Keeping Pace

Grace Eller, a hyper-competitive eighth-grader, has spent all of middle school pursuing one goal: winning the top scholar award at Oakview Middle School. Her chief rival is Jonah Perkins, a boy she grew up with as a close friend but who shut her out after transferring to Oakview in seventh grade, the year after his father died. Their childhood bond, forged through summers in a shared treehouse, collapsed when Grace failed to be there for Jonah after his father's death, consumed by her own parents' separation and divorce.

On the final day of school, Grace's carefully planned exam morning unravels. Her older sister Celia is driving instead of their mom, a sudden brake spills Grace's smoothie on her favorite shirt, and her cousin Avery asks for help with a math problem Grace refuses to discuss so close to the test. At school, Jonah catches her off guard by dropping his usual cockiness and telling her that competing with her has "kept him going," a veiled reference to his grief. Grace dismisses the moment as a mind game and attacks the exam.

At graduation, Grace is humiliated when the principal names Jonah top scholar and gives her only an unprecedented honorable mention for the second-highest GPA. At the reception, Jonah reveals he is transferring back to Purnell, a private school in Philadelphia he attended before his father's death. Grace also discovers that her father has a girlfriend named Brie, a music teacher with a four-year-old son named Teddy. When Grace encounters Jonah on a running trail days later, he asks her to train with him for the Marsh Madness Half-Marathon, a race they once promised to run together. Grace refuses.

Grace's father is an English professor and novelist whose career takes priority over hands-on parenting. Her mother, also a professor, shares an easy closeness with Celia that leaves Grace feeling like the odd one out. After graduation, Celia and Avery create a summer goals list for Grace: babysit Teddy, take an ungraded class, get a haircut, kiss someone ("extra points if it's Jonah!"), run a half-marathon, and make a new friend. Grace crosses out the kissing goal with "Ew, NO!" but starts training for the August 17 race and agrees to babysit.

Babysitting proves challenging. Brie asks Grace to limit praise and let Teddy develop at his own pace, and Teddy melts down whenever he can hear his mother's music classes nearby. Grace suggests moving their outings to the playground and library, and Brie listens. At the library, Grace finds a flyer for a teen creative writing class. She also befriends Luna, a girl her age who takes guitar lessons from Brie and becomes Grace's first real new friend.

Grace and Jonah gradually resume running together after a tense encounter in the treehouse. They revive a childhood game called the "question ramp," trading three escalating questions, and through it share vulnerabilities they have hidden from everyone else. Jonah reveals his mother's boyfriend is moving into their home. Grace confides her fear of losing her identity without academic competition. Over weeks of shared miles, they rebuild trust.

In writing class, the teacher Erica Shah encourages risk-taking and freewriting rather than striving for perfection. Grace analyzes Emily Dickinson's poem "Success is counted sweetest" and finds herself fascinated by Dickinson's argument that those who never succeed understand success most deeply. Grace's father reads her notebook and singles out an entry about the treehouse mailbox, a small wooden box she and Jonah built as children to exchange notes and gifts. The entry captures Grace's devastation when the mailbox disappeared after Jonah's father's funeral. Her father encourages her to develop the piece for a teen essay contest.

At Grace's fourteenth birthday party, Jonah gives her a purple notebook of her exact favorite kind. As Grace comforts him about a family upheaval, they hold hands and nearly kiss before Avery bursts in teasing them. Jonah leaves without saying goodbye and pulls away over the following days.

Weeks later, during a rainy long run, Jonah reveals the deeper reason he wants to run the half-marathon: His father once promised to run one with him. A sudden downpour sends them to the treehouse, where a playful mud fight turns tender. Jonah tells Grace his ex-girlfriend Cassie broke up with him because she believed he was obsessed with Grace. Grace admits she has never kissed anyone, and they share their first kiss in the rain.

Inside Grace's house, while she changes out of wet clothes, Jonah finds the summer goals list on her desk. He sees the crossed-out kissing goal and is furious, believing the kiss was a game. Grace panics and shows him her essay about the mailbox, hoping it will prove her feelings. Instead, Jonah is appalled that she wrote something so private for a contest and that her father already read it. He demands she not submit it. Grace refuses, and Jonah declares everything between them "a mistake."

Grace texts Avery, who is excited about the kiss but sides with Jonah after hearing the full story. Grace lashes out, accusing Avery of lacking ambition. Avery retorts that Grace will end up "alone and stressed out all the time like your dad" and hangs up (215). Grace then develops shin splints, a painful overuse injury, and cannot run for at least a week. She tears up her training plan and quits.

Brie and Teddy come to say goodbye; Brie and Grace's father have broken up, and Brie is moving to New Jersey. At a Phillies game afterward, Grace realizes her father prioritized his career over Brie just as he did with her mother. She does not want his version of success if it means "disappointing people I care about and never getting too attached" (260). Grace decides not to submit the essay, not because Jonah demanded it, but because she refuses to use something that hurt him to win a prize.

When Avery goes missing from a soccer game, Grace finds her in the treehouse. Avery reveals that her boyfriend broke up with her, her teammates have turned cold, and she hates her position on the team. Grace comforts her and realizes she loves running for its own sake, not just as competition. As Grace's shin heals and she returns to training, Celia offers pivotal advice: Grace has always learned so quickly that she never built resilience through failure. Grace begins to see her difficulty with emotional conversations as a skill she can develop rather than a permanent flaw.

Avery rereads Jonah's old texts and points out that his terse responses were invitations for Grace to say more. They make a plan: get Jonah alone, apologize, and tell him how she feels. At a pool party, Grace finds Jonah and explains that she wrote "ew" out of denial and chose not to submit the essay because he matters more than any contest. She calls him her favorite person. Jonah tells her he realized his feelings months ago, and they kiss again. He reveals he has told his mother he may not want to return to Purnell.

On race morning, Jonah arrives wearing a bib with "Running for Dad" beneath his name. Grace's family cheers from the sidelines with homemade posters, while her father is absent. Grace and Jonah admit they would rather run together than against each other. The buzzer sounds, and side by side, they start to run.