching as if they were warming up for the world championships. Kelsey was hopping up and down to see how many people were behind