Running in the Wrong Direction

The school's cross-country season started on the first cold Monday of October and ran (so to speak) until Christmas.

Nadia's school took cross-country seriously. Mr. Hollis took it very seriously. The route — three kilometres through the school's back field, across the stream, up the hill they called the Shoulder, and back — was mapped, timed, and used as a metric for general fitness in a way that Nadia found slightly oppressive.

She had run it nine times so far this term.

She had come last nine times.

Not just last — genuinely, impressively last. The second-to-last finisher was usually Marcus, who had asthma and also stopped to look at birds. Nadia consistently finished after Marcus. Sometimes by a significant margin.

"You're not trying," said Elise, who was her best friend and who came third, every time, with the reliable consistency of a metronome.

"I am trying," said Nadia.

"You walk the hill."

"The hill is steep."

"Everyone else runs it."

"I'm aware," said Nadia.

But here was the thing Elise didn't know — the thing Nadia had never mentioned to anyone, because it seemed both too small and too hard to explain:

When Nadia ran the cross-country, she wasn't looking at the path in front of her.

She was looking at everything else.

The way the field turned different colours as the light moved across it. The particular shape of the oak tree silhouetted against the October sky. The stream — she always slowed down at the stream specifically to look at the way the water hit the stones. The Shoulder, from the top, revealed a view that changed every time: some mornings clear to the hills, some mornings grey and cloud-layered and beautiful in a different way.

She came last because she was not trying to come first.

She was looking.

The thing that changed was a conversation.

After the eleventh race — last again, just ahead of Marcus, who had stopped to look at a kestrel and had no regrets about this — Mr. Hollis called her over.

She braced herself.

"You know you're coming last," he said.

"Yes," she said.

"Every time."

"I'm aware."

He looked at her. Not unkindly. He was one of the better teachers, in Nadia's assessment — the sort who looked at students rather than through them.

"Tell me something," he said. "What are you doing out there?"

She opened her mouth to say running, and then stopped.

Because that wasn't really true.

"Looking," she said.

"At what?"

"Everything," she said. "The field. The light. The stream. The view from the top of the Shoulder."

Mr. Hollis was quiet.

"And do you — do you just look? Or do you — I don't know — think about it? Remember it?"

Nadia looked at him. "I remember everything," she said. "In detail. Like a photograph, almost."

Mr. Hollis made a face she couldn't fully read.

"Wait here," he said.

He went to the equipment shed and came back with something she hadn't seen before: a small camera. Not a phone camera — a proper one, with a wide-angle lens.

"Next race," he said. "Take this."

"I'll come last," she said.

"I know," he said. "That's fine."

She took the camera on the twelfth race.

She ran — and looked — and shot.

The field at the start: twenty-six pairs of trainers lined up in the wet grass. The first stretch, from behind the pack: the runners spreading out like a fan opening. The oak tree, bare now, against a sky that was three shades of grey at once. The stream, close up — the water so clear you could see the gravel. The Shoulder: she went up it slowly, camera to her eye, and photographed the view from the top. She got it right this time — caught the exact moment the sun broke through the clouds and lit up the valley.

She came last by four minutes.

She went to Mr. Hollis and gave him the camera.

He looked through the photographs. He didn't say anything for a while.

Then: "Your photographs are extraordinary."

Nadia felt something in her chest she didn't have an immediate name for.

"The one from the top of the Shoulder," he said. "This one." He held the camera so she could see it on the small screen. The valley, the breaking light, the dark line of the hill ridge against the sky. "Have you ever shown anyone your photographs before?"

"I don't usually take photographs," she said. "I just look."

"You see," said Mr. Hollis, "the way some people run."

He said it so matter-of-factly, as though this were an obvious and known fact. As though it were simply the truth.

Nadia looked at the photograph of the valley.

She had been there. She had looked at that view with her own eyes. She had known, in the moment, that it was worth the stopping for.

She thought: I have been running the wrong race.

Not badly. Not incorrectly. The wrong one for me.

"What do I do with this?" she asked.

"Whatever you want," said Mr. Hollis. "But I'd start by showing more people."

She came last in the final three races of the season.

She also had twelve photographs displayed in the school's end-of-term exhibition, in a series called Three Kilometres: A Different View.

The photograph from the top of the Shoulder won a local young photographers' award in February.

She framed Mr. Hollis's ribbon and put it next to it.

She still couldn't whistle.

She had made peace with that too.

The End.