The Million Dollar Race

by Matthew Ross Smith

  Technically Mom and Dad own the account, since he’s only twelve, but he’s got this whole plan that when he turns eighteen, he’ll immediately monetize the account and become an overnight millionaire.

  To be honest, I think that’s part of the reason I’m so excited about this race. Winning that trust fund would make me—the older brother—top dog again, restoring the natural order of things. I already know what I’d do with the dough. I’d buy a mansion on a private island, surrounded by a twenty-foot-high gate. I’d put a giant flat-screen TV on every wall, in every room. Jay would come over and we’d train all morning on my state-of-the-art track and then we’d float around in my sneaker-shaped pool.

  “As our first order of business,” I say, pacing the living room in my white socks and slip-on sandals, “I motion that Franny stop recording this.”

  “Nay!” Franny says, turning his phone around to grin at the camera.

  I cross my arms. “Mom.”

  Yes, we’re a democracy. Yes, every vote counts. But here’s the thing. Beneath all the pomp and ceremony, everyone knows Mom’s really in charge. She’s like the Speaker of the Living Room. If you need something, you can appeal directly to her.

  “All who support Franny putting his phone away, say aye,” she says.

  “Aye!” I say.

  “Aye,” Dad says.

  Franny makes fish lips to the camera again, ignoring us.

  Mom’s neck is her anger indicator. It’s like an alert in a nuclear power plant—if it’s flashing red, you know you’re in serious trouble.

  “Francis,” she says, hands still folded tightly in her lap. “If you don’t turn that phone off right now, you’re not going to see it for a month.”

  Technically this would take a motion to approve.

  But… you know.

  7

  Fine,” Franny says. He slides the phone onto the coffee table and sits back petulantly.

  “So,” I say, glaring at him, “as I was trying to say, there’s this new race sponsored by the Babblemoney Company. The winner gets a million bucks and a lifetime sponsorship deal. I need your permission to sign up.”

  Any other family, the conversation is over.

  Great! Wow! Good luck, son!

  With us?

  Get comfortable. This could take a while.…

  Our family motto is “Skepsis!” which is an ancient Greek word that means, basically, “question everything.” It’s where we get the English word “skeptical.”

  “Now let’s think about this,” Dad says, tapping his finger on his bottom lip. “Why would they—a huge shoe company—do such a thing?”

  “Because it’s fun,” I say.

  “Mmm. In my experience ‘fun’ is not often the motivation of ruthless multinational corporations. I’m sure there were many meetings about this at the highest levels.”

  “The old lady who runs it doesn’t know what to do with all her money,” I explain. “She wants to give back before she dies.”

  This wins me a few nods.

  My family is big into “giving back.”

  “I’m getting some strong Charlie and the Chocolate Factory vibes here,” Mom says, picking a fuzzy off the couch. “And we all remember how that ended.”

  “Um, with Charlie inheriting the company and becoming an overnight bazillionaire?”

  “Is that how it ended? I thought it was darker.…”

  “Dahl was a fairly capable satirist,” Dad says, lifting one of his skinny legs and placing it over the other. “In fact, if you look at some of his adult work—”

  “They’re right,” Franny says. “This whole thing stinks like a dead fish.”

  I can’t believe this. All I need is a freaking signature on a permission form. I should’ve just forged it.

  “Let me ask you this,” Mom says. “I think I know why they’re having the competition. But why do you want to be a part of it?”

  “Do you even have to ask?” I say.

  “I want to hear it in your own words.”

  “Because it’s awesome. It’s on ESPN. The winner gets a truckload of cash. Lifetime sponsorship. And—”

  “And what?”

  I look over at the blown-up photo of us on the dining room wall. We’re in Sea Isle, five years ago, all of us wearing matching tie-dye shirts. Seeing us all so happy like that, sticking our tongues out, makes me crushingly sad. I want to get a pair of scissors and cut myself out of the picture. It’d be so much easier to hate my family if I didn’t have to remember—if I didn’t know, deep down—that I love them.

  “You guys don’t get it,” I say. “Everyone in the world thinks I’m just some goof who fell on his face in the biggest race of his life. I mean, I am, it happened… but what I’m saying is… that’s not the real me. I can win this thing. I know I can. And if I don’t take this chance now, if I can’t even try, I’ll regret it for the rest of my life. Please don’t take this away from me. Please.”

  It’s considered poor form to beg at the Family Council.

  But whatever.

  I’m just keeping it real.

  Mom’s got a sensor in her ear that reads the sincerity of human voices. It’s why she’s such a good lawyer. “Okay,” she says. “I vote yes.”

  Dad leans back and sucks in a deep breath like he’s really agonizing. “Okay. I guess I don’t see the harm.…”

  Franny doesn’t matter anymore, but he still gets to vote, family rules.

  “Aye,” he says. “But my objections are noted. I still think this thing stinks. I don’t know how or why. But I’m gonna get to the bottom of it.”

  The council adjourns. I race up the steps, two at a time, and do a victory lap around my bedroom. I skim my fingertips across the double waterfall of prize ribbons and gold medals hanging above my desk—so many that I had to hammer in a second nail last year to hold more, and both nails are tilted down from the weight.

  8

  Come on!” I yell the next morning. “Power through! Last one!”

  Me and Jay are training together at the middle school track. It’s our standard workout, a mix of leg raises, side sweeps, reverse crunches, side planks, kettle bells, and box jumps—everything designed to make us more explosive.

  Sometimes I complain about training because everyone else does, but, if I’m being honest…

  I love it.

  I love the feeling of my lungs expanding in my chest on a cool summer morning. I love it when the ball of my foot strikes at just the right angle, my calf muscles engaging, my quads, my hips, my core, all in perfect rhythm. It’s only when I’m running that I feel the clutter of my thoughts thinning, something pure and bright shining underneath.

  As we push through our last set, I visualize myself breaking the world record. In my mind, I flex for the cameras like Usain Bolt and look up into a blizzard of golden confetti. From the glint in Jay’s eye, I can tell he’s imagining the same thing.

  After training we stop for lunch at Frank’s Pizza. The smell of mozzarella sticks is intoxicating, but, with the big race coming up, I order a salad with grilled chicken.

  “So listen,” I say, sliding an oregano shaker between my hands. “Let’s be real. We both wanna win this thing.”

  Jay flicks a quarter and follows its path across the red-topped table with his finger. “Obviously,” he says. “What’s your point?”

  “I just don’t want this to wreck our friendship.”

  “Why would it wreck our friendship?”

  “Because if one of us qualifies at regionals. That means…”

  He stops the quarter beneath his finger. Unlike mine, his fingernails are neatly clipped. “It’s all good, bro. Same as always. No mercy, no hard feelings. Cool?”

  “Cool,” I say.

  We fist-bump.

  The owner of the pizza shop brings out our food. He’s been wearing the same greasy apron since 1979. The flour on his face makes him look like a sweaty, gold-chain-wearing ghost. “You two bums ever gonna pay me or wha
t?”

  “We told you,” Jay says, “you’re sponsoring us. Remember?”

  “Oh yeah. Right. And what do I get outta that?”

  “When we’re rich and famous,” I say, “we’ll tell everyone that we never coulda done it without Frank’s Pizza, home of the famous Upside Down!”

  We both give a double thumbs-up, smiling with extra cheese.

  Frank punches numbers into an imaginary calculator in his palm. “Nah,” he says. “Still won’t cover it.”

  9

  After what feels like an endless chain of days, the morning of the regional qualifier finally arrives. “Chew,” Dad says from across the breakfast table. He’s wearing his fuzzy purple bathrobe, sipping from a chipped coffee mug.

  “What?” I say.

  “You’re not chewing enough. Twenty chews per bite ensures maximum nutrient absorption. You need all your strength today.”

  “Is that supposed to be a pep talk?”

  “I’m just saying.”

  I chew the banana until I’ve made a smoothie in my mouth, then swallow.

  “So,” I say. “You guys comin’?”

  Despite all the grief my family causes me, I think deep down I really do want them to come. I know because when I fantasize about winning, they’re always there, celebrating with me, game-show style.

  “I mean, it doesn’t matter,” I add quickly. “It’s up to you.”

  I feel like a conversation is an invisible tightrope sometimes. Two people have to wobble across it at the same time.

  “Of course we want to be there,” Dad says. “It’s just… your mother and I were talking. We feel like… I don’t know. We feel like sometimes we kind of… make you worse? So if you don’t want us to come, we won’t be offended.”

  “No,” I say. “It’s fine. You guys can come.”

  “Great!” He’s so excited he almost chokes on his coffee. “I mean, uh, yeah, sounds good. You riding your bike over?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay. We’ll meet you over there.”

  “And Franny?” I say, peeling a second banana.

  “What about him?”

  “Can you make sure he doesn’t… do anything Franny-like?”

  My brother is a human tornado that wrecks things just to film himself doing it. I’m tempted to tie him up so he can’t come anywhere near this race. It’s too important.

  Dad sighs. “Look. Your brother’s worked very hard on his YouTube channel. You know that. If he wants to film at the race, I don’t think it’d be fair to—”

  “Forget it,” I say, peeling the rest of my banana, raising it toward my mouth.

  “Your brother’s his own person, son. We can’t legislate his behavior.”

  “But you can. That’s what parenting is.”

  “Not to us. You know that.” To Dave and Diane Falloon, parenting isn’t about rules. It’s about Creating a Worldview That Will Allow Us to Decide Right from Wrong for Ourselves.

  I toss my banana peel in the trash… and chew the final bite twenty times before racing out the back door.

  REGIONAL QUALIFIER

  Excerpted from ESPN’s 30 for 30 documentary, “Crossing the Line: The Incredible True Story of the Million Dollar Race.”

  Grant Falloon, Track Star

  The registration tent—man, it was crazy. There must’ve been like five hundred kids there. I guess you dangle a million bucks on your hook, you get a lotta fish.

  Jay Fa’atasi, Track Star/Best Friend

  It felt like the tryouts for American Idol or something. You know how you have the Actual Talented People? The ones with a real chance of winning? But then also the Delusional Ones who think they have talent but really don’t? And then, of course, the Clowns, just there to make a mockery of everything and post it on their social media?

  Grant Falloon, Track Star

  We waited in line to register. I made fun of Jay because he’d brought all these extra documents—he practically had his second-grade spelling tests. We only needed the permission form at that stage.

  Jay Fa’atasi, Track Star/Best Friend

  Better safe than sorry, bro.

  Grant Falloon, Track Star

  At eleven fifteen a flex of dudes in EVENT STAFF T-shirts—

  Jay Fa’atasi, Track Star/Best Friend

  A flex?

  Grant Falloon, Track Star

  You know how a group of bats is a cauldron? And a group of crows is a murder?

  Jay Fa’atasi, Track Star/Best Friend

  Yeah.

  Grant Falloon, Track Star

  A group of security guards is a flex.

  Jay Fa’atasi, Track Star/Best Friend

  [Laughs.] I like that.

  Grant Falloon, Track Star

  So anyway, the guards wheeled out this giant projector screen. By the time they got the livestream working, the old lady sponsoring the race, Ms. Babblemoney, was already mid-sentence on the screen.

  Jay Fa’atasi, Track Star/Best Friend

  Babblemoney’s one of those super-rich people who wear the exact same thing every day.

  Grant Falloon, Track Star

  Red tracksuit and pearls.

  Jay Fa’atasi, Track Star/Best Friend

  She looks like a sporty version of the queen of England. [Laughs.]

  Grant Falloon, Track Star

  I was thinking about what she’d said in the announcement… about how champions don’t let anything or anyone stand in their way.

  Esther Babblemoney, Billionaire CEO

  [On projector screen]

  [Seated in what appears to be some kind of private library]

  … always dreamed of something like this.… When I was your age, our parents shoved us out the door first thing in the morning. There was nothing else to do, so we all lined up to see who could run to the tree the fastest, who could throw this rock the furthest, who could jump over the creek…

  Jay Fa’atasi, Track Star/Best Friend

  She went on for like ten minutes, telling us about her whole childhood, blah blah. Finally the livestream cut out, and a track official in a red Babblemoney hat explained the rules. There would be a series of preliminary heats to weed out the riffraff. Then the top eight finishers would compete in a winner-take-all final.

  Grant Falloon, Track Star

  I was in the first heat.

  Jay Fa’atasi, Track Star/Best Friend

  Grant has always taken racing seriously. Like, maybe a little too seriously. That day he was extra focused.

  Grant Falloon, Track Star

  Yeah. When I get in that kind of zone, my vision shrinks to exactly forty-two inches—the width of my lane.

  Jay Fa’atasi, Track Star/Best Friend

  It’s like he has lane vision instead of tunnel vision.

  Grant Falloon, Track Star

  It wasn’t until just before the start that, out of the corner of my eye, I saw—

  Jay Fa’atasi, Track Star/Best Friend

  A turtle!

  Grant Falloon, Track Star

  [Shakes head.] The kid next to me was wearing a full-body turtle costume, the kind with the giant shell and everything. The kid’s friends were all lined up along the fence outside the track, filming with their phones, laughing.

  Diane Falloon, Mom

  Grant didn’t get off to the best start. It was like his Wi-Fi dropped out for a split second. Then he realized, Oh, it started!

  Grant Falloon, Track Star

  One of the worst starts of my life.

  Jay Fa’atasi, Track Star/Best Friend

  Even with the bad start, he still won his heat easily. It was like an NBA player playing in a high school game or something. He was just on a different level.

  Diane Falloon, Mom

  Grant had the best overall time for a while.…

  Dave Falloon, Dad

  Until Jay’s heat.

  Grant Falloon, Track Star

  I watched him from way up high in the bleachers. I don’t usually get
that view. He was flying down the track. I’d never realized how easy he makes it look. He had the best time so far. Easily.

  Jay Fa’atasi, Track Star/Best Friend

  There were eight of us in the final… but the other six lanes might as well have been empty. It was coming down to me and Grant. We knew it. Everyone knew it.

  Grant Falloon, Track Star

  Just before the race, when we were pacing around, shaking out our legs, I had this crazy idea. I was like, “Yo, we should tie.”

  Jay Fa’atasi, Track Star/Best Friend

  I was like, “Wait. What? For real?”

  Grant Falloon, Track Star

  I was thinking about how we’d tied for last at the Penn Relays. What if we did the same thing, but tied for first. Would we both advance to nationals?

  Jay Fa’atasi, Track Star/Best Friend

  It was tempting, for sure. But I was like, “Bro, they’ll just make us race again.”

  Grant Falloon, Track Star

  He was right. Plus, even if we tried, it’d be almost impossible. One of us would accidentally cross first.

  Jay Fa’atasi, Track Star/Best Friend

  By the end of the race you’re like a wave washing up on the shore. It’d take a superhuman effort to stop yourself.

  Grant Falloon, Track Star

  We both knelt in the blocks.

  I closed my eyes.

  Runners on your marks…

  Set…

  Jay Fa’atasi, Track Star/Best Friend

  But the race didn’t start. Something was happening.

  Grant Falloon, Track Star

  It was hard to see what was going on.

  Jay Fa’atasi, Track Star/Best Friend

  Security guards came running onto the track. I looked over at Grant. He was shaking his head like I can’t believe this. Then I looked closer.

  Grant Falloon, Track Star

  My brother was lying across the finish line with his ankle chained to a cinder block. He was yelling through a bullhorn: “Babblemoney owns your dreams!”

  Diane Falloon, Mom

  I knew what Franny was saying. How these giant corporations, they create this vision of what you’re supposed to be… and then cash in on it. Because to be that version of yourself… you have to buy their product.