X-Country

A parable of the current novel-writing situation:

A tinny bang and a puff of smoke. The girls ran through the damp grass with springy mesh running shoes, ponytails bobbing, elbows jockeying for position in the pack. It was the second heat of junior varsity girls.

She was in the thick of it, the undulating sea of bibs and numbers and gaudy school colors. The air was brisk but she didn't feel the cold; all she felt was the sting in her lungs. Each stride she felt the tight then the slack, pulse in then out of her quads.

She started pushing up the hill, planting firmly each time into the grassy hillside, the smell of the damp almost perceptible. She was turning over and climbing the hill, steadily, still with the pack. She felt the first beads of perspiration, not yet congealing into sweat. And in a moment she felt for the firmness of the ground, and it was not there, just the sudden jerk downward of a hamstrung horse. She went down, grounded, no more rhythmic pulsating forward.

She got up and limped back toward the start.