Wing Jones(42)

Granny Dee’s been waking up early every morning, at the same time as LaoLao, and making LaoLao and my mom congee for breakfast. LaoLao’s favorite. I know it’s Granny Dee’s way of trying to make up for the fact that LaoLao’s working at the restaurant and Granny Dee isn’t … but it doesn’t stop LaoLao from calling Granny Dee lazy.

“You make congee and go back to bed! That not work! I’m on my feet all day. What do you do?”

Granny Dee will bluster, and then after LaoLao leaves, she’ll look at newspaper ads, looking for something she can do. I’ve heard her calling a few places, but she hasn’t even gotten an interview.

“Nobody wants to hire an old woman,” she tells me.

So I should be nice to her this morning. But something about her tone, and her words, grates at my insides.

“I don’t dawdle,” I mutter.

“Since when?” says Granny Dee.

“You don’t know everything.”

“You keepin’ secrets, Wing? From your granny? From your mama? We got enough goin’ on without any secrets.” Granny Dee holds her coffee cup up to her thin lips, eyebrows cocked suspiciously.

“I don’t dawdle,” I repeat, frustration making me fierce.

Granny Dee’s eyes widen till they’re round as pennies. “Sugar, I wasn’t trying to hurt your feelings,” she says carefully. “I was just sayin’ you aren’t the speediest little bird in the sky.”

“You don’t know anything!”

“Honey, what has gotten into you this morning?”

I don’t answer. I go to the door and yank on my sneakers. I’m not even dressed yet, still in my bunny pajama bottoms and a ratty tank top. I pull my curls up into a ponytail on top of my head.

“Watch,” I say to Granny Dee. She doesn’t move, she’s just staring at the sneakers on my feet. The ones Aaron gave me.

“I’ve never seen those before,” she murmurs to herself.

“Granny!” I shout, and she jumps a bit, coffee spilling out of her mug. I watch it drip down the side and splash onto the linoleum, as if in slow motion. I’m sure I can hear the drops as they hit the ground.

“Watch what?” she asks. She sounds nervous now.

“Watch me.”

The cracked and bumpy asphalt doesn’t feel as good under my feet as the track does, but in moments I’m going so fast I barely notice what’s under my feet. I run up the street, not so far that Granny Dee can’t see me, and back again, not caring that Mrs. Swanson has stopped her gardening to gawp at me or that seven-year-old Jonny Bilt from next door is pointing and shouting. At the end of our street, a car slows down as I approach, a blue station wagon I think I recognize, I can’t be sure, but I’m not going to slow down now to inspect it. I do two laps of the street and I’m not even winded. The sun is pouring gold down on me, drenching me in it, and I breathe it in with every step I take. I know I’m shining.

Granny Dee is standing on the edge of the front porch, gripping the rail.

“I told you!” I shout triumphantly as I swing up our driveway, feeling like the ground should be smoking in my wake.

Granny Dee sits down, heavily for such a frail old woman, hand on her heart. I wonder if she can see that I’m dripping sunshine. Maybe that’s why she’s so shocked.

“Granny Dee! What’s wrong?”

Granny Dee is breathing so hard you’d think she was the one who just ran up and down the street. I go sit next to her, and even with the state she’s in, I can’t keep the smile off my face. Can’t keep the gold from spilling out of me and all over her.

“I can be speedy,” I say, my voice quiet in our buzzing street.

Granny Dee looks at me like she’s never seen me before. Like I’ve just sprung out of the ground fully grown, the way Athena popped out of the head of Zeus. Like I’m someone she doesn’t know at all.

“Granny Dee?”

“What … When … What…” She shakes her head as if she’s shaking water out of her ears. I can tell she’s underwater, that everything is murky and blurry for her and her information is coming in all garbled. But she’ll come up soon.

I put my hand under her wrinkled elbow and help her up; the skin there is so loose it hangs like a pair of jeans on a washing line. She’s still gawping at me.

“Wing…” she says, and I won’t lie, I’m glad she knows who I am, because from the way she’s eyeing me, I was starting to worry that the shock was too much for her and my attempt to impress my grandmother might have given her a stroke or a heart attack or something.

But before she can finish her sentence, a car, the same car I saw at the end of the street, pulls into our driveway. And now I know where I’ve seen this car. It belongs to Eliza Thompson.

Who is staring straight at me the same way my Granny Dee has been staring at me.

And like that, all the gold and sunshine on me melts into a puddle at my feet.

I’m starting to think that showing off what I can do might not have been the best idea I’ve ever had.





CHAPTER 26


I can feel Aaron’s eyes on the back of my neck. I can perfectly picture his lips moving in a silent whisper, encouraging me, telling me this is the right thing to do.