Sunny(13)

I told her I didn’t know.

Then she asked me what I thought it was about.

I told her I didn’t know that, either, but that at the same time I did know but didn’t think I knew.

Aurelia said what she thought, which was, everything is moving. Everything. Even the things that aren’t are, because the world is moving. It’s spinning, so everything is changing constantly. Her, me, Darryl, and even you. And that somehow everything is still connected. Aurelia gets deep like Coach sometimes too. And I like it.





Dear Diary,

Practice was funny. Sort of. The part of it where I tried to explain Baraka to Patty while we were stretching. That was funny.

I told her the movie was deep. Deeper than deep. Stretch.

She couldn’t believe there were no words. Stretchh.

I told her, over and over again, that it was just action. Stretchhh.

And Patty didn’t get it. But Lu said he did.

He said there would be all action whenever a movie was made about him. Stretchhhh.

And then Aaron jumped in all huff and puff and blow your house down. He said no one would ever make a movie about Lu. Then, switch!

Lu said they’d make one about him before they’d make one about Aaron. Sounds true.

Ghost said, Womp womp.

Patty laughed. I laughed. Then Aaron said something about me not being allowed to laugh because they were having a runners’ conversation.

And then I was gonna tell him that I didn’t know there was a such thing as a runners’ conversation, but before I could, Lu said he was right. And that I was not a runner no more. That I’m a thrower. Then Lu said he was a thrower too. He put his fists up and said he had those two things to throw right at Aaron’s face.

Patty made that weird noise when you blow air out your nose in a short burst as a way to be like, ohhh. The noise that sounds like gkish. Ghost nodded and held his fists up too, and then, of course, Coach came over and said those hands better be getting ready to work on form. Then he told Lu to count us off. Not Aaron. Lu.

Ghost said womp womp again.

I should’ve just named it Womp Womp Wednesday because while everyone else ran ladders, which would’ve been a piece of cake for me—to run four laps, then three, then two, then one, then one, then two, then three, then four, which comes to five miles—I had to spin around the track. Like . . . spin. Around. The track.

Coach said the plan was to work on the second spin. The second whoosh in the whoosh whoosh. This picks up where the rules for the first whoosh left off.

6. Then go straight into a 180-degree turn, completing the second whoosh.

But the way he wanted me to practice it was to line up on one of the white lines on the track. The lines that make the track lanes. One of the ones on the outside, so that I’d be out of the way. Coach told me to keep my feet on the line. That every step—after the 230, then after the 180—should land on the line. Coach demonstrated it so I could see how it was done. Then he did it again. Then again. Faster. It looked silly when he did it slow-motion, but once he sped it up, it looked almost like the way a ballerina would walk down the street if they didn’t want to just walk regular, and maybe wanted to show off. Just quickly spinning and prancing—Aurelia calls this allegro—which I think is sort of beautiful.

Spin, step. Spin-step.

Spin, step. Spin-step.

Coach told me it was just like ballet.

I asked him if he knew ballet.

He said he didn’t.

I told him I did. And that he was close.





Dear Diary,

On the way home, I tried to explain Baraka to Darryl. He also thought I was talking about the president, and when he found out I wasn’t, he laughed. Just a little. But that little laugh led to me talking about the monkey in the bathtub, and the monkey in the bathtub got us through traffic, through all the people trying to get home, and I talked about all the people in the movie running and dancing and crying and working and walking and spinning and moving and moving, and then we were getting out of the car, going into the house, where we heated up TV dinners that were supposed to be meat loaf but Darryl called it “some animal,” and I explained the animals in Baraka, climbing and fighting and dying and running and swinging and moving and moving, and then we were in the family room, standing at the big table where the puzzle pieces were scattered and just my mother’s eyes—Darryl completed them last night on his own—stared up at us, attached to nothing, like random spots of dark and light, and I told Darryl about the cars and buses and clocks and sun and moon, ticking and changing and swerving and crashing and moving and moving. And fluuuuuuute Fluuuuuuute. A sound that sounds both sad and happy. And that sad and happy made me bring up why I quit running.

I asked Darryl how come he never asked me about it when it first happened.

He said he asked me about it last night. But then Mr. Nico came.

And I said he said Gramps asked him to ask me.

And he said Gramps did ask him to ask me.

And I asked why didn’t he just ask me.

He asked me what there was to ask.

I told him he could just ask why I did it.

So he did. Just asked. Just asked it while helping me piece my mother’s cheek together.

And I told him. Well, I didn’t just tell him. First I counted to ten. I don’t know why, after all that buildup. I guess I was trying to figure out the best way to say it. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. And then . . .