Wing Jones(72)

I want to ask him where he’s been. If he knows we’ve been visiting. If he’s seen my dragon or my lion. I want to ask him so many things.

“Wing is running.” It’s LaoLao, she’s bustled forward and is clucking around his hospital bed like a mother hen. “You will not believe when you see. She so fast!”

Marcus looks at me, confusion scrawled across his face. “Fast? Wing? I guess I really was out for a long time.”

“You’re gonna be so proud,” says my mom, her eyes still on Marcus. I don’t think she’s ever going to look away from him again. “She’s on the track team and everything. She’s been winning all her races.”

Now Marcus looks at me like he definitely doesn’t remember me.

“That’s great…” he says. Then he lies back down on his pillows. “I’m sorry I’m not more excited. I don’t think my brain can keep up with everything.”

He looks down at his inert body and raises a limp arm. “My body sure as hell can’t.” Then he laughs, the sound a shadow of what it used to be. “Are y’all just gonna stare at me all day? I don’t know if I’m gonna be able to go back to sleep with y’all watching me like that.”

“You’ve been sleeping just fine for the past few months.” The words spiral out of my mouth before I can stop them.

He shakes his head and then winces, because the movement was too quick and must have hurt him.

“Months,” he says, disbelief woven through his words like a mismatching thread. “Months.”

He remembers us.

But he’s different. I knew he’d be different. But I wasn’t expecting my brother to be gone.

My strong brother. My proud brother. My brave brother. He’s gone. What is left is a boy who cries in pain, whimpers, who stares into space for hours.

This new Marcus doesn’t remember what happened that night. Or a lot of what happened before. He doesn’t remember taking me to Gladys’s. He remembers Monica. Who won’t leave his side even though finals are coming up and she needs to be studying. He remembers Aaron. Who I know is visiting because Monica tells me, but he’s never there at the same time I am.

Marcus isn’t proud of me. He pretends he is. But he isn’t. I want to tell him that it is all for him, but I don’t know how to make him understand.

I perch on the edge of his hospital bed, lap full of all his favorite treats. Snickerdoodle and chocolate chip cookies, beef jerky, sunflower seeds, Skittles. He’s lost so much weight. We’re trying to fatten him up, but the doctors say it will take time.

He didn’t know, when he first woke up, about the accident.

He didn’t know how bad it had been.

He didn’t know that even if he could play football again, and he can’t, no team would have him now.

He didn’t know he killed two people.

“I’ll never play football again,” he says to the wall. “I’ll never go pro.”

I’m torn between wanting to hug him and wanting to slap him. I want to tell him that we don’t care that he’ll never go pro. He lived. He lived when two people died. I want to ask him why isn’t life enough?

But the doctors and the psychologists say this kind of thing isn’t helpful or healing. So instead I rub his back and make comforting sounds.

He doesn’t ask me about my running. I don’t think he really believes it. That I’m good at something.

I don’t think he believes that this is his life now.





CHAPTER 51


“I know some of you have entered the Riveo Running Girl competition,” Coach Kerry says after practice one day. It’s a Tuesday. Marcus has been awake for eight days. “It’s a fantastic opportunity, and it would be wonderful if someone from our team won,” Coach Kerry goes on.

There’s a woman with her. It’s Natalie, with the ice-blond hair and navy blazer and matching heels, who works at Riveo. She was the one I handed my entry form to at the shop. When I turned it in she looked at me like she knew me already. “You’re that girl who’s been in the local papers, the fast one, right? The one breaking all the records?” She smiled then, but it wasn’t a friendly smile. “You look so … distinct. A hard face to forget. An unforgettable face is a good thing for a campaign. I hope you’re as fast as they say you are.” Her eyes are hungry today, like they were that day in the Riveo store. She looks at me like right now I’m just a rock but with enough pressure I’ll turn into a diamond. One that she’s gonna rip out of the ground herself.

Coach Kerry tells us that Natalie is here to check our times during the races leading up to the Riveo race. “They’re going to other schools too. The decision is nothing to do with me,” Coach says.

The next day at practice I force everything else out of my head. Even Aaron. Even Marcus. I run so fast and so hard that my body can barely keep up with my feet. My stomach sure can’t. I barely make it into the nearest bathroom before I start puking, my whole body trembling.

I don’t tell anyone I threw up. And I go even faster the next day.

The following Thursday I’m stretching before a race, a real one, a race that Riveo Natalie is gonna be at, when Eliza flutters close to me. My hair is pulled back; I had Granny Dee braid it as tight as she could.