Ghost (10 page)

Anyway. I won't lie. I never caught up to everybody else, even with Coach pretty much yelling at me through that stupid megaphone the whole time. He was leaning on the horn like a crazy person, everybody on the street looking at me, some totally confused and some actually cheering me on. I didn't even come close to finishing with everybody else, but I didn't quit. I never stopped running.

As everybody except for Sunny lay down on the track, trying to catch their breath, Coach had this cocky grin on his face as he came from his car, like he knew he'd worked us to death. “Coach Whit, who shined today?” he asked, jingling his keys.

Coach Whit stood with her hands on her head, her face and the parts between her braids glistening with sweat. “I gotta give it to Sunny, Coach. The kid stuck with me the whole time.” Sunny lit up. He wasn't even
tired. Like running eight hundred miles or however many we ran was no big deal to him. I, and I'm sure almost everybody else, felt like, I don't know, like we had become slime.

“Good job, Sunny,” Coach said, giving him a high five. “I told you vets to look out for him, didn't I?” Mikey and Aaron and Brit-Brat and J.J. and pretty much all the vets groaned, but I could tell they were impressed by lanky-legged Sunny. Patty jumped up and gave him five as well.

“Yo, you like an alien,” she said.

“Yeah man, you got legs,” Lu followed. Then he turned around to me. “You too, Ghost. Them new shoes ain't give you no new speed, but you ain't quit, so . . . yeah.”

“Thanks,” I said. “You too.” I don't know why I said “You too.” It's just like a reflex. It didn't even really make sense in this case, but that's what came out.

“Okay, okay,” Coach said. “Y'all can hug and all that tomorrow at the newbie dinner.”

“What's that?” Patty asked.

“It's tradition. Every year I take the newbies out for Chinese food on the first Friday of the season. It's like a bonding thing,” Coach explained, and then looking from me, to Lu, to Patty, to Sunny, one by one, he
added, “What, y'all don't like Chinese food?”

Of course we quickly answered, “Nah, Chinese is good.”

“Definitely.”

“Sounds good to me.”

“I'm cool with it.”

Coach, with the key ring now on his middle finger, spun the keys like cowboys do with their guns on the old movies Mr. Charles was always watching.

“Okay, then,” Coach said. “Now give me two cooldown laps and get off my track.”

At home, me and Ma had my favorite for dinner. Salisbury steak. Every time she brought it home, all I could think about was how lucky the people in the hospital were that they could get that for dinner. Salisbury steak is amazing. I don't know what exactly Salisbury is, but whatever it is, it's delicious.

“So you liking track?” Ma asked, heating the food up.

“Yeah, it's cool. It's crazy hard, but it's cool.”

“And what about the coach?” she asked. “How's he?”

“I like him,” I said, plain, unsure of what she was getting at. Like I said, moms never trust people around their kids. Never ever. And Coach had just left after
asking my mom if I could go to the newbie dinner, and she said I could, but the smell of Salisbury might've changed her mind just that quick. I don't know why it would've, but who really understands moms?

“You know what?” she said, popping open the microwave when it dinged. She flashed a smile at me. “I like him too.”

Phew.

The homework Ma was avoiding tonight was all about how to draw blood—they call it phlebotomy—and the movie of the night was
Love Jones
, which we've seen a
bazillion
times, but my ma loves it. It's about this photographer lady and this dude who writes poems and they like each other, then they hate each other, then they love each other, and then it's over. Or something like that. I never really pay much attention. I just flip through my world records book and spout out different facts.

“You know, there's this dude named Tommy . . . um . . . Tommy something.” I couldn't pronounce his last name. “He holds the world record for pulling the most nails out of a piece of wood with his teeth.”

My mother, sitting with the nursing textbook open on her lap, just shushed me and kept on watching.

“And there's this other guy,” I continued, even
though I knew she didn't want to hear it. Most of the time I just liked to mess with her. “His name is Wim Hof. What a name, right? Yikes. Wim Hof. Anyway, he got the record for the most amount of time spent in ice.”

“In ice?” my mother asked. Must've caught her at a boring part in the movie.

“Yep.
In
it. One hour and fifty-three minutes.”

“People crazy,” she said, shaking her head. Then she held her hand out in front of me to let me know the boring part of the movie was now over—it was time for her to resume fanning the tears back every five minutes. Blah, blah, blah.

“Hey, you ever heard of Usain Bolt?” I asked her. “He holds the record for being the fastest man.”

“Cas, come on now,” she begged. “They getting ready to fall in love again. You know this my favorite part.”

I just shook my head and kept on flipping. The good thing was she didn't ask me about my new fancy shoes, but that's just because she didn't know about them. I changed them in Coach's cab on the way home from practice. Coach, on the other hand, definitely asked about them.

“Where'd you get 'em? That's all I wanna know,”
Coach said. This came after he told me that he was proud of me for not quitting today. I told him that I had no idea why he loved to torture children so much.

“Do you grill all the kids on the team like this? Or just me?” I replied, snappy.

“Just you.” He slapped my arm.

I told him that my mother had gotten them for me as a way to encourage me to do the right thing and stay out of trouble. Just saying it turned my stomach, because here I was, a boy who was suspended for busting somebody in the face at school one day, and skipped half the day the next because I was laughed at. Then I swiped shoes! I clearly wasn't staying out of trouble. Matter fact, I was knee deep in it.

“Oh . . . okay,” Coach said, but I could tell he didn't believe me. I wouldn't have. He could probably see it on my face, especially since just like him, I didn't have no hair on it to disguise it either. And honestly (yes, honestly), I couldn't even believe that I had just lied like that. I wasn't really the lying type. But I also wasn't the stealing type until a few hours earlier. Altercations, altercations, altercations!

FRIDAY MEANS TWO
things. The first is that it's the last day before I can take two days off school. I like to think of it as a non-altercation suspension. Plus the weekend was when me and Ma actually did stuff—and not just watch movies and avoid homework—because she didn't work on weekends and took early morning online nursing classes to get them out of the way. And when she was done, we would clean the house (I was in charge of the living room), Ma would give me her version of a haircut (she always got most of it even), then give herself one, and then we would go over my aunt Sophie's house. Aunt Sophie is my mom's younger sister, and she's like the coolest lady ever.
She has a tattoo on her arm that says
SWEETIE PIE
that I never asked about, but always stared at just because I can't wait to get one. But mine ain't gonna say nothing like that. Mine's is gonna say
WORLD'S GREATEST
or, of course,
GHOST
.

Anyway, on the weekends, Aunt Sophie and my mom sit around and play cards and crack jokes and eat corn chips with cheese dip and drink beer, and sometimes they let me and King, Aunt Sophie's son, sit with them and play. Yes, we can play. Me and King learned how to play spades and tonk when we were real young. It's a thing in our family. A serious thing. And yes, his real name is King. I think the sisters just wanted to give us royal names. So, yeah. All I had to do was get through Friday without any problems, and I was good to go for the weekend.

The other thing about Friday, which I didn't know until Thursday, is that Coach gives everybody the day off. No practice. And then, of course, since this was the first Friday of the season, Coach was taking the newbies out for dinner.

After two half days of school (which technically equals one full day), I'm happy to say that school went pretty smooth on Friday. Brandon Simmons was back, and even though I had on my regular dusty-butt
shoes—the fancy ones were for track only—Brandon didn't have too much to say to me. I saw him just before first period, and he walked right past me and Dre. I saw some of the other kids snickering at him as he passed. But I told them all to chill. I don't know why because he totally deserved to be roasted, but I guess I felt kinda bad for the dude. I been there.

“I can't believe you're giving this clown a pass,” Dre said. It was almost like he had a year's worth of laughs stored up, waiting to unload them on Brandon. Everybody did. But I just couldn't let it happen. Funny thing was when I saw Shamika in Mr. Hollow's class, she apologized to me about everything that went on in class the day before. And that, my friends, is what they call karma. Plus, like I said, she was a cool girl anyway.

At lunch, she even sat with me, Red, and Dre, and told us every story about times she cut things, just because she was feeling a little guilty.

“There was one time I cut my hair. Man, that was crazy. Just straight-up started hacking it off like a maniac, just because it was hot and my hair was on my neck,” she said first, just before taking a bite of her burger. Then, in the midst of chewing, she continued, “And another time, I cut a pair of jeans into shorts while I still had them on! That was
not
smart! Still
got the scars on my legs!” And then she erupted into laughter just like she did in class. But this time she was the butt of her own joke. And even though me, Dre, and Red didn't really find it that funny, we couldn't help but laugh too because, well, that's what her laugh makes you do.

Before I knew it, school was over and I went on my usual walk home. I mean, Coach wasn't coming until later, so I figured there was no rush. So I went to Mr. Charles's store.

“Let me guess, sunflower seeds?” Mr. Charles said. He turned the little TV down as usual.

“Let me guess, a dollar?” I said, slapping my money on the counter. I grabbed the bag.

“You okay, son?” Mr. Charles asked.

“Yeah, why?”

“Oh, you know . . . all that stuff that happened yesterday with you being teased, and then you came here and got . . .” He stopped short.

I was starting to feel a little annoyed that he even brought it up, because I was definitely trying to forget about it all. Especially that last part. The stockroom part. Talk about
weird
. Not that I hadn't thought about it. I mean, how could I not? But every time my father's face, or the sound of
his angry voice, or the sound of the gun cocking popped into my mind, I would just shake it out of my head by thinking about
my
bullets. The
silver
bullets. But you just can't be mad at an old James Brown–faced man like Mr. Charles. You just can't.

“Yeah, man,” I assured him. “I'm cool. I'm actually in a good mood.”

“Oh yeah?” he asked.

I used my teeth to rip open the corner of the bag. “Yep. Got a dinner thing I'm going to tonight. For my track team,” I said, all proud.

“Track team?” Mr. Charles asked, now turning the TV down even more. “You're on a track team, Castle?”

“Yes, sir,” I started to say, but it's hard to try to talk and get a seed out the shell at the same time. So I waited until I got it done, then continued, “Remember, I told you yesterday?”

“You did?” Mr. Charles looked puzzled. “The old brain's getting wonky these days. Sorry, son.”

“It's cool.” I tapped the bag in my palm to get a few more seeds out. “So yeah, I'm on a team called the Defenders. One of the best teams in the city.”

“I didn't know you were an athlete.” Mr. Charles seemed impressed.

“Well, I am. A pretty good one too,” I bragged,
tossing the seeds in my mouth, then casually slapping my hand against my thigh to brush the salt off. A shock of soreness shot down to my knee, a painful reminder that I was definitely an athlete.
Argh!

Mr. Charles twisted the top off a cranberry juice and took a sip. “I believe you. I told you, kid. You're one of the world's greatest.”

“Got that right,” I said, now spitting shells in my hand. “One of the world's greatest.”

After I left the store, I headed to stop two—the bus stop. I took a seat next to an older woman. She was doing a crossword puzzle and humming a song I didn't recognize. She might've been making it up. It didn't sound bad, though. Across the street at the gym were all the people working out—the Walking Dead. Ha! That's what they look like! Anyway, I hung out there for a little while before moving on. When I got to Martin Luther King Park, I looked down at the track and there wasn't nobody there except for a man jogging with his dog. But nobody else. No
real
runners. After that, there was really no place else to go but home, and I wasn't ready to go there yet. So I went to the basketball court.