Free All Night Long by Melody Mayer

problem with their parents so easily.
    “Let's go talk to her and find out,” Lydia suggested. She kissed Billy goodbye and promised to call him later. Billy reiterated his promise to take Jimmy to the Mets game; then he left. Lydia had to get Martina and take both kids in to face the bad news.
    Man. This was gonna suck.

“Runners, take your marks.…”
    Kiley dug her fingertips into the artificial rubber surface of the running track at Bel Air High School. The athletics director, Bucky Shelton, who'd made a big deal of the fact that he'd played football at USC and then for the San Francisco 49ers before he retired and became an educator, had explained this was the same surface used at the Olympic games.
    Kiley did not care. Kiley did not like to run. In fact, Kiley
hated
running. She felt as fast and graceful cutting through the water as she felt slow and ungainly galumphing along while the fleet-footed left her in the dust. But it wasn't as if she had a choice. All the students were required to do athletic testing before the new semester began. And this was the day they were doing it.
    “Get set.…”
    She glanced quickly to her left. Along with the other six orseven girls in the starting blocks, who looked as if they wanted to be there about as much as she did, which was to say not at all, was Zona, the pixieish one of the three obnoxious girls who'd given her a tour of the high school during that first day of orientation. To her right was Lydia, in the same blue shorts/white BAHS T-shirt that everyone else had been given, but in bare feet instead of running shoes. Lydia claimed before the race that she ran faster in bare feet. The athletic director had looked at her cockeyed, then gave a dismissive shrug and motioned Lydia to the starting blocks.
    Crack!
    The starter pistol sounded, and the race began. Four hundred meters, about a quarter of a mile, one complete circuit of the track. Kiley was not the kind of girl to give up before she even started, so she tucked her elbows in and gave it her all. She cut her eyes at Zona, who was already behind her. Kiley hoped Zona would finish last. Not that Zona had given any indication of being the kind of girl who cared about anything like doing your best, but it would still be satisfying to beat her. She bet that Lydia would—
    Whoa. In the space of a split second, barefoot Lydia flashed past her, a blur of platinum blond hair and churning coltlike legs. Quickly, Lydia had a ten-yard lead, and soon after that, thirty, then fifty yards. Kiley chugged along as fast as she could. She found herself in the middle of the pack—not as bad as she'd anticipated. When she rounded the rest of the track, she could see Zona not far from the starting blocks, walking. Well, Kiley wasn't surprised. Girls like her thought acting as if they were too cool to try rendered them even more fabulous. Kiley found the attitude monumentally annoying.
    Up ahead, Lydia was nearing the finish line. Kids wereactually cheering her. A huge roar went up when she crossed the line that ended the race.
    Mr. Shelton's voice boomed out over a bullhorn. “The rest of you keep running! Miss Chandler just did the four hundred in fifty-one fifty-two! That's an unofficial school record. Woo-hoo!”
    By the time Kiley finished—thankfully, not last—there was a crowd of people gathered around Lydia, who stood by the finish line. They were firing questions at her. Where had she gone to middle school? Had she ever competed in track and field before? How was she in sprints? Long distance? And from Coach Shelton—“I'm going to make you into a star, Miss Chandler!”
    It amused Kiley to see Lydia deflect all the queries. “There's nothing that makes you run faster than a wild boar chasing you through the bush,” she told the group matter-of-factly.
    “You are going to be Bel Air High's star runner,” Mr. Shelton enthused. “We are about to put this school on the map for girls' track and field!”
    “Like we