It was dull hanging around the triathlon venue while the rest of the field finished – most of the competitors had started after they had because only so many could use the pool at one time. It came as no surprise that Kayla had won, and Rachel was second, among the under-sixteen girls, since they were the only ones entered, but by the time they managed to make it out to find Rachel’s mother at the finish line, the next group of competitors was in. That group included Casey, and to everyone’s surprise both Kayla and Rachel had beaten his time! There clearly was going to be some teasing about that on the way home.

The fact of the matter was that the two girls had done much better than they had expected. There had not been a huge group of women runners entered, but Kayla had finished seventeenth overall among them, while Rachel had been nineteenth. They were in the lower half of the field overall, but hadn’t missed making the upper half by much. When all was said and done, everyone was very pleased about their finish.

Rachel’s dad had also done very well – he finished eleventh overall, and fourth in his age group, which was very competitive. He’d also done races like that enough that he was a lot more used to recovering from the strain. By the middle of the afternoon, everything was done. The Bacons and Kayla were soon in their minivan headed to a pizza joint for badly-needed food.

“I’m really proud of you two girls,” Rachel’s dad told them as they clustered around a couple of pizzas. “That was an excellent job for your first outing at a mini tri. I hope you learned something about pacing yourself from it.”

“Some,” Kayla admitted. “Mostly I let other people pace me, just to get a feel for it.”

“Probably not a bad idea. It’s hard to guess when you’re new to something like that, but you’ll have a better idea next time. Are you interested in a next time?”

“Yeah,” Kayla replied, having recovered a lot from her effort. “I think if I’m more prepared, I can do better.”

“Me too,” Rachel added.

“There are several of them around, but only a handful are close enough to go to on a day trip like this one,” he explained. “The best one is coming up in the middle of August. It’s different in that it has an open-water swim on a lake, so everyone is on the course at the same time and no waiting for other heats to come in. The biking is on roads, and the run is on a trail about like a cross-country course. Do you think you’d be up for it?”

“Sure,” Kayla said. “Count me in. But how about longer runs? A while back you were talking about mini-marathons, even the real thing.”

“We could do that,” he replied. “Especially after as well as you did today. There’s a mini we could go to in a couple of weeks, that’s 20k. You did 10k today, on top of biking and swimming, so a 20k ought to be something you could do fairly easily. Now, at the end of August, just before school starts, there’s a full-out marathon back up at Meriwether, mostly on the rail-trail, but going both ways. If you do well in the other events, and the odd 5k and 10k races the rest of the summer, I don’t see any reason why you couldn’t do it. It would be a big distance for you, but you might as well find out what it’s all about.”

“Sure, I’d love to do it,” Kayla agreed, and Rachel was just about as quick to respond in the affirmative as well.

“I’d love to see you two do a full one,” he laughed. “Look, I don’t want to involve you two in the politics very much, but there’s a group that whines that 5k is too long for middle school runners, and wants to cut the races to 4k. I would love to drop a couple of full 40k marathon finishers into that discussion just to hear what happens.”

“I heard some of that last fall, from other girls at the cross-country meets,” Rachel grinned. “How are they going to get anywhere if they don’t push themselves?”

“I’m glad to hear you say that,” he replied. “Because that’s true in life, as well as running. As you get further into life, less gets given to you just for the sake of it being given. You have to work for things you want, and the harder the goal you set for yourself, the more rewarding it will be to achieve it. If something is worth having, it’s worth working for.”

It was late in the afternoon before Kayla was finally back home. JJ was gone somewhere, probably with Lute or someone, and her folks were busy with chores around the house. They were very happy to hear the outcome of the race, and that Kayla had enjoyed it despite being so tired toward the end. Kayla knew she had things to think about, but there hadn’t been any time for it what with talking with Rachel in the back seat of the minivan on the way back, and now, helping her mother with the housework. She really would have liked to get out in the woods for some nude time, just to think, but it was getting too late for that.

It wasn’t until after supper that she managed to be alone for a while, just sitting in a lounge chair by the pool; she didn’t even bother to take her shorts and T-shirt off. While she liked and respected her mother, she was pretty sure she wasn’t the one to talk to about this. As far as she knew, her mother had never set herself any challenges or goals for what she wanted to do in her life, well, at least not the big things. She had been content to work at the Spee-D-Mart until it closed, and there was the job at the Courier that had opened up for her when that had happened. She seemed to be doing all right with it, true, but couldn’t she have done more if she’d tried?

While she hadn’t learned all that much today about what Meriwether College was like, or colleges in general, it seemed clear to her that they were a part of that bigger world beyond Bradford. If she were going to get out in that world, it seemed likely that it would involve college in a few years. It did seem clear that her parents weren’t going to push her to attend college, so that meant she would have to push herself.

There were a lot of questions laying down that road, questions her parents couldn’t help her with. Maybe, she thought, she ought to talk to Shae and Dave about those questions. It couldn’t be this weekend, since she knew the two were in New York again – they occasionally had to go to New York to deal with things there, but they ought to be back in a few days.

One of the things that Kayla and Rachel had talked about in the back of the minivan on their way home from the triathlon was the upcoming 20k. They both agreed they hadn’t done very well in setting their own pace, but just tagged along with other runners most of the time. They wanted to be able to run their own race, and the only way to figure out the pacing was to get out and run twenty kilometers to see what paces would be needed. On Monday, they ran four laps of the Amherst cross-country course, keeping track of their times with their wrist watches, proving that the distance was something they could do, but they thought they could have done better on time. On Tuesday, they did the same thing again on the Bradford course, pushing a little harder, and finishing more quickly. They both seemed more tired when they finished than they had the day before, so figured they were getting a better idea of their limits.

Yes they were tired when they finished up the run on the Bradford course, but at least at Bradford the pool at Kayla’s home was close. They slowly jogged over there, trying to work off the effects of their run, and when they got to the pool they didn’t waste any time getting their clothes off and in the water to cool off.

They hung around late enough that Emily asked Rachel if she would like to stay for dinner. Rachel accepted; the sun sets late around Bradford that time of year and there would be plenty of time for a leisurely run home. “Oh, you won’t have to run home tonight,” Emily told her. “Your mother is going to come and pick you up.”

“Yeah, I could stand a ride home for once,” Rachel snickered. “I’m only losing a little training that way.”

After dinner, about an hour later, Rachel’s mom showed up, and within a couple of minutes, Shae joined them. “Good, you’re all here,” the tall woman said. “I wanted to talk to you.”

“It’s always fun talking to you,” Kayla replied politely. “How was your trip to New York?”

“Long, but it’s always long. It turned out that Dave and I had more to do than we’d expected, so we didn’t get everything finished. I’m sure you know I’m in the process of moving here permanently, even though I’ll have to go back to New York to play Shaella Sunrise occasionally, but that won’t start until October or so. It’s not worth it for me to keep my apartment there, so I’m trying to get it packed up. A moving company will haul my things, but I want to get them packed up myself so I have some idea of what boxes things are in.”

Kayla knew the couple was in the process of having a big new house built out northwest of town, but it was nowhere near ready to move into yet. “I’ll bet that’s a big job,” she commented.

“It’s a bigger job than I thought it would be,” Shae sighed. “Being as pregnant as I am isn’t making things go any easier, so we didn’t get anywhere close to everything into boxes yet. So I have to make a quick trip back to finish things up, and right now Dave can’t go with me.”

“That’ll make it even harder, won’t it?”

“Oh, no doubt about it,” Shae replied. “But while we were on our way back, Dave suggested that things would go a little more easily if I had some help. Kayla, we know you’ve gone out of your way to help us out with things, and we thought you might be willing to come help me. It wouldn’t be all work. At least part of what I’d want is to have someone to talk to while I’m driving, since it’s a long way. But if we get things done quickly I could spend a day or two showing you some of the sights around New York.”

“Sure!” Kayla cried. “I’d love to.”

“Well, we talked about it some more,” Shae went on. “It didn’t take much thought to realize that things might go more easily if I took both of you. I mean, you and Rachel have gotten pretty close to inseparable, anyway. Rachel, would you like to come along? We’ll be four, maybe five days counting driving, and we’ll be staying at my apartment while we’re gone.”

“Wow! You mean, really?” Rachel gushed and turned to her mother, asking, “Mom, can I go?”

“I don’t see any reason why not,” Mary smiled. “You’re going someplace I’ve never been, and I doubt it will be the last time it’ll happen in your life.”

“Wow, thanks Mom!”

Mary turned to Shae. “When will this be?” she asked. “The girls are all eager to run in a mini-marathon the weekend after next.”

“I’m flexible,” the tall blonde replied. “Except that it’s a case of the sooner the better, considering my due date. I’ve got a few things to get done tomorrow, but we could leave early Thursday morning. That ought to get us back here by Monday, or Tuesday at the latest. Does that work for everyone?”

It did. The girls were so eager that they were ready to leave in the next five minutes, and it was hard to hold them down. There were a few details to work out; since Shae planned on having her car packed pretty full on the way back, she asked the girls to bring the absolute minimum of stuff they could manage. She did insist that Kayla at least bring shoes, since there would be some places they would be required. It was not a new concession for Kayla to make. Having shoes with her was one thing, but wearing them was something else.

Rachel stayed with Kayla on Wednesday night, and early on Thursday morning, not much after the sun was up, Shae came by in her car to pick up the girls. Soon, they were on I-67, heading for the Indiana Turnpike.

“Girls, this is going to be a long trip,” Shae told them. “It’s not much less than ten hours to drive it normally, and it’s going to take us longer than that, since I have to stop and use the rest room pretty often. That’s one of the less than fun things about being pregnant. The baby presses down on my bladder, and that means I feel like I have to go all the time, and then we’ll be hitting rush hour just as it gets bad.”

The trip wound up taking over twelve hours, with Shae driving all the way, of course. While she’d made the trip often enough that she didn’t need a map or anything, the girls kept a close eye on a map in the car, just to help them understand where and how far they were going.

The three of them talked, and they talked a lot. Both Kayla and Rachel felt a special connection with Shae in that she was an adult who they could talk to about things they didn’t feel comfortable asking their parents, and there was something Kayla had on her mind. “Shae,” she asked when they were somewhere in northern Ohio, “What’s it like being in college? Is it kind of like being in high school?”

“Yes it is, and no it isn’t,” Shae told them. “You don’t have classes all the time, but the classes are harder and you need to study more than you do in high school. What’s more, you have to do it pretty much on your own, since nobody will be standing over you to make sure you study. A lot of college kids mess up on that. They don’t understand the need to study, so they’d don’t do it. You have to force yourself to do it, just like the two of you have to force yourself to go out and train for your running.”

“We have to push ourselves, since there’s no one to push us?” Kayla asked, remembering what Rachel’s father had said a few days before.

“That’s a pretty good description,” Shae agreed. “I have to be honest, I didn’t get as much out of college as I might have, mostly because I was an athlete and some things came easy for me. But I got lazy and didn’t have my priorities in order, so I missed some chances. Dave went to a much better college than I did, and he got a lot more out of it since he was very focused on what he wanted to do afterward. There have been times in the last few years when I’ve had to learn things the hard way that I could have learned in college. Are you thinking about going to college?”

“I’ve thought about it the last few months,” Kayla told her. “I mean, it seems pretty clear to me that there are things I could learn in college that I’d never be able to learn if I didn’t.”

“It’s something you want to think about real hard,” Shae counseled. “I always said I didn’t want to be a Bradford mom who raised kids at home and had a job driving a fork truck out at General. It seemed to me like there was a bigger world out there, and I wanted to see some of it. I find it more than a little ironic that I’m going to wind up being a Bradford mom after all, but at least I won’t have to be driving a fork truck. I guess I’m OK with that now. I wasn’t at your age.” She shook her head and went on, “Kayla, your mom wasn’t like that. Now, she was and is one of my best friends, and really, I only have one better friend besides Dave. But I’ve often thought your mom missed a bet by not going to college. She was smarter in school than I was, but she was satisfied at the time with who she was and what she wanted to do. I think she regrets that now.”

“She’s never come right out and said it, but I think you’re right. So do you think I ought to plan on going to college?”

“I can’t make that decision for you. The question is whether you’re satisfied with what you are and are likely to be, or do you want to do better? If you want to do better, you need to raise your horizons a little, and college is a good way to do it.”

“That’s sort of what Dad says,” Rachel pointed out. “He says that if I keep running the way I do, it will be a lot easier for me to go to college.”

“Your dad has that right,” Shae grinned. “If the two of you keep running and improving the way you’ve been doing, there’s every likelihood that you can get athletic scholarships to some darned good schools. My father could have afforded to send me to college without one, but I was proud then, and still am, for that matter, that I earned my way with my skills. There’s no reason the two of you can’t do the same. But if you do wind up going to college, don’t go there just to run. Go there to learn.”

That New York was packed with people was clear to both Rachel and Kayla as they watched out the window of Shae’s car while they got closer. A lot of the last part of the trip was through northern New Jersey, which, while not exactly a scenic wonder of the world, was new to them. Kayla had been to Chicago once, years before, and didn’t have much memory of it; Rachel was a little more traveled, but things were still new to her eyes, too. At least Shae knew where they were going, and soon they were crossing a big bridge onto Staten Island, where Shae’s apartment was located. The last part of the trip was on surface streets, and there could be no doubt: even though they were on the outskirts, this really was a city, and a lot different than Bradford and Amherst. It was scary to the country girls, and they couldn’t imagine themselves living there.

Both of the girls had heard stories from Emily about Shae’s apartment, and they found from the moment they walked in the door that the stories were true. The doors and ceilings were much higher than they were at home; the countertops and furniture were higher too. It made them seem like midgets, even though for once Shae seemed to look normal size. It wasn’t the first time they’d realized how hard things must be for her, being so tall.

The apartment was piled with boxes, evidence of Dave and Shae’s work the previous weekend, but they could still see it was a nice place to live, especially for someone as tall as Shae. “There’s still quite a bit to do,” Shae told them, “but I’m thinking that if we get a good day in on it tomorrow, we should be able to wrap things up, or at least get pretty close to it. Then we can have some time to look around.”

The kitchen stuff in the apartment had already mostly been packed up, except for a few little things, but they’d already known that. “I’m too tired to take you out some place,” Shae explained, “but there’s a good pizza place up the street that delivers here, and that’s probably the easiest answer.”

It didn’t take long to decide on what they wanted on their pizzas, and Shae phoned in the order. While they waited – and it didn’t take long – they explored the apartment a little more and spent some time looking out the windows, but didn’t really work on anything yet since they were all pretty tired. After they finished eating, they set to work boxing up the books on Shae’s bookshelves. Everyone was pretty much done in after their early start and a tiring day, and soon the girls were unrolling sleeping bags on the bed in the spare bedroom – the linen had been stripped and boxed already.

The next day they were up early and worked steadily all through the day; by early afternoon they were pretty close to done. There were sealed boxes piled high in the living room, and there was a smaller pile near the door that they would be taking back to Bradford with them. About the time noon came, they stopped, got in the car, and drove out for a fast-food lunch.

“We really ought to be working this afternoon, but one of the things I wanted to show you we’ll have to go to today,” Shae grinned. “You’ve both seen me on TV, of course. I need to stop by the studio where Avalon is shot, and they probably will be in production. I don’t think I can give you the full tour, but you can at least see what it’s like on a sound stage.”

Needless to say, the girls were thrilled with the idea. Shae drove them across the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge into Brooklyn, where the studio was located. It was smaller than either of the girls had imagined – smaller than the floor of the high school gym – and rather cramped with a couple of sets that were familiar from having seen the show. It was fun to see how the show was put together. They couldn’t stay long, and soon they were back working in the apartment.

As the day wound down, Shae told them that they were close to done with what they had come to do. “There are a few things we’ll have to pack up at the last minute, but only a few,” she told them.

That evening, Shae treated them to dinner in a neighborhood restaurant, and spent a little time driving around with them, but since it was late they stayed on Staten Island. At one point they were in a place where they could look across at Manhattan. “The Twin Towers used to stand over there,” Shae said, pointing at the site. “Even at this distance, they were big, and it still seems empty to me. A lot of things changed that day, and they changed for me, as well, even though I was at the studio when it happened.”

“If it hadn’t happened, you’d still be working there, wouldn’t you?” Rachel said quietly.

“Yeah, that’s true. A lot of things would have been very different for me. That was bad luck for a lot of people including Dave and Julie, but good luck for me.” Shae sighed, and went on somberly, “That’s something I try to not think about too much. Somehow it doesn’t seem fair, but life isn’t fair I guess.”

It was quiet in the car on the way back to the apartment. With her words, Shae had left the girls with much to think about. The reality of Shae’s situation was striking home.

Shae was in a better mood the next day, after a good night’s sleep, but then, they all were. “There’s not much we have to do today,” Shae told them. “So let’s just have some fun. There are tons of things to do in this town, and as long as I lived here, I never got to do everything I would have liked to do. I’m thinking that we might as well let Manhattan go for today. It won’t be quite as busy tomorrow since it’ll be Sunday and there’ll still be a lot to see. But I have one idea I think you girls would appreciate. Have you ever been swimming in the ocean?”

“I’d never seen the ocean until we got here,” Kayla told her. “But we didn’t plan on swimming, so we don’t have any swimsuits with us.”

“That’s not a problem,” Shae smiled broadly. “What would you say if I told you that there’s a beach near here where you don’t need swimsuits?”

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