The runners in the outer lanes were almost halfway down the back straight when Jannie finally came out of the curve in dead last. But she didn’t look upset. She was up to speed now, running fluidly, efficiently.
“That’s not going to do it, missy,” McDonald said, and it was almost like Jannie could hear him because her stride began to lengthen and her footfalls turned from springy to explosive. She didn’t run so much as bound down the track, looking long-legged, loose-jointed, and strong as hell.
Through the binoculars, I was able to get a good look at her face; she was straining but not breaking with the effort.
“She just picked off the girl from Kentucky in lane four,” McDonald said as the runners entered the far turn. “She’s not going to be last. C’mon, young lady, show us what you’ve got now.”
The stagger was still on, but the gaps between the athletes were narrowing fast as they drove on through the turn. Jannie was moving up with every stride. Coming onto the home-stretch, she passed a Florida girl in lane two.
Damon’s roommate yelled, “She’s freaking flying!”
We were all on our feet now, watching Jannie dig deep into her reservoir of grit and determination. Thirty yards down the stretch, she surged past the Texas girl in lane six. She went by an Oregon racer in lane eight at the halfway mark.
“She’s in fourth!” Ali shouted.
The top three girls were neck and neck, with Bethany Kellogg barely leading and ten feet between Jannie and the girl from Alabama in third.
With thirty yards to go, she closed that to six feet. With fifteen yards left, she’d pinched it to three.
Eight inches separated the two girls when they crossed the finish line.
Coach McDonald lowered his binoculars, shaking his head in wonder. “She just ran out of track, that’s all that happened there.”
My binoculars were still glued on Jannie, who was limping away from the finish line in pain. A television cameraman was moving toward her across the track when she bent over and started to sob.
CHAPTER
53
FOUR HOURS LATER we had the surreal experience of seeing Jannie’s race on ESPN. We watched the clip on a flat-screen at Ned Mahoney’s beach house on the Delaware shore.
The edited video showed the start of the race, Jannie’s fall, and Jannie coming into the backstretch in dead last, then the tape jump-cut to the far turn and her go-for-broke sprint down the stretch.
A second camera caught her limping away from the finish line and doubling over, and then the screen cut to the anchor desk at ESPN’s SportsCenter.
Carter Hayes, the Saturday coanchor, looked at his partner, Sheila Martel, and said, “That girl ran so hard after the fall, she broke her foot crossing the finish line!”
Martel stabbed her finger at her coanchor and said, “That girl ran so hard after the fall, she missed third by eight one-hundredths of a second, and first by four-tenths of a second.”
Hayes jabbed his own finger Martel’s way and said, “That girl ran so hard that if you subtract the conservative two seconds she lost in the fall, she would have won by one point six seconds and she would have been in the record books with the seventh-fastest time for the four-hundred among high school women. An amazing performance. Highlight of the day, no question.”
Sheila Martel pointed at the camera and said, “Heal up, young Jannie Cross. We have a feeling we’ll be hearing from you again.”
The screen cut away to the next story. We all cheered and clapped.
“Seeing her run in person, I swear my heart almost stopped,” Nana Mama said. “But when they called out Jannie just then, it almost stopped again.”
“Dad?” Ali said. “Is Jannie famous?”
“Tonight, she is,” I said.
ESPN? Highlight of the day? Jannie?
“How the hell did ESPN know about the race?” Mahoney asked.
Bree said, “Some freelance cameramen who sell to ESPN were there. They caught the whole thing.”
My phone rang. It was Jannie, calling from somewhere with a lot of background noise.
“Did you see it?” she shouted.
“Of course we saw it. Where are you?”
“At a party with Damon and his friends and some people I met at the meet. Everyone cheered for me, Dad.”
“Everyone cheered here too,” I said, tearing up. “You deserved it.”
“Yeah, but now Damon’s introducing me to girls he’s trying to pick up.”
“Too much information,” I said. “We’ll be back for you tomorrow afternoon. Keep that foot elevated. No weight.”
“I heard the doctor,” she said. “I’m glad you were there.”
“Me too,” I said. “Now go have fun.”
Bree and Ali went out to the beach beyond the dunes. Nana Mama and I shucked corn on the back deck of Mahoney’s cottage. He’d inherited the place from his aunt, a devout Catholic who’d attended mass daily.
“I’m convinced it’s why it survived Hurricane Sandy,” Mahoney said as he loaded charcoal into a Weber kettle grill. “Bunch of places just to the north of here were leveled, pretty much splintered.”