Free The Runner by Cynthia Voigt

town for the groceries. The old man didn’t like messing with bags of groceries. Or something. There wasn’t anything much left to eat, not even canned soup. Bullet was going to have oatmeal without milk for the third night in a row. Oatmeal they had in abundance. And she’d do it too, because she never just told the old man there wasn’t anything to eat, or gave him oatmeal.
    â€œThose barn doors need rehanging,” his father’s voice said behind him. It was an order.
    You don’t think I can, do you, on my own. Hanging doors, especially doors that big, and with the hinges rusting up and the wood behind the hinges rotten—that was at least a two-man job. They’d been getting worse and worse for a couple of years. Now they dug into the ground when you shoved them closed. If he hadn’t been so pissed, Bullet could have laughed at how obvious the old man was.
    Bullet walked out of the kitchen, moving slowly down the path to the dock, to run. Halfway there, OD emerged from the golden grasses, wagging her tail to greet him. “Get away, you stupid mutt,” he told her. She stood wagging her tail and watching him as he passed her by.

CHAPTER 7
    B ullet waited in the broad doorway of the lunchroom, paper bag in his hand, looking things over. Lou caught his eye, then indicated with a tilt of her head the empty seat next to her. He slid his eyes past her, not even glancing at the other three. That Monday he went to sit with some of the football squad.
    Bullet slid onto the end of the wooden bench, and the four others on that side slid down to make room for him. “Hey man.” “How they hanging?” “Long time no see.” “Hey, Bullet, have a meatball,” offered Jim, who pronged one from his green plastic plate of spaghetti and leaned across the table to shove it at Bullet’s face. “It’s not really shit, it just looks like it. And tastes like it. You want some?”
    â€œYou’re kidding.” Bullet unwrapped his packet of sandwiches. Just jam this lunch; they were out of peanut butter. It was lucky his mother bought flour by the hundred-pound sack and saw to it that the old man always picked one up when he went into town. They never ran out of bread.
    â€œWhere you been?” Pete asked.
    Bullet fixed him with his eye: “In school.” They laughed.
    â€œOkay, okay, I never laid claim to brains,” Pete said. He twirled spaghetti around his fork and ate a mouthful, sucking in the strands that hung out. He held his fork like a hammer in his huge fist. “How’re you guys going to do in the meet Saturday?”
    â€œI’ll win,” Bullet told him.
    â€œWe know that,” Jim said. “That doesn’t interest me. I might be interested if you lost one. But how about the rest of you. Anyone any good?”
    Bullet shook his head, chewing.
    â€œYou should play football,” they told him, once again. “We win sometimes.”
    â€œBullet doesn’t play team sports,” Pete told them.
    â€œThat’s the ticket,” Bullet agreed.
    â€œWhy should you, if you’re a potential Olympic contender?” Jim needled.
    Bullet shrugged. “I’m not contending.”
    â€œYour coach thinks you are.”
    â€œThat’s his problem,” Bullet said. “What about you, when’s your first game?”
    They groaned. “Man, we already played it. Saturday. Don’t you read your school paper? The Crimson Blade ?”
    â€œBullet doesn’t read, doesn’t write—he’s a tribute to the school system.”
    â€œHow’d he get to eleventh grade?”
    â€œHe just ripples his muscles at the teachers. Women faint. Men get terrorized. He used to run his fingers through his hair—” They laughed.
    Their laughter was swept away in a silence that brushed over the entire cafeteria, from one end to the other. Bullet finally turned around to see