Free Moon Runner by Carolyn Marsden Page B

strides’ worth of dark delicious shade. Her footsteps began to mark out a rhythm. She ran around the curve by the baseball diamond, toward the basketball courts. Why had she ever hated running? A lap wasn’t so far, after all.
    Roadrunner, roadrunner,
she repeated to herself.
    The second time she crossed through the mesquite tree’s shade, she was sailing. Her legs carried her effortlessly. She passed Alana chugging along with red cheeks. Ruth ran half a lap ahead, and Mina began to gain on her.
    A warm, dry breeze lifted the hairs around Mina’s face as she ran. By the third lap, she remembered her favorite dream of flying off a snowy cliff and over a landscape speckled with pools of turquoise water. A half-moon hung like a promise in the daytime sky. In the dream, she’d glided, arms outstretched to hold the whole round Earth from one horizon to the other.

“I did the coolest thing at school today,” Mina told her little sister when Mom picked them up from school.
    “Did you get Popsicles for snack?” asked Paige, pulling hard to open a bag of lemon drops, her black hair falling across her cheeks.
    “Nope. I ran.”
    “Oooh, I love to run!” Paige handed Mina a candy.
    Mom looked at them in her rearview mirror. “I hope that isn’t something sweet I smell coming from the back seat.”
    Mina closed her mouth tight around the lemon drop. She and Paige exchanged smiles.
    “I used to hate running,” Mina said, shifting the candy to her cheek. “But today it felt fun.”
    “You’ll probably win races,” Paige said.
    “I don’t care about winning. That part doesn’t matter.”
    “Take me running,” Paige said.
    “Mmm. Maybe.” Mina pressed her forehead against the glass of the car window. When she imagined the run in her mind, she once again felt like a roadrunner racing along on tall, skinny legs, sometimes lifting into a low arc of flight. “Okay. Let’s run super early tomorrow morning when the moon is still up.”
    As Mina and Paige approached the park near their house, a warm breeze swirled the fragrant smells of the springtime grass. The moon rested in the western sky, barely visible.
    “We should stretch first,” said Mina. “Hold on here.” She guided Paige’s hand to the fence, then showed her how to loosen her calf muscles.
    Paige imitated Mina, then announced, “I feel all stretchy now.”
    “You don’t look stretchy enough. Let’s do windmills with our arms.” Mina swung her arms backward, then forward, tracing giant circles.
    They set out over the damp, spongy grass. Mina breathed in the freshness.
    “Now faster,” Paige demanded after they’d gone once around the field.
    Mina quickened her stride, but not too much. Her little sister had to win this one.
    “Look, Mina, we’re racing the moon!” Paige shouted, pointing to the crescent that seemed to travel alongside them as they passed the monkey bars.
    “Who’ll win?” Mina asked.
    “I will!” Paige declared and sprinted ahead. She rounded the curve and threw herself down, panting, at the spot where she and Mina had stretched.
    “And you did win,” said Mina, crash-landing beside Paige.
    “Yup. The moon is in the same old place. And I even beat
you,
Mina.”
    They lay still together, the coolness seeping into their hot bodies. Mina stared up at the moon, so pale it almost looked transparent. She considered ways to record the morning run in her moon journal. “Don’t forget to explore movement in your journals,” Ms. Jenner had said. “Ancient peoples danced under the moon.”
    Mina hoped that running under the moon would count.
    A drawing of her and Paige? A poem? She hadn’t raced
against
the moon, she thought, but rather she’d let the moon guide her. That wasn’t a totally crazy idea. The moon’s gravity pulled on the ocean, creating the tides. It pulled on all liquids. And she was ninety percent water.
    Ms. Jenner had said to put music into the journals. Mina hummed a tune, making it up as she went