“You mean what he made you and Ghost do?” Curron jabbed. “Because we don’t need all that on the boys’ relay,” Curron bragged, cutting his eyes at Brit-Brat.
“Oh, y’all don’t?” That was Krystal’s cue to jump in. Brit-Brat didn’t pay it no mind, and neither did I, because Curron was always trying us. Deja bucked a little, but Krystal beat her to it. “You do know that you can’t keep taking off early in a relay race, right? If you jump the gun more than once, y’all shot . . . is shot.” Krystal laser-eyed Curron. “And everybody know you a gun-jumpin’ fool.” We all laughed. Everyone but Sunny, who was chillin’, trapping his laughter in his face, as usual, so nobody knew what he was really thinking. Krystal moved closer, put her hand on Curron’s shoulder like a concerned parent. “Seriously, is there gonna be one race where you don’t false start?”
Everybody laughed again, but Curron didn’t find it funny at all.
“Seriously, Krystal No-Speed, is there gonna be one day that your breath don’t smell like boiling track shoes?” Curron slapped a hand over his nose. He zinged her with that one, and even though it was super petty, all of us were yikes-ing from the blowback. Then he turned to Ghost. “And I know you ain’t laughin’, Ghost. Maybe you need more practice with your dance partner, because you ran the whole race before you realized nobody was running with you. The. Whole. Race.”
Ouch. I can’t front, just thinking of Lu and Ghost holding each other like that made me want to burst into laughter. But I held it in. But not everyone did, the loudest coming from Aaron, Freddie, and Mikey, who all began fake-waltzing.
“Whatever! It was his first race! His . . . first . . . race!” Lu came to Ghost’s defense. And I was right there for the follow-up.
“Ever,” I dropped in to drive home the point.
“Nah, it’s cool,” Ghost said, calling off his newbie goons. “How ’bout this, Curron. How ’bout you pick the distance, and we line up and—”
“Okay, okay, knuckleheads,” Coach cut him off, sauntering over, swinging his stopwatch. “Let’s get done with the funnin’ so we can get down with the runnin’. I swear if you all could move your legs as fast as you move your lips, we wouldn’t even have to practice.” Time for Coach’s daily pep talk.
“We got three practices left before the next meet. Today, tomorrow, and Thursday. Then it’s go time. If you came here to play around”—he looked at Lu, the instigator—“when Saturday comes, don’t cry when I don’t run you. If you came to be lazy, I’ll make sure you have a comfortable seat this weekend at the meet. Are we clear?” We all nodded. “It’s Technique Tuesday. I watched some of your forms break down last week, out there looking like wet noodles. I don’t wanna see that this week. Let’s keep it tight.” He tucked his elbows in, stuck his chest out. “Keep your stride wide, and remember to breathe. Come off the block like you got a point to prove.” Coach then told the relay teams what Coach Whit had already told us at the last practice—that we would also be working on baton passing. Thankfully, he didn’t mention dancing.
Me, Brit-Brat, Krystal, and Deja went off to one end of the track with Coach Whit. She was holding small orange cones. Not the kind that you see at construction sites, or in school cafeterias whenever there was a spill. These were small. Where the heck do you even get such tiny cones? If Maddy saw them, she’d want them for pretend megaphones.
“Okay, ladies, I need you all to pay attention, because what I’m gonna show you could make or break you,” she said.
Then Whit placed one of the cones just before the curve on the track, and another, I don’t know, maybe twenty feet into the curve. “This is the handoff zone,” she said, coming back from the second cone. “Or as Coach calls it, the hot zone. This is the amount of space you have to hand off the baton. Now, I know the three of y’all”—Whit pointed to Krystal, Deja, and Brit-Brat—“are used to standing at the starting line with your arm out waiting for the stick, but this year Coach and I have decided to shake things up. You’re going to run the eight-hundred relay as if it were a one hundred relay.”
We looked at Whit like she had grown a second head. Once she realized that none of us understood what she was talking about, she explained, “What I mean is, we’re gonna do blind handoffs.”
“Wait, what you mean, blind?” Deja asked.
“Now she ’bout to blindfold us, y’all,” Krystal joked.
“No, I’m about to show y’all how to win. That is, if you can shut up and listen. Especially you, Krystal, seeing as though you run the slowest leg.” Krystal sucked her teeth, burned. Probably would’ve sucked her teeth hard enough to turn her whole face inside out if she could.
“Now, watch and learn,” Whit said, and started demonstrating the blind handoff, a technique that usually only sprinters do during relays because of the momentum of the incoming runner. The runner who’s receiving the baton has to time it exactly right, start sprinting before the runner with the baton reaches the line. So there’s no slowdown.
“This is why I had you dance, ladies,” Coach Whit was saying, moving Krystal and me to imaginary positions on the track. “Now, Krystal, you’re coming in fast.”
“Wait, we’re running the eight hundred, not the four hundred,” Brit-Brat said.
“So?”
“So . . . I mean, how fast do you really expect us to be coming in? By the time I get to the final stretch, I’m rigged. This is the hardest race to run,” Brit-Brat argued, her arms spread wide, as if, what the? I nodded, thinking the exact same thing. The eight hundred ain’t no dash.
“As fast as you possibly can. Our job is to run to win. If that means you have to run until your legs detach from your body, then that’s what you do.” Whit’s face went dead serious. “Because the rest of your relay team is depending on you. Got it?” Brit nodded sheepishly. So did I. Coach Whit wasn’t playing no games today.
“So, Krystal, pretend you’re coming in, final stretch,” Coach Whit gave Krystal the baton, stood beside her. “You want to line your right arm up with Patty’s left shoulder. Now, whoever’s receiving has the hard job, because they have to time the transition. In this case, it’s Patty. When you see Krystal about to enter the red zone, where this cone is, you gotta take off, full speed. If you wait too long, you two will collide and get jumbled. If you go too early, the person passing the baton won’t be able to catch up to hand it off. Make sense?” We all nodded.
“Now,” she went on, “what this means for the incoming runner is that you have to dig deep and run with everything you got on that final stretch, because once you yell out, ‘Stick!’ you still have to run fast enough to catch the next runner, who will have her arm out, but will also have fresh legs. So we all have to feel each other out. Know when to go. Know when to hand off. It’s waltzing without touching. Just moving in rhythm. Now let’s run it slow-mo a few times.”
Coach Whit moved Krystal back twenty more feet and told her to jog toward me. Once Krystal got to the first cone, I started jogging. “Good,” Coach Whit said. “Now call it!”
“Stick,” Krystal said, no oomph behind it.
“No.” Whit thrust her arm out across the Krystal’s body like Momly does to me after slamming on the brakes. “I said, call it. Not say it.” Whit took the baton and stepped back a few feet. “Stick! Stick!” she shouted, running toward us. “People are going to be screaming. You need to make sure your teammate hears you. Now, run it again.”
When “stick” is called out, my job is to stretch my left arm behind me, without looking, while running full speed until Krystal slaps the baton in my hand. It’s tricky, because our running has to match up. She has to have enough juice and enough time to get to me.
We ran it again and again, faster and faster, working on the timing of it all. Deja had to practice the handoff to Brit-Brat, and Brit-Brat had to practice the handoff to Krystal.
“Now remember, these cones won’t be on the track. So you’re gonna have to learn to eyeball when the transition should happen,” Whit said, p
icking them up. “This time, full speed. Run it.”
She told Deja to start back at the two-hundred-meter mark, outside lane, and do the handoff to Brit-Brat. It wasn’t bad. Then she had Brit-Brat do the same to practice the handoff to Krystal.
“Stickstickstickstick!” was Brit-Brat’s way of calling out, which made us all laugh, even Whit. But, hey, whatever works. Next it was my turn to receive the handoff from Krystal, but when she reached the red zone, and I broke out running, she couldn’t catch me.
“Try it again,” Whit said. So we did, and I got out too far ahead of her again. I wasn’t trying to, but she’s just . . . slower.
“Yo, what you tryna do?” Krystal asked, panting.
“What you talkin’ ’bout? I’m waiting on you to call it out,” I explained.
“No, you tryna play me,” she said. “You over-running.”
“Over-running? That ain’t even a thing. Maybe you under-running—”
Coach Whit cut us off. “You two, cut it out and get back on your mark. Save that drama for the other teams on Saturday.”
But Krystal wasn’t ready to be cut off. Maybe it was because Curron snapped on her and Whit threw her a little shade earlier, but now Krystal was fuming. “Nah. See, I try to be nice to the new girl”—she looked around at Brit and Deja, all fired up—“but she always correcting me. And being all goody-goody, like she think she better than us.” She raised her chin at me. “What make you better? Your white mother?”
My white . . . mother? Ohhhh . . .
“What?” My left eye twitched, a sign that things were going to go bad if Krystal didn’t shut up. Nobody had ever tried to call me out about Momly before. Nobody had the nerve to even pretend to know something they really ain’t know nothing about. Until now.
“You heard me.” Krystal didn’t shut up.
“Enough.” Coach Whit slid between us, but that wasn’t enough to stop what was coming. Because now I wasn’t shutting up.
“I don’t think I’m better than y’all. I think I’m better than you.” I jabbed a finger over Coach Whit’s shoulder right at Krystal. “And not because of no so-called white mother. But because I’m actually . . . better . . . than . . . you. I just am. You run like your feet made of oatmeal. Like your whole life is in slow-mo. I’m faster, because I work harder while you sit around and pout like some spoiled brat. Like somebody owe you ribbons. Like it’s our job to carry your lazy—”
“Patty! THAT’S ENOUGH!” Whit yelled, whirling around to face me.
“Better watch who you playin’ with,” I snarled at Krystal, last dig in.
“PATTY, I SAID THAT’S ENOUGH!” Coach Whit grabbed me by the arm and dragged me off the track to the gate. My heart was pounding so hard that my chest felt like it had stopped pumping blood and was pushing those red beads I put in Maddy’s hair through my veins instead. “Are you serious?” Whit asked when we were out of earshot. “What was that?”
I glared over at Krystal. Made sure she knew I wasn’t scared. But I didn’t answer Whit. Didn’t want to, because if I did I would’ve said that that was me offering Krystal a seat and that she better take it before I showed her what it meant to lay down. I was so mad. So mad. White mother? I’m the daughter of Bev Jones. And she don’t make no junk. Momly ain’t even my real mother, but even if she was . . . what? I lasered in on Krystal’s face. Her eyes, tearing up, her tough, tearing down. You don’t even know what you talkin’ about, over there about to cry. What you about to cry for? You started it. Why you even have to go there? Why?
“You hear me talking to you, Patty?”
I glanced at Coach Whit. “Yeah.” I closed my eyes for a second, told myself to get a grip. Deep breaths, Patty, my mad slowly mellowing. This temper ain’t a new temper. Breaking invisible teacups. Smashing them everywhere. No, this ain’t new. I just be keeping it pushed down, all the way down in my legs. See, there was this weird period between my dad’s passing and my mother losing her legs that my mom always calls “the funky zone” because I was acting, well . . . funky. Temper on a billion. As soon as somebody started with me—even if they looked like they wanted to start—I would finish it. Talk people down. Talk them out of whatever they thought they wanted with me. And I was just trying to let Krystal know, that’s all. But it had been a long time since I had to get funky. And now that I had—and now that I noticed Krystal was really hurt—the “funk” was fading.
“So then I need you to answer me,” Whit pressed, steely. “What was that?”
“Look, I’m sorry,” I said, feeling somewhere between embarrassed and satisfied. But then I looked over at Krystal pretending I ain’t cut her deep, doing her best to hold in her tears. Deja and Brit-Brat pretending like they minding their business but really they being nosy, watching us.
And . . . I felt bad. A little bit bad. I didn’t want to, but . . . I did.
“What’s going on here?” Coach had now made his way over to us.
“I’ll let Patty tell you,” Whit said, her voice still furious, stalking off to go talk to Krystal.
“It’s nothing,” I said quickly.
“Nothing?” Coach looked down at my hands. “Since when does ‘nothing’ make you look like you’re about to punch somebody?”
I guess the funk hadn’t completely faded yet.
I looked Coach in the eye but didn’t say nothing. He mumbled something like, I’m getting too old for this under his breath. Then he startled me by shouting, to everyone, “Y’know, I’m not your daddy. I’m not your teacher, or your principal, or even your friend. I’m your coach. Your coach! My job is to coach you, to hopefully make you all better runners, but more importantly, better people!” He closed his eyes. “Krystal, Deja, Brit-Brat, right here.” He pointed to the ground in front of him. When they all came over, he took the baton from Krystal.
“Take one end,” he ordered. I grabbed it, thinking this was going to be a revisit of the whole “energy of the team” speech. “Krystal, you take the other.” She took the other end of the baton, looking like it was the last thing in the world she wanted to do. “If either of you let go, you’re both off the team.” Then he looked at Deja and Brit-Brat. “If you two see either one of them let go, you tell me. And if I find out they did and you didn’t let me know, you’re gone as well. Now, fix it.”
“Coach—” I begged.
“Don’t try me,” he cut me off, his voice ice. “There are Patinas and Krystals all over the place, begging to be in your spot. Praying to form the bond that y’all are so determined to break. Fix it.”
Coach went back to the boys, who were practicing their blind handoff, leaving me and Krystal standing there, holding the metal stick, trying our best to not let our hands touch, which was pretty much impossible. Deja and Brit-Brat stood in front of us, awkward.
“Come on y’all, just squash it so we can get back to work,” Brit-Brat said. “We a team.”
“I ain’t start it. She came for me for no reason,” I pleaded my case.
“That’s because you were purposely trying to make me look bad,” Krystal said.
“Make you look bad? I was running. Running. This is a track team.”
“Yo, you think I don’t know that? I was on this team before you!”
“That’s the thing. You don’t think I know that!” Krystal didn’t say nothing back. She just looked at me with a screwface, then yanked the baton. I almost let go.
“Whoa, whoa! Chill,” Deja said, eyes wide, hands up.
“Yeah, y’all trippin’. Let’s just talk it out,” Brit-Brat said. “I’ve watched enough Iyanla Vanzant to know how to do this.”
“When do you have time to watch Iyanla Vanzant?” Deja asked. “I didn’t even know she still had a show.”
“I don’t think she do, but my mother recorded every single episode and uses it whenever she feels like she don’t understand me. I keep trying to tell her, I’m tall and skinny with big feet, and therefore a monster. And then she says, no baby, you’re beautiful, and I
’m here for you, and what do you need from me to support you—which she steals from Iyanla—and then I say, a bag of Twizzlers, a trip to the mall, and a lock on my door, and then she says, how about a bag of Twizzlers, and then I say I hate everyone and everything.”
“Wait, so you don’t get the Twizzlers?” Deja asked, now laughing.
“What? Oh, of course I get the Twizzlers.”
“I love Twizzlers,” Krystal said, low. It was as if suddenly we were all just thinking about candy.
“Me too. My mother used to sell them,” I said after an uncertain pause. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to join in on this weird Twiz-fest that had suddenly broken out. Especially since I was just about to give Krystal a good old-fashioned Beverly Jones Funky Zone beat-down. But it seemed like it was happening, so . . .
“Your mother?” This from Krystal.
“Yeah, she used to be the candy lady in Barnaby Terrace.”
“Wait, that white lady sold candy in Barnaby Terrace?” she asked.
“That’s not my mother. That’s my auntie.”
Krystal was quiet. For once. Probably trying to swallow down all that “loud-and-wrong” she’d just spat.
Brit-Brat stepped in. “Okay, so what Iyanla would say, now that we’ve broken the ice, is, ‘Patty, what did Krystal say to offend you?’ ” Then she changed her mind. “You know what, scratch that question. I think we know what you both said. Yeesh. How about this. Patty, what’s one thing you want Krystal to know about you?”
Brit-Brat had her hands clasped and was leaning in like she really knew what she was doing. Like she was for real. I couldn’t believe I was actually about to do this, but seeing how serious Brit was, I felt like I had to.
“I wasn’t trying to embarrass her.”
“Say it to her, not to me,” Brit-Brat nudged, her voice over-the-top calm. Seriously?
“I wasn’t trying to embarrass you,” I said, feeling totally ridiculous. But also feeling like Krystal needed to know that, because it was true. “And I’m sorry for not adjusting like we learned when we were doing the waltz. But I’m still figuring everything out.”
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