Page 6 of The Heiress
Still, I couldn’t bring myself to apologize for my outburst, instead putting my backpack over my shoulder and the video gear on the seat of my walking frame. For all it’s inconvenience, it was a handy piece of equipment.
“If it’s not a good time, we can do it another day?” Taylor was standing to the side, obviously having heard our conversation.
I stared at Max for a moment, putting the situation in his hands. Like a test.
Did he think I wasn’t capable of taking Taylor through a few sprint drills. Was this going to be my life now—constantly having to prove that I wasn’t incapable?
“No, you should do it,” Max said to Taylor, “besides Phoe has to wait for his ride.”
Taylor smiled like I’d just promised her the world.
“Do you do much sprinting?” I asked Taylor as we made our way to the track.
“I’ve been doing fifty meter sprints, then jog to recover and do repeats like that,” she said.
“My coach used to make me do hundred meter sprints at 90% effort, rest and leave on the minute,” I said. “I had to do twenty of them.”
“Sounds brutal.”
“Yeah, but effective. So, maybe you won’t sprint longer than twenty meters in any point, but you need that conditioning behind you. But that’s something we can work up to,” I said with a wink.
“Thanks,” Taylor said with a grin, “I’m glad you saidwe.”
“How aboutyoustart with some thirty meter sprints?” I shot back at her.
“You’re not doing them with me?” she asked, causing me to shiver randomly, goosebumps rising even though I was wearing my blazer. Like, part of me wanted to entertain the thought of running, but it was quickly rejected by a blanket of fear.
With my walking frame being too cumbersome, I limped onto the track to set up the distance, tossing down a cone as the starting point and standing at the end cone with my phone, ready to time her.
A text came through from my mother:I’m waiting in the parking lot.
I ignored it, calling out for Taylor to start. Mom could wait. I mean, I hadn’t texted her yet; she’d come early on her own accord.
Taylor raced toward me, arms pumping, legs flying. She was huffing and puffing as she passed by me.
I called out her time. “Hey, don’t overrun the mark. Try to stop close to the line without slowing too much. That’s how it is in tennis. Sprint for a ball and you have to stop suddenly.”
“Good advice,” she said, breathing hard.
“Okay, walk back, and I’ll give you thirty seconds recovery before we go again.”
There was no complaint from Taylor. She went again...and again and again, keeping her times within a range of a second. She hated to be even point one of a second slower.
After five, I said, “One more.”
But she said, “Two more.”
After seven, I said, “Can’t stop on an uneven number. Let’s make it eight. Last one. Give it everything!”
Taylor’s last run was her fastest, an indicator that mind over matter really was a thing. Even though she was tired, she was able to dig deep. I smiled as she collapsed onto the track, lying down on her back in fatigue.
I hobbled down to pick up the cones while she lay stretched out. Then I texted Mom:Just finishing now.Because a bit of guilt was seeping in that I’d already made her wait for over ten minutes, and it would probably take me another ten to walk over to the parking lot.
I tucked the cones into Taylor’s tennis bag just as she was rising to her feet and as a figure made its way onto the track about to run in a clockwise direction, which was the opposite way to run around a track. The person was wearing a hoodie with the hood up, and the pace was akin to a slow jog. Like a real slow jog, not much faster than walking.
Without any prompting, Taylor skipped over to my walking frame and pushed it over to me. That made me think I must have been hobbling pretty bad, though she didn’t say anything. She hoisted her tennis bag onto her back and we stayed where we were as the jogger made her way toward us. But she veered sharply into the outside lane to pass us by.
Even with the hood over her head, I recognized it was Elisha from photography class, the new girl who was a boarder, the one who had started helping at the balloon arch activity during Homecoming Week, then abruptly disappeared.
