Amanda Kabak
Wanting It More
For three years on a handful of 400-meter tracks around the country, I’ve been second to Greta’s first or third to her second, only winning the 1500-meter races she didn’t run in. Not that this means I’m a perpetual loser. Greta and I compete in different divisions and so don’t actually race against each other very often—just, as Coach McMillan says, when the stakes are high. But today, I saw her crying not thirty minutes before taking her mark, and I think that this time I might finally beat her.
At the starting line, Greta is at my left, which is not what I’d prefer, but given that I run the 3000 as well as this race, my kick at the end should make up for any small issues at the start. If I can stay close enough through the first two laps, I should have the closing speed to beat her. Such is the theory, and while practice has historically been a different matter between us, I hold her tears in my mind like a lucky charm.
There’s the gun, and we’re off, diving toward the center of the track for position, a sixteen-legged, pulsing swirl. I keep my eye on Greta and focus on spinning out my starting adrenaline and settling my breathing. Though there’s no place for extraneous thought in this race, while I ease past Chloe from USC, I wonder why Greta was crying—Greta, the stereotypic-