can outrun him and I’m too grown for that silliness now.

“Well, Squeaky,” he says, checking my name off the list and handing me number seven and two pins. And I’m thinking he’s got no right to call me Squeaky, if I can’t call him Beanstalk.

“Hazel Elizabeth Deborah Parker,” I correct him and tell him to write it down on his board.

“Well, Hazel Elizabeth Deborah Parker, going to give someone else a break this year?” I squint at him real hard to see if he is seriously thinking I should lose the race on purpose just to give someone else a break. He looks around the park for Gretchen like a periscope in a submarine movie. “Wouldn’t it be a nice gesture if you were … to ahhh …”

I give him such a look he couldn’t finish putting that idea into words. Grownups got a lot of nerve sometimes. I pin number seven to myself and stomp away. I’m so burnt, I go straight for the track.