Ghost (Track #1)(16)

“. . . I swear, I almost broke my nose, kid. I mean, I just clipped the hurdle and dove face-first to the ground.” Despite his riding-in-silence comment, Coach was blathering on, probably telling me a story, but I wasn’t really listening. He continued, “So I know what it’s like to be embarrassed in front of your teammates. Trust me, tomorrow nobody will even remember.”

I heard that part, that tomorrow nobody would remember, and I’m not sure if I believed it or not, but I knew what I could do to help the situation. In addition to the ladders, water bottles, white parents, albino thinking, I also thought myself up a plan.

When we pulled up in front of my house, Coach put the car in park.

“Twenty dollars,” he said, trying to lighten the situation.

“Coach.”

“Nah, nah, don’t try to dash on me,” he insisted. “You done already robbed me for half a day’s pay.”

“But I paid you back already with all that sprinting I gave you earlier,” I groaned.

Coach did a double take. “Oh, you thought that was for me?” He pressed a finger to his chest.

I shook my head and unlocked the door. After I got out, Coach rolled down the window. The car slowly drifted forward. “Remember what I said, Ghost. . . .” He accelerated slightly. “Tomorrow it won’t matter. It’ll be a new day. A new chance!”

When I got inside my house, I didn’t waste no time. I knew what I needed to do, and I knew that I had to do it before my mother got home and made me eat dinner and watch some sappy flick with her while she procrastinated doing her homework. See, besides working in a hospital cafeteria, she was also taking online classes (there were also textbooks in that big purse), trying to get her nursing degree. She always says she can’t wait to one day trade that serving spoon for a stethoscope, and this house for a new one not in Glass Manor. But she hated homework. I guess I get that from her.

I dropped my backpack on the couch and headed straight for the kitchen. The drawer next to the stove was where my mother kept leftover duck sauce, soy sauce, chopsticks, menus, tape, screwdrivers, but most importantly, all her coupons, organized and paper-clipped by product. Seemed like everybody was having a sale on ketchup, which was a good thing because ketchup always made cafeteria food taste better. Way better. Along with the coupons (and all the other stuff) were the scissors she used to cut those coupons. These weren’t just regular scissors, though. Nope. These were hospital scissors. At least that’s where my mom got them from, and they were big, and shiny, and heavy, like if a doctor gotta cut somebody’s arm off or something, he could just use these bad boys and . . . snip, snip, bye-bye arm. Which was why I knew they’d be perfect for what I needed them for.

I grabbed the scissors and sat down on the kitchen floor. Using one foot to press against the heel of the other, I pushed my sneakers off. I yanked the laces out of both, so the floppy tongues fell forward like drawbridges coming down out of beat-up, leather, no-named fortresses. Because here’s the truth—I was still so angry about what happened on the track. Embarrassed. There was so much noise inside of me. So much of everybody’s laughing. So starting with the left shoe, I took those big scissors and began cutting and cutting, performing my own kind of surgery, the blades sawing and slicing into the black leather until the high parts of my high-tops were gone.





5


WORLD RECORD FOR THE MOST RUNAWAYS IN A SINGLE DAY


I WONDER IF doctors ever cut off somebody’s arm or leg and afterward realize that they made a huge mistake. Like, totally blew it. Because that’s definitely how I felt about low-topping my high-tops, but not until I got to school the next day.

I was cool with my new shoes when I first did it. Walked around the house totally hype about how much lighter they were, which would definitely help me out on the track. But when I heard my mom at the door, I took them off and, quick, threw them in my room. I didn’t really think she would notice that I cut my shoes in half, because she was usually so beat when she got home she never noticed anything but the couch. But still, I wanted to play it safe just in case she was in a bad mood and saw that I pretty much just threw half the money she paid for those sneakers in the trash, buried under Styrofoam to-go containers, all streaky and stinky with brown gravy and french dressing. She probably would’ve flipped out and, knowing her, would’ve made me get the glue and the needle and thread and the stapler and some tape and made me try to fix them, all while giving me the speech about “the value of a dollar.” And that would’ve been even worse than her yelling at me or punishing me. Shoot, maybe even worse than ladders.

I was even still good with the shoes the next morning, which I was really happy about because a lot of times when you sleep on something, your sleep, for some reason, causes your mind to change. I don’t know why, but it does. But when I woke up the next morning, wrapped in my blankets on the living room floor, I opened my bedroom door, peeked at my shoes as if they might have come to life in the middle of the night, and, thankfully, was still all right with them. Even after I got dressed and put them on, I wasn’t too worried because my jeans came down long enough to cover the raggedy top and make them look regular.

What wasn’t okay, though, were my legs. They felt like they had been cut off in my sleep, stuffed with dynamite and hot peppers, and then reattached. So even though my shoes were covered, I couldn’t hide the fact that I was walking like a senior citizen zombie, which I feared would draw unnecessary attention—the last thing I needed.