The Unforgettable Leta "Lightning" Laurel - Softcover

Toalson, R.L.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1665956283 ISBN 13: 9781665956284

Verlag: Aladdin, 2026

Inhaltsangabe

A determined girl athlete deals with food insecurity and a new rivalry challenging her feminist ideals in this “resonant” (School Library Journal, starred review) upper middle grade coming-of-age story from author of The First Magnificent Summer, R.L. Toalson.

Eighth-grader Leta “Lightning” Laurel is a big sister, a problem solver, and the star of her track team. Her dad’s been out of the picture for more than a year, and food’s gotten scarce at home.

When Leta learns her mom’s financial struggles are even worse than she’d thought, she hatches a plan to bring her dad home: she’ll win district champion in the 400-meter dash, the newspaper will write about her, her mom will send the clipping to her dad, and her dad will remember he has daughters who need him. Because she’ll be unforgettable.

It should be easy; no one can beat her in the 400. But a new runner shows up, threatening Leta’s top spot and her budding feminist beliefs about sisterhood. She works harder and harder in practice, trying to ensure the new girl won’t ruin her perfect plan…until an injury sidelines her.

How will she ever prove to her dad and the world that she’s unforgettable? How will she prove it to herself?

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

R.L. Toalson grew up running wild through corn rows and cow-grazing fields and recording true and wildly exaggerated false tales to entertain her friends, family members, and anyone who would listen. She still runs (literally) wild through the streets of her city and spends most of her days recording true (if a little exaggerated) and false tales to entertain anyone who will listen. She lives in San Antonio, Texas, with her one brilliant husband, six delightful children, and two arrogant cats. She’s the author of The Colors of the Rain, which won the Arnold Adoff Poetry Honor Award for New Voices in 2020; The Woods, which received a starred review from Booklist; the highly acclaimed The First Magnificent Summer; and Dirty Windows Don’t Open. Visit her at RachelToalson.com.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter One: Thursday One THURSDAY
I don’t look like a runner. I look like a rag doll trying to launch myself toward the finish line on rubbery legs that weren’t made for this.

But my legs were made for this, so I keep going.

The wind blasts against me, picking up for the home stretch. This is about the time my thighs and calves have melted into wobbly blocks of Jell-O, and my arms have numbed completely, my form long gone.

Of course there’s a wind when I can’t feel my feet.

I just want the misery over.

I chance a look at the sky. Dark clouds glare at me. Storms are pretty typical in April, but… is that a tail?

My hearts rams in my throat. I hate tornadoes. I’ve never experienced one, and I don’t live in a place that sees them often, or, like, ever, but that doesn’t stop my brain from whispering, I think that is a tail. You better run for your life.

Which makes everything harder. Running for your life is too much pressure. And I’m actually running toward the possible tail, or the imaginary one, however you want to see it, since it’s straight ahead and so is the finish line and the end of my torture.

I can hear Coach Mac yelling from here. The wind’s not against her. It snatches her words, twirls them across the football field, and delivers them right to my ears.

“Pick it up, Leta, or I’ll add another!”

She’ll have to make me crawl another. My legs won’t make it through one more four hundred.

I try to pick it up. I really do. But when I cross the finish line and bend over, gasping—just what Coach Mac tells us not to do (“Doesn’t let enough air get to your lungs, ladies!” she says)—and Coach Mac calls out my time, I wonder the same thing she asks:

“What’s wrong with your feet today, Leta?”

What’s wrong with my feet?

I’ll tell you what’s wrong with my feet: Track shoes are expensive, which means Mom can’t buy a new pair every time mine wear out, which means I run miles and miles in my track shoes, which means all the miles someone else ran in these track shoes before me (because they’re not brand-new, they’re secondhand, that’s the way we have to do things in my family) along with my miles add up to slow slow slow

SLOW!

Coach Mac has me running the four-hundred-meter dash. It’s not quite long enough to wear regular running shoes. It’s more of a long-distance sprint, which calls for the special metal-spiked shoes that are supposed to help a runner’s toes grip the track so they can run super fast.

Some of us don’t run super fast. At least, not every day. I’d like to remind Coach Mac of that, right now, when she’s looking at me like I’m some alien who stole Leta Laurel’s body and is now pretending she can run. Sometimes we’re tired. Sometimes our feet don’t work. Sometimes we have terrible shoes.

I’m practicing today in my track spikes because our next meet is Saturday. Coach Mac likes us to spend our last practice before our meets in the shoes we’ll wear for our race.

The spikes on track shoes should be sharp. Mine are so dull you might mistake them for one of those thimbles Mom wears when she’s sewing the hem of my pants, which have to be let out every month or so. Every time I bring her another pair for her magical alteration skills, she says, can I please stop growing? I tell her I’d really love to, have you ever been taller than just about every boy and girl and person and teacher in your school? I passed her up by the time I hit fifth grade, so I already know that answer.

Growing is a problem, because Mom just bought me these track shoes six weeks ago and already they feel tight against my toes.

But I won’t tell her that. Anything that costs money makes Mom get that anxious look on her face. And I don’t like making Mom more anxious than she already is.

When I first handed Mom the track practice schedule, she beamed at me and said, “You made the team!” She looked so happy, I didn’t have the heart to tell her everybody made the team. Our school’s too small not to take everybody who wants to run track—and even then, Coach Mac isn’t above begging more girls to join with promises of monkey bread breakfasts before meets and free pizza on the way home. That’s not why I joined, but it’s probably why half the girls are on the team. Not a lot of money around these parts, and free pizza is free pizza. And have you ever tried monkey bread?!

When I told Mom Coach Mac assigned me to the four-hundred-meter dash, her face fell like a shot-put ball in the hands of a weakling. Even she knew what kind of shoes you need for any race that ends in “dash.”

The most expensive kind.

“Let me see those shoes,” Coach Mac says.

I wonder what she’d do if I pretended she wasn’t talking to me. But since she’d probably make me run another four hundred and my legs are already fried, I stop and lift up a foot.

“Give me the shoe, I mean,” Coach Mac says, rolling her eyes.

I almost say, “But it’s really stinky,” but I decide she gets what she deserves. I pull it off and hand it to her.

She wrinkles her nose before turning it over. She clicks her tongue and shakes her head. “Well, now I see why my star runner can’t seem to do more than lumber like a deranged giraffe.”

She doesn’t mean that. Does she?

A couple of girls giggle. They’re no friends of mine. They’re girls who can afford the sort of shoes that should make them faster, if they had any kind of running talent.

That’s mean. I shouldn’t say it. But at least the words stayed in my thoughts instead of hurtling out of my mouth.

“It’s the wind,” I mumble. I’ve never liked running against the wind. Why can’t our school build an indoor track?

I know why. It’s because all the athletics money goes to football. Surprise, surprise. It’s not fair, but it’s also not unusual. You pick any school in Texas, and it’s the same “football is king” story.

Good spikes would help against the wind. I know this. I stare at the ground.

“Get yourself some new spikes before this weekend’s meet,” Coach Mac says.

Doesn’t she know that’s easier said than done? Track spikes aren’t in the budget.

Unless Dad magically decides this week is the week he’ll start sending Mom some money from his out-of-state job way up in Michigan, which doesn’t seem to pay much. But since he hasn’t done that in three years, I think it’s probably unlikely.

I do believe in miracles. Just not that kind.

“Yes, ma’am,” I say anyway. And my chest pinches up tight, which is what happens anytime I think about Dad and the silence and what it might mean.

Coach Mac hands back the shoe, but not before wrinkling her nose again. “And try some baking soda inside.” She waves a hand in front of her nose, like she’s trying to get rid of something foul. A dead skunk in the middle of the road when it’s ninety-nine degrees out and the air conditioner is blasting on high so the dead smell gets caught in the car and you’ll never get it out. The fumes from the boys’ bathroom at school, which doesn’t have a true working door and gifts everyone who passes with an unexpected (but should be expected)...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Aladdin
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2026
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1665956283
• ISBN 13: 9781665956284
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 352
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar