Chapter Twelve

The session was two-hundreds, six of them, descending. He took the first four well. On the fifth he went out too hard and died in the last forty, and came in over.

“Again,” she said.

He ran it again. Better — visibly better, and he knew it was better. He finished almost smiling.

She clicked the watch.

Not enough.

He walked back to the line. He set himself.

Again.

He ran. He gave her everything an eleven-year-old has, all of it, his arms loose the way she’d taught him, and he came up out of the rep gasping and looked at her, and his face did the thing — young, winded, scanning hers for one word.

She knew the word. It was right there behind her teeth.

And then she heard it. Not the word — the last command. It was still in the air over the lanes, the way sound stays a moment in mist.

It had been her father’s voice.

It had come out of her mouth.

She looked down. The stopwatch was in her hand, on its cord, her thumb on the button. His button.

She put it in her pocket and walked off the track. She didn’t say anything to the boy. There wasn’t anything in her mouth she could trust.

At the gate she looked back once.

He was standing in his lane, looking down at his own feet, checking them for the mistake. Then he walked back to the start line and toed it, and set himself, and stood there in position, waiting.

She kept walking.