Lu Read online

  He turned away from me, looked out the window, letting the words sit between us for a second. I thought about changing the subject and telling him about new-future-little-baby, but instead I just ain’t say nothing. Already said enough. Just leaned over to see who Coach was looking at, now waving at. An old man, maybe fifty. Maybe sixty. Hard to tell because his face looked forty but his body looked eighty. He was sweeping the sidewalk. Walking beside him was another dude, a guy with an old body and an old face, but he had a wild jumpy bop. And it was obvious he was buzzing and bothering the young-faced old man about something.

  Coach rolled the window down.

  “Everything all right, Mr. Jeff?” Coach asked. Youngface turned toward the cab.

  “Hey now, Otis.” He lifted the broom in the air like a magic wand. “I’m fine. I’m fine. But . . . I’m tired of trying to convince this fool to get away from me before I sweep him up with the rest of the mess the wind done blown around out here. I got a daughter just like him, always beggin’ beggin’ beggin’. I’m taking care of her son right now while she tries to get herself together, so all my money—every red cent—is going to the Goodwill and his belly. Grandson gon’ eat me out of a house, a home, and into a doggone hole.” The old man shook his head, hard. “And now this joker here come talking about sparing some change. He got some nerve.”

  Coach lifted his butt off the seat, just high enough to slide his wallet from his back pocket. He slipped a dollar from the fold.

  “Here.” Coach held the single out the window, not for the man called Mr. Jeff, but for the jumpy man (Oldface) behind him, who came shuffling across the street. He walked like all the bones in his body were broken. Like his legs were only being held together by string. A puppet with an invisible puppet master.

  “Hey, hey . . . Otis, man, I appreciate this. You know I’m hard up right now. You know . . . I mean, I . . . I . . . I just need to get something to eat. You know how it is. Just something to eat. That’s all,” the man jittered, the sound of his words like wheezes, like he couldn’t speak and breathe at the same time. He smelled like burning things. Sweat. And rotten.

  Coach just nodded. Swallowed. Rolled the window up. Then finally turned back to me.

  “You wanna talk about embarrassment?” Coach chewed on the sentence, crunched it like Ghost does sunflower-seed shells. “Tomorrow, why don’t you ask Whit about it?”

  “Whit?”

  Coach nodded and changed the subject. “Let me ask you something, pretty boy. Your daddy ever mention the name Torrie Cunningham to you?”

  Did he ever. Torrie Cunningham was like a legend in Barnaby Terrace. My father talked about this dude all the time. Said nobody around here really watched track back in the day until Torrie started running for Barnaby High. Everybody called him the Wolf, because when he would pass you, instead of the woop woop sound everybody in the crowd makes, Torrie would just howl. Like, he would be on your heels howling at your back, and then the whole crowd would howl as he zoomed past. I had to listen to those stories all the time. Dad said the three years Torrie ran were the only three years track was more popular than basketball. But he never made it big because he quit running his senior year. So, yeah. I knew all about him. So I told Coach, “My dad always be talking about him.”

  “Well, I ran against him.” Coach shook his head. “The Wolf was noooo joke. Ran like his parents were breeze and wind. Like he was born to do that, and just that.” Coach grinned, and then he didn’t. “The Wolf could’ve been the G.O.A.T. Know where he is now?”

  I figured the Wolf was probably coaching a high school team or something like that. Either that or coaching another young elite team for us to dust on Saturday, and maybe that’s why Coach was bringing him up.

  “Where?” I asked.

  “Right there.” Coach knocked a knuckle on the window. Then yanked the stick thing, put the car back in drive, and pulled out.

  “Wait, that guy is—” I tried to get another glimpse of the old-faced man through the back window but couldn’t.

  “The Wolf.” Coach nodded. “His senior year he got caught up in what a lot of us got caught up in. What my old man got caught up in. See, Torrie was howling and all that, but he was never a wolf. And we all realized that when he met a real one and got eaten alive, from the inside out. These days, if he ain’t over here bothering Mr. Jeff, he over at the basketball court jumping around, out of his head, but . . . I don’t know. To me, that’s embarrassment. Not the dope—that’s illness. But to let something get in the way of your full potential . . .” Coach glanced in the rearview, adjusted it slightly, then looked back at the road. “Actually, maybe I can’t say that. Because the thing that’s beating him, he never stood a chance against. He’s not jumping over a hurdle, son. That brother back there’s jumping over a mountain.” Whoa. Guess I didn’t know everything about Torrie Cunningham.

  “Yeah. Okay,” I said. “But . . . what that gotta do with Whit?” I was trying to understand what the heck Coach was talking about. He was always all over the place. A grown-up Sunny.

  “Oh. Right.” Coach turned the wheel to the left and the car floated in that direction. “He’s her big brother. That’s why me and Whit work together so well. Why we connect. We’ve seen what’s out here for talented kids, like you. The wonders . . . and, unfortunately, the wolves.”

  I stayed quiet again, Coach’s words pricking me like I was sitting in the middle of a giant hairbrush. That dude, the one back there begging and moving like he was trying on a new body for the first time, was Whit’s big brother, one of the best runners in Glass Manor (and every other neighborhood around here) history? That dude? Really? That was enough to make me itch. Enough to make me try to scratch my head down to the brain. See if I could get it to understand.

  The Wolf. That guy was the Wolf. Wolves howl. Growl. Flash their teeth. Wolves bite. I bit the dust. Jumping hurdles. Jumping Coach. Coach and Whit. Whit and Wolf. Wolf a big bro. I’m almost a big bro. Will be in December. Snowflakes in December. Snow is white. I’m white. But not really. Not really. Really the man. The kid. The guy. Focus. That was the Wolf. The Wolf. Maybe I’m what he would’ve been if he wasn’t bit. But I’m . . .

  “Here we are. The Palace of Lu,” Coach announced, finally pulling up in front of my house. The tone of his voice had some joke in it again, but I could tell it was still attached to some serious.

  “Good-lookin’ on the ride,” I said, not scratching no more, but still kinda . . . surprised. But not in the good way. I held my fist out for a pound.

  “This one’s on me,” Coach joked. “And, uh, you can thank me tomorrow by cutting out all that embarrassment nonsense. Sometimes we fall. It happens. Plus, I don’t even know what you so worked up about anyway. Especially today. I was the one being a human hurdle. And I didn’t care what I looked like. You know why? Because sometimes I gotta be who I am for you to know it’s okay for you to be who you are.” He knocked his fist against mine.

  “Well, that’s you, Coach. But I ain’t no human hurdle,” I explained. “Plus, I already know who I am.” I rubbed my chin like my dad does when he smooths out his beard. The man. The kid.

  “So do I.” Coach smirked, yanking the car back in drive. “Embarrassed.”

  I looked at him, put my thoughts on mute for a moment. “Come on, Coach. I was joking. You don’t know what a joke is? For real for real . . . I wasn’t really embarrassed. I mean, I was, but really I was just—”

  “Oh, I know, I know. I got it,” he cut me off, now full-on smiling. “Scared.”

  4

  A NEW NAME FOR LITTLE BROTHER: Little Sister

  Gordon. That’s my dad’s real name. But everybody calls him Goose. Everybody. Except my mom. And me. I call him Dad. Actually, I called his phone when I got in the house and found out he and my mother weren’t there yet. So tonight, I called him . . . Late Dad.

  “Late Dad? That’s the best you got, Lu?” he joked me about my bad joke. Which made it a worse joke. I could hear him tur
n away from the phone and tell my mother that I called him Late Dad, and then I could hear my mother say, “Late Dad? Wow. Nice one, son. Really clever.” She sounded disappointed, but a funny kind of disappointed. Honestly, I couldn’t blame her. The joke was trash. But come on, I can’t be great at everything. Plus he’s my father so it ain’t like I could just say, Where you at, you booboo-faced clown? I mean, I could have, but why run the risk of future-new-little-baby ending up an only child?

  Anyway, ten minutes after that goofy phone call, my mom and dad got home. I was just about to get in the shower and wash the track funk off me before dinner, but doubled back to get the big baby surprise that I wanted but didn’t really want. But did. But didn’t. But kinda needed to want. Or was supposed to want. And did. But . . . didn’t.

  “Nope. Absolutely not!” Dad pointed back down the hall toward the bathroom. “We ain’t telling you nothing, because it’s impossible to talk and hold our breath at the same time, Stinky Son.”

  “Yeah, Stinky Son,” my mom joined in just to be funny. She was his all-the-time hype-man. Hype-woman. “You smell like . . . old bananas!”

  “And you smell like mom jokes,” I tossed back at her, swiping under my arms, then sniffing. I knew I stank, but for some reason I just needed to make sure.

  “Then I smell like YOU!” she shouted, her voice cracking into a big laugh. “Only difference is, I’m actually a mom. A mother of . . . two.” She put two fingers in the air. “And you, banana boy, won’t know if the other is a sister or brother until you smell less like your daddy after a long day.”

  “Wow.” From me.

  Dad snapped his neck toward her. “I thought we were on the same team!”

  “I know.” Shrug. “We are.”

  “Wow.” From me, again.

  “So then why you gotta bring me into this! I don’t stink!” he whined, sounding like he felt played out.

  “No, honey,” my mother replied, lifting her voice to cartoon tone. She kissed my dad, then thumbed her nose. “You . . . um . . . you don’t stink . . . at all.”

  I took a long shower. The washing part happened quick, but I just stood there in the water, thinking about future-new-little-baby and how weird it was going to be hearing all that crying, and smelling the poop, and holding something smaller than a watermelon. I always wanted to have a little brother. Somebody I could look at and it would be like looking at me through a brown filter. Probably a less cool brown filter, but still a brown filter, because the chance of Mom having another albino baby was almost impossible. But now that it was happening—like really happening—it felt funny. Because, honestly, I was kind of like a miracle (that’s what they say), but if there’s another miracle, then the first one just becomes a cool thing that happened. But not . . . a miracle no more. And even though being different is tough, being different is different.

  But still, it’ll be cool. It’ll be cool. It’ll be cool, yeah. Of course it will. Definitely. Plus, no matter what, it won’t be as hard to be a big brother as it is to jump hurdles. And I ain’t scared of that, so ain’t no way I was gonna be scared of this. No matter what Coach was talking about.

  After the longest shower of all time, I threw on some sweats and headed back to the kitchen, the smell of leftover turkey meat floating through the air.

  I sat down. Elbows on the table. Deep breath. “Okay. I’m ready.”

  “For what?” my mother asked, nudging my arms off and taking a seat. My father was washing his hands in the sink.

  “Um . . . for the surprise.”

  I felt something hit the back of my head. A balled-up paper towel.

  “Surprise!” Dad yelped.

  “Ha. Ha. Ha,” I fake-laughed, slapping my father on the back as he sat next to me.

  He tucked his chains, then picked up his turkey wing and bit straight into it, caveman-style. Chewed and chewed, while I stared at him, waiting and waiting. Then I looked at my mother. She turned away.

  “Mom!”

  “Okay, okay.” She broke. “You’re gonna be a big brother.”

  I cocked my head, annoyed. “Seriously.”

  Both of my parents busted out laughing, turkey-meat confetti flying from my dad’s mouth. Gross.

  “Okay, okay. Here we go, for real this time.” Mom took a deep breath. “We have ourselves . . . ,” she revved up.

  A boy.

  “A . . .”

  Snowflake. But a snowflake boy. Just say it.

  “Boy!” she yelped.

  “I knew it!”

  “Named Lu.”

  “Wait . . . what?”

  “But what we’re about to have is . . . a girl!” My mother shrieked and my father threw his greasy hands in the air, clapped them over his head. Mom rubbed her stomach. “You’re gonna have a little sister!”

  A sister. I felt . . . okay, let me explain. It’s not that I wanted, um . . . that I was kind of hoping for a little brother because I don’t like girls. It ain’t that at all. I do like girls. Patty been acting like my sister for forever, and, you know, it’s cool. But to have a little brother would’ve been good for me, y’know, like I said before, just because I wanted to see what I would’ve looked like if I was . . . brown. And me being a boy and all, I just felt like it made sense to look into another boy’s face to see my own.

  “What’s wrong?” my mother asked, which let me know that I wasn’t doing a good job at keeping my face happy, and I imagined it probably looked like I was forcing a smile, and when you force a smile, it always looks like you’re trying to ignore the fact that your stomach’s bubbling.

  “Nothing.”

  “Lu.” My dad had finally got the turkey meat down. I looked at him. “Say it.”

  “It’s . . . really, it ain’t like a big thing. I’m cool. Happy.” I’d been practicing that. “I just wanted . . .”

  “A little brother,” Mom said. She reached over, grabbed my hand, which I had balled into a fist and was pushing my thumb between the fingers. “Right?”

  “I ain’t even know you could have more kids, but then you say you having one all of a sudden and so I just wanted to know . . . what I would look like . . . I know he might not have looked just like me, or whatever, but still, it would’ve at least been cool to know what I would’ve looked like if I was . . . normal.”

  “Normal?” Mom’s face twitched. “You know how I feel about—”

  “I know, I know,” I cut her off. “But you know what I mean.” She hated when I said things like normal. Because when I say normal, I mean brown, and she don’t feel like the color of my skin makes me un-normal. But if that’s true, then why would she call me a lightning bolt? To be one in seventeen thousand ain’t normal, and when seventeen thousand (million) people are just staring at you like you a freak, it sometimes be feeling . . . off.

  “I know. But can I tell you something? Your little sister might not look like you—”

  “Or she might,” my father interrupted, a finger in the air.

  “True. She might. But even if she doesn’t look like you, she is going to look at you. And you know what she’s gonna see?” My mother followed my eyes, making sure she didn’t lose me.

  “Yep. The most handsome boy to ever go to Barnaby Middle.” I forced a joke. And another smile. Then lowered my head.

  “You’re not serious, and I know you’re not.” She pulled my card. “Look at me.” Eyes up. “Do. You. Know. What. She’s. Going. To. See?”

  “What?”

  “Herself.” Mom smiled. “She’s gonna see herself, son. In you.”

  “Like I do,” Dad followed like a cornball, and I could tell it was part for me, and part to remind my mother what it meant to be on the same team.

  After dinner, Dad and me had to wash dishes, and that’s when I asked him if he meant what he said, that he really saw himself in me, or if he was just sucking up to Mom. Or both.

  “Both. Definitely both,” he teased.

  “I knew it.”

  “But mainly I meant i
t.” Dad grabbed the drying towel and laid it out so that I could put the wet plates on it.

  “Okay, but how? I mean . . . in what way?”

  My father leaned against the counter—because us washing dishes really meant me washing dishes—and tucked just the tips of his fingers into the pockets of his jeans.

  “Well . . . I see a kid with so much future. So much passion, but at the same time, so much . . . um . . .” He looked at me like he wanted me to give him the words he was missing, but I was missing them too.

  “What?” I asked. “So much . . . what?”

  “I don’t know. Look, when I was your age, I just wanted to be accepted. I just wanted to be cool.”

  “And . . . you are.” That was obvious. Runs in the family. My father is literally the coolest dude I know. Some people don’t want to be like their dads. Like Ghost and Sunny. But I pretty much wanted to be just like Goose. Always fly. Fresh clothes, kicks, tattoos. Got this cool way of talking, like, he keep his voice low, and if you don’t know him, it can be kinda hard to make out what he saying, which to me, all plays into his Goose-ness. Matter fact, he might be the coolest dude anybody know. Coolest dude around here, for sure.

  “Yeah, but it wasn’t always like this. Man, the way you are on that track, I never had that when I was running. Other people did, but not me,” he explained.

  I scrubbed leftover turkey slime from a plate, streaks of brown left behind from the seasonings Mom used. “Other people like the Wolf, right?” I asked. Dad did this weird head-nod-head-shake mix-up thing he always did whenever the Wolf came up, so I explained. “Me and Coach were talking about track and how it was back in the day. He was going on and on about him. The Wolf. Mr. . . . what’s his name. Torrie—”

  “Cunningham. The fastest kid I ever seen.” Dad, now all perked up, took his hands out his pockets and rubbed them together, ready to tell me a story I had already heard like a trillion times. The Wolf. The howl. The speed. Again. “He would talk so. Much. Trash. So cocky, but it didn’t matter because nobody could beat him.”