Running toward

Running toward is the phrase Gram uses to distinguish Paige Walker’s restless movement from escape. For Lennie Walker, it opens into a question that reaches beyond her absent mother: what Bailey was running toward, what Lennie herself might pursue, and how to keep moving when grief remains part of the journey.

Origin and Meaning

When Lennie asks whether it is customary for a mother to go so long without seeing her daughters, Gram acknowledges the unusualness of Paige’s absence, then describes a different kind of truth about her daughter: “Your mom was born like this, practically flew out of my womb and into the world. From day one, she was running, running, running.” Lennie asks, “Running away?” Gram answers, “Nope, sweet pea, never away, know that,” and clarifies, “She was always running toward.” The correction does not explain where Paige went or what she sought; it changes the direction of the question, from escape to pursuit.

Lennie carries that distinction away from Bailey’s desk and wonders what her mother was running toward then, what she is running toward now, and what Bailey and Lennie were running toward. The unanswered questions extend the phrase beyond Paige’s biography. It becomes a way of imagining a life through its desired destinations, even when those destinations are unknown.

A Family Moving in Different Directions

The phrase acquires weight in the summer after Bailey’s death, when school has been out for two weeks and Lennie observes that she, Gram, and her uncle are “running loose through the park—all in opposite directions.” At home, Gram follows Lennie with a full teapot and two mugs, trying to restore their former late-afternoon ritual of tea and conversation. Lennie retreats to The Sanctum and pretends to read rather than talk; Gram’s long showers, where she tries to cry unheard, reveal another form of grief inside the household. In this setting, running toward does not mean that the family has found a common way forward. Their movements diverge, and the phrase offers a possible orientation rather than an easy reconciliation.

Lennie’s own impulses also feel directionless. She describes kissing her pillow with startling intensity and is ashamed of her attraction to the person she had promised her sister she would never kiss again. She sees Toby Shaw under a plum tree and recognizes that she ought to turn in and think about Joe Fontaine, but she does not do what she thinks she should. The contrast between obligation, longing, and action makes the phrase’s question intimate: movement toward something is not necessarily orderly, approved, or free of regret.

Desire, Music, and a Changed Self

A more deliberate movement appears when Lennie practices Cavallini’s Adagio and Tarantella for two hours. The playing feels to her like turning air into colors, and the experience makes her consider attending summer band practice after all. She also reconnects with Sarah, arranging to meet at Flying Man’s and wanting to tell her about Joe. Lennie admits to herself that she does not want to talk about Toby, hoping that what happened can be ignored if left unspoken. Her motion toward music and friendship therefore coexists with avoidance: the phrase describes an orientation, not a guarantee that every part of the past has been faced.

Lying on the forest floor, Lennie compares her former self to a turtle protected by its shell. If Bailey were alive, she thinks, she might have remained mildly happy and safely withdrawn. Now she feels shell-less, devastated and intensely alive, wanting to make color through her clarinet. She is troubled by the thought that anything good could come from Bailey’s death, but remembers that Bailey had been shell-less too and had urged her to come out of herself. In that moment, it is Bailey’s life, rather than the fact of her death, that teaches Lennie how to be. Running toward thus becomes associated with accepting a more exposed, vivid self without pretending that the loss which changed her was worthwhile.

Forward Motion and Grief

Near the end, Lennie leaves the music room after challenging another clarinetist for first chair and runs through the woods to write a poem to Joe. Her recognition of a future arrives beside the unbearable fact that Bailey has none. The passage does not frame forward motion as leaving Bailey behind: Lennie understands that her sister will die again and again in memory, and that grief will remain because love remains. What she can do is love Bailey and the world, and follow Bailey’s example by living with daring, spirit, and joy.

That understanding is given a physical form when Lennie later runs to the cemetery. Moving through alternating patches of light and shade, she feels the fabric of death that has clung to her for months begin to loosen. She continues toward the small hilltop cemetery, where Bailey’s grave was chosen for its closeness to the river, and rests against the warm gravestone. The run does not erase grief or substitute motion for remembrance: Lennie reaches the grave, touches Bailey’s name, and stays beside her. The phrase’s final force lies in that conjunction—Lennie can move into the next day and still turn toward the sister she loves.