Twerp (20 page)

“Then we’re good?”

“Yeah, we’re good.”

Just like that, we
were
good. I know how that sounds, but it’s true. It’s not as if the memory goes away. I’m not saying it does. But life goes on, and Lonnie is still Lonnie, and I’m still me, so what’s the point of dwelling on the past?

“Are you going to beat that guy or what?”

“What guy?”

“You know … 
Eduardo
.”

“I don’t know, Lonnie.”

“C’mon, you’ve
got
to beat him!”

“He’s real fast.”

“I don’t care if he’s real fast. He’s a dirtbag.”

“He’s
not
a dirtbag.”

“Then how about the fact that he’s Jillian’s fake brother? Are you going to let Jillian’s fake brother beat you? Are you going to give her that satisfaction after the way she treated you? Are you going to give her that satisfaction after the way she treated
us
?”

“What if there’s nothing I can do about it?”

“There is something you can do about it,” he said.

“What?”

“Run faster.”

So that was the strategy I had going into Track and Field Day:
run faster
. What other strategy is there? The thing about sprinting is there’s not much to think about. You listen for the gun. You push off. You run as fast as you can until the end. Either you’re fast enough to come in first, or you’re not. That’s what I like about it. It’s pure. But it’s also terrifying for the same reason. If you’re not fast enough to come in first, you’re not going to come in first. There’s no way to come in first except by running faster than whoever comes in second.

The school year was winding down. Another week passed, and another weekend, and I spent the entire time studying for tests and thinking about losing to Eduardo. Studying was by far the less painful thing to do. I don’t know if I was ever more prepared to take a bunch of tests. I aced every one, including English. (Thanks for the 96, Mr. Selkirk!) The last one came on Wednesday, June 11, in social studies. Before I turned in my test paper to Mr. Loeb, I wrote at the bottom, “Sorry again about what I said to Mr. Caricone. I deserved to sit out in the hall. Sincerely, Julian Twerski, the second-fastest kid in P.S. 23.”

I stared at the words after I’d written them. There was no shame in being the second-fastest kid in school, even if the fastest kid was a fifth grader. That just proved it was a fluke case. He was a fifth grader, but he was two years older than I was, and bigger and stronger, so after it was over I could still say, and not be lying, that I’d never lost to anyone my age or size.

But then a thought came to me that made me shiver:
What if I didn’t even make it to the finals?
The way I had the thing pictured, Eduardo would sail through his heats, and I’d sail through mine, and then we’d end up racing in the finals, and he’d win, and that would be that. But at least the entire school would see how he towered over me, and how he kind of had a mustache, and how the race wasn’t fair from that point of view. That would maybe take some of the sting out of it. But what if we wound up together in one of the first heats? No one would be paying attention at that point. The bleachers would still be filling up, kids would still be looking for their friends in the crowd, waving their arms and yakking. If Eduardo blitzed me in the first heat, no one would notice. The thought of losing in the first heat was unbearable.

That meant I had to avoid standing near Eduardo as the runners were grouped. The problem was that the rest of the runners were going to avoid standing near me for the same reason. So, in a way, I did have a strategy.
I figured I’d take a long time in the locker room changing into my gym shorts and sneakers, maybe even make an extra trip to the toilet, then head across the street to Memorial Field at the last minute and show up as Mr. Greetham was counting off the first heats. I knew Eduardo was the kind of guy who stepped forward as soon as he was asked. So if I could sneak into the very last group, we wouldn’t meet until the finals. Mr. Greetham would be looking around for me, on account of last year, so even if I got to Memorial Field a minute or so late, he’d squeeze me into that last group.

Track and Field Day came on Friday the thirteenth. I hung around after social studies period talking to Mr. Loeb. He told me right off he hadn’t graded the final exams yet, but I told him I just had a question about social studies. Then I asked him how come the class was called “social studies” and not “world politics” or “world history” or “world geography”—which, when you think about it, was what we learned in that class. He took that question and ran with it. I remember listening to the sound of his voice, but I didn’t hear a word he said. I kept thinking about the gym shorts and T-shirt tucked under my arm.

The conversation with Mr. Loeb, if you want to call it that, took maybe five minutes, and then I headed downstairs to the boys’ locker room. It was jammed with fifth and sixth graders changing their clothes, which made the
old dirty sock smell stronger than usual. There was a lot of yapping back and forth, bragging without meaning it, griping about teachers. That kind of thing. Two guys moaned real loud when I walked through the door—like they’d been praying I wasn’t going to show up. I also got a quick nod from Willie, the guy who finished second to me in the finals last year. I nodded back at him and then made a beeline for the last toilet stall at the rear of the locker room.

That was where I changed. Afterward, I just stood in the stall with my school clothes tucked under my left arm and listened. There’s a big difference between listening to guys when you’re looking at them and listening to them when they’re just voices. You pick up more when it’s just their voices. You start to hear not only what they’re saying but their mood. Even guys I didn’t know, I could tell from the tone of their voices whether they thought they had a chance to make it to the finals or whether they were running just for the heck of it. Most of them were running just for the heck of it. That killed me—how they knew they were going to lose, and how after they lost they’d just shrug, walk back across the street, change back into their school clothes, and nothing would be different for them. You could almost think of the scene at Memorial Field like a painting that was about to be painted, with guys in the background and guys up front. The guys who
were running for the heck of it were in the background. The guys up front were Eduardo and me.

I waited for the entire locker room to clear out, and then I waited another couple of minutes just to be safe. When I opened the door of the stall, it was eerie how quiet and still it was. There was a gray sock dangling out of the bottom of a locker, stuck between the frame and the door. It caught my eye, the way it was all twisted and mangled. I felt bad for it. It was a stupid thought. I mean, it was just a gray sock. But the thing looked like it was in pain.

I waited as long as I could in the locker room and then headed out to Memorial Field. The walk took about half a minute, and I arrived as Mr. Greetham was dividing up the guys into heats. Just as I thought, Eduardo got picked for the first heat. So did Willie, which made me feel bad. He was like that gray sock, in a weird way. About to get mangled by Eduardo. I could’ve warned him to avoid Eduardo’s heat. But then he would’ve realized what I was doing.

Mr. Greetham shot me a where-have-you-been look and then penciled me into the last heat. There were only four of us in the last heat. The other eleven heats had six runners. The winner of each heat advanced to the semifinals—twelve runners in all. Then the top two finishers in each semifinal—four runners—raced in the finals.

As Eduardo and Willie lined up for the first heat, I was feeling real guilty. I
should’ve
warned Willie to avoid that heat. He was a good guy. He’d given me a quick hug and whispered “Good race!” after I beat him in the finals the year before. He still smiled at me whenever we passed in the hall. If the situation were reversed, if he knew about Eduardo and I didn’t, he would’ve warned me.

There was nothing I could do now but watch.

Eduardo towered over Willie and the other four runners at the starting line. It wasn’t fair. He was just too big. He looked like a camp counselor who’d rounded up his campers and forced them to stand in line. Then he did something I’d never seen before, at least not in person. He got down into a sprinter’s crouch—like the runners do in the Olympics. Willie glanced over at him with a confused expression on his face. It looked weird, not just the fact that Eduardo had gotten into a crouch but also the fact that he looked even bigger and faster hunched over than he did upright. The way his shoulders were pointed forward, the way his hair was trailing down his neck, he looked like a racehorse. It caught the attention of pretty much everyone at Memorial Field, even the kids in the stands. The yakking stopped. It was like someone flipped a switch. Not only could you hear the hush—you could feel it.

“Runners ready!” Mr. Greetham yelled.

Willie and the rest of them leaned forward. Eduardo didn’t flinch.

“Set!”

Eduardo raised his head slightly.

“Go!”

Eduardo rocketed off the starting line. He was ahead by three steps almost before the other runners got going. His arms and legs were churning together in perfect rhythm. There was no wasted effort. He began to straighten up, and his stride began to stretch out. My heart beat faster and faster as I watched.

But then a miracle happened, or at least it seemed like one to me. Willie stayed with him. Eduardo still had that three-step lead, but he wasn’t pulling away. My heart started to pound even more. It was pounding as if I were running, not just watching. Eduardo and Willie were out by themselves … and then Willie started
gaining
on him. Willie lowered his head, and Eduardo’s three-step lead became two steps, and then one step. Then Willie let out a yell. I remembered that yell from the year before. He’d yelled as I pulled away from him in the finals. Back then, I thought he was yelling out of frustration. But now I realized it was because he was going full speed, putting his guts into the race. He was dead even with Eduardo now, and the two of them were hurtling together toward the finish line ….

Willie beat him by a step.

Yeah, I know how plain and dull that sounds,
Willie beat him by a step
, but I don’t know how else to say it—maybe because at first I couldn’t even make sense of what had happened. I could still hear the echo of Willie’s scream in my ears even though he was walking calmly now, with his hands on his hips, ten yards beyond the finish line. I could feel, but not quite hear, cheers coming from the students in the bleachers. I watched Eduardo jog over to Willie and shake his hand.

Then, just as the world clicked back into place, I heard Mr. Greetham call out the time: “Five-point-one.”

Five-point-one?

I’d run four-point-nine twice as a fifth grader and coasted at the end. How could that be faster than Eduardo? Then again, the way Eduardo was running, how could Willie have caught and passed him? It wasn’t possible. Except I’d seen it with my own eyes. But the time had to be wrong.
Had
to be wrong. That was the only explanation I could come up with. No way was that a five-point-one. Mr. Greetham had read the stopwatch wrong, or maybe the stopwatch was broken.

But the times for the rest of the heats sounded right—five-point-seven, five-point-six, five-point-eight. That was the range for the next nine heats. After the first six, I couldn’t watch them anymore. I listened for Mr. Greetham
to start each race, and then I listened for the time. I felt exhausted and sick to my stomach, so I closed my eyes and waited for my turn.

I heard Mr. Greetham call, “Heat twelve, to the starting line.”

I opened my eyes and walked onto the track.

I heard a girl in the bleachers yell, “That’s him! That’s him!”

But I didn’t turn around. I focused on the track crackling under my feet as I stepped up to the starting line. The chalk was smudged from the first eleven heats. The longer I stared at it, the blurrier it looked. The wind was blowing in my face, not hard, but enough to make me think,
I’m a quintessence of dust
.

I heard Mr. Greetham yell, “Runners ready!”

I tensed up, then relaxed.

“Set!”

I took one deep breath.

“Go!”

The weird thing is, I don’t even remember running the race. I remember pushing off, and then taking one hard step, and then grunting, and then nothing. Not even the rush of wind. The next thing I remember is running past Mr. Greetham, who was standing at the finish line.

Then, a second later, I heard his voice: “Four-point-seven.”

When he called out the time, a loud cheer came from the crowd. The sound of it washed over me, and I knew what it was for, but it felt wrong. It felt like a joke.
I
felt like a joke, like a fake. When I thought I was going to lose, I’d told myself there was no difference between being the fastest kid in the school and the second-fastest. I’d told myself that I was a quintessence of dust whether I won or lost. I’d talked myself into it. Except now I was going to win. What difference did it make? I was still a quintessence of dust. I was a quintessence of dust who’d run a four-seven forty. But still a quintessence of dust. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the other three runners in the heat walking off the track with their heads down.

“I’m sorry,” I said, half to them and half to myself.

Then I heard Greetham again. “Why’d you slow up?”

I turned to him and said, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. Just run through the finish line.”

As I was jogging back to the starting line for the semis, I saw Jillian jumping up and down in front of the bleachers, waving her arms at me. I started to wave back, except then I noticed Devlin standing next to her—he must’ve ditched school. I lowered my head and jogged past them, but Jillian yelled out my name.

I took a deep breath and walked over to her. “What?”

“Julian, that was
so
amazing! You’re
so
fast!”