Wing Jones(24)

There’s one stretch I remember that I wasn’t too bad at. Probably because you do it sitting down. I sit on the damp grass, touch the soles of my feet together, and lean forward as far as I can for a count of ten. My lioness comes over and presses her head against my back, stretching me further.

That’ll have to do. Maybe tomorrow, I’ll see what kind of stretches the girls like Eliza Thompson do down at the track.

A car whizzes by, the headlights shining like searchlights and I freeze, sure that whoever it is will see me and make me stop.

But the car goes on, leaving me with my heart pounding before I’ve even run a step. My dragon rises into the air and circles me, and my lioness prances – that’s the only word for it – out onto the track and looks back over her shoulder expectantly at me.

I ran last night. I can do it again. One foot in front of the other, one step, another, and another, and now my lioness is running ahead of me, and I want to catch her, I want to be as fast as her, so I push, and it feels…

It feels amazing.

I start to laugh, a little breathlessly because my lungs are working so hard to keep up with my feet, and it’s hard, and it hurts a little, my lungs are burning a little, my calves are protesting a little, but it isn’t a bad hurt, it isn’t a hurt like the way my heart hurts when I think about Marcus.

Marcus.

Thinking about Marcus does something to me. It’s like just thinking about him is enough to light a flame behind me, because I’m really running now.

Marcus.

I picture him waiting at the finish line. Cheering me on. The way I’ve always cheered for him. And I go faster.

I picture him running a little ahead of me, he’s always been a little ahead of me, and I go faster. Damn it, Marcus, why aren’t you here?

Damn it, Marcus, why did you do this?

My face is salty wet, tears or sweat, I don’t know but I don’t care. I wipe it away with the back of my hand without slowing down and I keep running.

Faster. And faster. And faster.

I run until I can’t run anymore, until my legs are quivering like Jell-O and I’m drenched in sweat, my shirt sticking to my back and my front and even my knees are sweaty. I didn’t know knees could get sweaty.

My dragon and my lioness have gone, leaving me alone with the moon. Now that I’ve stopped, I feel like an idiot for running around in circles, like that is gonna get me anywhere. Like that is gonna do anything.

But when I’m running, I don’t feel like an idiot. I feel free, like anything is possible. Like I’m not running from something, but for something.

“I’m running for you, Marcus!” I shout into the night at the moon. Because maybe the stronger I am, the faster I go, maybe it’ll be enough to wake him up.

I think I’m running for me too. Because I’ve never tasted anything like the night air, never felt so free, never done anything that felt so natural. But I don’t need to shout that. No one needs to hear that. Not even the moon.





CHAPTER 14


Daytime doesn’t feel like real time. The only thing real is running.

I can’t shake the feeling that if I can run fast enough, Marcus will wake up. And since he isn’t waking up, I’m not going fast enough. So I keep running. I feel like every time my feet slap against the ground, his heart beats.

Running with my dragon and my lioness by my side is my only reality. Daytime is like a blurred dream. Sometimes I hear Heather’s helium-high laugh, I can tell it’s directed at me, but her words are like pebbles now. They ping off of me and lie in a pile at my feet and I step over them easily.

I don’t speak at school unless a teacher calls on me, and even then I reply in one-word answers. Every night I go farther, longer, faster.

On Sunday we visit Marcus. His vitals are the same, which apparently is a good thing. I get antsy sitting next to him, my feet speaking their own language, a tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap against the floor.

When my mom isn’t looking, I lean in close and whisper in his ear. “Marcus, I’m running. Wake up so you can see. I want us to race. I’m good.”

Hearing that I want to compete against him, that I think I have a shot at keeping up, should be enough to wake him up. The idea is laughable. And Marcus is competitive enough that he’d want to show me that he’s always the best. But his vitals stay the same; there’s no twitching finger or fluttering lids or anything to show he can hear me.

“Wake up,” I whisper. I don’t know why I whisper. Nobody ever woke up anyone with a whisper. I want to shout, but the quiet of this room, the sombre seriousness, presses like a muzzle on my mouth. It isn’t just me. My mom, Granny Dee, LaoLao, we all speak in hushed voices. Like we’re trying not to wake him.

You’d think we’d be yelling and shouting and shaking him. Even Granny Dee keeps her voice to a low rumble. And LaoLao barely says a word, just stares at him, drinking him in with her eyes, patting his hand in an uneven beat that almost matches the tapping of my impatient feet.

And my mother. She’s all smiles in the hospital room. Not real ones, though. She contorts her face into something that once upon a time resembled a smile. Imagine a carved smile on a pumpkin, like a jack-o’-lantern. Now imagine that pumpkin starts to rot, to sink in on itself, to smell. And then some punk kid comes by and kicks it in, and the jack-o’-lantern is still smiling, but it isn’t a smile anymore.