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who are supposed to be your friends have to make you feel worse than you already do?
    “Oh my goodness,” Lucy said.
    Stephanie and Emma had squeezed onto the bench. They were smiling as if they were best friends with Sierra. Miranda looked as if she wanted to leave, but Sierra put her hand on Miranda’s leg to get her to stay. Then Emma tossed her head back and laughed, and so did Stephanie. The next thing I knew all the grade six girls were gathered around the bench fussing over Sierra and her perfect hair and her cochlear implant, and Kelsey, Lucy and I were stuck watching from our hiding spot against the school, alone.

Chapter 5
    Most clubs don’t start till the second week of school, but Miss Fielding was in a hurry with the running club. She had scheduled a practice for the first day. I practically had to drag Lucy. She could spend a half hour putting her books away. She says it’s because she’s meticulous, but we both know it’s because she’s a dawdler. Not wanting to be in running club didn’t help.
    By the time we got to the gym, Miss Fielding had already started her presentation. She is tiny, like a gymnast. Her hair is as short as a boy’s because she shaved it last spring to raise money for cancer research.
    The first race was next Wednesday at Laurier Park. Miss Fielding said she didn’t expect any of us to win. She just wanted us to do our best, because the point of running club was to be fit and enjoy being outdoors in the fall. I wasn’t sure whether or not to believe her. Would she really not care if none of us did well?
    Stephanie and Emma cared. They high-fived each other as if to say Miss Fielding was going to be more than pleasantly surprised because not only were they going to win every race, they would also be heading to the Olympics when running club ended. Miss Fielding stopped talking and looked at them.
    “We’re in the Tornadoes,” Stephanie explained.
    “The best running club in Edmonton,” Emma added.
    “That’s terrific,” Miss Fielding said. “We can always use leaders to set good examples.”
    Lucy poked me. “This is going to be worse than I thought,” she whispered.
    It was bad enough Stephanie and Emma acted like they were better than everybody—it appeared it might be true. They were certainly dressed for the part, with their brand-new running shoes and tracksuits. As awful as it was to admit, they probably were the fastest girls in the school.
    If only Lucy and I could do something better than them, something public and that counted, like rescuing orphans from a fire or solving global warming.
    “It’s just a few days a week,” I whispered back. “And it’ll be finished by October.”
    “I might not last that long.”
    “Or maybe you’ll be really good at it!”
    She gave me a you’re-crazy look.
    Miss Fielding was talking about stretching. “We better pay attention,” I whispered as I tried to reach my toes, but they seemed very far away.
    “Why?” Lucy replied. “I’ll be dead before any of this happens. I can’t even run half a block.”
    “We’ll do a short warm-up run today,” Miss Fielding announced. “We have some volunteers to help out, so if you have to walk that’s fine. A volunteer will make sure you’re not alone.”
    The volunteers were junior high kids. Miranda and Kelsey’s sister, Jackie, was one of them.
    “I’ll run with the back of the group,” Miss Fielding said. She turned to a tall, strong-looking junior high girl, Sasha, and asked her to run up front. Then she said, “Stephanie and Emma, you run with Sasha.”
    Stem took off as if they’d been shot from a cannon. If I didn’t hate them so much, I’d have been impressed. Tyler, a bunch of grade five and four kids, and Miranda and Kelsey followed.
    Miss Fielding was encouraging to me and Lucy. She patted Lucy on the shoulder and said, “Good job.” To me she said, “You have a nice ride.”
    “A nice ride?” I said.
    “Stride,” she said, more loudly.