The dirt behind the curb was still cold enough to numb my fingers through my canvas work gloves.

I pushed the spade four inches into the ground, right along the white string line I’d staked out once the frost lifted in April.

“Coach wants me running thirty-twos in the two hundred by Friday,” Emily said, pulling her ponytail over her right shoulder.

“He says if I don’t hit thirty-two flat, I’m stuck on the second team the whole spring season.”

“You ran thirty-one point eight on Tuesday,” I said.

“That was with a tailwind,” she said, picking at the edge of her sweater sleeve.

“It feels totally different on the back curve.

The wind shoves right against your chest.”

I reached into the red plastic nursery bucket and set the root ball of a new lilac into the hole.

Three replacement roots had cost me forty-two dollars at the garden center on Route 8, but the old bushes had died back in February during the hard freeze.

“Keep your head down till you’re out of the turn,” I said.

“Every time you look up at the clock, you lose two tenths.”

“That’s what Coach said too,” she murmured, patting the dirt around the base of the plant.

A high engine whine came tearing down the street, loud enough to cut Emily off midsentence.

A custom gas-powered golf cart whipped around the corner of the cul-de-sac, spraying dark gray gravel over our curb and blowing thick black exhaust across the grass.

It had oversized off-road tires, a heavy steel bull bar on the front, and dark custom vinyl seats.

The driver didn’t ease up as he passed our mailbox, his heavy gold signet ring flashing on the steering wheel as he swung the cart around the bend.

A dark cloud of exhaust settled right over our new planting bed.