Chapter 4

A Chapter by mamachansensei

Chapter 4

   Katelyn woke to the buzz of someone at her door. “Open.”
   Johppa entered the room. “You’re not up, yet!”
   “I won’t be long,” Katelyn said.
   “I’ll have your breakfast sent up, and we can talk while you eat. Go ahead and get dressed,” Johppa said.
   Katelyn pulled on a pair of tight shorts, sweatpants and a T-shirt while Johppa explained the morning’s event.
   “This morning’s event will be the cross-country race. It will begin on a mountain path. The mountain path leads into a forest and then through a village to a meadow leading to the finish line. There will be a stand there where you will take a green tag. The tag indicates your place in the race. You turn it in under your entryway when you return to the building.
   There is another path that’s seldom used. There is a seven foot drop onto a cliff edge.   The cliff edge leads into a cave. You follow the cave tunnels to the other side, to a meadow. Then there is a steep incline. You go from there through a forest, the path is clearly marked. On the edge of the forest you’ll find a meadow leading to the finish line.
My advice is to take the mountain path, the other is more dangerous,”
   Katelyn’s breakfast arrived. Johppa took the tray from the slave and placed it on a table. While Katelyn crammed food into her mouth.
   Johppa continued her explanations. “The green tag you take will look like there’s nothing on it. There is, you just can’t read it. You won’t know how well you do on any of the events until the finality. The top ten score’s will be announced.”
   “Wait a minute. You mean we won’t find out who won until all the events are over? How do we know how well or poorly we’re doing?” Katelyn asked.
   “If you do your best for all the events you have nothing to worry about. What kind of warm up program do you have?”
   “Delivering the news,” Katelyn answered.
   Johppa looked confused. “I’m not familiar with that exercise program.”
   Katelyn laughed. “It’s a job. I delivered news discs to homes in my section.”
   Johppa caught on, “Oh, so walking is your warm up-program? There is a walking track here in the building. I will take you there. We should get started. The race starts at 0900.”
   Through her warm up Katelyn thought about the morning’s race. She wondered if she could keep up with the others, much less come in one of the top ten. After a long walk and some stretches, she felt better about the odds.
   The race was to begin on a mountain ridge. Katelyn looked over the edge to see if she could see the ledge below. She couldn’t, the edge was too steep.    Katelyn would have preferred to return to the middle of the crowd to begin the race but kids were too tightly packed. They wouldn’t let her through. Then Katelyn remembered that she’d forgotten to take off her sweatpants. She had her hands at her waist when someone plowed into her from behind. She lost her balance and slipped over the edge of the mountain ridge. Katelyn managed to grab the edge and hang by her hands, but already, the press of kids had filled in her space. Although she yelled for the kids to move so that she could climb up, no one heard her. She looked down but still couldn’t see the ledge below. Katelyn closed her eyes and dropped, hoping she wasn’t dropping to her death. As she hit the ledge the wind was knocked out of her, and she had to take time to breath again. While she sat trying to catch her breath, the gun fired to begin the race.
   “Oh, how do I get myself into these messes? Now I’m on the path I was warned was dangerous.”
   Katelyn stood to walk along the ledge and realized just how narrow the ledge was. she had to scoot sideways. At that place on the ledge it was a miracle she made it to the ledge at all. Katelyn hugged the mountain wall and shuffled along as fast as she dared.
   When it seemed that the mountain pass would continue forever, the path widened and then lead into a cave. Katelyn walked into the cool dark cave and had to wait a minute while her eyes adjusted to the darkness. There seemed to be only one path through the cave. There were no side paths. Katelyn was glad of that. She didn’t like the thought of getting lost in a cave. As Katelyn walked on she realized that the roof of the cave was getting lower and the sides narrower soon she was crawling through the damp cave on cold ground .
   “It’s a good thing I’m not much bigger,” she said. “If I got stuck, no one would find me.”
   As the cave widened some, Katelyn looked up. There in the distance was light. She was relieved that the cave part of this race would soon come to an end.
   Outside the cave opening were bushes as far as she could see. Each bush must of had at least a thousand thorns an inch long. Katelyn rested her head against the cool cave wall.
   “I can do this,” She tried to encourage herself. She was thankful that she hadn’t gotten a chance to remove her sweatpants. She stood looking out of the cave entrance hoping to see some kind of trail through the briar patch. When she couldn’t see a path she decided to just go. As she walked into the bush, the thorns pierced her sweatpants and dug into her skin. Katelyn gritted her teeth and continued on, always looking for a shorter way out of the sticker bushes.
   As Katelyn neared the end of the sticker bushes, she began to hurry and then to run. Just as she was clearing the briar patch, she tripped over a root and fell twisting her ankle.
    “Argh, will everything go wrong today?”
   Katelyn crawled out of the briar patch and sat rubbing her ankle. She looked at the scratches on her arms and legs. Several were bleeding but not badly.
   “I guess I won’t bleed to death.”
   Katelyn couldn’t see the steep incline Johppa had spoken of but continued walking.   The grassy hill gradually got steeper until Katelyn was grasping handfuls of weeds to help pull herself up the hill. Her limbs began to ache.
When she thought she could go no farther she saw the top of the incline.
   There, on the top of the incline looking down at her, was a goat-like creature. There were two long horns on top of his head. Katelyn preferred not to mess with him, so she began to climb sideways to avoid him. When she reached a far enough distance to feel safe, she climbed up over the edge of the incline. Mr. Two horns was still watching her. Katelyn slowly inched away from the edge and stepped toward the forest in the distance.
Mr. Two horns grunted. She stopped and he turned his head away. She stepped toward the forest. He turned toward her, grunted and pawed the ground. She stopped. They stared at one another. Katelyn took a step toward the forest. He put his head down and charged at her. She ran. Katelyn knew at any moment she would be rammed with the horns on the head of that beast.
   As she entered the forest the beast stopped chasing her. She ran into the forest a ways, and tripped over a twig, and turned. She wanted to meet her death head on. Katelyn realized she was no longer being pursued. She felt lonely and humiliated and tears began to run down her cheeks.
   “Stop it,” she told herself, “You don’t have time to cry. You have a race to finish.”
   Katelyn wandered about the forest looking for What she thought would be the clearly marked trail. It was no where to be seen. Although she tried to be patient she began to panic. There were no markings. She was lost. Her ankle hurt, her scratches stung, and she was thirsty, and hungry, and frustrated.
   Katelyn let out a long loud scream. “I hate this nature junk!”
   She kicked a weed and ripped a handful of leaves from a tree. One of the leaves in her hand looked a strange shade of green. She scratched the color. It was paint. She had found the marked trail. She was glad she was alone, because now she felt foolish. Katelyn hurried to finish the race.
   The forest led to the meadow just as Johppa had said. Katelyn’s impatience to be done with this race caused her to hurry. She reached the end of the race, but saw no one. Where was everyone? She hadn’t seen anyone since the beginning of the race, yet she was sure that she had been last and everyone else was already back in their rooms. Katelyn grabbed a green tag from the stand and headed for the building.
   The Cressian at the desk that received her green tag gave her an odd look. Katelyn ‘s face colored with embarrassment. She hung her head in shame. She hurried straight to her room not looking at anyone.
   “Open,” she demanded. The door opened.
   Katelyn threw herself onto her bed and wept.   “I am such a failure. I can’t even compete in a stupid cross country race.”   Exhausted from her humiliating adventure she wept herself to sleep.

prev chapter