Wing Jones(71)

All that matters now is winning that Riveo race. I’m not doing this for me, I want to tell Aaron; I’m not being selfish. I’m doing it for my family.

I’m doing it for Marcus.

Running used to make me feel weightless, like it set me free. But now … now it’s something else. Something heavy. It doesn’t matter if I love it. It doesn’t matter how it makes me feel. Only thing that matters now is winning.

I’m not running for me.

I’m running because I’d give anything for my brother, and this is all I’ve got to give.





CHAPTER 49


“This good for your feet, and your heart,” says LaoLao, pushing a strand of gray hair behind her ear. She didn’t used to have gray hairs.

I’m in the kitchen with my mom and LaoLao. My mom is doing the dishes and LaoLao is putting together some concoction that she claims will be good for my blisters. I want to tell her I can get something for my blisters at the drugstore, but she’s sure her ancient remedies are better.

I don’t remind her of the time she made me something to make my hair soft and it made my head stink for a week. After sixteen years, neither Granny Dee nor LaoLao knows what to do with my hair.

“What’s wrong with my heart?” I ask.

“It’s broken! You don’t have to tell me. I know.”

I blink, wondering how she knows about Aaron.

Then I realize LaoLao is talking about Marcus.

I didn’t know it was possible for a heart to break so many times and in so many ways.

The phone rings and my mom puts down the bowl she’s rinsing and crosses the kitchen to pick it up, cradling it between her shoulder and jaw.

“Hello?”

LaoLao is humming tunelessly, pausing to ask me to pass her various ingredients. Garlic, lemon, vinegar… My feet are going to smell like something that needs to go in the oven for a few hours and be cooked on a low heat.

“Of course,” my mom says into the phone, and the words are innocuous but the way she says them makes my LaoLao stop mashing together her mixture, makes me look up from the fridge, even makes Granny Dee wander in from the living room.

“We’ll be right there.” Mom’s breathless, like she’s been running.

She clangs the phone down and turns to us, tears crinkling in the corners of her eyes.

“Marcus is awake.”

Her words are a hot glue gun on my heart, sticking it back together again.

I’ve never seen Granny Dee or LaoLao move as quickly as they do after that. I didn’t know they could move so fast.

Granny Dee rambles the whole way to the hospital that she should have been there, that she can’t believe he woke up alone.

“He wasn’t alone. The doctors were there,” says my mom, merging lanes without signaling, making my newly mended heart speed up.

“Be careful, Mom!”

“I’m being careful,” she says as she runs a red light.

“Mom!”

LaoLao takes my hand and holds it. “Don’t be nervous,” she says.

I wonder how she knows. If she’s nervous too.

No one has said what I’m thinking. No one has said … what if he doesn’t remember us?

What if it isn’t him?

I close my eyes and lean my head on my LaoLao’s shoulder. She’s so round and well padded I can’t even feel the bone; it’s like snuggling a marshmallow. Soft and spongy and comforting.

“It will still be him,” says LaoLao, like she’s read my mind, stroking my head. “It will still be him.”





CHAPTER 50


I’ve forgotten what my brother’s eyes look like.

He’s sitting up. He’s sitting up. I haven’t seen him in any position but horizontal in months and months and now he’s sitting up.

And staring at us.

Smiling at us.

My mom is trying so hard not to cry. I can’t see her face but I can tell by the set of her back and the trembling in her arms, and then when Marcus says, “Hi, Mama,” it’s as if he’s opened the floodgates and my mom is shaking and sobbing so hard I think she’s going to disintegrate right in front of us.

“It’s OK,” says Marcus softly. “I’m OK.”

I step forward, nervous, shy – feelings I’m used to having but never with Marcus. I’m staring at him like he’s not real, like he’s going to disappear before I get to him.

“I’m glad you’re back,” I say, my voice hesitant and unsure as a kid on the high dive.

“I never went anywhere,” he says, smiling the smile I know so well, and I can tell he’s waiting for me to reassure him that everything is still the same.

“How are you?” I say instead.

He shrugs and winces. “All right. Been better.”

“I missed you,” I say, and he smiles again.

“I missed you too.” He looks at me like I’m not quite real. Like I’m not who he remembers.

He isn’t who I remember either.

“You got taller,” he says. “And you look … older.”

Now I shrug. I don’t know if I’m any taller than I was seven months ago. It’s possible. Anything’s possible.