The Running Dream: Part IV

“Aaarooo!” Sherlock says, wagging his tail.
Rosa reaches out tentatively to pet him.

I look at her. “You’re very philosophical about the finish line.”

For some reason this thought startles me. And I think about all the races where this is true—the 400, the 800, the 1600, all the relays—and it shocks me that I have never looked at it this way.
Maybe because of staggered starts.

“Item one!” he says. “I’ve noticed a lackluster attitude growing among you.”

“We have a patron. Someone who insists on staying anonymous. They have pledged a dollar for every dollar we raise, up to ten thousand dollars.”

And I escape.
Not that there’s any danger of him following me.
Not with Merryl making a beeline toward him the way she is.

But if we don’t fight for your rights now, you will get a measly settlement that won’t include the medical care and prosthetic limbs that you’ll need in the years ahead.

That thought, along with everything my dad said and the obvious toll this has taken on my parents, hits me in the gut like an unexpected punch.

She bustles about, uprooting dead plants and weeds, and mulching new life into the tired dirt.

“It was hard at first, but now I’m pretty good at it. It’s like a dialect—it takes some getting used to, but you eventually figure it out.”

“A seemingly impossible dream,” Marla’s voice says, “only if you haven’t seen the latest advancements in running prostheses.”

“But with this dream,” Marla’s voice continues, “comes a price tag. With fittings, fabrication, and ongoing adjustments, a leg like this costs around twenty thousand dollars. But that’s where all four divisions of the Liberty High School track team come in.”

“She just wants to run again!” they shout in unison.

“The word,” Annie says with a haughty look, “is ‘lively.’”

Sherlock’s head pops up between us, and after Rosa’s had a chance to nuzzle with him, I collect my things and say, “All right, boy, let’s get going.”

So the next day I go to Room 402 at lunch and do my best to volley back right answers to Rosa’s ad lib math problems.

“We could do that with your definitive leg if you want. It doesn’t cost anything extra. I just embed the cloth when I’m making the socket.”

And I guess we’re being a bit exuberant, because Eric Hollander in one of the seats in front of us turns around and says, “You got A’s? Dude, I got a D.”

“Quite a year,” he says to me, and we both laugh at the understatement.

It’s an old-timey single-screen movie theater that shows foreign films and cult classics. A funky-cool place that’s run by a bohemian grandma named Greta.

And then at the end of June Dr. Wells decrees that my leg is stabilized and gives me a prescription for my permanent leg.

A suction sleeve liner goes right over my stump, and it has a two-inch notched metal peg sticking out of the bottom of it.

“I love this!” I say after the preliminary adjustments are done. “I had no idea it would be this much better than my first one.”

The Tremont Theater has a little kiosk in front where tickets are sold.

She waves a gnarled hand toward the entrance.