I interviewed Savannah for a feature assignment in COMM 111. She has read the this final draft and approved its accuracy.
Boom! Tennis shoes, flashing legs, the smell of sweat, breaking clouds. The Canadian sky opened with sunshine at the same moment her first step hit the ground.
Misjudging the length of the track, Savannah sprinted to the marked wooden post ahead in the distance, ready to breathe normally. An amateur mistake. Upon reaching the post, the other racers kept going, running, jogging, passing. Confused and out of breath, Savannah continued moving with the numbered stampede of racers, branded with sun and tagged like cattle. They raced across bridges, through groves of trees, past briars and bushes, through moments of time.
As she raced, Savannah’s mind flashed back to the reason why she was running, to the red ink staining the pages of her quiz as if it were the scene of a small massacre, to the voice of her professor offering to drop the lowest quiz score of each student that joined the cross-country team. Pride moved her.
Somehow, through the fog of her brain, Savannah noticed a girl adjacent to her in a light orange t-shirt. Though she struggled to continue moving, Savannah decided she would have a win. She had to beat that girl.
In an unspoken rivalry, the girl pulled just ahead of Savannah, forcing her to exert herself beyond discomfort. Like the pedals of a bicycle, they floated round and round each other in breathy spurts of strength. With the finish line in view, the orange-shirted girl ran harder than ever. Savannah’s limbs were numb, but all at once, her mind was captured by the cheering voices of the crowd, of her mother and sister. With a soft smile across her lips, the last thing Savannah saw before collapsing over the finish line was the exhausted tennis shoe of the orange-shirted girl one stride behind her.
Comments