The Runner Read online

  He waited for what she would say. She didn’t say anything.

  “He almost made it, he was coming back, he was running and they—got him. We were covering him and at first we thought he was just—taking an obstacle, the way he did when he was moving fast but—”

  She laid down the receiver beside the phone and walked out of the room. The voice went on talking. She came back into the room with a cleaver in her hand. With the cleaver she sliced through the connection, where the wires came out from the wall. The voice ceased.

  She put on a sweater and picked up the phone, putting the receiver back in its cradle to make it easier to carry, coiling the long wire up neatly. She left the house through the back door and made her way down through the barren vegetable garden, between the fields of marsh grasses, to the water. At the end of the dock, the little red boat rode choppy waves. She climbed down into it, lowered the outboard, untied the lines and headed out.

  The wind bit at her face and her ears, stung her bare hands. Spray hit her skin, like needles. At the town dock, she looped the line in a clove hitch and climbed up onto the wooden boards. Carrying the phone, she marched up the street to the telephone company. She stood for a minute in front of the big plate-glass window, as if studying the display of telephone models. Behind the display, people sat at desks.

  She lifted her hand and heaved the phone into the window. The glass cracked, shattered. Fragments sprayed out into the bitter air—diamond bright, diamond sharp. They flew up and around, like particles of firecrackers exploding.

  Abigail Tillerman didn’t stand there long. Her chin high, her skirt blown by the wind to tangle her legs, she turned and walked away.

  The boat’s motor came to immediate life. As she headed out of the narrow harbor, she thought, What was that song Liza sang? “The water is wide, I cannot get o’er.” Liza’s voice was in her ear, beyond where the motor noise could reach. The wind was behind her now, and the boat bounced along the wave tops. “The water is wide, I cannot get o’er,” the voice in her head sang. “And neither have I wings to fly. Bring me a boat—” The long, high note lingered.

  Well, she had the boat. And the wide water ran, she knew, around the whole world, ringing it around, the encircling oceans that somehow contained and connected all the lands within.

  The wind blew at her back, and the wet spume blew onto her shoulders. She lifted her shoulders and squared them, to take up again the burden of long life.

  CYNTHIA VOIGT won the Newbery Medal for Dicey’s Song and a Newbery Honor for A Solitary Blue, both part of the beloved Tillerman Cycle. She is also the author of many other celebrated books for middle-grade and teen readers, including the Bad Girls series; Izzy, Willy-Nilly; and Jackaroo. She was awarded the Margaret A. Edwards Award in 1995 for her work in literature, and the Katahdin Award in 2003. She lives in Maine. You can visit her at cynthiavoigt.com.

  Cover design by Debra Sfetsios-Conover

  Cover illustration copyright © 2012 by Mick Wiggins

  Atheneum Books for Young Readers

  Simon & Schuster

  New York

  Ages 12 up

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  Books by Cynthia Voigt

  THE BAD GIRLS SERIES

  Bad Girls

  Bad, Badder, Baddest

  It’s Not Easy Being Bad

  Bad Girls in Love

  Bad Girls, Bad Girls, Whatcha Gonna Do?

  THE TILLERMAN SERIES

  Homecoming

  Dicey’s Song

  A Solitary Blue

  The Runner

  Come a Stranger

  Sons from Afar

  Seventeen Against the Dealer

  THE KINGDOM SERIES

  Jackaroo

  On Fortune’s Wheel

  The Wings of a Falcon

  Elske

  OTHER BOOKS

  Building Blocks

  The Callender Papers

  David and Jonathan

  Izzy, Willy-Nilly

  Orfe

  Tell Me if the Lovers Are Losers

  Tree by Leaf

  The Vandemark Mummy

  When She Hollers

  ATHENEUM BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division

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  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1985 by Cynthia Voigt

  Lines from “A Shropshire Lad” are from The Collected Poems of A. E. Housman. Copyright 1939, 1940 © 1965 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Copyright © 1967, 1968 by Robert E. Simmons. Reprinted by permission of Holt, Rinehart and Winston and of The Society of Authors as literary representative of the Estate of A. E. Housman and Jonathan Cape Ltd., publishers of A. E. Housman’s Collected Poems.

  Lines from “Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries” are from The Collected Poems of A. E. Housman. Copyright 1922 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Copyright 1950 by Barclays Bank. Reprinted by permission of Holt, Rinehart and Winston and of The Society of Authors as literary representative of the Estate of A. E. Housman and Jonathan Cape Ltd., publishers of A. E. Housman’s Collected Poems.

  Lines from “Will There Be Any Stars in My Crown” are reprinted by permission of Zap Publishing Company.

  ATHENEUM BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS is a registered trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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  Also available in an Atheneum Books for Young Readers hardcover edition

  Book design by Debra Sfetsios-Conover

  The text for this book is set in Baskerville.

  First Atheneum Books for Young Readers paperback edition July 2012

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

  Voigt, Cynthia.

  The runner.

  Summary: As a dedicated runner, a teenage boy has always managed to distance himself from other people until the experience of coaching one of his teammates on the track team gradually helps him see the value of giving and receiving.

  ISBN 978-0-689-31069-0

  [1. Runners (Sports)—Fiction. 2. Interpersonal relations—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.V874Ru 1985

  [Fic] 84-21663

  ISBN 978-1-4424-5066-0 (hc)

  ISBN 978-1-4424-2881-2 (pbk)

  ISBN 978-1-4424-8916-5 (eBook)