Wing Jones(43)

Coach Kerry appraises me like I’m a horse she’s thinking of buying. Eyes up and down and up and down. “Can I help you?”

I force myself to meet her gaze. Where is Eliza? The other girls are huddled around Coach Kerry, eyeing me warily. I wonder what Eliza has told them. I look at the ground and notice they’re all wearing the same brand shoes. Riveos. I wish I had a pair of those, best running shoes you can get, but at least I have Aaron’s mom’s old running shoes and not just my Converse.

“I’d like to try out for the team?” I mean to say it as a declaration, but it comes out like a question.

“Anyone can join the track team,” says the coach, her voice weary now. “You don’t need to see me for that.” She turns away, back to her huddle of girls, and I know I am already forgotten. My shoulders slump.

“Coach!” a voice shouts from the other side of the track. “This is the girl I was telling you about! The one I saw tearing down the street. I swear, this girl is faster than me.”

Coach Kerry straightens up slowly and turns to face us. Eliza has jogged over and is standing next to me.

“Eliza.” The coach’s voice is sharp; it jabs through Eliza’s excitement like a prong going through a gooey marshmallow. But Eliza’s excitement is sticky, and it’s spreading.

“You’ve got to see her.”

“She looks a little … big to be a runner. Maybe she should go for the football team, take her brother’s place,” someone says in a stage whisper, and hushed giggles rise into the air like a flock of startled birds, getting louder the higher they get, the farther they fly. I swat one right out of my face, and just like that, they all stop flapping and fall back down to earth, silent again. Then I drop my bag and walk over to the starting line.

“You can do this,” Aaron says.

The coach’s head snaps up at the sound of his voice. “Aaron, what are you doing here?”

“I’m her coach,” he says, and his chest swells up so big I’m worried he won’t be able to see past it.

“Her coach,” says Coach Kerry, her face stony still.

“Maybe he gets community service for it.” The same person who said I was too big to be a runner speaks out again, and this time when the giggles start I don’t just swat at them, I run straight through them, scattering them in every direction, and I’m running so fast they can’t catch me.

When I circle back around again, Aaron and Eliza are wearing matching smug expressions. The other girls are staring at me like I’ve just grown snakes for hair, and Coach Kerry’s mouth is wide open like she’s trying to catch flies for breakfast.

“Told you she was fast,” says Eliza as I pull up next to her and pause to catch my breath.

Things move pretty quickly after that. Aaron asks Coach Kerry if he can be assistant coach but still train for his own races, and she has to get some kind of permission from administration, but not only is he still going to be my coach, he is going to get credits for it.

Coach Kerry makes me run over and over. I run alone. I run with the rest of the team. I run short distances. I run long distances. Coach stands with her stopwatch, eyes frantically darting back and forth between me and the time. Me and the time.

I never thought about trying to figure out how fast I was really going. I was just running. But now all anyone can talk about is my time. I’ve never thought of time like this. Like something you want to beat. My dragon and my lioness haven’t run with me in a while, but sometimes when I’m out on the track with Coach Kerry and the others, I’ll think I see my lioness tearing around a corner in front of me. I think she and my dragon are happy that I’m running more, running faster, running better. They still wait for me at night, under the porch or under my bed.

Eliza is the only one on the team who can keep up with me. During our warm-up and cool-down laps, I pull back to match her pace. She’ll look over at me, shake her head, and grin so wide it’s like the crescent moon is trying to imitate her smile.

“Damn, girl,” she says, and she’s laughing but it isn’t a mean laugh, it’s a laugh full of awe and happiness. “Where you been hiding all that speed?”

Everyone wants to know where my “new” speed came from. They don’t know what I know – that it was always there, simmering under the surface, waiting for me to figure it out. I just needed something to run for, something to flip the switch inside me, so that my dragon and my lioness could lead me outside and show me how to run.

My steps are in time with Marcus’s heartbeat, and even though I can’t stand to be close to him at the hospital, what I’m doing is helping him. I don’t think anyone would understand. Not even Aaron. Only my dragon and my lioness understand what running really is for me. Only they hear the beat of my feet. Only they know that every breath I take when I’m running is a breath for him and that as long as I keep running he’ll keep breathing.

Now I practice in the afternoon, out in the open, under the sun – no more late night moonlit runs for me – and it takes a while for me to get used to it. It’s strange running with anyone but Aaron and my dragon and my lioness. I can’t get used to people watching me, judging me, questioning me. Like one afternoon Coach Kerry pulls me aside after practice and says in a low voice that when the season officially starts I might want to have a doctor prove I’m clean.