Sidetracked

by Diana Harmon Asher

  Wes, Mark, and Sanjit are already clustered together, wearing their uniforms. Sanjit’s arms are a nice mocha color and Mark’s are the color of a French roast coffee bean, but it makes me feel better to see that Wes’s arms are even paler and bonier than mine. We fold and unfold our arms and tug at our shorts. We try to look casual, but it’s hard to know what to do with our arms and legs. There’s so much of them sticking out.

  I guess Victoria and Teresa are used to wearing little teensy short shorts, because they seem happy enough. But Brianne isn’t the skinniest girl in the world and she has her sweatshirt tied around her waist, even though it’s one of those hot, muggy September days that make you think it’s still July. Erica is so little that the shorts actually look baggy on her. Heather is sitting on the stairs like she couldn’t care less how she looks. If she wanted to know, I’d tell her that she looks fit and strong, but that’s probably not what a girl wants to hear. Then again, maybe it is. I figure it’s safest not to say anything at all.

  Coach T has gone to find out why the bus is late, giving half the school a chance to walk by and snicker at us. We pretend not to hear the comments.

  “Nice shorts, Friedman.”

  “Great look, girls.”

  “Woo-woo!”

  I’ve never been so happy to see a yellow school bus roll up.

  As we race to the door, Sammy comes running. “Sorry I’m late,” he says. I stare to figure out what he’s wearing. It almost looks like a skirt, but then I realize he’s got on red-and-white-checked boxers and they’re ballooning out from under his uniform shorts.

  “Sammy, what did I tell you?” asks Coach T.

  “That some of the world’s most successful people are short, so I shouldn’t be self-conscious—”

  “No, Sammy. What did I tell you about boxer shorts.” Sammy looks down. “No jewelry, no watches, no boxer shorts. You’re going to have to get some briefs.”

  “Briefs? You mean tighty-whities? No way! Look, I’ll tuck them in.” He tries shoving the boxers up into the shorts, but they just puff out again. Victoria and Teresa lean into each other and giggle. Sammy’s shoulders droop and he looks down sadly at the red and white checks sticking out.

  “Can’t your mom bring you some of your brother’s?” suggests Mark.

  “He’s like two sizes smaller than me.”

  Coach T is looking at her watch and shaking her head. “We’ve got to go,” she says. “I don’t want you disqualified, Sammy. Could your mom bring some briefs to New Kingsfield? Could she meet us there?”

  Sammy thinks for a minute. Frowning, he says, “Okay, I’ll call her.”

  Coach T claps her hands together. “Excellent! Then let’s go!”

  I’m nervous. I try to remind myself that I’ve been to ten practices and run up White Oak Lane about a million times. And I’ve made progress: now I feel like there are only five angry monkeys hanging on my legs, instead of ten. But I don’t know what it will be like at New Kingsfield. Maybe they have hills twice the height of White Oak Lane. Maybe the other kids will laugh at our uniforms. Maybe they’ll be twice as fast as we are.

  My seat on the bus squeaks with every bump, and my thighs stick to the green plastic. At each turn, I make a wish that we’re not there yet. For a while my wishes come true, but unless the driver is a maniac kidnapper or New Kingsfield has been hit by an asteroid, I know eventually my luck will run out.

  Mark is sitting next to me, and Heather is across the aisle, staring out the window. Coach T is in front of me.

  “Coach?” I say. “Am I going to be the slowest one there?”

  She turns around and grips the back of her seat. Her fingernails are almond-shaped and perfectly even. “Don’t worry about that,” she says. “It’s your very first race. Do your best, and whatever you run, it’s your personal record.” She says this like a personal record is some magical thing. “Once you have that, you can try to do better.”

  I think about what she’s saying. If you’re starting from nothing, then anything counts. If I’m terrible, then just ordinary bad will be an improvement. It gives me hope.

  Finally, the bus takes one last turn and we arrive. Sammy is looking out the window for his mom. I peel myself from the seat and try to pull down my teeny little shorts as Coach T shoos us off the bus.

  The New Kingsfield kids hover around the starting line, along with the team from Hampton. All of them are wearing uniforms just like ours, skimpy little shorts and singlets. New Kingsfield is in red and Hampton is in orange. They’re shaking out their arms and legs, and they look nervous and self-conscious and fidgety, too. For a quick moment I’m hit with a strange, unfamiliar feeling, like maybe this is a place where I belong.

  We break up into a girls’ group and a boys’ group, and my group follows a New Kingsfield boy around the course. It’s called “walking the course,” so we have some idea where we’ll be running. There are no woods here; it’s just a big, long loop around the field, through the school grounds, and back. As we walk, Sammy keeps an eye on the parking lot.

  “My mom’s still not here,” he says. He pushes the boxers up into his shorts, but they pop back out. We walk around a few buildings and across a field, and when we can see the parking lot again, Sammy’s mom still isn’t there.

  “What do I do?” Sammy asks.

  “Go commando,” suggests Sanjit.

  “What’s commando?” asks Sammy.

  “Take off the boxers,” Mark explains. “Run . . . without them.”

  “Is that allowed?” I ask.

  “Take it off, take it off . . .” Wes starts to chant, and Sammy smacks him on the arm.

  Then Sammy scrunches up his mouth in a determined kind of way, like he’s made up his mind. “Where’s the bathroom?” he asks.

  “Right there,” says the New Kingsfield kid, pointing to the building we’re passing. “But hurry up, there’s not much time.”

  Wes pulls Sammy along. “We’ll meet you guys at the start,” he says.

  When we get there, the boys are lining up. I stand next to Mark. He’s rolling his shoulders, loosening up. A couple of the Hampton kids are staring. They look worried.

  “Why are they looking over here?” I ask Mark.

  He smiles. “Because they think I’m fast.”

  “Have they seen you run?”

  “Nah. It’s because I’m African American,” he whispers. “Every sport, it’s like, ‘Uh-oh, they’ve got a black kid. He must be good.’” He looks like he sort of enjoys disappointing them.

  “Huh. I’m Jewish. Do people expect me to be something?”

  “Smart, probably.”

  “Oh, no,” I say, shaking my head. Mark smiles even wider and holds up his hand for a high five. I guess we have something in common.

  “All right, gentlemen!” calls out the ref. “Two minutes to the gun.”

  “Gun?” I say, but nobody answers me.

  “Where are Sammy and Wes?” asks Coach T. I’m not used to seeing her look stressed, but she does right now.

  “They stopped at the bathroom,” says Sanjit.

  “The gun is about to go off,” says Coach T.

  “Gun?” I say again.

  Finally, we see them running up from the school building. “Hurry!” calls Coach T.

  “One minute!” says the ref.

  Wes and Sammy are scampering up the hill. Sammy has his red-and-white boxers in his hand.

  The ref takes a gun out of his pocket and holds it in the air. I know it can’t be loaded or anything, because this is a track meet, not a fox hunt. But still. He glances at Wes and Sammy and waits a few extra seconds until they make it to the starting line. Sammy tosses the boxers to a surprised Coach T, and we’re ready.

  I’m sensitive to loud noises, so I cover my ears just to be safe.

  “Ready . . .” he says.

  A few of the boys bend their knees and get their arms into running position. I keep my hands over my ears.

  “Set . . .”
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br />   Through my blocked ears, I hear someone calling, “Sammy! Sammy!” I turn to look and take my hands off my ears for a second. A short, chubby woman is running toward us, waving a pair of tighty-whities like a surrender flag.

  “I’ve got them!” she’s calling. “Sammy! I’ve got the underwear!”

  BLAM!!!

  Chapter 17

  I can’t even begin to process what just happened. My heart flies out of my eyes, my hands slam back over my ears. I freeze as the others take off. The gunshot is so loud, my nerves are completely jangled, and my pulse is pounding about a zillion beats a second. A zillion and a half.

  I hear Coach T’s voice, and the girls on the team are shouting, “Run! Go, Joseph, run!” but the best I can do is push myself into a semi-controlled forward fall. I’m down on the ground, then I’m up. My legs are shaking and I go right down again. When I finally feel my feet connecting to the ground I start to run, but I’m so far behind I know I’ll never catch up.

  The only reason I keep going forward is because I can’t turn back. I can hear Heather’s voice calling, “Go! Keep going!” My legs are all wobbly and I’m hardly moving, but I don’t stop. The other boys are running single file halfway across the field. They’re so far away, they look like a trail of ants. Even the slowest ant is about half the field ahead of me.

  One by one they start to disappear behind the school building. I keep putting one foot in front of the other until finally I get there, way behind everybody else. I’m by myself. Everyone is out of sight. I follow the path, hoping this is the way the New Kingsfield kid told us to go, wishing that for once I’d paid attention. I’m doing okay, until the path forks and I have to make a decision. Do I go left or right? I take a guess and follow the path to the left around a building, but it’s obviously the wrong guess, because after a minute or two I’m dead-ended at a back door, looking at three enormous garbage bins. Luckily, a couple of kindhearted janitors are taking a break and point me in the right direction.

  I run and stumble and walk, and then I start to weave around again, like Coach said I shouldn’t do, but I can’t help it. I keep going, hoping I’m not lost, hoping I’m not going to collapse or end up with the garbage bins again, hoping that this will all be over soon. It seems like I’ve been running all day and it feels like the longest day of my life.

  At last, I come to the building where Sammy and Wes went to find a bathroom. I follow the trail around the back, half walking, half stumbling, and when I come around the other side, finally, I see the field where we started and the finish line. I’m barely walking now, gasping for air, gripping my side, which, fruit salad or no fruit salad, is in a monstrous stitch. This has all been a disaster.

  Coach T is waiting at the finish, holding up her hand for a high five, but I don’t even have the energy for a low three. I guess the ref has been waiting for me to finish, because I hear the impatience in his voice when he calls out, “All right, ladies! Let’s move this thing along. Three minutes to the gun!”

  I barely make it to a nearby tree by the time the ref yells, “Ready!” I plunk down, put my elbows on my knees, and press my hands to my ears as hard as I can. I hear him say, “Set . . .”

  BLAM!!!

  Sammy, Wes, Mark, and Sanjit are calling out, “Go, Lakeview!” and even from here I can see that Heather is in the lead. She glides along, like a different kind of creature, all long legs and flying hair and determination.

  Coach T comes over with a cup of Gatorade. “You finished!” she says.

  “But I was terrible,” I answer. I’m still trembling from the run, not to mention the girls’ starting gun.

  Coach T transforms into Mrs. T right before my eyes. She touches my shoulder in that way she does in the Resource Room. “I should’ve warned you about the gun. That was my fault. We’ll take care of it next time. It’s an easy fix.”

  And what would that be, I wonder? A nervous system transplant?

  “But you finished,” she says again. “You did it. I’m proud of you.” Then she gets up and looks at her watch. “I want to be at the finish for the girls. I’ll see you over there.” She pats me on the back and walks away. I’m glad she doesn’t see the Gatorade splatter all over my shorts.

  I practically crawl to the finish line, but I get there just in time to add my pathetic “Yay” to the other cheers. Heather finishes first, by a lot. She flashes through the finish tape and takes a few long steps before she comes to a stop.

  The rest of the girls come in one by one. They don’t look great, but nobody looks as bad as I feel.

  When we pile back onto the bus, Victoria says, “That was brutal.”

  “Are you kidding?” says Sanjit. “It was awesome.”

  Sammy mumbles, “You didn’t have your mother chasing you with a pair of tighty-whities.” The girls giggle.

  “I’m eating like five bags of chips when I get home,” says Wes.

  “Ten,” says Mark.

  As the bus heads back to Lakeview, Coach T turns around. “I want you to know that I’m very proud of you guys,” she says. “You all did a fantastic job.”

  I’m waiting for someone to say, “Except Joseph. Joseph was terrible.” But no one does.

  Coach T goes on, “Our first meet, and we had a first-place finisher!” Heather ducks and smiles as cheers of “HeathER” fill the bus, and Erica reaches over to give her shoulder a little pat. “But what I’m most proud of,” Coach goes on, “is that everybody finished. Every single one of you!”

  She’s looking at me, but I shrug. I don’t feel victorious at all.

  As the bus bumps along, I think it all through. I thought I had the worry bases covered: what I ate, staying on the course, wearing this teensy little uniform. I never thought about a gun. And next time there will be something else I never thought of. And the next, and the next.

  I realize that my worrying fell short, and it always will, because of a simple rule. I call it the Friedman Law of Worry:

  There will always be something you don’t think of. And that’s what will get you.

  So, if the law holds true, maybe I should stop worrying altogether. Or maybe I should vastly expand my worrying categories.

  I’m a little unclear which path to take. But then Coach T calls out, “Now, everybody, rest up. Have plenty to drink, and I’ll see you at practice tomorrow. Remember, the JFK meet is next week.”

  So we do all this again in a week.

  I better get started on a new worry list tonight.

  Chapter 18

  When I get home, I go straight to the kitchen. There’s still about an hour before my parents get home. I take a piece of bread and spread it with peanut butter about an inch thick. Then I take some walnuts and press a few into the peanut butter and glob on some of this maple cream that we bought in Vermont this summer, and then I remember that stitch in my side and slice up a banana and put that on there, too. Then I cover the whole thing with another slice of bread. I don’t have the patience to sit down to eat it. I just stand at the counter and take a bite.

  My mouth is full of peanut butter maple walnut banana sandwich when Grandpa comes in. “So, how was it?” he asks. “Did you win?”

  I give him a squinty look and shake my head.

  “But you didn’t quit?” I shrug and shake my head. “That’s my boy.” I brace for a back slap, but Grandpa just rumples my hair instead. “Eat your snack. I’ve got some Web surfing to do,” he says and goes back to the guest bedroom.

  I pour myself a glass of orange juice and drink it in about five gulps. I take a quick shower, then go to my room and change into my regular clothes. I flop down on the bed and my mind flies in a million directions. I replay the start of the race, the gun, the garbage bins, all of it. I keep hearing Coach T’s words: “You did it. I’m proud of you.” And Grandpa’s: “You didn’t quit? That’s my boy.”

  I’m glad they’re both proud of me. I really am. But I have to wonder, Does not quitting lead to something better, like actually acco
mplishing something? Or is just not quitting going to be my goal forever?

  I know that Grandpa is a big fan of not quitting. I remember once in second grade when he took me to basketball practice. It was a Saturday morning. I guess my parents were away, probably at a dental equipment conference, because Grandpa drove me over to the Griffith Elementary School gym.

  I was seven and I loved the gym. I couldn’t get over how shiny the floor was, like someone had poured liquid glass all over it. Under the polish was golden wood with bright-colored lines that had mysterious meanings I’d never understand. I loved the shrieks my sneakers made when I ran. I couldn’t stop tiny-stepping around so I could hear it over and over. “Eek-eek-eek. Eek-eek-eek.”

  My gym teacher didn’t love any of that, especially while he was trying to talk.

  “Joseph! Stand still! Joseph!” Mr. Hensarling would say. And when I didn’t stop, “Friedman! Enough!”

  I guess that’s when it started. The Friedman thing.

  But Mr. Hensarling wasn’t there for weekend rec. On Saturdays, second-grade rec basketball was run by Sean Maurer’s dad. His favorite word was DE-fense. “DE-fense! DE-fense wins games! DE-fense is what makes a good team GREAT!”

  He showed us how to play DE-fense—get in front of the kid with the ball, jump up high, wave your arms like a maniac. I thought I was pretty good at it, actually. I jumped, I waved, I even made funny faces. So I didn’t understand why Sean’s dad came marching over to me.

  “Joseph,” he said, trying to force his face into a smile. “You play defense against the other team. Michael’s on your team. You don’t play defense against him.”

  “Oh,” I said. I wished he’d explained that before.

  Everything about second-grade basketball was harder than first grade. In first grade, we had fun drills: bouncing, passing, trying to shoot for the basket. Casey Minter’s dad ran those clinics, and he cheered for everybody, even if we missed a hundred times or dropped the ball. He didn’t mind if I decided to run around in circles, making my sneakers squeal.