“If this trail is crawling with bikes, you’ll have to stay on leash and I’ll be looking over my shoulder the whole time,” Mom grumbled. “Have I told you how much I hate Oregon?” She reached for the space between the door and the driving chair where her running shoes lived. She froze. “Oh dog doo!” she hissed with a kind of mominous anger I’d never heard from her before, even in Oregon.
“I can hold it until we start running,” I said helpfully.
“My running shoe... It’s gone. There’s only one down here.” Mom opened the door for a better look into the empty space on the floor next to the driving chair. She slammed the door so hard that the bang made me jump.
“Don’t worry, Mom. I run without shoes all the time. I’ll show you how.”
She pulled her clunky walking shoes from their spot under the copilot’s chair and scrunched her face like they smelled worse than usual. “Gross. And my hiking shoes are still wet from yesterday.”
“Oh no!” I moaned supportively. “Now you’ll have to run in your slippers.”
She stuffed her feet into the soggy shoes like she wanted them to choke on her heels. “Do you know how hard it was to find a pair in my size?”
Mom had especially small feet for a human. They were more like dog feet, really, with toes coming straight from her ankles. “Maybe a prince will come knocking on every wagon door in Oregon searching for the freakishly small foot that fits,” I told her. “That happens, you know. I saw a movie about it once.”
“There’s no such thing as the Prince of Oregon,” Mom said in that way that meant there was no use trying to tell her about fairy godmothers. “Almost nobody carries the brand that I like, even here in the running capital of the world. I had to pay full price for these on Amazon and wait six weeks for them to come from Europe. There’s no hope.”
She had so many kinds of running shoes, I had no idea what that meant. How could so many shoes be right if they were all so different? “We could go back to the palace steps to look for it. We’ll have to hurry, though. In case another one-legged, tiny-footed scullery maid gets there first.”
“I don’t wan to go back to that dump,” Mom grumbled. She grabbed the leash and opened the door like a punch. “It’s like 45 minutes in the wrong direction. That means staying an hour and a half longer in Oregon than we have to.” She stood blocking the door and scowling like an angry guard dog. “Well? Are you coming?”
I tucked my ears and tail before dismounting. Mom slammed the door again with a thump that shook all of Oregon.
No sooner had we started running when I got that prickly feeling on the back of my neck like we were being stalked. It started with a hum that grew into a roar as it closed in. There was a clicking noise like something snapping its teeth together and a mominous ka-chunk that sounded like worse things to come.
“On your left,” a lady-voice bellowed from behind us.
Mom jumped as suddenly as a cat when I walk into the room. She pulled the leash so close that her next step practically landed on my head and scurried off the trail, pulling me after her. We stood in the shadow of the trees, Mom scowling at the three ladies as they rolled by like they were the ugliest stepsisters in the land. I smiled and showed them my tongue in case they wanted to stop for a kiss.
“Thank you,” the one with the curly hair said.
“Good morning,” the one with the short hair said.
“Last rider,” the plump one said with a big, sunny smile.
“Fat chance,” Mom muttered in her head, where only I could hear.
As we ran through the infinitrees, Mom kept checking over her shoulder as if we were being chased. By what, I wasn’t sure. Only bikes passed us, each one with a friendly hulloo and a smile. Maybe she was confusing the whirring sound with the buzzing of invisible meese, because she ran with the stumbling steps and darting eyes of a character who doesn’t make it to the end of the horror movie.
Unlike the enchanted forest where I chased a wolf through Washington, these trees were spread so far apart that one hardly ever touched the next. The trail shot straight through them with hardly a twist or a slope, so we could see a wolf, moose, or bike coming from a mile away.
As soon as Mom spotted a bike in the distance ahead or behind us, she tugged on the leash and pulled me off the trail in such a hurry that it seemed like she thought bikes moved as fast as speeding missiles. I had to sit still as a statue and wait the hunerd years it took for them to pedal by.
Nothing makes Mom more dangerous than making her stop on a run.
“I think there’s room for bikes to go around us,” I told her. “The trail is as wide as a street.”
All she said was, “Stay close,” and reeled in the leash a little more. She was paying so much attention to the trail behind us that she wasn’t looking where she was going.
“Ow!” I yelped, pulling my toe from under her clunky shoe.
She jumped three Oscars high at the sound of my voice. “I’m sorry, Spud. Serves you right for getting underfoot, though.”
“There isn’t enough room on the leash to run anywhere but under your feet.” I tested my smashed foot by taking a step. Luckily, it still worked. “You were right. Those shoes are as heavy as rocks. And just as sharp. Why do shoes need claws? Are you gonna use them to dig something up?”
“It’s supposed to make your feet stick to the ground when it’s muddy. That’s why having the right gear is so important. Trail running shoes have smaller lugs to make you light on your feet.” She set her eyes back on the trail ahead to demomstrate the clonky elephant-stride of someone running in the wrong shoes. “I guess I’m not used to being around people anymo—aargh!”
There was a ding behind us and Mom pulled me off the trail to watch. A man rode by on a contraption that was part bike and part train. A pole hanging off his seat like a dingleberry pulled a caboose with a people-puppy inside.
“Good morning,” the man said.
The people-puppy just stared with his mouth hanging open. When his eyes fell on Mom, they got wide like he was looking at a moose in a prom dress. Mom bared her teeth at him and his head snapped straight ahead.
The only thing that makes Mom more prickly than an ugly stepsister on a pretty bike is the mouth of a people-puppy—especially if that mouth that says nothing at all. As soon as the coast was clear, Mom stepped back onto the trail and aimed her eyes at the people-puppy’s back like she was trying to set him on fire.
It took miles before Mom stopped diving off the trail at the sound of every whirring bike and snapping twig. She settled in just in time for the trail to dump us into another long car kennel. It was packed with the type of small cars that indoor people like, with barely enough space inside for a cupholder, let alone a bed or a bike.
We searched the edges of the car kennel for the rest of the trail, darting around the hoards of babies in backpacks and skinny men wearing Captain Kangaroo hats to keep the clouds from burning their bald spots.
It was no use jumping behind a tree every time someone else was on the trail now. There were so many people that we’d be hiding behind tree trunks for the rest of our lives waiting for a chance to sneak away. The smell of shampoo and poop juice in paper cups filled the forest as people walked in zigzags across our path. Unlike Mom, they had no idea there was a trail behind them, or that someone else might be using it.
I had to keep a close eye on Mom to know which way she would dodge around each clump of people. She winced at the squeal of a not-so-little girl noticing how cute I was.
“Where are all these people coming from?” I asked. I would have been excited if I weren’t afraid of getting blown up. Mom looked like she would explode at any second.
“The line at Starbucks,” Mom muttered.
“Don’t you think some of these friends might want to pet me?” I asked.
Mom pulled the leash hard to one side. “I’m not in the mood.”
The lady in front of us stopped short. She held her witch high in the air like a beacon.
Mom kept running and scowled over the lady’s shoulder, straight into the witch-screen. I thought she was going to run the lady over just for an excuse use her anvil-shoes to stomp her to a pulp, but she took a step to the side at the very last second.
The lady didn’t even thank her for getting out of the way. She just flipped her hair from one shoulder to the other and did something funny with her lips.
“Step off the trail if you’re gonna stop,” Mom muttered inside her head where only I could hear.
“I think all these people are coming to see...” Mom took a breath to gather the strength not to smack a guy's butt when he leaned over to tie his shoe in the middle of the trail.
...to be continued...