Wing Jones(62)

My dragon and my lioness glare at me at night, and I know they blame themselves for letting me go running that night in the rain.

But as much as I hate missing practice, and I really do, some part of me likes the attention I’m getting from Granny Dee and LaoLao.

It’s been a long time since anyone has taken care of me like this.

But still, I have to get better fast. Next weekend is our training weekend in Hilton Head, and there’s no way I’m gonna miss that.





CHAPTER 42


“You ready for this weekend?” Eliza is practically bouncing up and down next to me, grinning her mile-wide grin.

I nod and grin back at her. It’s Friday afternoon after practice. I’ve been back at school a few days after being sick. There are vans in the parking lot, ready to drive us to Hilton Head. My mom almost didn’t let me go, but yesterday Coach Kerry talked her into it. “We do it every year. It’s good for the team. It’ll be good for Wing,” she said. Mama, I wanted to say, you’ve been letting Marcus run around with his friends, with his team, since he was twelve. But maybe she was thinking that she should have been a little more careful with Marcus.

We pile all our stuff into the backs of the vans. I only brought my duffel bag and a sleeping bag. Coach Kerry provides all the tents; she got ’em donated from a local business. Whole trip has been paid for, partly from donations and partly from a fund-raiser that the rest of the team did last summer.

As we head for one of the vans, Eliza tells me how much fun we’ll have and how we’ll make a campfire every night and how Hilton Head is the most beautiful place she’s ever been, and I’m just grinning at her because I can’t wait to see it for myself.

I’m expecting Aaron to ride in the van with the rest of the guys on the track team, guys I know by face but not by name, so I’m surprised when he jogs over to our van.

“Our van is full,” he says. “Y’all got any space for me?”

“Yep, in the back next to Wing,” Eliza chirps, before I’ve even gotten in.

There are a few giggles, but if Aaron hears them, he ignores them. “Cool,” he says, and I try to look nonchalant, like it’s no big deal that we’re about to spend seven hours squished up next to each other.

There turns out to be plenty of room and there’s an empty seat between us, the middle seat, and no one takes it, and I’m not going to scoot into it just so I can be closer to Aaron, even though that’s what I want. At first we’re quiet, but then, I don’t know who goes first, we start talking and we don’t stop.

We don’t talk about running. We don’t talk about Marcus. We talk about how Aaron wants to go to med school but is worried he won’t be able to afford it. He’s been trying to pull up his grades, he didn’t do too hot freshman and sophomore years, and he’s hoping his last two years will be enough to boost his GPA to get in somewhere with a good pre-med program. He wonders if he’ll be able to run track, the only mention of running, and still be pre-med. How he’ll balance it.

The van stops for gas and someone in the front hollers back to us and asks if we want to switch seats, but we don’t.

“I’m good!” I call back.

“Me too,” says Aaron, and again, that slight pause, as if everyone else in the van can feel whatever it is sizzling between us.

The van starts back up again, and the roar it makes as it hits the highway is a comfort. Between that and the music Eliza is blaring, no one can hear me and Aaron in the back.

We talk about how I want to travel. I want to go to Shanghai and see where LaoLao is from and where my mom was born. And to Ghana, to the village where my Granny Dee’s parents lived. I tell him, smiling shyly, that I want to study both Chinese and Japanese when I get to university. I know a little bit of Mandarin from LaoLao, but I want to be fluent.

“I didn’t know you were so interested in languages,” he says. “Or so interested in Asia. I thought I knew you, Wing-a-ling, but I’m finding out new things about you every day.”

“What do you know about me?” Our knees knock against each other in the small space behind the seat in front of us.

“I know that you love to sing. And that you’re afraid of heights. And you like to go to the beach. I know that you watch old cartoons on weekend mornings. And you bake real good chocolate chip cookies. And you’re messy. And you’d do anything for the people you love.” He leans closer, voice low, eyes tight on mine. “I know that when you’re happy, you shine. And I love it when you laugh, I love the sound, and I feel it.” He sits back and gestures with his hands around his chest.

He does feel my feather giggles.

“I like getting to know you, Wing Jones.”

“I like getting to know you too.”

Aaron reaches over across the empty seat between us and puts the smallest amount of pressure on the back of my hand, sending shooting stars up my arm. My hand flips over, making its own decision, I sure as hell didn’t tell it to do that, so our hands are lying palm to palm. That line from Romeo and Juliet, the one about the lips being palms, and palms kissing, flits through my mind. Then he squeezes my hand, and if the first touch sent shooting stars, this is a whole meteor shower, racing up my veins from my palm straight to my heart.

Hours later, we drive through a tunnel of green. I’ve never seen trees like this before. Trees with long, wispy branches that droop and drape over the road like velvet curtains. I push the window open and breathe in salty, unfamiliar air. The ocean lies ahead of us, beckoning with open arms.