Ghost (Track #1)(33)

I sat frozen in my seat.

“You from Glass Manor?” I asked softly.

Coach nodded. “That’s how I know Mr. Jefferson,” he explained, which made a lot more sense to me now. “So I know what it’s like to live here. I know what it’s like to be angry, to feel, I don’t know, rage on the inside.” Coach’s face seemed to relax a little, like he was cooling down. “And the same thing running did for me, I felt like it could do for you.” He looked out the front window and shook his head. “But maybe I was wrong.”

“What did you think it would do for me?” I asked, realizing that he never thought it could help me dunk by next year. Realizing I didn’t even really want to play basketball anymore.

He faced me again, looking straight in my eyes. “Show you that you can’t run away from who you are, but what you can do is run toward who you want to be.”

I let that sink in. Who was I? I was Castle Cranshaw, the kid from Glass Manor with the secret. The one with a daddy in jail and a mother who worked her butt off for me, and cut my hair, and bought knockoff shoes, and clothes that were big enough for me to grow into. I was the boy with the altercations and the big file. The one who yelled at teachers and punched stupid dudes in the face for talking smack. The one who felt . . . different. And mad. And sad. The one with all the scream inside.

But who did I want to be? Well, that was harder to answer. I wasn’t exactly sure yet. But definitely one of the world’s greatest.

“Do you understand?” Coach asked, his head cocked to the side.

“Yeah,” I replied sheepishly.

“Do you really?” He was glaring at me, hard.

“I do. Seriously.” I wiped my face, sniffled, then added desperately, “But please don’t tell my mom.”

Coach sighed. “I won’t.” He paused, then followed with a threat. “This time.”

“Thank you,” I murmured, so relieved I thought I was gonna pass out. But I still had another question burning inside. “Well, do I still get to run?”

Coach glared even harder at me, and I was hoping that somewhere in my face he could see himself and give me another chance. I never wanted to be on no track team before I met him anyway. But now that I had been on one, even if it’d only been for a few weeks, I felt like I didn’t want to do nothing else.

He unclenched his jaw. “Yeah, you can run.” Then pointing down at my raggedy regular sneakers, he added, “In those.”

“But I can’t—” I started, but Coach cut me off.

“You wanna run or not?”

“Got it.”

“And Friday, you’re cleaning my cab,” he commanded.

“Coach!”



The rest of the week was pretty much filled with me being on my best behavior at school—I was straight-up acting like that annoying goody-good, Maureen Thorne—then working extra hard at practice, which was much more difficult than usual because running in my regular raggedy sneakers made me feel like my feet had gained weight. Like I had obese toes or something. It had been a while since I had practiced in my cutoff shoes, and I think the silver bullets had me spoiled. Not to mention, everybody wanted to know where the silver bullets were, and I kept making ridiculous excuses like, “Lettin’ them rest” and “Coach work us so hard at practice that I was scared I’d ruin them before the race.” And then they would say something like, “Oh, so you are gonna run, right?” or “Word, so you getting your uniform, right?” But they’d say it under their breath. And I would just shut all that down by saying, “Shhhh, uh, uh, uh, it’s not worth talking about it. Not worth you risking yours. I’m here, ain’t I? Still on the team, right? That’s all that matters.”

So the raggedy-runners was what I had to run in. And I stuck at it, through ladders on Wednesday, and Thursday’s long run. I, of course, was now a step behind Lu, who was blazing around the track like it was nothing, doing everything he could to secure his spot as the lead sprinter. I mean, we both were sprinters. And Aaron and Mike. But Mike was going to run the eight hundred and the four hundred, just because me and Lu were both faster than him in the shorter sprint races, and Chris Myers—who ran the eight hundred—his father took him off the team because his grades were slipping. Aaron was going to run the four hundred. He was the master of it. Like, seriously, could burn anybody. And between me and Lu, one of us was going to run the two hundred meter, and one of us was going to run the one hundred meter.

Now, here’s the thing. The two hundred was a good race. A hard sprint. But it wasn’t as, I don’t know, glamorous. No, no, that’s not the word. The two hundred just wasn’t the . . . main event. The main event was the one-hundred-meter dash. It was what Usain Bolt set the record in. It was the race. Before I got caught and Coach forced me to run in my old sneakers, I had a pretty good chance at snatching that spot from Lu. Don’t get me wrong, he was crazy fast and had been running that race pretty much ever since he started running. But over the month of practice, my time was maybe a half second faster than his. But not during the week of slumpy, cutoff shoe running, which was definitely the week that counted. But hey, it was only the first race of the season. So I figured I’d take the two hundred—honestly, I’d run any of the races Coach would let me—and work my butt off (and my legs and feet) to earn the chance to run that race.