Race to the Sun

by Rebecca Roanhorse

  I opened my eyes slowly, the way the good guys in movies do when they’ve just figured out how to beat the villain. I noticed that the bright young scholars of Culeco Academy of the Arts had formed a ring around Yasmany and me. This crowd didn’t seem as bloodthirsty as the ones in my last school had been. In Connecticut, kids hooted like in Planet of the Apes whenever a fight was about to start, jumping up and down and beating on each other in anticipation of someone getting wedgied back to the Stone Age. But these kids looked kind of grim and quiet, like this was some boring school assembly they had to attend.

  Well, from my perspective, it didn’t really matter whether they were enjoying themselves or not. They had me surrounded just the same. I was trapped.

  Wait. No. That’s an excuse, and I don’t lie to myself. I could have pushed my way out of there if I’d wanted to. But now all eyes were on me. I had an audience. And I am a showman.

  Yasmany stretched his fingers wide before he made two fists. “Time to die, little man. Stand up.”

  I stood all right. Got right in his face. “Time to die?” I asked.

  “Time. To. Die,” he repeated.

  “Like the dead chicken in your locker?” I asked.

  “What?”

  See, that’s the real secret of dealing with bullies: Change the game. You thought we were going to fistfight, Mr. Tough Guy, but—surprise!—suddenly we’re talking about murdered poultry.

  “The dead chicken in your locker,” I said, explaining it to the crowd. “That’s the real reason you didn’t want to open it. You didn’t want anybody to see your dead chicken so they wouldn’t know you keep dead chickens in your locker. Because,” I said, turning to face Yasmany again, “what kind of weirdo keeps dead chickens in his locker?”

  “Stop saying ‘dead chicken’!”

  Everybody laughed. That probably would have sent Yasmany into a berserker rage if some girl hadn’t shrieked, “Blood!” She was pointing at Yasmany’s locker.

  “What?” Yasmany asked again. He and everybody else looked at his locker, and yeah, there was watery pink blood leaking from it, the kind you find at the bottom of Styrofoam meat packages. Not a lot, but enough to drip from the bottom of the locker door and pool on the floor. And it only takes a tiny bit of blood to freak people all the way out.

  Not me, though. I mean, I didn’t know SANGRE DE POLLO was going to come dripping out of his locker, but it wasn’t exactly a surprise, either. I could work with it.

  “Open it,” I said to Yasmany. “Unless you’re too…chicken.”

  If he hadn’t been completely bewildered by what was happening, he would have gorilla-rushed me for sure. Instead, he walked over to his locker and tried to undo the lock. Two, four, seven yanks on it, each angrier than the last. Then he punched his locker door again and said, “I can’t open the stupid thing! I keep trying, but I can’t.”

  “Here. Let me.”

  He took a step back to let me through. But not without asking, “What? How you know my combo?”

  His “combo” was still taped to the back of the lock. About as sharp as a bowling ball, this Yasmany.

  I looked at him over my shoulder with spooky eyes and replied, “Fool! I am a magician. I can read your mind.” Then I spun the dial with fast fingers, clock-, then counter-, then clockwise again. I tugged the lock open dramatically and, with a flourish, removed it.

  “You want the honors?” I asked him, stepping aside with a gracious magician’s bow.

  Yasmany—bro had gone full autopilot by now—stepped forward and opened the locker door, every kid behind him on tiptoe, watching, waiting.

  A whole raw chicken, like you get at the grocery store, with bumpy yellow skin and no head, flipped out of his locker, landed on its chicken butt, and went splat.

  Kids scattered, screaming. Adults would be here any second. Yasmany did a 180 and looked around wildly. He didn’t have eyes anymore: just fear. “I didn’t put no dead chicken in my locker!” he yelled. “You gotta believe me!”

  “I believe you,” I said.

  Of course I did. It was I who had put it in there, after all.

  Abracadabra, chicken plucker.

  Keep reading for a sneak peek at Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky by Kwame Mbalia!

  THERE WAS A RHYTHM IN my fists.

  Pop pop

  It told a story.

  Pop pop

  Everybody thought they knew the story. They’d seen it before. He’ll get over it. It’s a phase. Give him space. But they only knew fragments. They didn’t want to hear the rest….

  Oh, you do?

  Hmm.

  Well, what if I told you that I went to war over my dead best friend’s glowing journal? Or that I battled monsters big and small, with powers I didn’t know I had, with gods I didn’t know existed. Would you believe me?

  Nah, you wouldn’t. You got your own problems. You don’t wanna hear about my struggles. Right?

  Oh, you do? Well, I gotta warn you, it’s a wild ride, so buckle up, champ.

  Let me give you some truth, and I hope it returns back to me.

  “Tristan! They’re here.”

  Pop

  Mom’s shout interrupted my groove. I stopped pummeling the small punching bag Dad had installed in my room and loosened the straps on my boxing gloves with my teeth. The gloves fell on the bed, and I dropped down next to them. Eddie’s journal sat on my tiny desk in the opposite corner. Still glowing. Still unopened since his mother had given it to me after the funeral two weeks ago.

  My room was so small I could’ve reached out and grabbed the leather book, but that would mean dealing with it, and who deals with their problems by choice?

  Pffft. Not me.

  “Tristan Strong!” my dad yelled from down the hall.

  I hated that name.

  It made me appear to be something I’m not. My name should’ve been Tristan Coward, or Tristan Failure, or Tristan Fake. Maybe Tristan How-Could-You-Lose-Your-First-Boxing-Match.

  Anything but Tristan Strong.

  Mom’s footsteps echoed through our tiny apartment, and then soft knocking sounded on my door. “Tristan, baby, did you hear me?”

  I cleared my throat. “Yeah, I’m coming.”

  The door opened and Mom peeked in. She was still wearing the TEAM STRONG T-shirt from last night. I don’t think any of us had gotten much sleep after we came back from my first bout. I stayed up nursing my pride, the only thing I really injured. My little fan club—Dad, Mom, and my grandparents on Dad’s side—had tried to cheer me up, but I could see the disappointment written on everyone’s faces, so I pretended to go to bed while they held whispered discussions into the wee hours of the morning. And now it was dawn, time to get this show on the road.

  Mom’s eyes took in the organized chaos of my room and crinkled when they landed on me. She crossed the floor in two steps—avoiding yesterday’s untouched dinner in the process—and sat down on the mattress. “It’s only for a month,” she said, not even playacting that she didn’t know what was wrong.

  “I know.”

  “It’ll be good for you to get away.”

  “I know.”

  She rubbed my head, then pulled me into a hug. “The grief counselor said it would be good to get a change of scenery. Some fresh air, work around the farm. Who knows, maybe you’ll find out you were meant to work the land.”

  I shrugged. The only thing I was sure of was that I wasn’t meant to be a boxer, despite what Dad and Granddad thought.

  I pulled free of Mom’s hug, stood, grabbed my duffel bag, and headed out to start my month of exile.

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?” Mom asked.

  I turned and she held Eddie’s journal out to me. Her hand and wrist were bathed in the emerald-green glow that was coming from the cover. But, like everyone else I’d shown the journal to, she didn’t notice any strange light.

  Mom mistook my confused frown for apprehension as she slipped the book into my bag. “He wanted you
to have it, Tristan. I know it’s tough, but…try to read it when you can, okay?”

  I didn’t trust myself to speak, so I nodded and headed to the front door.

  The decision to ship me to Granddad and Nana Strong’s farm down in Alabama had been made without my input. Typical. My parents had talked about it a few times before, but after Eddie’s death, and my third school fight in the final two weeks before summer break, well, I guess the time was right.

  At least I’d held my own in those school fights. Unlike in the ring last night.

  It was just my luck that my grandfather had been there to witness my humiliation.

  “You outweighed that other kid by seven pounds!” Granddad had said after the match, in his growling rasp of a voice. “Set the family name back by a decade.”

  That’s me—Tristan Disappointment.

  Son of Alvin “Wreckin’ Ball” Strong, the best middleweight boxer to come out of Chicago in nearly twenty years. I had Dad’s height and Granddad’s chin, and boxing was supposed to run in my veins. I’d worn Granddad’s old trunks, and Dad had worked my corner. The Strong legacy was expected to take another leap forward during my first match.

  Instead, it got knocked flat on its butt. Twice.

  “You’ll get him next time” was all Dad said, but I could tell he was let down.

  And that hurt almost as much as getting punched.

  An early summer heat wave greeted me with a blast of humidity as I left the apartment building with my backpack over my shoulder and my duffel bag in hand. Thick gray clouds huddled in the distance, and I added that to the list of totally not ominous things. Glowing journal? Yep. Storm on the horizon? You betcha.

  Dad and Granddad stood at the curb while Nana (no one ever called her Grandma, not if you wanted to eat) knitted in the car. Dad towered over his father, but you could see the family resemblance. Deep brown skin like mine, a wide jaw, and a proud stance. I got my hair from Mom’s side of the family, thankfully, because both Strong men had identical bald spots peeking through their short afros.

  “Get him in the fields, put him to work,” Granddad was saying. “That’ll put some fire in his belly.”

  Dad shrugged and said nothing. To be fair, no one did much talking when Granddad was around. That old man could yak a mile a minute.

  Nana saw me coming down the stairs, dropped her knitting, and rushed out of the car. “There he is! How you doin’ today, baby? Are you sore from last night?”

  She gave me a hug that muffled any answer, then shooed Granddad to the side. “Get the boy’s bag, Walter. Alvin,” she said, addressing my father, “we’ve got to hit the road before that thunderstorm hits.”

  Granddad looked me up and down. “Is that all you kids ever wear?”

  I glanced down. Black Chuck Taylors with gray untied laces. Loose khaki cargo shorts, and an even looser gray hoodie. That hoodie went with me everywhere—it had a picture of a flexed bicep on the back in faded black ink. Call me sentimental, but it’s what I always wore when Eddie and I were hanging out. He called it the Tristan Strong uniform of choice, perfect for all occasions.

  So yeah, I wear it a lot.

  Nana shushed him and pulled me into another hug. “Don’t listen to him, Tristan. I can’t wait to have you back with us on the farm. You were so little last time, but them chickens you used to chase still haven’t forgotten you! I packed a lunch and even rustled up a new story or two for the ride….”

  And so, just like that, with a clap on the shoulder from Dad and a hug from Mom, I was someone else’s problem for a month. Good-bye, Chicago, and all your glorious cable TV, internet, and cell phone service. I hardly knew ye.

  One thing became very clear during the twelve-hour car ride to Alabama—I was never going to do this again.

  Never ever.

  Sitting in an enclosed space with Granddad was like wiping your tears with sandpaper. Painful—excruciating, even—and you wondered why you ever thought it was a good idea.

  Oh, think I’m playing?

  Ten minutes into the trip: “When I was your age, I had a full-time job and I’d already fought in two title fights.”

  Three hours in: “Oh, you’re hungry again? Did you bring some stopping-for-snacks money?”

  Six hours in: “Man, I shouldn’t have ate those leftover beans for breakfast.”

  Eight hours in: “Can’t believe I drove all this way to see a Strong boy fight so soft. That’s your grandmother’s side of the family. Ain’t no Strong ever look like that in the ring. Why, I remember…”

  Anyway, you get it.

  By the time we crossed the Alabama state line, I was ready to claw my way into the trunk. I don’t know how Nana could just sit there and hum and knit for most of a day, but that’s what she did. The Cadillac rumbled down a two-lane highway, kicking up trails of dust and exhaust, a dented rocket ship blasting through time in reverse from the future to a land that Wi-Fi forgot.

  I’d put my earbuds in somewhere back in Kentucky, but the battery on my phone had long since run out. I just kept them in so no one would bother me. Nana kept knitting in the passenger seat, and Granddad tapped a finger on the steering wheel, humming along to a song only he could hear. Things seemed more or less calm, except for one thing:

  Eddie’s journal sat on the seat next to me.

  Now, I could’ve sworn I’d stuffed the book under the clothes in my duffel bag. Which Grandad had put in the trunk. And yet here it was, waiting on me to do something I’d put off since the funeral. The late afternoon sun, occasionally peeking out from behind the storm clouds, made the journal look normal, ordinary. But every so often I’d shade the cover with my hands and peek at it while holding my breath. Yep, still glowing.

  Why not open it, you might ask, and see what’s inside?

  Well, believe me, it wasn’t that simple. Before Eddie’s death, the cover of his brown leather journal had always been blank. Now a weird symbol appeared to be stitched into it, like a sun with rays that stretched out to infinity, or a flower with long petals. The same symbol was embossed on a carved wooden charm that dangled from a cord attached to the journal’s spine. I’d seen the tassel before—Eddie had used it to mark his spot, or to flick me in the back of the head—but the charm was new.

  And, even more weirdly, the trinket pulsed with green light, too. I’d been staring at that book every day for minutes on end, but the glow always stopped me from opening it.

  I mean, I knew what was in there anyway. The stories Eddie had jotted down in his goofy, blocky handwriting, from his own silly creations to the fables Nana used to tell us when we were younger, when she’d come up to visit. John Henry, Anansi the Spider, Brer Rabbit’s adventures—I’d read them all. Our end-of-semester English project was supposed to be a giant collection of stories from our childhood. Eddie was doing the writing, and I was going to give the oral presentation. Then the accident happened. The counselor Mom took me to every Wednesday had said I should try to finish the writing part, even though school was now over for the year, as a part of healing and other stuff.

  (Before you say something slick you might regret, Mr. Richardson is pretty cool for a counselor, you get me? We play Madden while we talk, which means I can focus on running up the score on his raggedy Eagles squad and not on being embarrassed about answering questions. It helps…some. If it gets too tough, he knows when to back off, too. So you can keep your Sensitive and Man up comments to yourself. Chumps.)

  To avoid thinking about the haunted journal, I watched the weather outside the car window. The clouds had never let up, even once we were in the Deep South. They just switched from hurling lightning bolts at us to hurling fat drops of rain that splattered across the windshield like bugs. Everything everywhere was miserable, and that pretty much summed up my life at the moment.

  I took off the earbuds and sighed. Nana heard and turned around in her seat to look at me.

  “You hungry, sweetie?” she asked.

  “No, not really.”


  “No, ma’am.” Granddad’s deep voice rolled back from the driver’s seat. “You answer ‘No, ma’am’ to your grandmother, understand?”

  “Yeah.”

  Granddad looked at me in the rearview mirror.

  “I mean, yes, sir.”

  He held my eyes a moment longer, then went back to looking at the road.

  “Well,” Nana continued, turning around and picking up her knitting, “despite what your granddad said earlier”—she gave him a glare—“let me know when you are. Your mama told me you ain’t been eating much, and we’re gonna fix that. And don’t you have some writing to do? That’s what your counselor wants you to focus on.”

  “Boy don’t need no counselor,” Granddad rumbled. “He needs to work. Ain’t no time for moping when horses need feeding and fences need mending.”

  “Walter!” Nana scolded. “He needs to—”

  “I know what he needs—”

  I shook my head and stopped paying attention. After spending a day in the car with them, I’d realized that this was what they did. They argued, they laughed, they sang, they argued again, and they knitted. Well, Nana knitted. But they were two sides of the same old coin.

  With Granddad, everything was about work. Work, work, work.

  Bored? Here’s some work.

  Finished working? Here’s more work.

  Need someone to talk to? Obviously, that meant you didn’t work hard enough, so you know what? Have a little bit more work.

  Nana, on the other hand, sang and hummed when she wasn’t talking, which almost never happened, because she always had a new story to share. “Do you know why the owl can’t sleep?” she’d say, and off the story would go, and you’d sit there and listen, just being polite at first, but by the end, you’d be on the edge of your seat.

  I smiled. Eddie had loved listening to my grandmother. When she’d come to visit earlier this year, he’d practically followed her around, his journal in hand.