Running Full Tilt Read online

  Text copyright © 2017 by Michael Currinder

  Cover illustration copyright © 2017 by Sarah King

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  Charlesbridge and colophon are registered trademarks of Charlesbridge Publishing, Inc.

  Published by Charlesbridge

  85 Main Street

  Watertown, MA 02472

  (617) 926-0329

  www.charlesbridge.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Currinder, Michael, author.

  Title: Running full tilt / Michael Currinder.

  Description: Watertown, MA : Charlesbridge, [2017]

  Summary: Sixteen-year-old Leo Coughlin’s life is increasingly stressful because his autistic older brother Caleb’s behavior is becoming more bizarre and even violent, and their parents’ marriage is falling apart—but Leo finds an escape in long-distance running, and in two new friends: Curtis, himself a potential state champion who teaches him the strategy of running, and Mary, his would-be girlfriend.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016043040 (print) | LCCN 2016050004 (ebook) | ISBN 9781580898027 (reinforced for library use) | ISBN 9781632896490 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Autism—Juvenile fiction. | Long-distance running—Juvenile fiction. | Running races—Juvenile fiction. | Brothers—Juvenile fiction. | Parent and child—Juvenile fiction. | Families—Juvenile fiction. | Friendship—Juvenile fiction. | CYAC: Autism—Fiction. | Running—Fiction. | Brothers—Fiction. | Parent and child—Fiction. | Family problems—Fiction. | Friendship—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.C866 Ru 2017 (print) | LCC PZ7.1.C866 (ebook) | DDC 813.6 [Fic] —dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2016043040

  Ebook ISBN 9781632896490

  Color separations by Coral Graphic Services, Inc., in Hicksville, New York, USA

  Production supervision by Brian G. Walker

  eBook design adapted from printed book design by Susan Mallory Sherman and Sarah Richards Taylor

  v4.1

  a

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Part Two

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Acknowledgements

  TO MY BROTHER, CHRIS, for inspiration. It wasn’t always easy, but it was worth the ride.

  I DID ONE FINAL STRIDE and positioned myself on the line. It was a staggered start that would break at the first turn. When the gun finally blasted, I got sucked into the flow. I had to protect myself, but I had to be aggressive, too.

  Unlike sprinters, distance runners don’t run in the solitude of their own lanes. They run in packs, with steel spikes sharp as steak knives attached to their feet. Inside a tight pack moving at close to four-minute-mile pace, the spikes like barracuda teeth slashing at calves and shins from front and back, elbows and fists box for position.

  By the time we cut in at the first turn, it was clear nobody wanted to take the lead in this race. So it was a scramble of bodies as we broke from the bend, sixteen guys angling toward the inside rail, like bees making their way to the hive.

  We completed the first lap in 61 seconds and change. I knew damn well that when the pack is crammed tight and you lose focus for even a split second—the amount of time it takes to blink—it’s easy to get clipped. So when I went down, the first person I cursed was myself. Falling is a runner’s worst nightmare, but I did the only thing I could do at that moment. I got back up.

  I knew if I could catch the pack by the bell lap, I might have a chance. At that point in the race, every runner has crossed the pain barrier and is running on fumes. It all comes down to guts and will in the final sprint. I had three laps to go. If I could be there for the final hundred meters, I still had a chance.

  That’s the beauty of a distance event. If you make a mistake early on, you can still get back in the race.

  Part One

  1.

  “LEO?”

  “Yes, Caleb?”

  “Who put butter on Monica’s nose?”

  “You did, Caleb.”

  I flipped over onto my back, put my hands under my pillow, and watched the headlights from a passing car hit the speed bump and roll across our bedroom ceiling. It was our last night in the house, and I wished to God my older brother would stop talking nonsense and just close his eyes and go to sleep.

  “Morris is frozen cat?”

  “Yes, Morris is frozen cat,” I answered.

  “THAT’S RIGHT!” Caleb exploded in laughter. “Leo, what car God drive?”

  “What car God drive?” I asked.

  “GOD DRIVE BROWN THUNDERBIRD FORD!” he said, laughing again.

  My brother posed riddles, ones I never solved. I had no idea who Monica was, why our cat was frozen, or why God drove a brown Thunderbird. I just knew my brother refused to sleep, and since he never slept, neither did I.

  Dad once explained to me that Caleb’s birth was a difficult one and his issues extended way past just autism. Mom was in labor for twenty hours and an encephalogram later revealed a lesion in Caleb’s brain that probably was caused by a lack of oxygen. All I understood was that Caleb’s autism and cognitive delays meant that his brain made sense of the world in a different way than mine. When he saw, heard, touched, or experienced something, his brain was doing something totally different with that information than my brain. I didn’t really get it at the time. I just knew there was something inside him that made him talk differently, walk differently, act differently, and obsess on weird things like train tracks, ceiling fans, and Greyhound buses.

  Caleb loved to paint, so Dad used to buy him paint-by-number kits, and on nights when he was especially restless he painted in the den outside our bedroom by the light of the television.

  Caleb didn’t get the whole idea of painting by numbers. He grasped the part about finding all the squiggly shapes with the same number and filling them in with the same color, but he didn’t understand that the codes were predetermined. So he produced this crazy art. One month he painted this series of seascapes where deep-blue water and white-tipped waves became bubbling orange lava flecked with flames. Green-faced-sailors with blazing-red eyes fought for their lives adrift bubbling molten rock.

  Dad framed and crammed our bedroom walls with Caleb’s art. My favorite was da Vinci’s The Last Supper. It hung opposite my bed, making it the first and last image I saw each day. Caleb’s version included an orange-skinned Jesus with purple hair, and apostles in jet-black robes circling behind a
brick-red table. It looked more like Hells Angels at a Sizzler steak house than Christ’s final meal.

  “Leo, what happen long time ago?”

  “What happened, Caleb?” I asked him.

  “Caleb put Morris cat in mailbox.”

  “Yes, you did, Caleb,” I confirmed.

  “Scare mailman. RIGHT!” Caleb’s laughter filled our tiny bedroom.

  “You scared the holy crap out of him,” I assured him.

  “NEVER, EVER DO THAT AGAIN!” Caleb shouted. “CALEB GET IN BIG TROUBLE!”

  “It’s time to sleep.” I turned and flipped my pillow. “Good night, Caleb.”

  “Good night, Leo. God love you.”

  My brother said this to me every night, and I always wondered what he meant.

  Did God love me, or him?

  2.

  WHILE I WASN’T EXACTLY THRILLED about moving, I couldn’t wait to get out of Manchester. We lived in one of those St. Louis subdivisions that looked like it had been designed with Legos; everything looked the same. Our house was located on one of those dead-end streets with a little loop so there’s only one way in, one way out, and everybody knows everybody’s business.

  Last April, Caleb crawled out of bed late at night and wandered into the Larsens’ house, a few doors down. He didn’t bother ringing the doorbell or knocking. Caleb just barged into their living room and started zinging Mr. and Mrs. Larsen with his bizarre random questions. He did the same to the Pirellos a couple of months earlier, only a little earlier in the evening.

  When some seventeen-year-old guy cruises into his neighbors’ house late at night wearing nothing but his pajamas, it’s going to cause a hot mess in the neighborhood. Breaking and entering lands some people in jail, but Mr. Larsen was pretty cool about the whole thing and didn’t even call the cops. Mrs. Larsen was a different story, though. She went off the deep end because Caleb freaked out her twin daughters, Nina and Lori, who were in my grade. She got the whole neighborhood riled up. That was the final straw. After Caleb pulled that little stunt, my parents decided to ditch Manchester for a new scene.

  Mom and Dad weren’t exactly sure how Caleb would deal with the move, but they did know that once they started packing up boxes, all hell would probably break loose. My brother liked things predictable. Major disruptions to his routines often triggered tantrums where he’d go ballistic. Caleb would bite his knuckles, smack his head, jump up and down, and scream nonsense. Sometimes he even hurt himself. One time a lightning storm forced Caleb’s favorite pool to close down early, so he punched out a bedroom window and ended up getting fifteen stitches.

  Mom’s solution was to haul Caleb and me down to her parents’ farm for the weekend while my parents moved house. I knew it was probably for the best, but it also meant I was in for a crappy weekend. The only difference between Grandma and Grandpa’s farm and a prison labor camp was that some prisons actually paid their inmates. By the time Mom rescued us on Monday morning, I was ready to snap.

  Our “new” house on Geyer Road turned out to be one of those old ranch homes that looked frail and tired. Its wood siding was scarred from peeling paint and crawling with ivy, the roof spotted with missing shingles, and the windows clouded and bleary with dust. The front yard, though, was enormous and teeming with life. Old oak and elm trees loomed above me; thick, snaky branches shaded the lawn, cooling and hiding me. The tangled chatter of birds and insects made me feel isolated, but it also chilled me out.

  “So…what do you think?” Mom asked.

  I could barely see the neighbors’ homes through the trees. That was another plus.

  “It’s pretty secluded,” I said.

  “It is,” she agreed. “That’s what I like about it.”

  Mom led us up a mossy brick walkway to the porch, unlocked the front door, and gave Caleb and me the grand tour. The entryway opened into a living and dining room with a wall of windows that overlooked a large backyard bordered by a creek and forest. To the right was a long hallway that led to two bedrooms and a bathroom. To the left was the kitchen, which adjoined a large den with walls made of red brick and old wood planks that looked like they might have come from a barn.

  The rooms were still cluttered with unpacked boxes and brown sheet paper, but for the most part things were already in place just as before: same tired green sofa, same old dining room table and matching cupboard, same rugs, same bookshelves and books, same kitchen table and refrigerator. Mom looked over the living room and sighed. “I was kind of wishing your father would have looked at this as an opportunity to upgrade.”

  Her comment was a dig at Dad, but I didn’t take the bait. She and Dad had all this complicated history that I preferred to stay away from.

  “Honest, Mom, the place looks great. And it seems to be working for him.” I nodded toward Caleb and smiled.

  Caleb plucked two ice cubes from the freezer, tossed them into a glass, and filled the glass from the sink like it was any other day.

  “Where will Caleb and I be stationed?”

  “You two have an entire floor to yourselves.”

  Mom led us downstairs into a dimly lit room that felt like a bear den. I scoped out the place—the old brown couch, television, and bookshelves were now parked next to a brick fireplace. With a little work, the room might make a pretty decent man cave I thought. There was even a door that opened to a small patio. Our bedroom was on the far side of the room, partly underground, the windows high on the walls looking out into the massive backyard.

  “Not bad?” Mom asked.

  “Not bad,” I said, but thinking about sleeping below the surface of the earth kind of creeped me out.

  I looked out the window and spotted an albino squirrel in a tree, pure white from nose to fluffy tail, scrambling from branch to branch as it chased a gray squirrel.

  “That’s Al,” Mom said, laughing, and nodding toward the squirrel. “We saw him the other day. Your father named him.” She gave me a little hug. “I’m going to head upstairs and do some more unpacking. I’ll let you and your brother settle in.”

  I turned and looked out the window again, but the white squirrel was gone.

  I emptied a few boxes of clothes and my books, then took a break and decided to check out the backyard, but the door wouldn’t budge. I had to throw my shoulder into the jamb a couple of times before the hinges finally loosened and I could pull the door open. I stepped outside into a yard thick with trees. With a little oil on those hinges, Caleb and I would have our own private exit.

  3.

  FOR THE MOST PART, I spent my summer scraping, sanding, painting, cleaning gutters, sealing and paving the driveway—you name it. I rarely saw any neighbors, and the ones I did see were old people, the kind that walked hunched over and moved slowly.

  I met up with Vincent and Ricky from my old neighborhood a couple of times that summer. Ricky and I had played CYO soccer together at St. Joe’s since we were five, and Vincent was this weird kid that lived down the street who knew everything about birds. The three of us liked to hang out in the woods behind our subdivision, and Vincent would whistle, gurgle, and squawk birdcalls and make the trees come alive in song. I’d known them almost twelve years, but they didn’t offer much of a reaction when I told them I was moving. When our car pulled out of our driveway for the last time, they flipped me the bird. I think it was their way of telling me they’d miss me.

  By August I was nearly going out of my mind, hungry for the company of people my age. I always got a little nervous before the first day of school, but this year I was also the new kid, which meant I was walking into a new school, a different terrain, one with unforeseen hazards. I slipped on my most comfortable jeans, a new black T-shirt that wouldn’t show pit stains, and my Nike running shoes. I took a look at myself in the bathroom mirror and figured I looked okay enough to just blend in.

  “You need to remember to smile a lot and introduce yourself to your teachers and classmates,” Mom cheerfully reminded me at breakfast. “You have a
tendency to present yourself as a grouch.”

  “Thanks, Mom,” I said, cringing at the way she said ‘classmates’ like I was heading off to first grade.

  Dad reached into his pocket and handed me a crisp ten-dollar bill. “Knock yourself out, son. Think of this as an opportunity to reinvent yourself.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked him.

  Dad smeared a giant glob of jam across his toast with his spoon. “Relax, Leo.” He laughed. “Don’t take life so seriously.”

  “I’ll try that, Dad.” I grabbed my lunch and thanked them for their crap advice.

  It was the typical first day of school. Most teachers reviewed their grading policies and expectations, distributed books, and maybe launched partway into a lecture. I was bored senseless and famished by the time lunch rolled around.

  My route to the cafeteria involved threading my way down unknown hallways past unfamiliar faces. Just outside the library, I had to skirt five thugs harassing some poor scrawny kid I assumed was a freshman. The ringleader, a burly guy wearing a football jersey with the name GLUSKER plastered over numbers, had his victim down on his knees, hands behind his back, pushing a tiny peanut across the tile floor with his nose. Glusker guided the kid by nudging his ass with the tip of his Timberland boot along a parade route lined by laughing upperclassmen.

  I made a quick U-turn and navigated my way safely through the student lounge and into the cafeteria, bought a couple of cartons of milk, and sought refuge at an empty section of table. Dad had made me an enormous ham-and-Swiss sandwich on rye that was goopy with honey-brown mustard, just the way I loved it. I opened my novel, and within five minutes I was in a different world.

  My bubble was soon popped, though, by the clank and clatter of five plastic cafeteria trays piled high with cheeseburgers and fries slamming against the Formica tabletop. I glanced over the spine of my novel to find myself in the unfortunate company of Glusker and crew. Fearing I might be the next guy rolling a peanut across the floor, I spun my body the other way, started cramming my sandwich into my mouth, and hoped that the three seats separating me from them would provide a safe-enough buffer zone. For the next few minutes, I heard nothing but raucous laughter and lewd remarks about the cafeteria ladies before one of Glusker’s minions snickered, “Hey, there’s Itchy.” And that stopped their conversation.