Wing Jones(44)

“Clean?” I ask, not sure what she’s saying.

“You know, that you aren’t taking anything to help your performance.”

My shock and offense must show on my face, because she holds her hands up and shakes her head. “Wing. Wing.” She says my name twice in such quick succession that it sounds like she’s a small child imitating a telephone.

“Wing,” she says again, “I don’t think that. Of course I don’t. But I know what the other schools will say. Maybe even some of the other students or faculty here. It’s a good idea.”

“Does anyone else on the team have to get tested?” I spit.

I’ve never spoken to Coach Kerry, or any other teacher, like this. She frowns, her weathered face morphing right before my eyes. Switching from supportive coach to irritated disciplinarian. She takes her sunglasses off, eyes narrowed.

“No one else is as fast as you,” she says. “And with you just coming out of nowhere, no training, never been on the team before, Wing, you’ve got to know that this whole thing is gonna look suspicious. You know I’m not the bad guy. Stop trying to make me out to be. I’m sure Aaron has been coddling you.”

“Aaron does not coddle me.”

“I’m not blind,” she says. Then she sighs, long and loud, as if she’s exhaling this whole conversation, getting it out of her system. “But maybe you’re right.” I start to relax. “Maybe it isn’t fair to ask you to get tested and none of the other girls. How about this? I’ll ask the whole team to get tested.”

We all test clean. It turns out that Vanessa, the girl who has been the least welcoming, the one who was laughing the loudest and saying that I was some kind of community service project for Aaron, is pregnant. She didn’t know. Doesn’t know who the daddy is either.

It makes me wonder about Monica. If she’s ever had a pregnancy scare. I might have put her and Marcus up on their pedestal, thought they were perfect, but even I’m not that naive.

Coach Kerry doesn’t drop Vanessa from the team. She tells her she can let the team know whether she’ll still be with us in January. “Take the holidays to think it over,” she says. Later, in the bathroom, I ask Eliza what “it” is.

“The baby,” says Eliza, looking at me like I’m an idiot. “She’ll get rid of it.” She says it so nonchalantly. Like it’s no big deal. “What the hell is Vanessa gonna do with a baby?”

I wonder what Monica would do. What would she have done if she’d found out, after the accident, that she was pregnant with Marcus’s baby? Would she have had the baby by herself? She wouldn’t have been by herself, though. We would all have been with her. I imagine Monica moving into our house of women. That baby would have had five mamas looking out for it.

I wonder what I would do. Not that I’ve ever had the chance to have anything close to a pregnancy scare. I’ve never even been kissed.

Closest I’ve come is sharing mac ’n’ cheese with Aaron.





CHAPTER 27


I like running with the girls on the track team, but sometimes I miss my moonlit, star-chaperoned runs with Aaron. I don’t know how to tell him that. Don’t know if I should. I’ve never been so aware of a person before. He’s usually running close to me, watching, advising, but so is Coach Kerry and so is Eliza, and I couldn’t tell you how many breaths they took in a minute or what their eyes look like when I beat my best time or what the sun does to their smile. Even when Aaron’s not near me, I know exactly where he is. And when he leaves early or is off helping someone else or doing his own training … I know that too.

At least I still get an occasional afternoon in the car with him when he drives me home after practice. But today he has to run an errand for his mom. I ask Eliza for a ride, but she’s got a dentist appointment, so I decide to run home. I leave my backpack in my locker since I don’t have any homework tonight. I’m about to start jogging down the street when something in the sky catches my eye. A flash of gold and green. My dragon is high above me, so high she might be a plane, but I can tell it’s her. I look around, knowing that my lioness can’t be far behind. They’re always together. And then, around the corner, I see it. My lioness’s tail. I chase after it, glancing overhead to make sure my dragon is still above me, and she is. She’s soaring lower now, looping around the clouds, making figure of eights. She’s flying like I run, with pure joy.

My lioness leads me down an unfamiliar street, but I’m not scared, I trust her, and then suddenly we’re in front of a building I know all too well.

Grady Memorial Hospital. My heart hiccups and I look up for my dragon but she’s gone behind a cloud or flown somewhere else I can’t follow. I never visit Marcus during the week. Not because I don’t want to…

I’m scared. Scared to go in on my own. What if he dies while I’m in there?

My lioness wants me to go in. I feel her behind my knees, pressing me forward, nudging me toward the building I’ve come to despise.

At the visitors’ desk, the receptionist who was so rude to us the first time we came smiles at me. She recognizes us now. And ever since that time, she goes out of her way to be extra friendly. “Miss Jones! Lovely to see you. Just in time too. Visiting hours are over in thirty minutes. Your grandmother is inside already.”