“How did it feel in your hand?”
Jog, jog, jog, jog.
“I don’t know,” I said, trying to find an answer. “I guess . . . normal?”
“Right. It felt normal, every time it went from my hand to yours, and from yours to mine.” Coach passed the baton from one hand to the next. “Now imagine it’s got magic powers, and every time I give it to you I’m transferring some kind of power from me to you. Like strength, or something. And when you pass it back, you transfer your power to me. So we stay balanced. Now if for some reason you decide not to pass it to me, what do you think happens?
“I don’t get your strength,” I said in the voice I give the hair flippers when they tell me I should try “a little powder on my nose.” The whatever voice.
“Exactly.” Jog, jog. Coach cleared his throat and tried to sound as if he wasn’t winded, but I knew he was because his words were thinning out. “Now this baton represents the energy of our team. When we’re passing it from one person to the next, the team’s energy stays, like you said, normal. But if anyone decides they don’t want to pass it, they don’t want to participate in it, well then, that energy is knocked off balance and your teammates are left empty-handed. Weakened. You understand?”
So here’s what I was figuring about Coach. He was probably one of those kids who wrote poetry and stuff like that. He acts all cool, but the way he be talking makes me think he was more like Sunny when he was younger. Which is still cool. But a different kind of cool. And I don’t really know if all his philosophies make sense, but we all understand what he be trying to tell us, no matter how left he gotta take us to get us right.
So, “I think so,” is what I said back to him.
Coach cut his eyes at me—not satisfied.
“Well, to make sure you know so, let me make it clear. We are a team, Patty. You can pout and shout, but you cannot check out.” Coach took a second before praising himself. “I should’ve been a rapper. Out here running on a track when I should’ve been rapping on a track!” He laughed. I did too, an inside belly chuckle. “So, you understand now?”
“Yeah.”
“Good, because I don’t feel like running no more.” Coach made a hard left off the track and started walking across the grass. He flipped the baton in his hand over and over. “Hurry up and finish, Patina. . . .” Patina. Coach was always trying to be funny, and I knew he thought saying my name like that was comedy gold. He lifted the baton in the air like a wizard casting a spell and yelled, “We got work to do!”
TO DO: Dance, this time, like an old king is watching (stiff and boring)
BY THE TIME I reached the other side of the track, Coach was already laying out what everyone needed to do in practice, which, for the most part, was basically what we always did on Mondays. Fartleks—fart licks—which is basically just when you run kinda fast for three minutes then real fast for one minute. Then kinda fast for three, real fast for one. Over and over and over again. Then there’s some specialized training, where the sprinters would break off and do their own thing, the mid-distance runners would do the same, and the distance runners, well . . . they just run all practice. But then, out of nowhere, Coach threw a wrench in the plan.
“We’re also gonna spend some time working on relay,” he said, slapping the baton against his thigh. “Not all twenty of you.”
“There’s nineteen of us, Coach. Chris is gone, remember?” Aaron slipped in. Coach just raised his eyebrows, glared at Aaron in the I’m talkin’ way. Plus, rounding up ain’t against the rules. Seriously.
“Anyway, just my mid-distance runners for now,” Coach elaborated. “At some point we’ll develop the 4x400, but we don’t have enough veteran sprinters on the boys’ side for that. He nodded at Ghost and Lu. “We’ll get you newbies where you need to be soon. We got a long season ahead of us. But for now, let’s start with one of our sweet spots—the 4x800. Let me get Freddy, Mikey, Eric, and Curron. And for the girls, I need Deja, Krystal, Brit-Brat, and joining them as the fourth will be Patty.” He glared at me. “Can you handle that?” I nodded. “Good. Coach Whit is gonna work with y’all. These two groups are our 4x800 relay teams. If anyone has a problem with this decision, speak now or forever hold your peace.”
I looked around the circle at all the faces, each one either nodding or smirking. I was cool with running relay, even though I never had before. I’ve watched it enough times—at meets, the Olympic races they show on TV, and Internet clips—to know that all you had to do was take the baton, then run as fast as you could to hand it off to the next person. Like passing the collection plate at church.
“All right, ladies, come this way,” Coach Whit called, leading me and the other three girls to the outside of the track. She was holding a small radio, one of the old ones with a CD player and a handle. The kind Cotton’s grandma got in her kitchen. Whit set it on the track. Then she gave us what I can only describe as an evil grin. “Today, I’m gonna teach y’all how to dance.”
Wait. What?
“Dance?” Brit-Brat bawked. “I don’t know about them”—she thumbed at us—“but I already know how to do that.” She put her hands together in a single clap, then put them up to her chest, palms out, and started shoving the air—a standing push-up—like they did on the old-school rap videos my father made me watch. Salt-N-Pepa style.
“Heyyyyy!” Deja howled, joining in, dipping low.
“Go, Deja! Go, Brit-Brat! Go, Deja! Go, Brit-Brat! It’s your birthday, but not really. We at track practice. We at track practice. Track, track, track, track!” Krystal chanted.
I didn’t join them, but their silly dancing definitely helped with the process of pulling me out of my second-place slump. Brit-Brat’s craziness reminded me so much of Cotton’s, jumping around, clapping, telling me to make sure I’m getting good angles with the phone. This was something Taylor and TeeTee and Becca, and all the hair flippers I went to school with, couldn’t do. What I was missing. Even so, though me and the girls on the track team could kinda relate, I was still the new girl, and I hadn’t really gotten close to everybody yet. At least, not the vets. My crew were the newbies, and the only one of them I could see breaking out in a full-on dance break was Sunny—which would be the funniest dance break of all time, with his lanky self. So I didn’t feel like I could really join in. But Brit-Brat’s goofiness definitely made me feel like maybe I could vibe with them. Maybe next time. Like maybe the vets were cool.
“Okay, okay.” Coach Whit tried to settle us down and hold in her laugh at the same time. “You do know there are other dances that don’t involve all that booty action, right?”
“Whatever, Whit. You probably be just like this in the club,” Brit-Brat said, tapping Deja with the back of her hand.