Ghost Read online

  “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 cra
zy 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.

  5

  WORLD RECORD FOR THE MOST RUNAWAYS IN A SINGLE DAY

  I WONDER IF doctors ever cut off somebody’s arm or leg and afterward realize that they made a huge mistake. Like, totally blew it. Because that’s definitely how I felt about low-topping my high-tops, but not until I got to school the next day.

  I was cool with my new shoes when I first did it. Walked around the house totally hype about how much lighter they were, which would definitely help me out on the track. But when I heard my mom at the door, I took them off and, quick, threw them in my room. I didn’t really think she would notice that I cut my shoes in half, because she was usually so beat when she got home she never noticed anything but the couch. But still, I wanted to play it safe just in case she was in a bad mood and saw that I pretty much just threw half the money she paid for those sneakers in the trash, buried under Styrofoam to-go containers, all streaky and stinky with brown gravy and french dressing. She probably would’ve flipped out and, knowing her, would’ve made me get the glue and the needle and thread and the stapler and some tape and made me try to fix them, all while giving me the speech about “the value of a dollar.” And that would’ve been even worse than her yelling at me or punishing me. Shoot, maybe even worse than ladders.

  I was even still good with the shoes the next morning, which I was really happy about because a lot of times when you sleep on something, your sleep, for some reason, causes your mind to change. I don’t know why, but it does. But when I woke up the next morning, wrapped in my blankets on the living room floor, I opened my bedroom door, pe
eked at my shoes as if they might have come to life in the middle of the night, and, thankfully, was still all right with them. Even after I got dressed and put them on, I wasn’t too worried because my jeans came down long enough to cover the raggedy top and make them look regular.

  What wasn’t okay, though, were my legs. They felt like they had been cut off in my sleep, stuffed with dynamite and hot peppers, and then reattached. So even though my shoes were covered, I couldn’t hide the fact that I was walking like a senior citizen zombie, which I feared would draw unnecessary attention—the last thing I needed.

  When I got to school, first I looked around for Brandon Simmons. But he was nowhere to be found. The only reason I was checking for him was because he could always sniff out stuff like raggedy shoes, or whatever, not that he would’ve tried me two days in a row. If he did, he would’ve won because my legs were barely working, but he wouldn’t test me, not after what had happened at lunch. If anything, people might’ve been teasing him. But like I said, he wasn’t around. Principal Marshall was, though, and the first thing he said to me was that this had better be an altercation-free day, followed by, “And Mr. Simmons won’t be joining us. He’s suspended,” which I have to say were the sweetest words I had heard in a while. I caught up with Dre in the hall for a few seconds. He assumed I was limping because of the fight—battle wound—and was telling me how everyone was talking about how I mopped Brandon, even the people who got chocolate milk splashed on them.

  “Bro, you like a hero,” he said. “Like, you could run for class president right now and win, if you were into all that stuff.” He threw his arm around me. “Picture that . . . President Cranshaw.”