Ghost (Track #1)(10)

“He said he’ll be here in a minute.” It would’ve been the worst mistake ever to smile, but I sure wanted to.

I sat there in the office while the principal went on about his business, flipping through folders, clicking at something on his computer, scribbling in a notepad, when I finally asked him about the pictures of the different students on the wall.

“Who those kids?” I asked, biting a fingernail. Must’ve snagged it in the scuffle.

Principal Marshall looked up from all his busywork. “You don’t get to ask me any questions until tomorrow,” he snapped. His tone was sharp, and I could tell he wasn’t playing. “I don’t want to hear your voice. Your job right now is to sit there and wait for your uncle. Got it?”

I just nodded and sank into myself. Thankfully, it wasn’t too long before Coach came marching up the hallway. The look he gave me was just as bad as the look Mr. Marshall had given me, which were like the looks my mom gave me whenever I was in these situations. The I’m so disappointed in you look, which is way worse than the I’m mad look.

“I’m here to get Castle,” Coach said to the secretary, Mrs. Dickson.

“Okay, just sign him out,” she said.

Coach scribbled something on a piece of paper, checked his watch, jotted the time down, met the principal, shook his hand, apologized to him for what I did, and we were out of there. On the way down the hall, Coach didn’t say a thing. Not a word. But as soon as we got in his cab, he lit me up.

“What were you thinking telling those people I’m your uncle? Do you know that’s probably against the law? I’m not sure if it is or isn’t but it probably is, and if it is, you got me out here committing crimes. I’ve known you for one day. One day! And I just kidnapped you!”

I kept quiet because Coach was really mad. Plus, I was super grateful that he came and got me, and I didn’t want to say anything to mess that up. Shoot, he might’ve turned around and took me back to the school if I said the wrong thing.

Then finally, after a few minutes, he calmed down a little and asked, “What happened anyway?”

“I got in a fight.” I stared out the window as we passed Mr. Charles’s store.

“Care to elaborate?” Coach pried.

“Okay. So there’s this dude, Brandon Simmons. He’s always getting on me about my mom and where I live and how I look and all that. And today, I just couldn’t take it no more.” I faced Coach. He glanced at me and then back to the road. “So I jumped on him. Beat him down.”

“And what, you think that makes you tough?” Coach scoffed.

I thought about it for a second. “I don’t know.”

“Does that make it right?” he asked.

What is it about adults that makes them all just say the same things? Like they all studied the same book about grown-up-ness, memorizing phrases like, Does that make it right? and Be the bigger person.

I just shrugged. Spoke with my shoulders. I kinda wanted to say, Yes. Yes, me punching Brandon in the face makes it right, because he had been begging for it for forever. It made it right for everybody he joked on, and those kids would’ve given me their honor roll certificates for what I did. That wasn’t the answer Coach was looking for. But man, that’s how I felt.

Coach drove through town, and eventually we ended up at Martin Luther King Park. He said that since I had cost him a half day’s worth of fares—the front seat wasn’t even all junky yet—I would have to make it up to him by putting in extra work at the track, which was fine with me.

Coach grabbed his whistle and clipboard from the glove compartment. “Okay, here’s how you’re spending your suspension. We got us three hours before practice. We’re going to use this time to get you caught up on the way all this goes.”

“How all what goes?”

“Being on my team, boy.”

I could tell he was still irritated, but not as much as he had been.

We headed over to the track, the bright white lines marking out the red lanes, the green field in the middle.

“Okay, so first things first. Where’s your practice clothes?” Coach asked.

“These them,” I said.

“You have on jeans and high-tops,” he stated the obvious.

I looked at myself. There was a stain on my sneakers. A new one. Maybe ketchup. Or chocolate milk. “So?” I said. “What’s wrong with that?”

Coach sat down on a bench, stretched his legs out. “You know what, don’t worry about it. We’ll figure that out later. Let’s just start with some stretching.”

Apparently there were a whole slew of different kinds of stretches, and Coach showed me how to do them all. Each one was for a different reason. This one for this part of the leg, that one for that part of the leg, another one for your back. Then jumping jacks, toe touches, push-ups. It all seemed silly to me, but not as silly as the next part—the two-lap warm-up jog.

Me and Coach bounced around the track, him telling me to keep my arms tucked, which was actually hard to do. He said form is everything when it comes to running, and that it has more to do with form than how fast your legs move. That didn’t sound right. To me, it seemed like if my arms were tucked but my legs weren’t moving fast, then I wasn’t gonna be beating nobody. Just common sense. But then again, I didn’t think a two-lap jog—as slow as we were jogging—would get me going, but by the time we finished I was pouring sweat.