Page 16 of Spectacular Things
Pre and Post
Six-year-old Cricket has never second-guessed the identity of the man in the large black-and-white photograph hanging above the toilet: It’s her father. She’s grown up on a diet of Disney movies so it just makes sense that one of her parents is dead.
“Good morning, Dad,” Cricket says to him after her first flush of the day, every day.
Muscular and mid-stride on a race track, the man frozen in motion in the Lowes’ bathroom shares the same dark hair and determined look as Mia during morning training sessions.
His bulging quads explain Cricket’s own strength.
“Do you ever miss him?” Cricket asks her mom, who has stumbled into the bathroom. Hair still mussed from sleep, Liz gropes for her toothbrush.
“Miss who?”
“Our dad,” Cricket says.
“Your dad?” Liz asks, her bleary blue eyes suddenly as bright and alert as high beams.
“Yeah,” Cricket says, nodding up at the picture. “Him.”
“Oh, honey,” Liz says, unable to hide her relieved delight. “That’s not—that’s Steve Prefontaine, a famous runner.”
“My dad’s name is Steve?”
“Nope,” Liz says, bending over to spit and rinse.
Mia’s face appears in the doorframe, officially hitting the tiny bathroom’s maximum capacity. “What are you guys talking about?” At eleven years old, Mia is average in height—she stands on the middle bleacher for school chorus—but she is only three inches taller than her sister.
Mia finds Cricket’s height just one of several irksome things about her.
Cricket’s eyes and hair have remained as light as their mother’s.
She is a walking recessive gene and yet Cricket demonstrates her physical dominance on a daily basis; she stands on the side of the bleachers for her school chorus, only blending in with her classmates when they are given a six-inch advantage.
She is the first pick for any game on the playground, whether it’s four-square or capture the flag.
The boys don’t even feel self-conscious about picking a girl first—she’s just that good, it would be dumb to go with anyone else.
“Cricket thought Steve Prefontaine was your father,” Liz explains to Mia with restraint, a laugh tugging at the corners of her mouth.
“You thought our dad was in the Olympics?” Mia asks her sister, pointing out the rings on his white tank top just above three letters: USA. “And on a poster?”
“I thought it was just a really big photo.”
In most households, the conversation would turn to questions about the girls’ actual father, but Liz steers them headfirst into a Steve Prefontaine Ted Talk—the promise the runner had represented and the shock of his death from crashing his car.
“What’s that say?” Cricket asks, pointing to the script below Steve’s feet.
“To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift,” Liz reads. “Steve said that—pretty good, right?”
Her girls nod absently, their minds pivoting toward the day ahead, the fact that their mom is already running late, which means they are already running late.
“Steve Prefontaine may not be your dad, but he’s one of my greatest influences,” Liz says. “And that line”—she nods at the poster—“it’s helpful to say whenever you don’t feel like doing something you need to do.”
Because Cricket cannot yet read, she repeats the line to herself on the walk to the bus stop until she has it memorized: To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.
The next morning, she sets her alarm clock and recites the quotation as a prayer because as much as Cricket loves soccer, she is not a natural early riser like her mother and sister, who seem to effortlessly spring out of bed for sunrise training sessions.
And unlike Mia, Cricket is not a school person.
Or a load-your-plate-in-the-dishwasher person.
But reciting Steve’s words forces Cricket to understand what’s at stake, and she’d rather battle the alarm clock than give less than her best.
Others have begun to expect the best from her, too, and not just her mother and sister.
As Cricket’s talent begins to draw a Saturday-morning spotlight, soccer coaches and teammates and the parents of teammates will approach her after games and let Cricket know that she was a shining star out there on the field, that she could really go places if she puts her head down and does the work.
In the years ahead, Cricket will write her adopted mantra in the margins of her homework and on the walls of heavily graffitied bathroom stalls.
She will select it as her senior quote for her high school yearbook and write it on the inserts of her cleats.
Cricket will live by these words, which she attributes as much to her mother as to Steve Prefontaine himself.
No matter what happens, she will give her best, and come what may, she will not sacrifice the gift.