“Yeah,” I kinda squeaked. “I mean, of course it’s gonna be weird having a little kid around all of a sudden, but . . . yeah. I think I’m happy.” Patty cocked her head. “I’m happy.” I did a closed-mouth smile that was supposed to say, stop asking me questions, but judging by the way Ghost looked at me all squinty-eyed, I knew he knew it was something else. Luckily, before he could say something else, Sunny barged in.
“Let’s toast!”
“Toast?” You never know with Sunny. He might’ve pulled out four pieces of bread he was saving for a special occasion. Or in his head, he might be a grown-up and be really talking about a toast with the glass-clinking and all that. But then he reached down and dug his hands in the dirt and grass, snatched a clump.
“Do it,” he said in a un-Sunny-like, way-too-serious tone. So we all did it. Just held fists full of dirt and grass. “Now, together.” Sunny held his fist out, and Patty put hers to his, then Ghost put his to theirs, and I completed the cheesy fist bump—a four-fist clover—by adding mine to the mix. “Lu, we love you, and . . . ,” Sunny started, but got a little choked up. Now that was very Sunny. “And we wanna congratulate you on your baby human sibling.” Then he yelled out, “Boomticky tacky cheers!” and opened his hand and let the dirt and grass fall back to the ground. And so we all opened our hands and did the same. And I won’t lie, it was actually kind of cool. Until . . .
“Newbies! What y’all doing? It’s the last week of practice and now y’all decide to play in the dirt? How about we play on the track? What y’all think about that?” Coach barked, right on time, as usual. Right on time, means right on the wrong time, which is no time for fun time.
I slapped my hands together, brushing dust from my palms, and headed over to the track, where the rest of the team was. Mikey and Brit-Brat and Deja and Krystal and Freddy and J.J. and Curron and Lynn, and Melissa, and . . . Chris. Chris? What was he doing here?
Chris Myers. He was a long-leg. Ran the eight hundred. And good at it too. He started off on the team but quit after the first meet. Just all of a sudden, gone. But now he was back, which was weird because it was the end of the season.
“Thanks for joining us, assistant captain.” Yep, Aaron was there too. Being a jerk. Of course. He started bumping his gums as soon as I set foot on the track. Mad that I worked my way up to co-captain as a newbie. Scared I was going to outshine him, which wouldn’t have been hard to do. Aaron was fast but not fast enough. I, on the other hand, was the fastest runner on the whole team besides Ghost, and we were basically the same. Traded first place every meet. Plus, I was definitely the flyest.
“Co-captain,” I corrected him. “Ain’t nobody your assistant.” I eyed Aaron from heel to head.
“Yeah, whatever,” Aaron replied under his breath. “Ain’t nobody my assistant . . . but you.”
“Okay, okay,” Coach started in, stopping me from saying anything else. “Let’s talk. First thing first. Let’s welcome Chris back to the squad. Though he normally runs the eight hundred, he’s agreed to step up and run Sunny’s mile, since Sunny obviously won’t be.” Lynn sucked her teeth so loud that it sounded like a single clap. Coach eyeballed her but let it slide. “We need him. We need every single one of you at your best. This is the last week of the season. The last. And I know y’all want me to tell you all the good things you’ve done. I know you want me to praise you, and, honestly, y’all deserve some praise. But I don’t have time for that. We don’t have time for it. We’re four practices away from this year’s championship meet. And you know what I always say—”
We all knew where this was going, so we joined in and finished it for him.
“The best never rest.” There was just enough punch on it for Coach to not be mad, but we definitely dragged it out in that this-is-so-annoying way. All of us. Even Chris. Even Aaron.
“Exactly. The best . . . never . . . rest. And we are the best. And all that means is more work. We have to see it all the way through to the end. Got me?”
Everybody nodded, and a few people—mainly Aaron—chirped like a suck-uppy bird, “Got you, Coach.”
“Good.” Coach nodded. “At least the weather’s on our side. Not too hot. Nice breeze out here. So let’s stretch it out. After you knock out your warm-ups, Lu, you come talk to me.”
After the stretches and the lazy laps—Aaron always led the laps, and because of that they were always way too slow—I went through to the fence where Coach and Whit were going over the game plan for the last week of the season. Whit blew her whistle and got everybody else ready to do what we always did on Mondays—fart licks. Basically, you just run kinda fast for like two or three minutes, then run real fast for one. Over and over and over again. Brutal.
“How’s the ankle?” Coach asked, staring down at it. He asked because after our last track meet, I had a slight limp. See, I usually run the hundred meter and the two hundred meter, and even though I don’t run the four hundred meter, if I did, I’d smoke it. It’d be Aaron’s first second-place ribbon of the year. Because I’m a true sprinter. Everybody and their mama know how I get down. Been sprinting since, well . . . a long time. But for the last month I’ve been training for a new event. An extra one. The 110-meter hurdles. And I ain’t gon’ front, I . . . I just . . .
Here’s the thing. When you look at a hurdle, it don’t really seem like that big of a deal until you get right up on it. You gotta time it just right, and pump your heart big enough to get your leg up and over the bar. You can’t just hop it like you hop over everything else, like a fire hydrant or a park bench. You gotta literally gallop over it like some kind of horse. But I ain’t no horse. I’m a human. A not-so-tall human.
At the last meet—my first time finally running hurdles—when I came up on that first one, even though I’d been practicing, I just got nervous and second-guessed it and my timing got thrown off and my heart got small. So even though I got over it, I clipped the second hurdle and went down. Like a clown. Hard. And my ankle did something funny. Something not funny. Something hurting. It ain’t broke or nothing like that. Just bruised. And sore. But not as sore as the part of me that likes to win and hates to be played out in front of a buncha people. The funny, not-so-funny thing was, ain’t nobody laugh. Nobody. Not even Aaron’s corny, butt-kissing mouth. Everybody just oooooh’d, which is almost worse than haaaaaaa. Because oooooh is like pity. So, it sucked.
“It’s fine,” I said. And I know when people say stuff like, Really Coach, I’m fine. I swear, they don’t be fine. But I was.
“Okay. Next question: Do you want to work on hurdles today or not? If you don’t, that means you won’t run it Saturday.” I opened my mouth to say something, but Coach put his hand to my chest, cut me off. “And that’s okay. We can focus on it next season. Plus, if everybody wins their races, including Chris, and Sunny places at least second in discus, we’ll take the championship.” Coach shrugged as if he didn’t just ask me the trickiest trick question of all time. He just heard us all say the best never rest a few minutes before, and now he was basically asking me if I wanted to quit. And I knew he didn’t mean quit running, or even quit hurdling, he just meant maybe taking a pause. But to me, especially when it comes to this sport, pausing and quitting is the same thing.
“No. I wanna work on it. I can do it,” I replied.
Coach nodded, but he looked at me like he ain’t believe me. He do that all the time, with all of us. It usually comes right before he spits some extra spaced-out, what-is-Coach-talkin’-’bout talk at us. But this time, he just said, “Okay. Let’s get to it.”
And Fart Lick Monday became Make It Over Monday. Or more like, Get Over Not Getting Over It Monday, for me.
3
A NEW NAME FOR RIDING IN A CAB: Trapped in a Rolling Room with Roommates Who Think They Know Everything in the Whole World
Can’t nothing really prepare you for the moment your coach, a man who don’t even really have eyebrows on his face, gets down on all fours in the middle of the track and yell
s for you to come jump over him. Nothing. But that’s what was happening. And . . . yeah.
“Let’s see it,” Coach called out.
“Um. See . . . what?” I was standing at the starting line. At first I thought Coach was trying to be funny. Cracking a joke, to see how far I’d go with it.
“Your hurdle.” Coach flung his hand out like he was waving me toward him. His back had a hump in it, arched and uncomfortable-looking. “Come hurdle me.” Honestly, this was one of the strangest things I’ve ever heard Coach say, and he says a lot of strange things. He was always doing stuff like this, but this was on another level. It just seemed . . . wrong.
“Just . . . jump?”
He nodded.
“Over you?”
He nodded again. Then backtracked and said, “Well, no. Don’t jump, Lu.” Phew, thank goodness. Then Coach added, “Hurdle me. Low speed. Now let’s go. On my whistle.”
Wha?
I made sure my chains were tucked into my fitted jersey to keep them from slapping me in the face, then got in position. Coach put the whistle in his mouth.
Badeep!
I took off, running only a little faster than a jog, and as I approached Coach I just . . . jumped—like, hopped—over him, before hitting the brakes. The whole thing was stupid. It was like a bunny hop. A leapfrog.
“I told you not to jump,” Coach reminded me, and I was immediately happy everybody else was busy “fart licking,” and that my mother wasn’t still doing the whole sit-in-the-stands-and-watch-her-boy-practice-every-day thing, like at the beginning of the season.
“I know, but you so low to the ground it just don’t make sense to—”
“It doesn’t matter that I’m a smaller hurdle. We approach it the same. Small, big, whatever. So, this time I want you to hurdle me. Her—dull—me. Lead with the knee.” Coach, still on the ground, put the whistle back in his mouth, then took it out just to add, “Now get on your mark.” Whistle back between teeth.
Badeep!
I took off again, this time a little faster, hurdling Coach like he asked—knee first—jumping way, way over him.
“Better! But you’re running like you’re running a regular dash. So you’re keeping your body low for too long. But that’s not what this is. Gotta get up quicker.” Coach sat up, rested on his knees, and started pumping his arms to demonstrate what I was supposed to look like, even though if I looked like he looked, then I’d look like ridiculous. Like a turtle trying to speed up. “Got me? Let’s go.”
Badeep!
“Better. Again.”
Badeep!
“Don’t get lazy. Again.”
I felt so silly, but I kept doing it. Kept running, faster and faster toward Coach, leaping over him—way over him, over and over again. Until, finally, he stood up.
“How’s the ankle?” he asked for the second time.
“It’s . . . cool.” I tried to catch my breath.
“You sure?”
“Yeah, yeah . . . I’m good.”
And I guess Coach took that as, I’m ready for something tougher. A real hurdle. Because he went and grabbed one that was off to the side of the track and dragged it over into the fourth lane, where he had just been acting like a human hurdle. “Back on the line.”
Coach stood to the side, blew the whistle, and I started sprinting down the track again. And right when I got to the hurdle . . . I pulled up. I just couldn’t jump it. I felt like maybe my rhythm was off or something. Like I was going to clip it like I did at the meet.
“What happened?” Coach asked.
“Nothing,” I answered. “Let’s do it again.”
I went back to the starting line, and this time ain’t even wait for the whistle. Just took off. Lead with the knee. Hurdle it. But as soon as I got a few steps away, one second from the metal legs and wooden bar, it got taller. At least in my mind it did. So I dipped off to the side and went around it.
I don’t know how to explain this, but I was so . . . I just felt . . . stupid. I should’ve been able to do this. I’d been training to do it for almost a month, and was doing pretty good jumping them until the last meet, my first time really running the actual race. And then the crash. I should’ve been able to jump this thing because . . . I could. I can do anything. At least on the track. Shoot, I would even run the mile if Coach ain’t bring Chris back. I don’t know how good I would’ve done, but I think I could’ve at least done okay. After all, I’m the man. The kid. The guy. Lucky. Lookie. Lucky-Nobody-on-the-Team-Was-Looking, Lu.
I started back down the track when Coach called out to me.
“That’s enough for today.” That’s what he said, but what I heard was, You can’t do it. Felt like I got punched in the back.
“No, no. Coach, just let me try one more—”
“Fall in with Ghost and give me some fartleks for the rest of practice. We’ll try something else tomorrow.”
I ain’t argue. I wanted to, but nah.
After practice me and Ghost helped Coach put cones and discuses and whatever other track things he’d pulled from his cab’s treasure trunk back in it. Most of the team had already left except Krystal and Brit-Brat, who were putting in some extra drills with Whit, who was timing them. Patty and Sunny had already bounced.
“Lu, I’m just gon’ let you know right now, don’t be trying to ride in my limo all the time. I know it’s a piece of junk, but it’s my piece of junk,” Ghost joked, sliding into the backseat. I slid in beside him, slammed the door.
“Oh, really?” Coach said from up front, yanking his seat belt across his chest. “If I’m your chauffeur, you owe me some cash, Castle.” He dragged Ghost’s name and rubbed the tips of his thumb and index finger together. “A lot of it.”
“Man, what you askin’ me for? Lu got all the money. You see how he be out here flashing on us. The gold chain god. Glass in his ears—”
“These diamonds, boy.” I had to let him know.
“Exactly. You heard him, Coach. Diamonds.” Ghost slapped me on the arm. “Pay the man!”
“Yeah, whatever.”
As we pulled out of the parking lot and started toward Glass Manor—we were dropping Ghost off first, since he didn’t live that far from the park—Ghost started running through ideas for names for my future little brother or sister.
“I’m thinking Ghost, if it’s a boy. And if it’s a girl . . . Ghost,” he suggested.
“No.”
“Why not? Ghost is such a good name for a boy or girl. Like Alex. Or Aaron.”
“Aaron?” Coach said. He was on the phone talking to his wife, Mrs. Margo. They were talking about their baby son, Tyrone, and how the weather was irritating him. Allergies. Ghost was irritating me—allergies—and now Coach was chiming in.
“Yeah, you never knew a girl named Aaron?”
“Hold on, honey,” he said into the ridiculous can-I-take-your-order headset he was wearing. Then shot back at Ghost, “No. I’ve met young ladies named Erin, though.”
“That’s what I said, Aaron.”
“Right, and I said Erin. Not Aaron. Erin.”
“What the? Coach . . . you saying the same thing. Aaron.”
“No—”
“Don’t matter, y’all. Aaron or . . . whatever different version of that name Coach keep saying, definitely ain’t happening.” I shut that down.
“Okay, what about Castle?”
“What about shut up?”
“Hmmm.” Ghost did a so-so hand wag. “I just think Li’l Shut Up would have a tough life.” He shook his head. Coach laughed and whispered something—I know, about us—to his wife.
Driving through Glass Manor wasn’t much different from driving through Barnaby Terrace, except folks around Glass Manor lived in buildings, and we lived in connected houses. Row homes. We lived side by side. They lived up and down. Either way, we all sharing walls. Plus the vibe is the same. People on the block talking, kids tossing a football back and forth across the street, heaving it at just the right h
eight. High enough to get it over oncoming cars, but low enough to not clip the telephone wires. Music from somebody inside. Music from everybody outside.
When we pulled up to Ghost’s apartment, he opened the car door, and as soon as he got a leg out, Coach started up.
“Hold up. Wait one second,” he said, flipping his hand behind him, palm up. “Ten smackers, please.”
Ghost smacked Coach’s hand and said, “How ’bout a five,” then jumped out of the car and slammed the door. Coach rolled the window down and yelled, “I quit! Better lace them fancy silver sneakers up and get ready to walk home from now on!” Ghost ignored him. Then Coach looked at me through the rearview. “Wanna get up front?”
“Nah, I’m good back here,” I said, leaning against the door.
“Get up front.” Coach’s voice thickened. So I got up front.
As we pulled away from Glass Manor, away from Ghost’s apartment and the noise of up-and-down life, Coach asked, “So, tell me, you scared to jump hurdles now?”
“Scared to jump ’em?” I repeated, looking at the side of Coach’s face. Ghost always said he looked a little like a turtle, and he was right. But a mad turtle. Almost like a Ninja Turtle. Coach scratched his chest, his T-shirt tugging down, showing the dark tattoo around his neck. “Um . . . not really,” I said. “But I am scared of not jumping ’em and breaking my whole body up. You saw what happened on Saturday. I ain’t built for that kind of embarrassment, Coach. Plus I’m way too pretty for bruises.” I thought that was funny—a joke—but Coach didn’t laugh or crack a smile or nothing. Just stopped the car. We hadn’t even made it all the way off Ghost’s block yet. He just whipped the cab over next to a parked truck and slapped his blinkers on.
“I’m just jokin’. Dang.” I tried to explain, but Coach tightened his face, bit down on his bottom lip like a lemon eater.
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