“STRAIGHTEN UP, PATTY!” Momly called out from the car window before pulling off. She said this all the time. Drove me crazy. Always nagging me about my posture or whatever. Roll your shoulders back, Patty. Stop hunching, Patty. And even though it was annoying, I knew she was right. I always walked like I had on a backpack, even when I didn’t. You’ll be walking with a cane by the time you’re my age, Patty. And even though Momly’s age was a long, long, lonnnng way away, I wasn’t trying to be walking with no cane by then. Or ever. So, I shook off the nag and rolled my shoulders back.
I made it all the way to the track with my back straight and caught up with Ghost and Lu going on about some dude who Ghost, I guessed, was having beef with at school.
“Soon as spring break is over, we’ll see if he got something to say to me,” Ghost said.
“Man, he ain’t gon’ say nothin’. He ain’t even gon’ look your way. Probably at home right now still crying about getting smoked on Saturday,” Lu followed.
“Burnt him up. Might’ve ruined his little vacation,” Ghost topped off, laughing and slapping Lu’s hand. Those two were always braggin’ about something. That was regular. So regular that I let my shoulders roll forward again, comfortable. Just couldn’t help it. Plus, these fools, and just about everybody else on our team, were already on break, and I was still in school getting academied. Fancy School Patty. And I didn’t know if Sunny was on break or not because he gets homeschooled, which, to me, just seemed like vacation with a little bit of education sprinkled in. Sunny didn’t seem to be paying Ghost and Lu no mind, though. He was just sitting on the track with his feet pressed together, his long legs butterflied.
“Wassup, Patty?” Lu said.
“Wassup,” I said with nothing on it. I sat next to Sunny, stretched my legs out in front of me. I was trying to get my mind right. Trying to refocus, work harder. First practice of a new week—after the first meet. Time to get to work. Ghost just looked at me and nodded. Probably could see the serious on my face, so he knew not to say nothing. Too bad Aaron, our team captain, didn’t get it.
“Yo, Patty, you still mad?” Aaron asked, stoking a fire he pretended he didn’t know was there. I didn’t think he was necessarily trying to be mean, but . . . he knew it was a soft spot, especially since the reason he was asking was because of the way I had acted when I crossed the finish line.
Now, Ghost was giving Aaron a what’s your problem look. “Yo, chill!” he warned. But the truth is, I didn’t need Ghost or Lu or Sunny or anybody to take up for me. But I didn’t say nothing. Just let it ride.
“I’m just sayin’, it was the first race of the season,” Aaron bulldozed on. “Let it go. Ain’t no reason to be mad about losing.” Losing? Losing? Back went my shoulders, and out came the mad.
“Yeah, maybe for you,” I shot back, glaring at Aaron. “But I’m still mad. And so what?”
“Uh-oh,” Curron warned. He was a mid-distance runner like me, but had more mouth than he had moves, so he already knew the power of my clapback.
“Shut up, Curron,” Aaron spat. “Yo, Patty, I ain’t even mean it like that. It’s just you got second place and was acting all funky for the rest of the meet, like no one else had races to run, like you ain’t got teammates that needed your support.” Spoken like a true captain.
I didn’t respond. Just stretched my arms out in front of me and grabbed my left foot, pulled myself down until my head was on my knee. Sunny was doing the same stretch. I turned my face so that my cheek was resting on my kneecap, and caught his eyes catching my legs.
“Hey, Patty,” he said, in his usual sweet voice, which in this moment seemed a little creepy. Actually, a lot creepy. He looked down my leg awkwardly and flashed a timid smile.
“Hey . . . uh, Sunny,” I replied, uncomfortable. Was Sunny checkin’ me out? If he was, now was not the time. Also . . . no . . . gross . . . stop it . . . right now . . . seriously.
“What happened to your nails?” he asked. Oh, he was checkin’ out my nails, and the fact that there was no polish on them. But there had been on Saturday at the meet. I did my best to make a cool design using the Defenders’ colors, but it ended up just looking like bright blue with orange squiggles. I scrubbed them clean before church yesterday—another thing Ma would’ve said made me look too fast. Ugh, yeah . . . I know. That’s the point. But Ma was talking about a different kind of fast.
“I took the polish off,” I said. “Why?”
“Oh, just because they were cool. Reminded me of Flo Jo,” Sunny said with a shrug. I wanted to ask him how he even knew about Flo Jo’s nails, but I didn’t. Because there was no need. Because he obviously knew something. I did, however, let a smile inch onto my face for the first time since the race. The first time in two days.
“Okay, listen up,” Coach said. He’d been standing off to the side talking to Whit, the assistant coach. But now he was in front of us, clapping his hands together to get our attention. “Before we start practice, I first want to say good job on Saturday. Some of you did better than others, but all of you put your hearts into it. I saw some things on the track that I loved”—then he looked straight at me—“and I saw some things that didn’t quite rub me right. Either way, I’m proud.” He pulled something from his back pocket. A metal stick. A baton. “But now, we got work to do.” He told everyone else to go start their warm-up laps, but he asked me to stay behind. And once everyone else had a two-hundred-meter head start, Coach “invited” me to jog with him. That’s right, Coach was running. And he never ran. He just ordered us to run. Even though we all knew about his whole used-to-be-an-Olympian thing, it was so hard to believe because we never saw him even pretend to take a stride.
After about ten seconds of nothing but the sound of rubber on asphalt, Coach finally said, “You did good Saturday, kid,” the silver of the baton gleaming in the sun.
Jog, jog, jog.
I let my arms drop down to my side, shook them out. “I did okay,” I said, blah.
“Second place is a lot more than okay,” Coach replied, clearly trying to make me feel better. “Still got you a piece of fabric, didn’t it?”
The piece of fabric Coach was talking about was the ribbon. The second-place ribbon. The not-first-place second-place ribbon. The one they give you for false finishes. “Yeah, I guess.”
Jog, jog, jog, jog.
“Here.” He extended the baton to me. I took it, not sure why he was giving it to me, but it didn’t matter because as soon as I took it, he said, “Now give it back.” I gave it back and about two seconds later, he extended it toward me again. “Take it.” Confused and getting annoyed, I grabbed it again. “Give it to me,” he said, motioning for it almost immediately, his palm up, rising and falling with each step. We were almost a whole lap around, and I could see my teammates well into their second and final one. I slapped the baton into Coach’s hand again and this time asked, “What we doin’ this for?”
“Take it,” he said, passing it to me a third time.
Jog, jog, jog.
“Coach, why you doin’ this?” I repeated. My attitude started to sizzle as I reluctantly took the baton again.
“I’ll tell you. But first”—jog, jog, jog—“give it back to me.”
I ticked my tongue against my teeth and gave Coach the bar, the metal clinking against his wedding ring. Finally he was ready to stop being a weirdo and tell me whatever it was he was trying to get me to understand.