4
WORLD RECORD FOR THE WORST DAY EVER
I KNOW IT seems like this was the best suspension day maybe in history. And to be honest, it was. At least, at first. I got to punch that jerk Brandon in the face—I know, I know, not cool, but still!—leave school early, and hang out at the track with my new coach—because I was on a team now—who turned out to be a pretty cool dude. Me and Coach didn’t go no further into my life or nothing like that, which was a good thing because I never really told nobody about my dad. Instead Coach asked me who my favorite basketball player was.
“LeBron,” I said, like it should’ve been obvious. “Who else?”
“Who else?” Coach said, surprised. “Uh . . . let me think . . . Michael Jordan?”
“Jordan? Come on, man. Jordan is like somebody’s granddaddy. Jordan don’t wanna see LeBron on his worst day. LeBron could be sick from a bad batch of cafeteria chicken drummies and still give Jordan the business.”
Coach stood up. “See, that’s the problem with you kids. Y’all don’t know what a true champ is.”
“Coach, I hate to break it to you, but LeBron is a champ. He got rangs,” I said, holding up two fingers and wiggling them around.
“But Jordan has six.” Now Coach held up both his hands. All five fingers spread on his right, just his pointer finger up on his left. He wiggled them like I did. “Six!”
“Jordan got six?” Whoa! I probably should’ve known that, but I didn’t. Dang. I knew he won a few, but six? “Is that the Guinness world record?”
“The what?” Coach asked.
“The Guinness world record. Gotta be.” I put it in my head to check the book when I got a chance.
“I don’t know, probably. He was the greatest of all time.” Coach shot an invisible jump shot, his tongue hanging out his mouth. It looked ridiculous. Clearly he wasn’t a ballplayer.
Then I asked him about that guy I read about who was supposed to be the fastest man alive. Usain Bolt. Coach knew all about him, too.
“Usain ran a nine-five-eight,” Coach said.
“What’s that mean?” I asked, because the numbers nine, five, and eight meant nothing to me. They’re not points or nothing like that. At least I didn’t think they were. I actually wasn’t even really sure if you could score points in track or not. Just seemed like the kind of sport you just win ribbons and medals or whatever.
“That was his time for the one hundred meter.” Coach pointed up the track toward the start line he had had everybody sprinting from the day before. “From there”—he moved his hand to the finish line—“to there. Nine seconds and fifty-eight milliseconds. The boy is like lightning.”
I looked at the distance and in my head counted, one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, and pictured myself running. Nine seconds seemed like a pretty long time.
“But that ain’t even that fast,” I said. Plus it just didn’t seem like one hundred meters was all that long. I mean, I had just run it the day before in what had to be six or seven seconds. Couldn’t have been more than eight.
“You don’t think so?” Coach asked, flashing a sly grin. “You think you can beat that?”
I looked at the distance again. One Mississippi, two Mississippi . . . “I don’t know.” I shrugged. “Probably.”
This was when the best day ever went bad. Coach told me to try to run one hundred meters in nine seconds and fifty-eight milliseconds—Bolt’s time. He stood at the finish line with his whistle in his mouth. I rolled my pants up to my knees and my shirtsleeves up to my shoulders just like I had done the day before.
“On my whistle,” Coach said, holding up the stopwatch. “On your mark, get set,” and then, badeep! I took off down the track running as fast as I could, legs pumping, arms pumping, heart pumping, until I got to the finish line.
“Ohhhh,” Coach howled excitedly. I felt good. Knew that I had proven my point. I bopped over to Coach with my hand up, ready for the high five. But Coach never lifted his hand.
“Not even close!” he yelped. “Not. Even. Freakin’. Close. You ran a twelve-five.” And before I could even respond, he barked, “Back on the line!”
I jogged back to the start. Coach blew the whistle. I ran. He blew the whistle. I ran. Again, and again, and again. Each time I came in a little slower than the last. My head started swimming, my chest burning, and my legs got all gooey, like all the running was turning my bones to liquid or something.
After the fifth try, Coach yelled out, “Fourteen seconds? Fourteen seconds? On the track, that might as well be fourteen minutes! Are you kidding me?”
I bent over and planted my hands on my knees. My legs were shaking, but only on the inside. Like my muscles were . . . shivering. My heart was pounding as fast as my feet had pounded the track. Maybe even faster. My stomach was flipping, and I just knew that my french fries were gonna come out as mashed potatoes all over the place. Coach walked over, his shadow making the red track burgundy around me. He leaned in and said lightly, almost as if he were whispering to me, “Back on the line.”
That’s when I lost it.
“What . . . what? What . . . again? I . . . need . . . a break,” I panted. “I’m tired.”
“Tired?” Coach squealed, and I could hear the smile in his voice. I glanced up and there it was, big and chipped and wide like whatever words were hiding behind those teeth, he was struggling to keep in. So he let them out. “You know who’s really tired, son? Your principal.” Coach put his hands up, palms facing me as if to stop me from even thinking about responding. Then he continued, “No, no. You know who’s really, really tired? Your mother. She’s so tired. So tired. And she’s gonna be even more exhausted when she hears about your suspension.”
“Come on, Coach,” I begged. “That’s messed up.”
“Come on, nothing,” Coach said like every old black person says when they don’t have a good comeback. He grabbed my shoulder and stood me straight. “Bending over cuts off your air,” he said. “We stand straight up at all times. Understand?”
I nodded, now understanding what was happening. I was being punished after all. This was Coach’s way of telling me that I better stop acting up in school. If this was what the consequences of getting sent to Mr. Marshall’s office were going to be every time, I’d rather have him just call my mother.
“Now, Mr. Better Than Bolt, get back on the line.”
Coach made me do the sprint two or three more times before finally letting up, and the only reason I think he let me stop was because my sprint had broken down into that weird, sloppy trot the tall skinny kid, Sunny, had done at the practice the previous day. My shirt was gone. I had peeled it off and thrown it on the field just in case the wet cotton was weighing me down or something. My legs had pretty much clocked out, but instead of letting me just sit down and rest, Coach told me to walk it off.
“Walk it off?” I asked, annoyed and confused and almost ready to cry.
“Yeah, just walk around the track. It’ll cool your body down slowly.”
But I didn’t want my body to cool down slowly. I wanted it to cool down immediately! So, yeah, at this point I had pretty much made up my mind that track was the dumbest sport ever. I mean you gotta move to warm up, and move to cool down? Don’t make no sense. Cooldown should be, I don’t know, some juice and an Icee or something like that. Not no walk.
Once I finished the first lap, Coach told me to take one more, and about halfway around the second lap of me mumbling under my breath about how stupid all this was, I could see the other runners—my new teammates—showing up, dropping their sports bags and water bottles and all that on the track, some of their parents trailing behind.
“This is gonna be it,” Coach was preaching to everyone as I finally made it back to the other side of the track for the second time. “Ten girls, ten boys. Just so we’re clear, this doesn’t mean you still can’t be cut. It just means you ain’t cut yet. Now, I’d like to keep it this way, but that’s totally up to you. Got that?”
Everybody nodded, including a woman with braids who looked too old to be on the team even though she was dressed in running clothes. I had first noticed her from the other side of the track and figured she was somebody’s mother . . . until she didn’t sit down with the rest of the corny kids’ cheering squad.
Coach went on about how this was the third day of practice for the spring season, and how he wanted to make sure we all knew each other, or at least make sure all the vets knew the newbies. I was still standing back, sort of outside the circle, as Coach started rattling off everybody’s name.
“On the girls’ side, for the vets we have Myisha Cherry, Brit-Brat Williams, Melissa Jordan, Dee Dee Gross, Krystal Speed . . .” Any girl with the last name Speed had to be fast. Kinda like any dude with the last name Bolt. Coach continued, “Deja Bullock, Lynn Tate, Kondra Fulmer, Nicky McNair.” He paused and motioned toward the last girl. “And our newbie for the girls, Patina—but she told me a few minutes ago that she goes by Patty—Jones.” Everybody clapped. “Patty, I got high hopes for you, young lady. Let’s make it happen.”
Then he started calling out the boys’ names. First, the vets. “Eric Daye, Curron Outlaw, Aaron Holmes, Mikey Farrar, Freddy Hayes, Josh ‘J.J.’ Jerome, and Chris Myers. You boys better look out for our newbies, Lu Richardson, Sunny Lancaster . . .” And this was when Coach turned to me. “And as of yesterday, this kid. Castle Cran—”
“Ghost,” I cut him off before he could even get the shaw out. “Just call me Ghost.”
Coach gave me a look. Actually, everybody gave me a look. Probably because I didn’t have no shirt on, and my pants were rolled to my knees, and my belt was yanked so tight that it made the denim bunch around my waist like genie pants. But whatever.
“I was gonna tell them that, son,” Coach said. Then he turned back to the rest of the team. “Lastly, this is your assistant coach, Coach Whit.” Coach Whit was the woman with the braids. She also had chubby cheeks, and like I said, she looked too old to be on the team, but she definitely didn’t look old enough to be nobody’s coach. Then she pulled a whistle from underneath her sweatshirt, so that pretty much meant she was.
“Give it up for your squad,” Coach told us, slapping his hands together. “This is gonna be a great season!” Everybody cheered and clapped for maybe ten seconds before Coach shut it down and told us it was time to get to work.
He divided everyone up into whatever their specialty was. Because most of the other kids had been running track for, like, forever, Coach knew who was a sprinter, who ran long stuff, and who ran all the junk in the middle. As far as the newbies were concerned, Sunny was a long runner and Patty ran the in-between. Me and Lu were the sprinters. (I never even knew I was a sprinter!) So guess what we were doing for practice? Sprinting. And guess who had just finished sprinting and didn’t get to take a break? Me.
“Today is Wednesday, and Mikey, why don’t you inform our newbies about what sprinters do on Wednesdays,” Coach said. Mikey was a vet sprinter. A light-skinned kid with braces and a rock face. The kind of guy who you didn’t really say too much to, because you just assumed he wouldn’t say nothing back. Except to Coach, of course.
“Ladders,” Mikey grumbled.
“That’s right.” Coach paced back and forth. “Four, three, two, one, one, two, three, four.” Every time Coach called a number, he clapped his hands together like a cheerleader.
Okay. Let me explain what Coach was talking about, because I didn’t have a clue at first either. All those numbers, the fours and the threes and all that, yeah, add a “hundred” on the end, and then add a “meters” on the end of that. So four hundred meters, three hundred meters, two hundred meters, and so on. We had to run those. Down the ladder to one hundred, then back up to four. I didn’t think the day that started kind of bad, then got good, then got bad, then got better, then got bad again, could get worse until Coach told me, Lu, Mikey, and Aaron—the four sprinters on the boys’ side—to get on the line, four words I was already sick and tired of hearing.
The whistle blew, and . . . well . . . Lu, Mikey, and Aaron blew me away.
Back on the line, this time for the three hundred. Toasted.
Back on the line, now, the two hundred. Roasted.
Back on the line for the one hundred. Dusted.
“Five-minute break,” Coach said. “Grab some water.” He came over to me, put his hand on my shoulder. I was literally folded in half, trying to catch my breath. My eyes were watering, but I knew better than to cry. I ain’t no crybaby. Especially not over no running.
“You all right?” Coach asked. I couldn’t get the words out. Every time I tried to speak, the sound was shoved back in my throat by a sharp inhale. So I just nodded. Then Coach squeezed my shoulder and pulled me up so that I was standing straight. “Remember what I told you. Stand tall.” I put my hands on my head, wove my fingers together. “Now hustle up and get some water.” Coach nudged me. “You only got three minutes.”
Here’s the other thing that I didn’t really know about being on a team. There are rules to drinking water. I mean, I guess it might be different on different kinds of teams, but on this team, everybody had their own water bottle that they had brought with them. So when I went over to the bench with the other sprinters, I just sat down. Didn’t ask nobody for a swig or nothing because . . . I don’t know . . . it just didn’t seem like something I should do. The only feel I had for these guys was that Lu was cocky, and Mikey seemed way too serious to share, and Aaron . . . well, I couldn’t get a read on him at all yet. So I figured, three minutes to catch my breath was just as good as water. It would have to be.
“Where’s your water, newbie?” Aaron asked, looking down the row.
“I . . . forgot it . . . ,” I replied, the fire in my chest finally cooling down.
“Here.” Aaron held his bottle out. “Take some. And don’t put your mouth on it either.”
Lu leaned back so I could grab Aaron’s bottle. I held it above my head and squeezed the bottle until the water shot through the nozzle like a jet stream, splashing me in the face, some even getting in my nose. Eventually I hit the target—my mouth, which was when I realized I was wrong. Water was way better than just catching your breath. Way, way better. After I handed the bottle back to Aaron, Lu finally had something to say.
“Yo, what you doing here?” he asked. The way he said it made it seem like the words had been bubbling up inside him.
“What you mean?” I replied. “I’m doing the same thing you doing. Running.”
Lu looked at me like I was speaking a different language. “Is that what you call that?” he jabbed. “I mean, yesterday you were big and bad, and today you just . . . bad. Plus, we all had to try out to prove we belong here, and you just walk on our track like you one of us?” Lu was giving me a stink-eyed stare, and I was looking to see if Aaron or Mikey agreed with him, but neither of them showed any sign of hate. I got the feeling Mikey never showed any sign of anything. Ever. Dude was a blank slate.
I tried to keep my cool, because I was all the way clear on what the punishment would be if I did something stupid. Plus, he was just talking trash. And it was just a little bit of trash. He wasn’t gonna do nothing to me. I knew that for sure.
Still, I had to ask, “You mad about yesterday? Is that what this is about? Me proving that you ain’t all that fast?” Then I had to add, “That you just got on a fancy suit, trying to front like you Usain Bolt.” It felt good to throw that name out there like I really knew what I was talking about, especially since I had to pretend like I didn’t think Lu’s gear was the sweetest I had ever seen. Especially the shoes. Oh man, those shoes. They were bright green and looked like they were specially made just for him. They had to have been helping him run.
“Ain’t nobody trying to be Bolt. I’mma be better than Bolt. Plus, at least I got on running clothes. You out here in your daddy’s gear pretending to be something you not.”
Oh no. I could feel the altercation-ness creeping up in my chest like a new kind of lightning. The black was turning red again, and I really wasn’t trying to be a repeat offender of the bully beat-down. Not in the same day. But Lu was begging for it.
“What you say about my daddy?” I asked, my head cocked to the side, which is pretty much the universal symbol for watch yourself, homie.
“I’m just saying if you can’t afford running gear, at least wear pants that fit. And what are those shoes? Sikes? Freeboks?”
“Chill,” Mikey said, flat. That’s all he said. Just, “Chill.”
Aaron followed up. “Yeah, take it out on the track, newbies.”
Luckily, Coach blew the whistle and called us all back to the starting line. I stood up. Lu stood up. We eyeballed each other for a second until Coach barked, “Hustle up!” Aaron finally pushed me toward the track, and Lu had no clue how lucky he was.
It was time to run back up the “ladder.” Starting with the one hundred. My adrenaline was still pumping from all that trash Lu was talking. I didn’t even do nothing to this dude, and he just felt like he could snap on me. Like I was some chump. Who is he? I thought. What gave him the right to just make fun of me for no reason? Like he was perfect. He’s the one God ain’t color in. He’s the one who looked weird. Why didn’t I at least get him on that? Stupid. But that’s okay, because when Coach blew the whistle, I kept up with Lu on the one hundred. Matter fact, I might’ve even beat him. On the two, I did okay. But it was on the three where the day got even worse.
I was wiped, but there was nothing that was going to make me quit. Not after all that trash talk. Plus, I could tell Lu was tired too. He was panting even harder than I was, and he didn’t even have the pre-workout workout! Coach even had to tell him to stop bending over, which made me feel good, to know I wasn’t the only one who felt like I was dying. But when the whistle blew, and we started running, what I didn’t know was that one of my shoes had come untied. By the time I realized one lace was flapping around, we were halfway through the sprint, and I was still keeping up with Lu and there was nothing that was going to stop me from beating him. So I pushed on. We rounded the bend, Lu leaning into it, which I honestly thought was kind of cool, and then we hit the straightaway. I had my elbows tucked and everything. But . . . my shoestrings. They apparently hated me. I stepped on one, I guess. I mean, who really knows how anyone trips over shoestrings. They’re just strings. How can you trip over a string? I don’t know, but I did. And it was bad. Not only did I do the whole slow-motion, stumble—stumble—stumble—fall thing, but to make it even worse (yeah, we’re in like negative worse at this point), my shoes came off. Both! Off !
Of course, you know that at the exact moment I slammed into the track, everybody else—who had all been off working on their specialties—just happened to be looking toward us.
Ohhhhhhh! was literally what everyone howled. Everyone. Even Coach. I lay there on my stomach for a second, before finally rolling over and sitting up.
“You okay?” Coach said, jogging over. I looked behind me. Lu was just finishing the sprint and was now staring back down the straightaway. I looked at my hands and knees. They were black and white with track burn. “Come on.” Coach grabbed me by the arm and helped me up. “Walk it off.”
But walking it off had a whole other meaning for me this time. It meant walking, in my dirty, soggy socks, down the track to get my sneakers, which might’ve been more embarrassing than any joke anyone has ever cracked on me. And walking it off also meant actually walking it off. As in, walking it off the track.
“Just sit this last one out, son,” Coach said, before turning back toward the other sprinters all yukking it up. Even Mikey. And especially Lu. “That’s enough laughing. On the line!” Coach barked, lifting the whistle back to his lips.
After practice, everybody gathered around the bench, grabbed their bags, and headed off to meet their parents. I sat with my head in my lap, waiting for everyone to disappear. Or waiting for myself to. I’d rolled my jeans down—crinkled from knee to ankle—and I had put my wet shirt back on.
“Scoot over, dude,” a girl voice said. I lifted my head, and there was Patty. She sat down next to me and started unlacing her shoes, which by the way, were also pretty dope. I looked straight ahead, out at the track, those stupid white lines teasing me like everybody else. “Don’t worry about today,” Patty said sweetly. “You ain’t the first person to crash out like that.” She eased her heels out of her shoes. “And you won’t be the last.”
I glanced over at Coach, who was standing off to the side talking to Sunny and the man standing next to Sunny, who I figured was his father. He looked like a businessman. Gray suit. Tie. Beard. Glasses. The whole getup.
“I just wanted to beat him, to shut him up.” I kept my eye on those white lines. I didn’t want Patty to see whatever might’ve been showing on my face.
“Who, Lu?” she asked, her voice brightening up, happy like this was some kind of joke. “Don’t pay that fool no mind. He just mad he albino.”
Now I turned to Patty, because I didn’t have a clue what she was talking about. Albino? Was that some kind of sickness? Was he infected with something? Or was it like he was in special ed, because if that was what albino meant, then people probably thought I was albino too.
“Albino?” I repeated.
“Yeah,” she replied. She must have sensed I was clueless, because she continued, “Wait. You don’t know what albino is?”
I shook my head. Then Patty shook hers.
“So, it’s basically when you born without the brownness in your skin,” she explained. “That lady who be cheering for him all crazy at practice, that’s his mother.”
The woman was my complexion. Medium brown.
“And his daddy dark-skinned. So it ain’t no way he could just come out white. Feel me? That’s albino.”
Somebody called out for Patty, a small voice. A little girl came running toward us. “So yeah, Ghost—Ghost, right?” Patty said, standing up.
“Yeah.”
“That’s why Lu acts like that. Trust me, I know. I used to go to school with him. He was picked on crazy until he started running track. Matter fact, kids used to call him Ghost,” Patty explained. The little girl had finally reached us. She threw her arms around Patty and squeezed tight.
“Ghost, this my baby sister, Madison.”
Madison looked at me. “Hey, Madison,” I said. She did a weird wave. Just jabbed her arm up and snapped down real quick. Then she buried her face in Patty’s stomach. She was probably freaked out by my name.
“Okay, okay, let’s go,” Patty said, looking over at a white woman. “Momly’s waiting for us.” Then she looked at me and said, “And before you start wondering if I’m reversed albino or something, me and Madison are adopted. So no need to be weird about it, ’kay?”
“Oh, I wasn’t—I—” I stammered, trying to pretend like the whole reversed albino thing didn’t pop right up in my head the second she called that white lady “Momly,” which was obviously one of those mom nicknames, like . . . I don’t know . . . “Ma” or something.
“It’s cool,” Patty said, smiling. She picked up her bag and threw it over her shoulder. Then she bent down and lifted her sister, holding her tight to her hip, and they left. Once Patty hobbled past Coach, Sunny and his dad started walking with her. Sunny turned around awkwardly and threw his hand up in the air to me.
“Good job today, Ghost!” he yelled, and even though I would normally think this was some kind of slick way of making fun of me, the look on Sunny’s face and the way his voice sounded made me think that he really meant it. So I waved back and said, nowhere near loud enough for him to actually hear me, “Thanks.”
That left me and Coach. When we got to his cab, I tossed my backpack on the floor in the back, slammed the door, and lay down on the sticky leather.
“If you sit back there, I gotta treat you like a customer, kid,” Coach said, starting the car. I didn’t say nothing. Coach turned around in his seat and glared at me. “Okay, then fine. I’m gonna run the meter. If you gonna make me drive you home in silence, I might as well get paid for it.”
Still, nothing from me. Not a word. Nothing to say. All I could think about was how stupid it felt to crash and burn on the track like that on my first real day of practice, and how Brandon Simmons would’ve laughed me off the planet if he was there to see that, and how I had finally beaten him up for talking smack about me and would’ve done it again, and how Patty said Lu had (was?) albino, and how she a white mother, and ladders were the worst, four-three-two-one-one-two-three-four, and water bottles, and how come I didn’t know any of this, and how come everybody’s shoes were so good, especially Lu’s and Patty’s. And probably Usain Bolt’s.
“. . . I swear, I almost broke my nose, kid. I mean, I just clipped the hurdle and dove face-first to the ground.” Despite his riding-in-silence comment, Coach was blathering on, probably telling me a story, but I wasn’t really listening. He continued, “So I know what it’s like to be embarrassed in front of your teammates. Trust me, tomorrow nobody will even remember.”
I heard that part, that tomorrow nobody would remember, and I’m not sure if I believed it or not, but I knew what I could do to help the situation. In addition to the ladders, water bottles, white parents, albino thinking, I also thought myself up a plan.
When we pulled up in front of my house, Coach put the car in park.
“Twenty dollars,” he said, trying to lighten the situation.
“Coach.”
“Nah, nah, don’t try to dash on me,” he insisted. “You done already robbed me for half a day’s pay.”
“But I paid you back already with all that sprinting I gave you earlier,” I groaned.
Coach did a double take. “Oh, you thought that was for me?” He pressed a finger to his chest.
I shook my head and unlocked the door. After I got out, Coach rolled down the window. The car slowly drifted forward. “Remember what I said, Ghost. . . .” He accelerated slightly. “Tomorrow it won’t matter. It’ll be a new day. A new chance!”
When I got inside my house, I didn’t waste no time. I knew what I needed to do, and I knew that I had to do it before my mother got home and made me eat dinner and watch some sappy flick with her while she procrastinated doing her homework. See, besides working in a hospital cafeteria, she was also taking online classes (there were also textbooks in that big purse), trying to get her nursing degree. She always says she can’t wait to one day trade that serving spoon for a stethoscope, and this house for a new one not in Glass Manor. But she hated homework. I guess I get that from her.
I dropped my backpack on the couch and headed straight for the kitchen. The drawer next to the stove was where my mother kept leftover duck sauce, soy sauce, chopsticks, menus, tape, screwdrivers, but most importantly, all her coupons, organized and paper-clipped by product. Seemed like everybody was having a sale on ketchup, which was a good thing because ketchup always made cafeteria food taste better. Way better. Along with the coupons (and all the other stuff) were the scissors she used to cut those coupons. These weren’t just regular scissors, though. Nope. These were hospital scissors. At least that’s where my mom got them from, and they were big, and shiny, and heavy, like if a doctor gotta cut somebody’s arm off or something, he could just use these bad boys and . . . snip, snip, bye-bye arm. Which was why I knew they’d be perfect for what I needed them for.
I grabbed the scissors and sat down on the kitchen floor. Using one foot to press against the heel of the other, I pushed my sneakers off. I yanked the laces out of both, so the floppy tongues fell forward like drawbridges coming down out of beat-up, leather, no-named fortresses. Because here’s the truth—I was still so angry about what happened on the track. Embarrassed. There was so much noise inside of me. So much of everybody’s laughing. So starting with the left shoe, I took those big scissors and began cutting and cutting, performing my own kind of surgery, the blades sawing and slicing into the black leather until the high parts of my high-tops were gone.