Ultra (19 page)

But here’s the funny thing. The more I cried, the better I was, until I felt as though I was floating up into the air. I looked at Mom and she was crying with me, and then suddenly, for no reason, we both started to laugh.

For a while, we laughed so hard we couldn’t stop. Ollie came running over. “What’s so funny?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Mom gasped. She looked at me. “Do you?”

I shrugged.

Ollie looked confused. “Are you guys laughing or crying?” he asked. “You sound like you’re laughing, but you look like you’re crying.”

Mom looked at me, and we broke into laughter again.

“Just tell me if you’re happy or sad,” Ollie said. “You should be able to answer that, at least.”

Another runner was crossing the finish line. He was old and hunched over. It was the bandit — Kern!

Mom wiped the tears away from her eyes. She said, “We’re happy, I think. Aren’t we, Quinn?”

The sun was rising over the hills, and the trees were sparkling, as if ginger ale had been poured all over them. Ollie’s question seemed impossible to answer — I was both happy
and
sad, which sounds weird, I know. The bandit’s crazy laugh echoed through the valley. I looked at the finish line and saw him toss his wineskin in the air.

SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS:
And then you came home?

QUINN:
Not quite yet. First I inhaled two plates of spaghetti and meatballs and then we stuck around to watch the other runners finish. Most people crossed the finish line on their own steam, but a few people were brought out on horseback. We whooped and hollered for all of them.

SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS:
What about Kara? What became of her?

QUINN:
She spent an hour in the medical tent and then she came out and cheered along with everyone else. She’d showered and changed into dry sweats and a hoodie, and I barely recognized her, she looked so hot.

She cheered with us for a couple of hours, eating bacon-and-egg sandwiches and drinking hot chocolate. Finally she had to go.

“My kids will be waiting for me to fix some breakfast,” she said. “But don’t forget to Friend me. We could do some training runs together!”

SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS:
And then?

QUINN:
Have you ever tried squeezing into a hatchback after you’ve run a hundred miles? It’s not fun.

My legs felt twitchy, as if electricity was running through them, and I kept crossing and uncrossing them to get them to calm down.

Mom drove us down the long gravel road back to the highway. “Don’t Stop Believin’” was playing on the radio. Kneecap grinned at me in the mirror and sang along in the
back seat. Ollie rested his head against the window and closed his eyes.

I sat in the front seat and watched the trees blur past my window. We drove farther in 15 minutes than I could’ve run in 3 hours.

I saw a sign for a railroad crossing.

“Better slow down here,” I warned Mom.

“These tracks haven’t been used in years,” she said.

“Better safe than sorry,” I said.

She slowed the car down. No trains were coming.

“Okay,” I said. “Now let’s make some time.”

I’ve run a bunch of races like the one described in this book. After the first, my nieces and nephews asked me what I’d seen while jogging through the forest all night long.

“Nothing much,” I said. “Just a whole bunch of trees.”

The kids were disappointed by this answer. And so, after my next race, I made a point of telling better stories. I described the hidden valley wriggling with hoop snakes, the bears I’d seen playing shinny hockey, and the shrine where lost runners bury their secrets.

The farther I ran, the more the stories grew … until they eventually became the novel in your hands.

So, a huge shout-out to my nieces and nephews — who inspired this story, lent their names to some of the characters, helped me with the jokes and dialogue, and even shared early versions of the book with their classmates. You all deserve a finisher’s medal:

Aaron, Alex, Ali, Ben, Benjamin, Brody, Caelan, Caitlin, Caleb, Christopher, Daniel, Darcie, Grace S., Grace W., Jackson, Julia, Julian, Kara, Kelsey, Kiernan, Leonardo, Lucy-Claire, Luke, Monty, Madelaine, Maggie, Mateos, Nate, Oliver, Olivia, Parisinia, Quinn, Ray, Riley, River, Rowan, Rylee, Sacha, Skyler, Sofia, Sydney, Tahnee, Tobias, Zoe.

David Carroll has successfully competed in five 100-mile races, including the Haliburton Forest Trail Run and the Sulphur Springs 100. He’s run the Boston Marathon twice, and many other marathons and half-marathons. His favourite running fuel is PB&J sandwiches.

Ultra
is his first novel.

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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Carroll, David, 1966-
Ultra [electronic resource] / by David Carroll.

Electronic monograph in HTML format.
Issued also in print format.
ISBN: 978-1-4431-2855-1

I. Title.

PS8605.A77724U57 2013    jC813’.6    C2013-901816-6

Text copyright © 2013 by David Carroll.
Cover photograph © Tim Clayton/Corbis.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Scholastic Canada Ltd., 604 King Street West, Toronto, Ontario M5V 1E1, Canada.

First eBook edition: September 2013