“You’re not running,” I say. “Just because you have a stutter and don’t want to have to talk more . . .” I snap it a little too quick and a little too loud, but once it’s out I can’t quiet it down and or pull it back, and Amelia looks down at her hands and when she does I see what’s written at the bottom of her heart, in tiny little handwriting. Stutter.
She picks up her stuff and asks Mrs. Baldwin if she can work in the classroom library by pointing to her notebook and pointing to the corner where the couch and all of Mrs. Baldwin’s bins of books are. Mrs. Baldwin nods and Amelia sits down with her back to the rest of the class.
Frankie’s shaking her head and still not looking at me either and I’m feeling more alone than the one and only Ivan, because even he has Bob the dog and Stella the elephant, at least for a little while.
Then Mrs. Baldwin stops by our group again and Frankie’s telling her about how she’s writing a poem about track. Mrs. Baldwin nods her head and touches her shoulder like she knows that’s important and a perfect thing to write a poem about. Frankie’s poem is already stretching toward the bottom of her notebook. She’s biting her tongue and flipping the page and writing more.
How anyone can just write a poem like that is a big who-knows.
I’m looking over at Amelia, who has her head bent over her notebook too, and I wonder what she’s writing, and I know that I should go say sorry, because I am, but Mrs. Baldwin is still at our group and now she’s looking at me.
“I don’t really write poetry,” I tell her.
She sits down in Amelia’s empty chair and points at my notebook heart. “Have you chosen a topic?”
I point at Izzy because I don’t want her eyes drifting to the bottom of my heart and seeing what I’ve written in little letters there.
“Great,” Mrs. Baldwin says. “Finding a topic is the first step.” But the bell’s ringing and it’s time to go. “Well, give it a shot tonight. Write about Izzy. See what happens.”
I nod my head, but what I’m really thinking is, I can write about Izzy all I want, but it’s not going to come out as a poem.
It’s time for gym but Mrs. Baldwin asks if she can see me quick after class. Frankie’s first out the door because gym’s her favorite period and she’s not missing one minute. Everyone else is packing up their book bags and starting loud conversations that will roll out with them into the hallway. Amelia finishes writing in her notebook and is the last one to leave.
I catch up to her before she reaches the door, and I don’t know why it’s so hard to say I’m sorry, but it gets caught up in my throat, and so I jot it down on the corner of her notebook tucked under her arm.
She reads it and gives me a sort of half smile like she understands, but her heart probably still hurts.
OK, she jots on the corner of my notebook, and then she leaves.
I pack up my book bag and zip it shut and turn around to see what Mrs. Baldwin wants to talk to me about.
“Just checking in to see how Ivan is,” she says.
“He’s awful.” I take out the book and show her where my bookmark sticks out from the pages.
“Have you gotten to the part where . . .”
I nod because I know exactly what horrible, horrible part she’s talking about. The part about Stella the elephant, and how that makes Ivan even more alone.
Now Ruby, the new baby elephant, is the one and only of her kind too. Thinking about it again makes me wish I’d had a better apology for Amelia, and I almost run to catch up with her, but I can tell Mrs. Baldwin is waiting for me to tell her more.
“Ivan just made this impossible promise to take care of Ruby and make sure she doesn’t grow up in that domain like Stella did. But I don’t know how he’s going to get her out. He’s just a gorilla.”
“He’s an awfully loyal gorilla,” Mrs. Baldwin says.
I nod.
Then Mrs. Baldwin gestures toward the library. “Why don’t you grab a book of poetry too? Maybe reading a few poems will help you write some of your own.”
I nod and search her Poetic Novels bin, because if I have to read poetry, I at least want it to be a story too.
I pull out The Crossover by Kwame Alexander, because it has a cool cover with a basketball player on the front. I’m about to write my name on the index card in the back when I see that the last person to read this book too was Reggie and I’m wondering if we have the exact same taste in books, and if she plays basketball and if our school even has a basketball team.
She checked out the book on May seventeenth in curvy handwriting.
Reggie Muñoz.
And then my brain makes one hundred clicks. Our mailbox. Muñoz. Frankie’s face on the stoop when she first found out I was moving into apartment thirty-one. Her face when she peered past me and into our living room, and how she said, It looks different. The picture of them in their track uniforms, laughing. Thirty-four kids in our class minus one is thirty-three, and plus one back is thirty-four.
I canceled out Reggie Muñoz.
I moved into her apartment. I’m sitting at her empty desk. I took her spot on the relay team. I wrote my name right over hers on a brand-new white label.
And I feel worse than I did ten minutes ago when I quit on Frankie and lashed out at Amelia, and I want to run 288 miles home, or 355 days backward and say no or yell to wake my parents or block the door and shake my head and push him back and tell him to follow the rules so there would be no that night. Then there would be no new brain research job and instead of moving into apartment number thirty-one I could sink back into my two inches of foam and sleep a whole night through and Frankie could keep Reggie as her best friend and teammate.
I slide The Crossover into my book bag and thank Mrs. Baldwin. Then I walk toward the gym. But this time Amelia isn’t waiting for me outside the classroom door. I’m on my own.
Chapter 19
Something I Could Do
When I get to gym, the class is running sprints, squatting down to touch the lines of the basketball court, pivoting and running back, then back again. The last person to finish each sprint sits out on the bleachers.
Right now five boys, Frankie, and Amelia are left on the line.
Mr. Meathead is blowing his whistle for the next one to start, and Frankie’s in the lead. They touch the half-court line and sprint back to the end of the court.
One of the boys is eliminated. He slams his fist on the bleacher and sits down with the rest of the class.
“Jump in if you want,” Meathead says to me. “Show them how it’s done.” He gives me a smile, which makes me feel like maybe I don’t need to call him Mr. Meathead anymore and Mr. Rayder, his real name, would be fine, at least for now.
“It’s OK,” I say. “I have fresh legs. It’s not fair.”
“Suit yourself,” he says.
But before he can blow the whistle for the next sprint, Frankie calls out, “Run!” She’s not even out of breath. “We can take it. Come on!”
And my legs really feel like running, so I drop my book bag and join them on the line. The whistle blares and we’re off. I reach for the half-court line with my fingers, pivot, and shoot back toward the end line under the basketball hoop. Frankie finishes first. Another boy is eliminated. In the next sprint I’m gaining on Frankie and Amelia’s gaining on me, and another boy is eliminated, until it’s just us three again, taking our mark and waiting for Mr. Rayder’s whistle.
We shoot off the line and stay neck and neck and neck as we bend to touch the half-court line, change directions fast, then charge back toward the end. We’re still in a perfect line, and it’s by our noses that we’ll win or lose the sprint, but even though I want to look left and right and see us all lined up, I can hear Coach Scottie’s voice saying to keep my eyes ahead, focus forward, so I do, and we all cross the line together. Frankie’s out of breath now, and so is Amelia. Her cheeks are pink and we’re all sweating.
“Tie! Line back up,” Mr. Rayder says. “All three of you.�
�
At first we all groan for the extra sprint, but then we take off, side by side by side, when he blows the whistle.
“Tie! Line up again.”
This happens three more times and we’re panting and huffing and chugging water from the fountain in between, and on our fourth sprint something happens. We make this little agreement, but not out loud, and not even with a look, it’s something that just happens in each of us, that we decide we’re crossing together every time. I can’t really explain it, it’s just this pact we make silently, inside, like a little secret message, and I know that we’re going to be neck and neck and neck, side by side by side, the whole class cheering us on, the whistle blowing over and over, until the bell rings.
And that’s exactly what happens.
The bell rings and we cross the line, together, for the last time. The whole class cheers from the bleachers and we’re bending over our knees, gulping for air, and Mr. Rayder announces us class champs and we raise our fists in the air and then do one of our triangle high fives.
As soon as our hands touch I remember how running erases my brain, and that’s a fact because now that my feet are still I’m remembering that Frankie’s mad at me for quitting track, and that even though I apologized, I hate that I snapped at Amelia, and that I’m living in Reggie Muñoz’s apartment, probably even her bedroom, and sitting at her desk in class, and now she’s at the bottom of Frankie’s notebook heart.
And I’m wondering if it’s possible that our little secret inside message to stick together in the sprints erased how mad they were.
On our way back to homeroom we walk side by side by side even though we’re not racing anymore, and even though we’re not talking, not even one word.
Before we open the door to homeroom I blurt out, “I know that I’m living in Reggie’s old apartment.”
Frankie nods, but her face is hard and unmoving like compacted soil that will take lots of work to break up and soften.
“I’m sorry,” I say, and even though it’s a word I’m not supposed to use, I add, “That must really suck.”
Frankie nods again, but her face doesn’t soften.
“I wish there were something I could do—”
“Run,” she says, staring down at her Nikes.
“I can’t—”
“You said you wished there were something you could do.” Then she pushes open the door of our homeroom class. “You could run. We could win the relay. That’s something.” The door slams behind her, and through the little square window I can see her slump down at her desk.
Amelia and I follow her in and my heart starts beating ten beats faster per minute, and why is a big who-knows because I ran hard in gym but had lots of time to recover my pulse.
Then before I can figure out why my heart is pounding, I say, “I will if she will,” and point at Amelia.
She drops her jaw and points to her chest. “I t-t-told you—”
“You told me that it’s hard enough getting through the school day. Well, it’ll be hard for me to get through June fifteenth. But if you do it, I will. We’ll do it together.” I take a deep breath to try to steady my heart. “Like friends.”
Now her face looks as hard and unmoving as Frankie’s.
“You’re fast,” I tell her. “And you won’t have to talk that much. Just run.”
She sits down quickly in her chair and reaches into her book bag. She pulls out a notebook, scribbles something hard onto a page. and turns it around.
Fine.
I look at Frankie. “Fine,” I say. “We’re in.” And then her face crumbles into a smile, and so does Amelia’s.
“F-friends,” she says.
Chapter 20
Closed Doors
Amelia only has to say five words at her first practice today, and she says them to Coach Okeke.
“Here to r-run. Not t-talk.”
He smiles big and teaches her the secret team handshake, which she practices with Ana and at least five of the girls on the team, and no one makes her say anything else either, because doing a team handshake says enough.
We do a different loop for practice, running through the park and down the steep stairs, but this time across a footbridge over a river into the Bronx.
Ana runs next to Amelia the whole way and says, “I can’t believe this is your first practice ever! You’re good.”
At first I want to cut in and tell her that Amelia’s not here to talk, but before I can, she responds, “I j-just n-needed a little p-push.” Then she looks over at me and smiles, and I get such a happy feeling I could hop hurdles over all the fire hydrants.
After practice we walk side by side by side by side down Broadway, weaving around groups of kids speaking Spanish and moms pushing strollers and doctors and nurses in their scrubs carrying Starbucks cups back toward the hospital where my mom is researching the brain right now.
Frankie and Ana turn toward Dacie’s house and Amelia stops and puts out her fingers—one, five, three because she lives on 153rd Street. Frankie waves her to come on and that we’re all going to Ms. Dacie’s house and she should come too. Amelia raises her eyebrows like, Who is Dacie? And even though she sighs like she just wants to go home now, she pulls out her phone and sends a message with the fastest thumbs I have ever seen. We all follow Frankie down the street and climb the stairs to the big wooden door with all the stickers that show everyone’s welcome.
Casey answers the door and keeps his eyes down toward the welcome mat like last time. He yells, “Frankie, Ana, and Rain are here! They brought a friend!” And why that makes me feel so good is a big who-knows, but it’s like I belong already.
When we introduce Amelia, Dacie looks over her purple glasses and right through Amelia’s aqua frames and says, “Those glasses are the coolest. I’m going to have to get myself a pair.”
Amelia smiles and nods.
“Welcome, Amelia. Let me show you around.” Dacie takes Amelia by the arm and hurries her into the kitchen, and the next time I peek in, I notice that Ms. Dacie has an old landline hanging from her kitchen wall too, and that Amelia is kneeling on the counter and pulling down a bag of Hershey’s Kisses from the top shelf.
Yasmin and Edwin pour out flour and sugar, and Ms. Dacie is glopping a big spoonful of peanut butter into a measuring cup.
Frankie sits with Ana, who is pulling all of Dacie’s art supplies out of a big plastic bin and spreading out the panels of her superhero comic across the floor. She has one more panel than she did yesterday. The superhero, whose hair is pulled up into the same two tight buns as Ana’s, is holding the hand of a tiny girl with matching hair, and they’re soaring through a dark sky.
Trevor is working with a tutor who’s wearing a City College sweatshirt and counting out blocks to balance an algebraic equation, but he stops before he comes to a solution and tells Ana that her art is really good.
“Thanks,” she says, and continues to shade the dark night sky.
I start helping Casey organize the DVDs that are stacked beneath the TV. “Who even watches these anymore?” I ask, and it makes him laugh.
“She has records too,” he tells me, and points to five milk crates and a record player.
Her voice rings out from the kitchen, “I can hear you! You sure know how to make a lady feel old!” And that makes us both laugh even more.
“And you have a landline!” I call back. “I thought my mom was the only dinosaur alive who insisted on having a landline.” And everyone laughs, and that makes me feel even more like I belong right there.
Then Ms. Dacie comes out of the kitchen with a dish towel over her shoulder. “Funny, funny,” she says. “You all laugh now, but I bet my memory’s sharper than all of yours! How many phone numbers do you have memorized?” She can hardly keep from laughing herself, and all of us are giggling when Jer says he doesn’t even know his mom’s number by heart.
“See?” she says. Then she taps the side of her head with her flour-dusted finger.
It
makes me think of Mom and that even though she’s probably right that my brain is better off without a cell phone, I still kind of want one so I can message fast back and forth with Amelia.
“And,” she adds, “music sounds better on one of these.” She shows us how the records slide out of their sleeves and how to load them onto the player and how they spin around and around. I don’t tell her that I already know all that because Guthrie listened to records too, and he used to say the same thing about music sounding better on vinyl.
Casey could watch the spinning all day, and I could too, because I want to count how many rotations make a song and I want to know how all those little grooves remember the melodies and harmonies and all the words to every song.
I remember pulling the records from Guthrie’s shelf, sliding them out from their covers, running my fingers along the grooves, and pushing them back in exactly where they belonged. That remembering rises up and up.
Then Casey puts on a Michael Jackson record and that gets Cris to tapping her foot and then Jer, and before the fifteenth rotation they’re both up and trying to moonwalk across Ms. Dacie’s wood floors. “Who can listen to Michael Jackson and not dance?” Jer exclaims.
Frankie and I snort and shake our heads, because there is no way I’m dancing, and that’s a fact. But for some reason it feels good that they are.
In the kitchen Amelia is showing Yasmin and Edwin how to make the peanut butter cookie dough into balls and roll them in sugar. “Th-these are my f-favorite.”
Then they’re pulling a batch out of the oven and pressing Hershey’s Kisses into the warm dough. “L-let them sit for a m-minute,” Amelia tells them. “They get all m-m-melty.” And I don’t know if it’s because there aren’t any pens or paper in Ms. Dacie’s kitchen, or if everything just feels easier here, but Amelia doesn’t seem to care how much she talks or how long she stutters on her syllables. And neither does anyone else.
I take out my poetry notebook because even if it’s not going to be a poem, I have to have something on my page about Izzy for English class tomorrow so Mrs. Baldwin can see I at least tried and it didn’t work. Then maybe she’ll let me write an essay.
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