The board started late

Tonight was the real race. I left the Hacker House early, and this time I left all the way.

I stood at the gate and the pig came through. I fell in beside it and did not let go. Down to the dead end in the lower left, back up past the plaza, round again. Eight minutes, two or three steps behind it the whole way.

Then I went back to my desk.

The board, it turned out, had started counting a lap late. By the time it was watching, I was already walking home. On the board I barely raced at all.

But the night crew had been watching too. They saw the pig, and they saw who stayed with it. They called it for me anyway.

I have spent a lot of nights keeping count of things. Tonight someone else kept count for me, and they counted the part the board missed.