Izzy Barr, Running Star Page 4

  Maybe she could stand on Cody’s shoulders, or he could stand on hers, and they could reach for it, trying not to knock over the entire tree. The tree already leaned too much to one side, from its uneven distribution of shoes.

  Then Izzy heard a wonderfully familiar voice. “What’s going on, Miss Izzy and Mr. Cody? Why aren’t you outside for your Field Day?”

  It was Mr. Boone, coming out of the front office.

  And he was on crutches!

  At first Izzy wasn’t sure if Mr. Boone’s crutches were part of his Field Day act: pretending to be out of breath, pretending to be wiping sweat from his forehead, pretending to limp from the exertion of his training. Pretending to need crutches from a training injury?

  “No,” he said sorrowfully, in answer to Izzy’s unspoken question. “I was hopping on the hoppy balls during first-grade Field Day yesterday morning to show the first graders what proper hopping looks like, and I hopped right off the ball and landed wrong on my foot. It’s just a sprain, not a break, but the doctor said no more hopping for me for a while.”

  He made a sad face. But then he chuckled. And then he laughed so heartily that Izzy and Cody found themselves laughing with him, until Cody was clutching his side and Izzy’s stomach hurt.

  But they couldn’t stand there laughing when the Field Day race was about to begin any second.

  “That’s Cody’s shoe.” Izzy pointed.

  “And I need it,” Cody said.

  “Right now,” Izzy finished.

  “Ah,” Mr. Boone said. “Well, crutches are no fun to walk on, no fun at all. But they happen to be very useful for retrieving stray shoes from high places.”

  Expertly, Mr. Boone hooked Cody’s shoe off the shoe tree with his crutch and tossed it to Cody.

  “Thank you!” Izzy and Cody shouted together.

  Without waiting for Cody to put on his shoe, the two of them raced back outside, Mr. Boone hobbling along behind them.

  9

  The rest of the third graders were finishing their exercises as Izzy and Cody arrived. In a few seconds Cody had his shoe on and was warming up with Izzy.

  Izzy thought she saw Mrs. Molina give a small smile.

  As Izzy lunged first to her left and then to her right, she tried not to look at the group of twenty or thirty parents gathered at the side of the field. Most parents couldn’t come to Field Day, of course, because they had to be at work at nine o’clock on a Friday morning. Kelsey’s mom would be there, but not her dad. Neither of Annika’s parents could come to school events on a weekday. Izzy’s mother would be at the hospital.

  And her dad?

  Don’t look, Izzy told herself sternly.

  She wasn’t going to be like Atalanta, so busy spotting golden apples in her path that she let herself get beaten in a very important race.

  Luckily, the girls raced first, all the girls from the three third-grade classes.

  “Ready!” Mr. Tipton called out, once the girls were in place at the starting line.

  “Set!”

  Izzy waited for the wonderful word she knew was coming next.

  “Go!”

  She took off like a cork from a bottle, exploding into motion.

  Her strides long and even, her feet in her new shoes springing with every step, Izzy took the lead. She didn’t think about winning; all she thought about was running—how good it felt to be in motion, like a bird flying, like a rabbit darting, like a deer loping.

  The pack of girl runners led by Izzy and Skipper, neck and neck now, rounded the stretch of track where the parents were gathered to watch and cheer.

  Izzy couldn’t resist stealing one peek. Her father would be hard to miss, taller than most of the other dads, wearing the old baseball cap he wouldn’t let her mother throw away.

  He wasn’t there.

  No tall man with a battered baseball cap was standing in the shade with the other parents.

  Izzy swallowed the lump in her throat, as thick as a big, cold pancake that hadn’t been cooked long enough.

  Unable to summon the strength for a final burst of speed, Izzy let Skipper reach the finish line a good ten feet ahead of her. Mr. Tipton was too busy timing the runners to give Skipper a fatherly hug, but he flashed his daughter a proud grin.

  “Congratulations, Skipper,” Izzy made herself say.

  Skipper gave a smirking shrug, as if she won so many races that she couldn’t be bothered to reply.

  Annika and Kelsey were still finishing their lap around the track, so Izzy turned her attention to cheering for her friends.

  “Go, Annika! Go, Kelsey!”

  She tried to beam some needed energy their way, especially to Kelsey, who had slowed down to a walk. Finally, the girls’ race was over. Kelsey and Annika both flopped down on the grass to rest.

  Izzy ran to get her friends some of the cool bottled water in the ice chest by the side of the field, grabbing a bottle for herself as well. It was good to have something useful to do.

  “How can you still be running?” Kelsey wailed as Izzy returned with the three water bottles and stood jogging in place as she drank. Her feet itched for the chance to run the race against Skipper over again, this time running just a few seconds faster.

  Now it was the boys’ turn to take the field, and the girls’ turn to watch and cheer.

  Izzy hoped Cody’s shoelaces were tied nice and tight. It wouldn’t do to kick off any more shoes, not in the middle of a run.

  She hoped he wouldn’t slow himself down by peering behind him to see how Simon was doing—if Simon was behind him, that is, and not ahead.

  She hoped he wouldn’t remember how slowly he read and how many answers he got wrong in math.

  She hoped he’d remember that he was the fastest boy in the whole third grade.

  Except for Simon Ellis?

  Simon took an early lead, as Izzy had done in the girls’ race. Two boys from other classes were right behind him, and Cody was right behind them.

  “Go, go, Go-dy!” Kelsey called out. “Go, go, Co-dy!”

  Apparently she hadn’t come up with a better cheer after all.

  “Will Cody be able to catch up?” Annika asked Izzy. “Simon’s pretty far ahead.”

  “Maybe,” Izzy said. Skipper had managed to catch up all too well in the previous race.

  Simon wasn’t likely to let himself be distracted, but he might have started out too quickly, at a pace he wouldn’t be able to sustain. Lots of times, the winner came from behind. But lots of times, the winner ran in the lead the whole way.

  “I can’t look anymore,” Kelsey moaned. She sat down and hid her face in her hands.

  “Eight times seven is fifty-six,” Annika muttered. “Eight times eight is sixty-four. Eight times nine is seventy-two.”

  Simon held on to his lead. Cody had passed the other two boys; he still had a chance unless he stumbled or lost his shoe again.

  “Cody, Cody, Cody!” Izzy shrieked her encouragement. Some of the other girls picked up the cheer: “Cody! Cody!” And then she thought she heard a deeper male voice joining in: “Go, Cody!”

  It sounded like Mr. Boone, but of course a principal shouldn’t cheer for one kid over another kid; a principal should cheer for all kids equally.

  Izzy glanced behind her to see if Mr. Boone was cheering for Cody, but he was just standing there, leaning on his crutches, watching the race like everybody else. So maybe she had imagined it.

  Cody was only steps behind Simon now. Izzy’s legs tensed in sympathy, wishing they could sprint along with him. Her heart pounded as if she were the one running, not Cody.

  He was so close! But not close enough. He needed a few more seconds to make up the distance, seconds he didn’t have—

  And then—

  Cody’s legs somehow jumped into an even higher gear.

  One last impossible burst of speed—

  And Cody won!

  “He won, he won, he won!” Izzy shouted.

  Annika broke off her muttered t
imes tables. Kelsey uncovered her eyes, leaped up from the grass, and hugged both her friends. The whole class was hooting and hollering, including the boys who were still finishing their race.

  Izzy looked at Mr. Boone again. He was beaming like the full moon lighting up the night sky. Kelsey liked to call him Mr. Moon.

  Even Mrs. Molina was clapping, though maybe she was clapping for all the boys, to be polite. But when Izzy looked at her more closely, she saw that their stern, strict teacher had tears in her eyes.

  10

  Simon pushed his way through the crowd of kids high-fiving Cody.

  “That was an amazing race!” he said sincerely, holding out his hand.

  Simon was so good at everything, he was even a super-good good sport.

  In the relay race, Izzy’s team finished third—not bad considering that her team had Kelsey on it; Skipper’s team was second. Izzy got a personal best in the long jump, but knocked down the high-jump bar on her second try; and she collected a blue ribbon for the softball throw. Annika got a red ribbon in the high jump, which surprised her more than anybody. Kelsey didn’t get any ribbons except for the yellow “participant” ribbon that every kid got, but she didn’t seem to mind.

  At the end of Field Day, after the closing hoppy ball race, everyone had Popsicles, even the parents. Izzy took a grape one, hoping its cool sweetness would melt that terrible raw-pancake lump in her throat.

  It didn’t.

  * * *

  After lunch, Mrs. Molina told her students to clear their desks and take out their Famous Footprint reports to share with the class.

  “We won’t have time for everyone to read his or her whole report, so try to pick just a few of your most interesting Famous Footprint facts to share.” She looked over at Simon as she spoke. “Then we’ll have these on display in the hallway outside our room. Who would like to go first?”

  Of course, Simon had his hand in the air before anyone else.

  The two footprints on his paper were covered with the tiniest handwriting Izzy had ever seen. If an entire book on Leonardo da Vinci had been copied onto the soles of two ordinary-sized shoes, it would look a lot like Simon’s Famous Footprint report.

  “Just a few facts,” Mrs. Molina reminded him. But Simon didn’t need the reminder, since he always did what he was supposed to do anyway.

  “Fact number one,” Simon said. “Leonardo da Vinci had the ideas for a helicopter, a tank, a calculator, and solar power for energy four centuries before these things were actually invented.”

  Simon obviously had good eyesight in addition to good research skills.

  “Very nice, Simon,” Mrs. Molina said after he had read out two more Leonardo da Vinci facts.

  Next she called on a girl who did her Famous Footprint on Eleanor Roosevelt and a boy who did his Famous Footprint on Babe Ruth.

  Kelsey read from her Famous Footprint that Laura Ingalls Wilder didn’t publish her first Little House book until she was sixty-five. Her books were translated into forty languages. An important award for a children’s book author had been named after her: the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award.

  Annika read that Albert Einstein discovered the equation E = mc2. She tried to explain what it meant, but Izzy didn’t understand it. Annika didn’t explain why Einstein had such messy hair or why his tongue stuck out in his picture. Maybe the biography of Einstein didn’t tell things like that.

  When her own turn came, Izzy stood up and tried to read her Wilma Rudolph facts as loudly and clearly as Simon had read his facts about Leonardo da Vinci. Skipper had stumbled over a few words when she read her facts about Jackie Joyner-Kersee.

  “Fact number one,” Izzy said, since Simon had started off that way. “Wilma Rudolph had polio at age four and was told she’d never be able to walk again without a brace. Fact number two, she did walk without a brace. Fact number three, she ran without a brace and won three gold medals at the 1960 Olympics in Rome.”

  “Those are very inspirational facts,” Mrs. Molina told her. “I can see why you’d want to run in Wilma’s footsteps. All right, who hasn’t had a turn yet?”

  Cody was one of the few students who hadn’t yet raised his hand. Mrs. Molina looked at him, then hesitated, as if she wasn’t sure she should call on him and spoil his triumphant day. He was bound to have a terrible Famous Footprint: he had admitted he didn’t have a book at home, and he hadn’t even opened the biography he had dragged back from the library. But Izzy could see that he had a completed Famous Footprint on his desk. She’d be willing to bet it wasn’t about Abigail Adams.

  “Cody?” Mrs. Molina asked.

  Cody picked up his piece of paper. He hadn’t managed to fill up two footprints the way Mrs. Molina had said they were supposed to, but at least he had something written on one of them.

  “Mine isn’t a Famous Footprint, because there isn’t any famous person I want to be like when I grow up. So I couldn’t do the assignment the way you wanted me to. I didn’t do the famous part—I just did the footprint part, and wrote about someone I do want to be like someday.”

  Mrs. Molina adjusted her glasses. It was obvious she didn’t know what to say. Library research was supposed to be an important part of the assignment. But writing about someone who truly inspired you was an important part of the assignment, too.

  “My dad,” Cody read aloud from his footprint. “My dad isn’t famous. He works on our farm. He has another job, too. He drives a truck for the…”

  Cody squinted down at his messy handwriting.

  “For the county. He is a great dad. He coaches my soccer team. He goes running with me. He feeds our cats. He walks our dogs. He takes care of our pig, Mr. Piggins. When I grow up I want to be just like my dad. The end.”

  Everyone clapped, even though Cody hadn’t done the assignment the way Mrs. Molina expected.

  The lump in Izzy’s throat came back again, even harder to swallow now than before. It felt like a whole plateful of pancakes stuffed into one huge bite.

  Cody’s dad had been at Field Day. Izzy had seen the big hug he gave Cody after his race.

  Cody had the crummiest shoes of any kid in their class, but he had his dad there to cheer him on.

  Izzy would have done better running in old shoes, with her dad there to see her, than running in new shoes without him.

  Besides, her dad had only bought her new shoes because Dustin had taken her side. For her dad, everything was always Dustin, Dustin, Dustin, and no bright blue shoes with silver arrows could ever change that fact.

  Izzy slipped out of her seat and took the girls’ room pass from the hook next to Mrs. Molina’s desk.

  “Can’t you wait until language arts is over?” Mrs. Molina asked her. She hated bathroom breaks as much as she hated water fountain breaks.

  Izzy shook her head.

  “Well, go then,” Mrs. Molina said.

  Outside in the hall, Izzy walked as fast as she could without running until she reached the towering shoe tree. She unlaced her new shoes and knotted the laces together. Then she took her old shoes off the tree and hung the new shoes in their place.

  She was back in class a few moments later, her old shoes on her feet.

  “That was fast,” Mrs. Molina commented approvingly. A suspicious look crossed her face. “Is everything all right?”

  “Sure!” Izzy said.

  Her toes felt strange in her old cheap shoes after the springy spaciousness of the fancy new shoes from her dad.

  “Everything is great!” Izzy said, blinking hard to keep back tears.

  11

  Kelsey was the one who noticed it first. The girls were sprawled on the floor in the family room at Kelsey’s house after school, talking about how funny Mr. Boone had been at Field Day, whacking the hoppy balls with his crutches in pretend rage for making him sprain his foot.

  “Your shoes!” Kelsey sat up and pointed at Izzy’s feet. “What happened to your new shoes?”

  Izzy shrugged.

  “I thought yo
u donated your old shoes to the shoe tree,” Annika said, her eyes following Kelsey’s finger.

  Both her friends waited for Izzy to say something.

  “Stop staring at me! I just decided I liked my old shoes better, and they’d be, you know, good luck for the race on Monday. Because they’ve had more experience running.”

  “You took your old shoes off the shoe tree?” Kelsey asked. She made it sound like an accusation.

  “So? They’re still my shoes. The shoe tree has, like, a billion shoes on it. Besides, I didn’t take my shoes. I switched them, and left my new shoes there instead.”

  “You what?” Annika asked.

  Izzy wished her friends would stop making such a big deal about it.

  “The new shoes made my feet hurt!”

  Izzy willed her eyes not to fill up with tears. Actually, the new shoes made her heart hurt, not her feet, but she was afraid she’d cry if she said that.

  “Mom!” Kelsey yelled.

  Kelsey’s mother poked her head into the family room. “What is it?”

  “Can you give us a ride back to school? We—well, Izzy—forgot something. Something really important. And we need to get it before the school gets locked up for the day.”

  Kelsey’s mother gave Izzy an inquiring look. Izzy didn’t say anything.

  “Do you need a ride back to school, Izzy?” Kelsey’s mom asked.

  Izzy hesitated. She nodded.

  Suddenly she remembered: today was the last day for the shoe tree! Today was the day that all the shoes were going away to the needy children.

  “Then we’d better hurry,” was all Kelsey’s mother said.

  When they reached Franklin School, Mrs. Green waited in the car while the girls pelted inside. The instant they came through the front door, Izzy saw that the shoe tree was bare. The tree itself was still standing in its place, one stray shoelace dangling from an upper branch like a leftover piece of tinsel. All the shoe ornaments were gone.

  “Maybe the shoes are in Mr. Boone’s office,” Annika said, obviously trying to stay calm.