Sidetracked

  “Yeah,” I answer.

  “Mine, too. And it’s not because I’m seventy-nine. It drifted when I was forty-nine. It drifted when I was nine.”

  “I read really slowly.”

  Grandpa nods.

  “And I feel stupid a lot.”

  “Join the club.”

  “Sometimes I have trouble sitting still.”

  “Then running sounds like a good solution, doesn’t it?”

  Huh. I hadn’t really thought about it that way. “Did you go to the Resource Room when you were a kid?” I ask him.

  “There wasn’t any Resource Room. The teachers called me stupid and the other kids beat the daylights out of me. They don’t do that anymore?”

  “No. They make fun of me sometimes, though.”

  “Sticks and stones,” says Grandpa.

  I guess that means things are better than they used to be and I shouldn’t complain.

  “So, you don’t want to go back to Sunshine?” I ask. I sort of hope he doesn’t. I like having him to talk to. Grandpa shrugs and pushes the lever on the recliner. It makes the headrest snap into an upright position, giving the back of his head a whack and sending us both rocking.

  “Sunshine,” he mutters, pulling himself out of the puffy chair. “They try to tell you what to eat, how to walk, what girls to wink at. They’d tell me when to go to the bathroom if they could.”

  I think about all the times they do that in school. Not only the teachers, but the older kids, the cool kids, the bullies, letting you know what’s okay and what’s not. Maybe you never get away from them. Maybe they follow you your whole life.

  Grandpa is heading for the bathroom. “They think they can make the rules about getting old?” he says. “Well, you know what I think?” He turns around and whispers, like he’s sharing this secret only with me, “I think it’s time to tell them all to mind their own beeswax.”

  Chapter 11

  The next day, for some reason even I don’t understand, I come to practice. I haven’t really filled my parents in about any of this, because this might possibly be my first real practice and my last. Maybe I came because I told Grandpa. Or it could be because of Heather or Mrs. T. I also have the weird idea that it has something to do with that searing pain in my side. Not that I had it, but that everybody else had it, too. Maybe I’ve had enough years of personal defeat and I’m ready to give shared misery a try.

  It’s possible that the others feel the same way, because they’re all back. This time Mrs. T is already there to greet us. I go stand with Wes and Mark. Wes is licking what looks like ketchup off his fingers. He wipes what’s left on his shorts.

  Teresa is watching. “Ugh,” she says.

  “What?” says Wes.

  “Were those fries?” she asks.

  “They were left over from lunch. I wasn’t going to let them go to waste.”

  “Ugh,” she says again.

  “Okay,” Mrs. T calls out, but Sammy raises his hand.

  “Yes, Sammy?”

  “Mrs. T—” he starts.

  “Coach,” says Mrs. T. “Call me Coach, or Coach T.”

  “Okay, so Mrs. . . . Coach,” says Sammy, “are we getting uniforms?”

  “Like I told you yesterday,” she says, “you are getting uniforms. But you have to put in some work first.”

  “The girls like guys who have uniforms,” Sammy whispers to Mark. Then he smiles and raises his eyebrows in Victoria’s direction. She doesn’t seem particularly charmed.

  Coach T claps her hands and gathers us around. “Okay. Today we start our training.”

  “Oh, boy,” mumbles Mark.

  “Here’s the plan: we’ll warm up with two laps around the track. Slow and easy. Remember yesterday. When you go out too fast, you pay for it. Right, Victoria?”

  “What?” says Victoria, who has been busy fastening her ponytail.

  “Yesterday, everyone went out way too fast,” Coach T says in a clear, loud voice, so nobody can say they didn’t hear. “Today we’re going to run two laps, how? Sanjit?”

  “Slow and easy,” Sanjit says. He really loves Mrs. T.

  “That’s right. Slow and easy. Then we’ll take a rest and go through the woods to White Oak Lane. Just follow the arrows, they’re spray-painted on the trail. At White Oak, we’ll take the hill, and I’ll meet you at the top. Remember: Slow. Take walk breaks. Are we ready?”

  Good thing she doesn’t wait for a response.

  “Let’s go!”

  Heather starts first, and the rest of us scurry behind her. This won’t be so bad, I think. This time I’ll stay relaxed. This time I’ll take it slow. Slow and easy.

  But I don’t get past my first few steps before I see it.

  Goose poop.

  Piles and piles of green-brown goose poop logs, all over the start of the track. They’re like big fat green worms, and they make me feel like I do around green olives, hard-boiled egg yolks, and batting eyes on a baby doll: frozen and queasy. The girls are hopscotching around it, but I can’t move.

  “Joseph,” says Mrs. T, but I can barely hear her. Bells of goose poop panic are ringing in my ears. It’s a goose poop minefield. A nightmare of goose poop.

  “Just step around them. It clears up.”

  I want to move, I really do. Coach tries to take my hand, but I pull back. All I can think is I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I can see the rest of the team. They’re rounding the far turn. They’re already halfway around, with Heather in the lead. Soon they’ll be here and they’ll know what a hopeless coward I am.

  I take a deep breath and stare down the little green cylinders. Maybe if I close my eyes . . . but then I might step in some. So I try squinting, which seems like a logical middle ground. I hold my breath so no stray goose poop molecules will enter my body, and I start to tiptoe.

  “Go, Joseph. You can do it!” shouts Coach T—a cheer that’s probably never been used for someone who’s moving as slowly as I am. But I take a step and another. I’m halfway through. Up ahead the track is clear, if I can just go a few steps more. I step and step and then, when I’m almost there, where the goose poop ends and the red track is clean and clear, some flight instinct kicks in and I rocket away, into the beautiful un-goose-pooped lanes.

  I can’t believe it. I breathe in deep and run with my chest puffed out, basking in my own bravery. I feel like a goose poop conqueror, like I could take on an olive, or split-pea soup, or stare down that icky gray film that surrounds an egg yolk.

  But then Heather passes me and Wes and then Sammy, and Victoria and Teresa. They’re not going that fast, but they’re faster than me. I try not to think about the fact that they’ve probably stepped in some of the poop piles without even minding.

  Coach T is clapping for everyone, and when Sanjit passes I tag along with him like nothing happened at all.

  We reach the starting point and join the others and that’s when Victoria sings out, “Joseph only did one lap.”

  Everybody looks at me, and I wait.

  “Joseph did what Joseph could do today,” says Coach T. She has that tone that she has sometimes in the Resource Room when she’s telling someone to mind their own business, without actually saying that.

  When the girls have finished sipping from their Poland Spring bottles and the boys have finished their competition of making the loudest slurp at the water fountain, Coach T says, “Okay, guys. Way to take it slow! Good job. Now we’re going on the woods trail. Remember, easy does it. Follow the arrows to White Oak, and I’ll meet you at the top of the hill. Walking is fine. I just want you to get familiar with the course. Now, everybody ready?”

  There’s that silence again.

  “Great!” says Coach T. “To the woods!”

  Heather is first out again, and I’m still last. I enter the woods, but I don’t see any arrows on the trail. They must be covered up by the fallen leaves and pine needles. Victoria and Teresa aren’t too far a
head of me, so I figure I’ll be okay as long as I keep my eye on them. They’re running together slowly, side by side. They both have their hair tied back in ponytails—Teresa’s is blond and Victoria’s is dark brown—and they’re perfectly in sync, bouncing and swinging left, right, left, right with every step. They’re like little doggie tails. Left, right, left, right, perfectly together, perfectly in time. Left, right, left, right.

  And suddenly I’m on the ground.

  I look back at the trail and see a big root sticking up. I guess I tripped. I try to get up, but I’m pinned by my T-shirt to a thornbush. I look ahead and see Victoria’s ponytail waving like a last little flag of hope, and then she’s out of sight, too.

  I brush the dirt off my knees and try to pry my shirtsleeve out of the thornbush’s jaws, but it’s got me. I’m stuck here, for who knows how long. The bushes are dotted with little red berries. It makes me wonder, If this were the wilderness and I was lost, could I eat these berries to stay alive? I read once that there are certain berries that make you throw up. I wonder if these are those kinds. There are some fallen branches in the woods. Could I build a hut with those? If the berries were no good, could I kill an animal and eat it? A fish, maybe. If there was a stream and a fish, I could catch it and probably get myself to eat it if I was on the verge of starvation. But a squirrel or a rabbit? No, I couldn’t. Besides, I’d rather share the nuts and berries with them, because it’s better to have a little animal companion than to be all alone. Maybe I could even train a squirrel to gather nuts and seeds and share them with me. That would be fun.

  I don’t know how much time has passed when I hear a voice.

  “Joseph.” I look up. It’s Heather. She doesn’t look happy to see me. I hear kids’ voices coming toward us.

  “He got lost in the woods?” one is saying.

  “How could he get lost? It’s only one path.”

  “What happened?” Heather asks.

  “Um, I fell,” I answer, “and then I guess I got distracted.”

  “Distracted?”

  “It’s a problem I have.”

  “Yeah, well, we’ve all got problems.” She tugs my shirt away from the thornbush, then puts out her hand and pulls me up.

  Wes and Sammy are coming down the path. “Hey, man,” says Sammy. “We thought maybe you were eaten by snakes.”

  “Or a Komodo dragon.”

  “Let’s go,” says Heather, like she doesn’t have time for all this silliness, and she takes off. I stumble behind her and so do Wes and Sammy. We’re out of the woods in about two minutes. I got lost on a trail that takes two minutes to run.

  But now there’s the hill. White Oak Lane. Sammy, Wes, and I stand there at the bottom and watch with amazement as Heather bounds up.

  “Did Coach T tell you guys to come find me?” I ask.

  “No,” says Sammy. “Coach is up top. It was her.”

  “Who?” I ask.

  “That new girl. Heather. She said we should wait, and then you didn’t come out.”

  Wes is looking up the hill. “We’ve got to run up this thing?” he asks.

  “I guess,” says Sammy.

  “Oh, Mama,” says Wes.

  Sammy narrows his eyes and decides to take the hill in a sprint. Wes puts his head down and follows him. I start heading up, but it feels like the time in gym when Charlie Kastner snuck up behind me and put his hand on my shoulder just when I was trying to get up from sitting cross-legged. Gravity is even worse than Charlie Kastner. And then that pain in my side comes back.

  All I can do is walk up, with a little spurt of a jog every few steps. By the time I get to the top I’m clutching my side and gasping for air. I have little, itchy scratches from the thornbush and I feel like I’ve rolled through a mud puddle.

  Coach T is leading the rest of the team in a few push-ups and sit-ups on the grass.

  “Good job, Joseph! I knew you could do it!” she says in her super-encouraging Mrs. T voice. I get down to try a push-up, but an acorn digs into my hand and my arm muscles just give a little spasm and collapse.

  I just stay there on the ground. I think I might throw up.

  A few minutes later, Coach T claps her hands and tells us we all did a great job. Practice is finished. I roll over and look up. Heather appears over me.

  “Why did you bother to find me?” I ask. “Why didn’t you leave me to starve in the woods? It would feel better than this.”

  “Coach told me to,” she says.

  “Coach was up here.”

  Heather shrugs. “So I took pity on you.” She looks me over and says, “Have an orange.”

  So now it’s an orange. I still don’t know what she means, but it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter that I got past the goose poop, or that I didn’t die in the woods, or that I made it up the hill. I’ve had enough of being slow and tired and in pain. I’ve had enough of being rescued and told to eat fruit.

  I peel myself off the ground and start the walk home.

  I decide that that’s it. This can’t go on. I have to think up a reason for quitting cross country, before it kills me.

  Chapter 12

  The perfect excuse to avoid practice presents itself the next morning.

  “So, Superhero,” says Grandpa, “I have to get a few things from Sunset. Want to help me this afternoon after school?”

  “Sure!” I say, much too happily.

  “You won’t have too much homework?”

  I always have too much homework, but I say, “No more than usual,” which isn’t quite a lie. I’m glad he doesn’t ask me about practice. That one’s a yes-or-no question.

  “I have to get my reading glasses and my laptop,” says Grandpa. “I’ll appreciate the company.”

  “You have a laptop?” I ask.

  “You think I was born yesterday?” he answers. “So, I’ll see you after school and we’ll ruffle some geriatric feathers.” Whatever that means, I’m glad I can skip practice to do it.

  When school is over, I leave in a hurry so Mrs. T won’t see me and make me feel guilty. I’ll explain tomorrow.

  At home, Grandpa is waiting outside. Dad walks to work when the weather is nice, so we can use his old Volvo to drive to Sunshine Senior Living. It’s a short drive, and when we walk in there’s a skinny lady standing inside at a desk marked “Reception.” She’s gripping her hands together in front of her chest. When she sees Grandpa, her face gets pruney.

  “Mr. Schatzkis. You’re back,” she says.

  “Just picking up a few things,” says Grandpa. “I’m not staying, so don’t get excited.”

  I think that’s a joke, but if it is, she doesn’t seem to appreciate his humor.

  We pass the dining room and even though it’s only about 3:30, there are lots of people there already, like dinner is just around the corner. They’re sitting at tables with white tablecloths and the carpet is red, green, and black with all sorts of swirly patterns and wiggly shapes. There are chandeliers hanging from the ceiling.

  “This is fancy, Grandpa. It looks like a movie or something.”

  “The Titanic, maybe,” he says.

  I look around. There are more women than men, and lots of walkers are parked around the room, some with little gray rubber feet, some with wheels. The ones with wheels have hand brakes, like bicycles. They look like giant insects or alien creatures, except with big old-lady bags hanging off the handles.

  Grandpa squints as he looks in. He motions with his head toward a group of old people at a table in the corner. There are three men and about seven women. Two of the men are just in plain white undershirts. One has skinny arms, but the other one’s arms are big and chubby, with hair even up on his shoulders.

  “There they are,” he says. “The same as when I left.”

  “Who?” I ask.

  “The old guys at that table. The ROMEOs,” says Grandpa.

  “They don’t look like Romeos.”

  “That’s what they call themselves. The ROMEOs. Retired Ol
d Men Eating Out. Once a week, they go out to a restaurant. Big whoop. They’re in Independent Living, so they think they’re hot stuff. You go into Assisted, they drop you like a hot tamale.”

  “Who drops you?”

  “The ladies. They don’t want to sign on to a lost cause.”

  “Does Assisted mean you’re a lost cause?”

  “Well, on a downward spiral, anyway. What they call Independent Living, you can cook, go shopping, take your pills. Assisted Living, they bring you down to meals, stand behind you when you take your pills, and tell you when your shirt is dirty. What comes next . . .” His hand makes a quick backward sweep through the air, like he doesn’t even want to think about what comes next.

  “What comes next, Grandpa?” I ask with a gulp.

  “They call it Nursing Care. I call it ‘Just Bury Me Now.’ ”

  I’m starting to see why he doesn’t want to go back to Sunshine. “So . . .” I ask, “your room is in the first one, right? Independent.”

  “Do I look like I’m in Assisted?”

  “No,” I say.

  “You’re damn right.”

  “Are you a ROMEO?”

  “Am I rushing over there to say hello?”

  “No.”

  “Then you can assume I’m not a ROMEO.”

  “Oh,” I say. “Why not?”

  “Why not,” he responds, thinking. “Well, first of all, there’s Monty.” He’s looking at the man in the red shirt. He has hair that looks like a strip of dryer lint. “Retired lawyer. For not the nicest guys. Does he think he’s fooling somebody with that hair? One good breeze, it’s gone with the wind.”

  “Who are the others?”

  “That’s Ronny. The skinny one. Fighting Assisted like a fish caught on a line. Can’t remember what day it is, but the girls think he’s handsome, so they cover for him. And Sig.” He waves his finger in the direction of the one with the hairy shoulders. “Manufactured ladies’ pants for forty years. Thinks we all want to hear about it. Bell-bottoms, straight leg, capri pants. He could talk your ear off with those capri pants. We used to call them pedal pushers. What’s the big deal?”