My Year in the Middle

by Lila Quintero Weaver

  Mamá and Mrs. Sampredo are right behind him. “Corre, hija, corre!” Mamá hollers in a loud and husky voice that surprises the ever-living stuffing out of me.

  Tina swivels her head, first at Mamá, then at me, glowering like she’s about to swat a mosquito. If she’s like her cousin Ricky, Spanish probably makes her want to barf.

  Then — oh, Lord! — Tina steps into the pothole. Splash, splash, kersplaaaat! Mud travels out at bullet speed in huge drops that pelt me and everybody nearby. It’s hard to say what takes her down, the edge of the pothole or its slimy bottom. She’s on her knees. As I zoom past her, I hear something that sounds just like Ringo when his tail gets caught in the door. It’s Tina yowling.

  Somewhere nearby, Ricky is having a conniption. “Cheater! Stop that cheater!”

  For a few seconds, I’m bumfuzzled. Do I keep going or turn back? But Mrs. Underwood’s booming voice breaks through: “Go, Olivera, go, go, go, go!”

  And then Belinda is running in the grass alongside me. “Go, Peewee! Go, Peewee!” So I do. I take that first bend, with my lungs on fire and my calf muscles threatening a charley horse. All the while, a voice I know speaks quietly in my ear: Stay calm, stay smooth.

  Thank you, Madeline Manning. Thank you so, so much.

  At the flagpole, I zip by before Marina can utter a peep. Weird. It’s lots quieter on this side of the school, and I still can’t hear the crunch of Tina’s shoes. After a bit, I figure it might be okay to steal a backward glance because she’s probably gaining on me fast. Where is she? I take a second peek. Nope, I can’t see hide or hair of that girl.

  Coming around the next bend, it’s like the whole school is watching. Boys in their track clothes, girls in their cute getups, teachers in their Bermuda shorts — they’re all crowded alongside the driveway. A handful yell, Lu, Lu! Lu — Lu — Lu! My school-bus buddy Denise is one of them.

  Soon Mrs. Underwood comes into view. Just because I couldn’t see Tina on the far side of the driveway doesn’t mean she’s not hard on my tail, so I keep booking it down the final stretch, burning up everything I’ve got left. As soon as I cross the chalk line, Belinda’s wrapping me in the beariest bear hug that a skinny girl has ever given anybody. “You won! You won!” she screams in my ear.

  Oh, Lord, I’m dying. My legs are giving out. My chest burns something fierce. I flop down on the grass. “Where’s”— huff, huff —“Tina?” I gasp.

  “She quit!” Belinda shouts.

  “After she fell?”

  “Yes!”

  “Third in the state and she gave up that easy?”

  Here come my family and friends. They swarm all over me, pull me to my feet, slapping my back, mussing my hair, and hollering, “You won!” I’m dizzy with happiness.

  Wearing a big grin, Papá holds up his watch. “Lu, you broke your own record today!”

  Then Angie leads us in our team cheer: “I say lightning, you say thunder. We’re the girls that make ’em wonder!” We all go hip-hip-hooray and jump into the sky.

  Tina Briggs is standing off to the side, and she’s a sight. She’s got flecks of mud all over her legs, and her eyes are down to slits from so much crying. I feel kind of bad. She is faster than I am. She is. It’s just that she didn’t see the pothole — didn’t even know to look for it. I’d like to give her a handshake or something, but she and her mom roar off for home before I can get near.

  “She should’ve won,” I tell Mrs. Underwood and everybody else standing around.

  “You’re right,” Papá says. “But wait till you get some experience under your belt.”

  “Sure shootin’,” Mrs. Underwood says. “At track camp you’ll learn what you’re supposed to do. Next year, you’ll be training and going to meets.” She grins at Mamá with all the gold in her molars shining. “Holy Toledo, that little girl of yours can run like the blue blazes!”

  “I know,” Mamá says. “I know.”

  Papá’s eyes twinkle. “We have something for the two of you.” Belinda and I tag along behind him and Mamá to the car, where he opens the glove box and hands each of us a velvet jewelry bag with a silky draw cord.

  We grin at each other. “One, two, three — open sesame!” Inside, we each find a golden medal strung on a blue ribbon, just the right length to dangle over our hearts.

  Belinda stammers. “For me?”

  “Yes, for you!” Mamá says.

  We slip the ribbons over our heads. “The medals aren’t real gold,” Papá tells us.

  “Like we care about that!” I hug both of my parents so hard I almost knock them down.

  When I get a closer look, I see that our names are engraved on the medals, and so is today’s date: June 4, 1970. I can tell that Papá did the engraving. Mamá threaded the ribbon through the loops at the top of each golden disk, securing them with tiny, perfect stitches. “You can keep that medal your whole life,” Papá says. “But pretty soon, you’ll have lots of others.”

  Belinda’s parents had to go home after her race, Papá is in a hurry to get back to the store, and Mamá needs to tend to the bridesmaids’ dresses. Papá tosses our car keys to Marina. “We’re riding with Mrs. Sampredo. Can you get Sam and Belinda home?”

  We pile into the car. From the front seat, Marina says, “So, Lu, who’s that gold medalist you like so much?”

  “Madeline Manning.”

  “Sometime I want you to explain why she’s so special to you.”

  Belinda digs an elbow in my side and giggles. “She’s Lu’s coach.”

  Marina doesn’t have the foggiest idea what Belinda is giggling about. “You girls are going to get a taste of real track coaching pretty soon.”

  Real track coaching. I’m ready. I’m chomping-at-the-bit ready. Monday before daybreak, we’ll board a bus for our first track camp. Between now and then, I’ve got to label everything. Lu Olivera on my bedsheets. Lu Olivera on my bedroll. Lu Olivera on my towels, T-shirts, socks, and everything I take with me.

  We join a stream of cars and buses leaving the school. It’s weird not being on Bus 18, inching around the curves of the driveway and bumping over the pothole. Man oh man, I love that pothole now. It saved my run against Tina, and I sort of hope the school never fills it in.

  About the time we pull out into the street, something happens. Sam’s free hand slides next to mine and our pinkies touch. Did he do it on purpose? I cut my eyes over and can’t tell because he’s looking off in another direction. Belinda’s too busy smiling at her medal to be of any help, and then — holy smoke! — Sam’s whole hand edges over, and his fingers curl around mine. Bumblebees, weak in the knees! Belinda may not notice our hands, but I bet she hears my heart going ninety to nothing. I don’t want Marina to notice, so I clamp my smile shut and look dead ahead at the dashboard. There’s not much I can do about my face turning bright pink, though.

  Sam says, “After track camp, can y’all go bowling?”

  Somehow, I get my mouth to work. “You’ll have to teach me because I don’t know how.”

  When Belinda finally gets a quick look at our hands, what does she do? Dies laughing. Normally, this would get my goat, but with my hand inside of Sam’s, it’s kind of hard to get worked up about anything.

  “Dang it!” Sam says. “My collarbone. I can’t bowl — not for six weeks. What else can we do for fun over the summer?”

  “How about meeting at the playground?” Belinda says. “You could swing, one-armed.”

  “Yeah. And when is one of those international things y’all go to?” he asks me.

  “Not till October.”

  “Shoot, that’s a long time from now.”

  Belinda says, “Let’s have a party at my house and invite all our friends!” This gets us chattering like chipmunks. We have plenty of ideas about who to invite and how to decorate.

  “I saw a strobe light once, and it was pretty cool,” I tell them.

  “Neat-o!” Belinda says. “And Spider has a humongous stack of records he could bring.”
Sam wants to know what kind of records, and Belinda rattles off a dozen names.

  Now I chime in. “Hey, Sam, remember when you asked me what kind of music I like? I have a new favorite band now — Sly and the Family Stone — but the song I’m really crazy about is by Van Morrison. I’ve been meaning to tell you that.”

  “Is it ‘Brown Eyed Girl’?” he says. “I love that song.”

  “You do?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “How come?”

  He blinks about a million blinks, then drops his voice to a whisper. “Because you’ve got brown eyes.” He smiles, but with that busted-up lip, it’s a crooked, halfway-sad-looking smile.

  “I didn’t think you noticed my eyes,” I whisper back.

  “Sure, I did — a long time ago.”

  Boy oh boy, the way thunderbolts are going off in my head, I have to sit back and get ahold of myself. And guess what? It just now hits me that behind his glasses, his eyes look as tiny as BBs, like before he got contact lenses, like before I started catching on that he’s a real boy, with realness all through him. He may be back to old-fogy glasses for a while, but ask me if I care. And anyway, I don’t look so hot myself right now. I’m sweaty and stinky and splattered with mud, and my hair must look a fright. Sam doesn’t seem to mind any of that.

  He noticed my brown eyes. Golly Moses, he really noticed them.

  Yeah, this is a pretty good day.

  Although Red Grove, Alabama, is imaginary, and so are the characters who populate it, certain people in this story existed in real life.

  George Wallace served his first term as governor of Alabama from 1963 to 1967. He was known for his strong segregationist policies, in particular his attempts to block black students and white students from attending school together. Wallace’s wife was governor after him, with Albert Brewer serving as her lieutenant governor. When she died in office, Brewer took over as governor of Alabama.

  In 1970, Albert Brewer and George Wallace went head-to-head against each other in the primary election for their party’s nomination. Wallace ran a particularly nasty campaign, relying on racist rhetoric and personal attacks to defeat Brewer. To accurately convey the cultural milieu of this election, I dug through old newspaper articles and consulted the work of historians. My research helped me craft a fictional political rally that stayed true to the tone and message of stump speeches Wallace delivered during this campaign.

  While a cakewalk has become a common carnival game, cakewalks have a complicated and troubling history. They originated on antebellum plantations and were later incorporated into vaudeville and minstrel shows, often performed by white actors in blackface.

  Madeline Manning may have served as Lu’s imaginary running coach, but she was also a true American sports hero. She won many national titles and competed in three Olympic Games, including the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City where she won a gold medal in the women’s eight-hundred-meter race.

  The war in Vietnam was in full swing during Lu’s childhood, and like Marina, many college students objected to the U.S. involvement in the conflict. There were numerous antiwar protests, including one that resulted in the tragic shooting of student protestors at Kent State University in Ohio.

  Researching historical details is an important part of an author’s job, and luckily for me, I love history. But some aspects of this story didn’t require much research. I lived them.

  I remember televisions with antennae and telephones with rotary dials.

  Just as Lu did, I spent time flipping through magazines for young girls, which, like the fictional Groovy Gal, overwhelmingly featured white models.

  Pop radio filled the background of my youth, and I can still hum along with many of the hits from those years. The song titles and recording artists mentioned in this story — including Van Morrison, James Brown, and Sly and the Family Stone — are real.

  Finally, like Lu, I immigrated from Argentina to the United States at a young age and grew up in a small town in central Alabama that closely resembles Red Grove. I vividly recall the academic year of 1969–1970 as the moment when public schools in my district desegregated. These recollections remain sharp in my mind and informed Lu’s story, both in the events portrayed and in the emotions the characters experience.

  So many good people have poured heart and soul into helping this story become a reality. I want to publicly recognize a notable few with my thanks:

  To my agent, Adriana Dominguez, who pumped me with sage advice and steady encouragement, and who traveled the journey from rough draft to finished novel by my side.

  To Eileen Robinson, whose expert eye and nurturing manner infused me with fresh energy at a timely moment.

  To Andrea Tompa, who answers to my idea of a dream editor, and whose kind and thoughtful feedback have proved invaluable.

  To Kharissia Pettus, for her warm and wise input on vital topics.

  To Maryellen Hanley, in whose able hands I landed and found spot-on art direction.

  To Tanya McKinnon, for sharpening my vision and urging me to reach higher.

  To Matt Roeser, who’s responsible for numerous iconic Candlewick covers and who struck gold again in the design for My Year in the Middle.

  To my husband, Paul Weaver, who offered encyclopedic knowledge on running and the sport of track and field, and who is also my most ardent cheerleader in writing and in life.

  To friends, family members, and colleagues who have believed in me, including my children: Jude, Ben, and Caitlin. Your support continues to make all the difference.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2018 by Lila Quintero Weaver

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping, and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.

  First electronic edition 2018

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number pending

  Candlewick Press

  99 Dover Street

  Somerville, Massachusetts 02144

  visit us at www.candlewick.com