Lu

by Jason Reynolds

  The Lu.

  Lucky Lu.

  Lookie Lu.

  Lu the Lightning Bolt.

  Then I grabbed one chain—just one—and put it around my neck. I mean, they were my father’s. And I’m his son. Gold. Shining. Cool.

  In the car, my mother—I repeat—my mother played my music—I repeat—my music. And my dad, who was driving my mom’s car, turned the radio up, like he always did. Loud. We rolled the windows down. It was another breezy summer day, more weird weather, which, honestly, was nice for a championship meet, because people wouldn’t mind sitting outside in the heat for hours, but tough sometimes because it’s hard to run against the wind. If the wind was to your back, it would push you forward. But if it was to your front, it would slow you down. And don’t even get me started about what happens if it pushes Sunny’s discus, like Coach was saying. Mess around and take somebody out.

  It was still kind of early when we pulled up to the park. There were a few people there, but it wasn’t jumping yet. Just the early birds. The other runners like me, who needed a little extra time on the track to warm up.

  The only person from my team who was there already was Chris. I wasn’t surprised. If I was gone the whole season but then had to run a mile in the championship, I’d be nervous too. I’d be just as nervous as I already was, because we both had to kill it in order for our team to win.

  When I got to the track, Chris was folded in half, touching his toes, coming back up, then touching his toes again, and coming back up again.

  “Hey, man,” I spoke.

  “Wassup, Lu,” he replied.

  “Nervous too?” I asked, slapping his hand.

  “Super nervous.”

  We stretched a little. Not a whole team stretch, but just enough to wake the legs up. Then we decided that the one thing both of us could do to get in the zone was some high knees. I would need them to get over the hurdles, and Chris would need them on that tough final stretch as he was running the rings of Saturn. So we high-kneed around the track, starting slow, then speeding up after every hundred meters.

  By the time me and Chris finished the lap, people had started trickling in. Curron, Brit-Brat. Then Mikey, Freddie, Deja, Krystal, J.J., Melissa, Aaron. Then Ghost. With his mom, and his aunt, and his cousin. Oh, and Mr. Charles Ringwald was with them too. They all held signs. And Sunny, with his father, and his teacher with the wild hair and tattoos. And Patty, with a million people, including her mom, her uncle, her little sister, shiny-faced Cotton, Skunk, and even Stinky Butt. Her aunt wasn’t there, though.

  After a whole bunch of wassups, me, Sunny, Patty, and Ghost sat on the bench, going through the motions of changing shoes and talking trash. Patty was drawing a star on Sunny’s forearm, and Sunny was going on and on about Patty’s nails, which were the goldest gold I’d ever seen. Ghost was telling Patty that he still wanted to hear her freestyle, and Patty was telling Ghost that she’d do it, as soon as he made her tacos. Sunny said he thought freestyles were supposed to be free, and I just sat there staring at the track. Zoned.

  “Yo, you good?” Ghost asked, tapping me on the arm. He had just changed his shoes, swapping out his new bright whites for his silver bullets.

  “Yeah. I think so.” But I wasn’t. Almost, but not yet. “Yo, I need to say something to you.”

  “Wassup?”

  “My bad about what I said when we first met. About your shoes.”

  “What? Man, that was a long time ago. And it was a joke,” Ghost said, zipping his duffel bag. “You let Aaron get in your head.”

  “I know, but still. I just felt . . . like, who is this dude thinking he can just come and try to outshine me?” I glanced at him, then back to the track. “I don’t know, man. But it wasn’t cool. So I just needed to say that. Before we got old.” I put my fist out.

  “Old? First of all, I ain’t never getting old. So, yeah. And second of all, my albino homeboy, get ready to be mad again.” He bumped his fist with mine. “Because I’m winning that hundred-meter dash today.”

  We joked about that—because I was definitely taking first—while my mother bopped around, offering everyone orange slices. When Whit showed up, she talked to my dad for a bit, as everybody else changed shoes and hit the track, along with other teams that were pulling up left and right, the park going from rattle to rumble. Watched the stands fill with hyped-up family members wearing shirts to match whatever team they were rooting for.

  This was my tenth track meet as a Defender, and by now, it had become routine. We had our own kinda rhythm. Everyone knew what to expect from everybody else. What was what and who was where.

  And like I said, Whit was there. But Coach wasn’t. So something was offbeat.

  “Let’s focus, everybody. Stretch it out. You know what to do,” Whit said, in Coach’s style.

  “Where Coach?” Deja asked.

  “I’m about to call him now,” Whit said. “But you don’t need to worry about where Coach is. You’re here, so you stretch. Keep your mind on the meet.” She tapped the side of her head, then stepped away to make the call.

  “A’ight, Defenders, let’s get to it. Squats. And, down!” Aaron started, and I followed. I wasn’t in the mood to argue or try to do anything to mess with him. It was championship day, and on championship day, more than any other day of this season, we had to be together. We had to be a team. And since Aaron’s the captain—the first captain—I just listened. Squatted. Counted. “. . . four, five, six . . .” I glanced over at Whit. Watched her hang up. Start texting. Call again. “Lunge with the right. And . . . down! One, two . . .” She left a message. At least I thought she did. Had her back to us, so I couldn’t tell what she was saying. Hung up. “. . . eight, nine, ten. And to the left. Down!” Whit started walking back over to us. Stopped. Checked her phone. It was ringing. “Back to the right. And, down!” Her face. It changed. That look. One I had seen in all of us. In me. Something—“five, six”—was—“eight, nine”— wrong.

  “And back to the left!” Aaron called out. But I stood up. Didn’t lunge. He counted but I just stood there. “Lu! Down!” he commanded. But, no. “What’s wrong with you?” he asked. Patty glanced behind her. Caught Whit’s face. Stopped stretching too. A few seconds later no one was counting, and we all were standing straight.

  “What is it?” I asked Whit. She walked right in the middle of the circle.

  “Something’s happened.”

  “To Coach?” My mind just jumped there. Instinct.

  “No.” Whit patted down the air. “No, no, no. Coach is okay. But . . .” Whit looked up, then looked back at us. “His son.”

  “Tyrone?” I took a step forward.

  “He had an asthma attack. A bad one. Allergies. So Coach is at the hospital. He . . . doesn’t think he’s gonna make it.”

  “Tyrone ain’t gon’ make it?” Ghost’s voice cracked. Patty grasped Sunny’s arm.

  “I don’t know about Tyrone. But I’m saying Coach might not make it . . . here.”

  “To the meet?” I asked.

  Whit nodded. “We’re gonna have to win it without him.”

  I could almost feel the team deflate. It was like normally Coach was the air and we were the balloon, but now Coach was the needle that popped us. “Get back to your stretches. I’m gonna go check the paperwork and make sure we have everything in order. We’re gonna win this thing. The best never rest!”

  “The best never rest,” a few of us replied, but not all of us, and definitely not all rowdy, all pumped up like we should’ve been.

  As Aaron continued to call out the stretches, I did them, but I just didn’t feel it. Something about doing this without Coach . . . it didn’t seem right. It just didn’t. And even though I ain’t know all the details—couldn’t see Tyrone trying to breathe, or Coach trying to save him—I didn’t need to, to know something was in the way. Something was not right. So finally, I stood up again.

  “What now, Lu?” Aaron asked.

  “I ain’t doing this
.”

  “What?” Aaron popped up. Not just him. Him and a bunch of other people, including Curron and Mikey.

  “I’m not doing it without him,” I repeated. “And for real for real, I don’t know how y’all could.”

  “Dude, this is what Coach would want,” Curron said.

  “How you know?”

  “Because this is what he trained us for. You think all this was so that we don’t run?” Aaron followed.

  “Yeah, what you think ‘the best never rest’ means?” Mikey piled on.

  “I don’t care what it means. Right now, Coach is at the hospital with a baby that can’t breathe, and you want to be out here running?”

  “Yeah, but how you know this ain’t what he would want, Lu?” From Deja.

  “How you know he don’t need us, Deja?” I fired back.

  “He don’t need us. He a grown-up.” From Lynn.

  “That don’t mean nothing. My dad needed me yesterday. My mother, too.” My voice started chipping.

  “Yeah, and I take care of my mother,” Patty said. “And my aunt.” Finally.

  “I look out for mine, too,” Ghost added.

  “And my dad,” from Sunny.

  “Look, all I’m saying is we’ve worked all year. Killing ourselves out here, fighting for this day. And we supposed to just throw it all away?” Aaron threw his arms around, dramatic. “I’m the captain. I say no.”

  “I’m the captain too. And I say yes,” I replied.

  The back-and-forth continued, everyone chiming in with what they thought we should do, but I was sticking to my guns.

  “What’s going on?” Whit finally came back over to what had almost become a mosh pit.

  “This fool trying to get us to quit!” Aaron barked.

  “No, I’m not!” I piped up, but then caught myself. “I’m not. I just . . . I don’t know. I just don’t feel right. This just don’t feel right.”

  Whit looked from Aaron to me. “Okay, so . . . what do you think feels right, Lu?” she asked.

  I looked down, then thought about Coach, and looked up. Looked Whit straight in the eyes. And it was like she read my face or something, because before I even said anything she said it for me. “Oh. Lu. The hospital? No. I don’t . . . I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Whit’s face looked like it went numb.

  “What would Coach do for us?” I asked. “Seriously. What would he do if any of us was jammed up like this? He would be there, even if it meant he couldn’t make it to the track, or he couldn’t pick up people for his cab job.”

  “That’s a fact,” Ghost confirmed. “He’d do anything to make sure we were good.”

  “If we run and win, he’ll be proud of us, and he’ll know we’re the best athletes. But I don’t think that’s what he cares about. If we show up for him when he needs us, he’ll know we family.” I paused, and suddenly things started making sense. “We’ll know we family.”

  “Let’s take a vote on it,” Aaron snapped, still not convinced.

  Whit sighed. “If you wanna go see Coach, and . . . forfeit the championship, put a hand up.” Me, Sunny, Ghost, and Patty’s hands flew up first. And most of the others followed. They went up slowly, but they went up. “Well.” Whit palmed her head and exhaled a loud breath. “I guess that’s it.”

  “I’m not going,” Aaron suddenly said. “I’m running. Track is about your time. It ain’t about nobody else. So y’all go ahead, and I’m going to beat my best time. That’s why Coach made me captain. I’m here to burn.”

  People started leaving the track, but I stayed. I was his co-captain. And we needed to figure this out.

  “Aaron.”

  “Go ’head. Bounce. You ain’t got the heart to be a champion,” he sneered. “After all that work you put in on those hurdles. It’s a shame.”

  “Maybe I don’t,” I said. “Maybe you right.” I ain’t have nothing else to say. I knew what I wanted to do. What I needed to do. I knew how to see the thing down the line. Not what was in front of me. Not what was in the way. “Have a good race, dude.” I turned around and headed off the track, but then doubled back. “By the way, just so you know, I was never trying to take your spot. I know you worked for it, and I’m sorry if you ever felt that way.”

  I walked back over to the stands, where everyone had already told their parents about what was happening. Whit was answering questions and had gone over to the officials to let them know that the Defenders were pulling out. My mother was still handing oranges out to everyone, and my father was talking to Chris’s father. Sunny’s father to Ghost’s mom. Patty’s mom to Skunk. Everyone shaking their heads. Everyone confused and concerned, scrambling.

  “We gotta go,” I interrupted my dad’s conversation.

  And all he said was, “I know.”

  Whit came running back over, and a few minutes later, we were all back in our cars—Ghost and his family split up and rode with several people because they don’t have a car—and we were headed out of the park, down the boulevard again. This time toward the hospital.

  It was a silent ride. My mom and dad in the front seat. Me in the back. All of us quiet. No radio. No talking. My mother kept turning around to see me. To check on me. To see if there were any cracks. But I knew there weren’t. I was solid.

  Dad whipped into the hospital parking lot, cars pulling in all around us. We all jumped out and ran to the double doors, which automatically opened. It was a stampede into the waiting room. A bunch of kids in track uniforms, with their parents and friends. All the other people waiting looked up at us like we were some kind of flash mob. Like we were about to break into a dance routine or something. And when Sunny pushed through the crowd, for a moment I thought he was going to suggest it.

  “Everybody, this is Ms. Melinda,” he said, talking about the lady at the front desk. “Ms. Melinda, these are the Defenders.”

  “Oh, um . . . hi, hello, Defenders,” the lady, Ms. Melinda, said, freaked out. She turned back to Sunny. “All of y’all here to see your grandfather?”

  “Melinda!” Ghost’s mom pushed through, cutting Sunny off before he could answer.

  “Hey, Terri!” Ms. Melinda was getting more and more confused. “I thought you were in the cafeteria today.”

  “No. Not today. It was my son’s first championship track meet. But his coach is in here.”

  “What’s the name?”

  “Otis Brody. Brought a baby in for an asthma attack,” she explained.

  “Tyrone!” I called out from the crowd.

  “Baby’s name is Tyrone,” Ghost’s mom confirmed. The lady started clicking and clacking on her computer, but before she could tell us anything, another set of double doors opened, the ones that led back into the doctor spaces, and Patty’s aunt came walking out with a doctor. She was stretching her arm, bending and unbending it and bending and unbending it like it was her first time ever using an elbow and she was trying to get used it.

  “Whoa!” she blurted out, walking right into our mob. “What in the . . . why are y’all here? I was on my way to you!”

  “Gramps!” Sunny gave the doctor a hug.

  “Momly!” Patty gave her aunt a hug, and Momly was able to finally hug her back after her arm had been in a cast for weeks. Patty and Sunny both tried to explain everything that was happening. I tried to fill in the holes, but all of it was sounding like the way my mother describes my music.

  “Okay, okay!” Sunny’s grandfather called out, trying to settle us all down. “Everyone! My name is Dr. Lancaster.”

  “My gramps,” Sunny tossed in, in case we missed it.

  “Yes, Sunny’s grandfather. I know who you all are looking for. And I’m going to go get him. Please just sit tight, and . . . yeah. I’ll be right back.”

  There weren’t enough seats for all of us, so we made sure my mom—who by the way everybody was congratulating on my new baby-sister-to-be—got to sit.

  “We’re naming her Light. I named her that,” I told everyone.

&nb
sp; “That’s a cool name, Lu,” Patty said, sitting next to Cotton. “You might actually end up being a pretty good big brother . . . dummy.” Cotton popped her on the arm.

  Ghost was at the vending machine with Patty’s sister, Maddy, pushing quarters in, buying a bag of sunflower seeds.

  “No shells on the floor, Cas,” his mother said. Then she looked around at us all. “If I knew we were all gonna be here, I could’ve gotten everybody some proper meals,” she told Patty’s mom, Ms. Jones.

  Sunny leaned against the wall.

  “You good?” I asked him.

  “Just scared,” he replied.

  I went over to him, put my hand on his shoulder. “Me too,” I told him. “I’m scared too.”

  And right then, the double doors opened again. The main ones that led outside. It was Aaron. He showed up. No sweat. No wrinkle, which meant, no race.

  Nobody said nothing. Not good or bad. He came in with his mom and leaned against the opposite wall. Looked right at me. I looked right at him. Nodded.

  We were all there. All of us. Like one of my mother’s weird fruit sculptures, pieces of melon and berries and kiwi and a bunch of different kinds of oranges, all made to look like a team. A family. But it was like the toothpick to hold us in place was on the other side of the double doors.

  Which . . . opened, again. The important ones leading into where the medical things happen. And finally, this time it was Coach.

  We all went nuts.

  “Coach, is everything okay?”

  “Coach, how’s your son?”

  “How’s Tyrone?”

  “Where’s Mrs. Margo?”

  He put his hands up. “He’s fine, he’s fine! Everybody’s fine. It was rough for moment, but it looks like Ty is gonna be okay. But . . . why aren’t y’all on the track?” Coach checked his watch, balled his face up.

  And we all went silent. It was like all the sound in the room had been sucked out. You couldn’t even hear the clicks of Ms. Melinda’s keyboard no more.

  Ghost gave me a look. Sunny, a chin up. Patty straight-up dug her elbow into my side. And from Aaron? A nod. I looked at the floor for a second. Then looked up at Coach waiting. Lead with the knee. I stepped forward. Cleared my throat.