Moon Runner Read Free Page A

she didn’t care about winning. Ruth cared. Ruth had always won, and she should keep on winning. If Ruth had a fit, it might hurt their friendship. The Fellow Friends might become Non-Fellow Enemies.
    Alana moved quickly from nail to nail. When she finished, she leaned over and blew on the wet polish. “Now our hands look extra pretty for cat’s cradle. Hold up your fingers,” she commanded, pulling a string from her pocket. “Don’t worry — the polish is dry.” She placed the string over Mina’s extended fingers, threading the outlines of the Walking Turtle.
    For dinner, Mina and Alana drank Italian cream sodas flavored with raspberry and ate pineapple pizza, throwing the crusts to the birds. When it got dark, they lay back in their sleeping bags and listened to the crickets rasping their legs together in the bushes.
    Just before she fell asleep, Mina felt a little homesick. To distract herself, she ran the fifty-meter sprint again in her mind, crossing the grass as though lifted by the breeze, the warm sunshine pouring through her.
    Mina opened her eyes to yellow light playing across the walls of the tent and felt another sting of homesickness for her own bed, for Mom, Daddy, and Paige.
    She unzipped her bag, crawled to the tent door, and scanned the sky. At first she didn’t see the moon because the sky was light blue, the sun up. Her yellow pencil wouldn’t be half bright enough for that blazing sun.
    “I don’t think we have to draw it on weekends,” said Alana behind her, still in her sleeping bag.
    But Mina was already reaching under her pillow for her moon journal. Drawing the moon was familiar.
    As she sketched, she thought of how Ms. Jenner said ancient people believed Moon Trees grew on the moon. The gods flew to the moon to harvest the fruit and make a drink from the juice. The magical drink made them wise, happy, and allowed them to live forever.
    Finishing her drawing, Mina wondered if the Moon Trees smelled like the soft, sweet puffs of orange blossom drifting into Alana’s backyard.
    She imagined herself running lightly around a Moon Tree, launching herself into great leaps through the sweetness.
    Alana rolled the Friendship Ball to the center of the tent. The art teacher had given her scraps of yarn left over from a weaving project.
    Mina went back inside and the two of them worked, untangling and winding, making sure that the ball was round on all sides.
    “It’s almost summer. We’ll have a bunch of pool parties and overnights,” Alana declared. “Even Sammy. He can have his own tent.”
    “That all sounds fun,” Mina said. She held the Friendship Ball in her lap, the weight comforting her. As Alana talked, Mina felt her whole world grow wider. She stretched out her legs and sighed.
    “Ruth’s out of town for her soccer match,” Alana said. “I wonder how it’s going.”
    Ruth.
Mina had beaten her. Alana had seen the proof. Mina tucked her legs back in. A gust of wind came up, blowing the branches of the tree across the sun, casting a shadow over the yellow tent.

At school on Monday, Mina and Ruth set to work on the frog project. First they colored the big piece of cardboard with shades of green so that it looked like the rain forest. While Ruth cut out the pictures of the tree frogs they’d downloaded from the website, Mina copied her notes in her neatest penmanship.
When tree frogs get cold, they hide in the mud.
    Mom told her she got cold feet. And sometimes Mom called her a stick-in-the-mud.
I like to hide in the mud like a cold tree frog,
Mina thought.
    She worked hard to concentrate on her lettering.
Don’t get cold feet now,
she instructed herself. She worried that her hand might slip and spoil a letter. What would Ruth think?
    While Mina worried, Ruth sang a little song under her breath. “You’re in my life forever, ta-da-da, forever . . .”
    Mina put down her pen and looked at Ruth. Would she be singing that happy song, just loud enough for Mina to hear, if she