Girl Runner Read Online Free PDF Page B

heist. I smile to my dull reflection on the silver wall.
    Am I conspirator or stolen object? How can I tell the difference?
    She is whispering—to herself, I think, and not to him or to me—but I nod anyway, to reassure her as she pulls me backward out of the elevator. The wheels catch on an edge of carpet, and in her struggle she nearly manages to dump me out, prevented only by the belt.
    I can hear the girl’s breathing accelerate as she rushes us through the mouldering lobby.
    The young man holds the door open.
    Max.
    There, I’ve remembered, and the girl is a green leafy vegetable like chard, but not chard. Bitter. I’m in my mother’s garden, travelling the rows, darting from end to end pulling peppers and tomatoes and beans while my brother George lies in the shade of his hat beside the wide basket I am working to fill.
    “Well done!” George crunches on a pickling cucumber I’ve brought to the basket. He’s supposed to be helping, but I don’t mind. I’ve got a job to do and I like a job to do; George likes not doing a job. So we’re both of us happy, together. Green cabbage, red cabbage, broccoli, parsley, celery, scallion, kale. Kale.
    Her name is Kale, or not quite, but close enough. Kaley, as I am called Aggie, not Aganetha; a pet name, a diminutive, most likely given in kindness, though not always. Depends who’s speaking.
    She’s got us smoothly through the door and we are whipping down the ramp and into the brightness of day. The air is damp, but chilly. I am confused, struggling to remember the hour, the season, the whole of it, struggling to place myself in time. My hands fumble at the blanket over my knees, and I discover it is wrapped all the way to my chest. The sun stinging my eyes. The wind catching my breath.
    I open my mouth to drink the heavy air.
    Thirst. I am thirsty.
    We cross a street without pausing, and the girl curses at a car that veers too near, though it’s clear she herself is at fault. We crash up and over the curb. I grunt. She’s got me turned on an awkward angle as she cranes to look behind, not ahead. She wants to be clear of the place from which we’ve escaped. Only when she’s sure do we stop.
    I think, We are under a tree. I think, The tree has its leaves. I think, The leaves are young. Clues abound.
    I hear what the girl’s saying, though it’s not directed at me. She is speaking to the young man, to Max, whose name I have no trouble remembering while hers already eludes me, vanished among the garden rows.
    She’s saying, “This is Aganetha Smart. We’ve got her! This is really her!”
    HERE COMES FANNIE down the lane.
    I’m walking the fence rail, my feet bare, the skirt of my dress tied into a knot at the side.
    The front field is a pasture for horses this summer, but today there’s only the old mare and her foal under one of the shade trees near the fence. The other horses are working—the light-legged gelding is pulling Mother to wherever she’s gone to help this morning, and the team is hauling the mower over the hay field, guided by one of the hired men.
    Here comes Fannie, closer and closer.
    I stop, one-legged on a post, but I don’t bother to wave. Fannie’s away inside her head, I can see it in her long stare, eyes ahead. She gives no sign of seeing me, passing right by, and turns toward the graveyard, though I think, perhaps, she’s going farther, elsewhere, to Carson and Edith’s. I feel invisible. Maybe I feel angry too.
    I jump from the post to the fence rail, and run toward the road in a series of hurried steps that turn to stumbles, to hesitation and wildly flailing arms. Watch me fall , Fannie , just watch me!
    George is lying under a shade tree near the mare and her filly. He has seen. He jumps to his feet.
    But I won’t fall—I’m only tricking. I bend over with laughter as he jogs anxiously toward me.
    “Hey,” he calls. “Aggie!”
    I right myself. I’m pleased to have fooled someone: it makes me like George more. I turn the