Pulse

someone to pick up the wet towels and fill my water bottle. Can you handle that?”
    “Pay no attention to her,” Mr. Reichert whispered. “Her bark is worse than her bite. She’s harmless.”
    Faith had to rely on the principal for backup, because Wade had not come to her rescue. He was laser focused on warming up, acting like he hadn’t even heard what Clara had said. Faith’s Tablet vibrated in her back pocket, and she knew Liz was probably trying to find her. Or maybe it was her mother. She ignored it and began helping Mr. Reichert roll out the high-jump pits and set up the bar. A few minutes later, the Quinns were standing at the ready, and the bar was set at six feet.
    “So Wade is jumping first then?” Faith asked, excited to see him fly through the air.
    “No,” Mr. Reichert explained. “Clara will go first. She’ll only take a few jumps though. Today is her throwing day, outside. Now that’s something to see. You’d swear a shot put weighs about as much as a cue ball in this girl’s hand. And don’t even get me started on the javelin.”
    “And the hammer,” Clara said, inserting herself into the conversation from where she stood about twenty-five feet away. “That thing is wicked cool. Nothing on Earth like throwing the hammer.”
    She went suddenly quiet and closed her eyes, taking a bottomless breath that ended in a trance-like moan. And then she was moving with long, languid strides. When Clara turned sharply at the bar and jumped, it was like she’d gone into slow motion and weighed about four ounces. Six feet was nothing. The bar was cleared by at least six inches.
    A split second later Clara was off the mat and walking out of the gym shaking her head.
    “My head’s not in it today, feels off.”
    Faith was left to wonder how high Clara would have jumped if her head was in the game.
    “I’m going out to throw; don’t follow me.”
    “How high can she go?” Faith asked as Mr. Reichert motioned for her to get on one end of the height adjustment for the bar while he stayed on the other.
    “Hard telling. She’s only been at it for about a month. I’m guessing she could hit seven and a half feet if she gets focused.”
    The Field Games were the most important competitive events in the modern world. Everyone knew what the really big records were and who held them. Faith was nearly sure the woman’s world record stood at seven feet, four inches, which had been achieved on a windless day in the Eastern State by a German athlete four or five years before. As Faith watched Mr. Reichert move his end of the bar higher and higher, she realized that Clara Quinn, a high school junior living outside the States, might become the next world record holder in the high jump.
    “What’s she doing hanging out at Old Park Hill high school? It doesn’t make any sense. She’d be a celebrity on the inside.” Faith was trying to get her end of the bar level with Mr. Reichert’s as she talked. It was way over her head.
    “Maybe she’s hiding out,” Wade said with a tone of seriousness Faith hadn’t expected. “Maybe we both are.”
    “Let me help you there,” Mr. Reichert said, coming to Faith’s side to finish the job of setting the bar for Wade. “And they’re not really hiding out, just staying under the radar, if you will.”
    “Whatever you say, boss.”
    Faith wanted to ask where Wade and Clara had come from and how long they’d been at Old Park Hill, but she was preoccupied by the new height of the bar, which had been set.
    “How high is that?” she asked, standing under the bar and staring up at it. She was tall at five feet eleven, but the bar looked like it was about two feet over her head.
    “Eight feet,” Mr. Reichert said. “It’s a good warm-up height for a full run-through.”
    “ Warm -up?” Faith asked. “Eight feet is a warm -up?”
    “Do me a favor and don’t move,” Mr. Reichert said.
    Faith was standing at the middle of the bar staring at the pit, so she didn’t realize Wade was already heading for the bar until it was too late. She was staring up to the ceiling of the gym when she heard a tiny pop , like the sound of a tennis shoe tapping lightly on the wood floor. She saw his long, lithe body glide into view in the shape of an arc. He was so high over her head—it was like he’d launched from a hidden trampoline she hadn’t seen. The world record, if she remembered right, was only four inches higher than Wade had just cleared on a practice