Sunny(20)

Ummmmmm. Yeah.

Diary, I bet you thought we’d be as perfect as pancakes, but we were actually more like health bars. Made of weird stuff, just there to cut the hunger.

He said good morning. Then sipped coffee.

I said good morning.

He asked if I slept well.

I told him I did. Asked him the same.

He said yes. Then sipped more coffee.

I asked if he maybe wanted pancakes.

He said sure. So I made pancakes. For six. And it was the first time I felt like stuffing pancakes in my mouth not to eat, but just to take the place of the cat that had my tongue. We ate in awkward. And suddenly, maybe on like bite number sixty or something, he pushed his coffee cup across the table to me. He never did that before. Never offered me coffee. So I figured I should take a sip. Diary, did you know coffee tastes like WHY IS ANYONE DRINKING THIS STUFF?! Did you know that? Because that’s what it tastes like. And when I took a sip, I couldn’t even swallow it, it tasted so trash. But I couldn’t just spit into the air either, so . . . I just let it dribble back in Darryl’s cup.

Oh no. I started to apologize, you know, rapid-fire sorrys like sorry sorry sorry sorry sorrysorrysorry

sorry sorrrrry I’m so so so

so so sorry

but before I could even get to “sorry” number five, Darryl had already hit his hundredth HA! He’d busted out laughing. Like, laughing laughing. I don’t remember the last time I heard him laugh, and I definitely don’t think I’ve ever heard him laugh that loud, and for that long. It actually sounded kind of painful. Like a bad cough. Like hacking and hacking and hacking up something he’d been choking on for a long time.





Dear Diary,

I told Darryl about me choking on that sausage biscuit yesterday. There was even more laughter in his face, but he tried to hide it. But I laughed, and then he did.

I also told him about Mr. Rufus. That he was in a coma. Darryl didn’t think that was funny. Which is a good thing, because it wasn’t. Not at all.

I told him about me almost hitting my whole team with the discus. His laughter came back, but then he noticed that mine didn’t, so he disappeared his immediately.

I told him that because of that, I had to go to practice today. He said he’d take me.

Then he told me a little bit about his date with Ms. Linda. Dinner. Told me she was nice, and smelled much better than Mr. Nico, who smells like he himself is a cigar. And that was all he said, and, Diary, I’m glad that’s all he said, because the thing is, I’m glad he went out with her, but I don’t want to know nothing else. He did say one other thing about the date, though. He said it made him feel younger. Like he had his boomtick booming and ticking again. (That part’s me, not him. Darryl didn’t say that.)

And that got us talking about my mother. And about when they were kids. He dug out a photo book and we flipped though old pictures of him with different haircuts, and my mother with different hair styles, and my grandfather with less gray hair, and Aurelia, who looked exactly the same. Darryl talked about how Gramps wanted him to be a doctor too. How he always said, saving a life is always more important than saving a dollar. Darryl also talked about how my mother’s parents died when she was in high school in a freak accident, and that Aurelia’s family looked after her, which is why she looked after Aurelia when she got all messed up on drugs. Darryl went on and on about how him and my mom met on the school bus, and she used to cheat off his homework.

And on it went, the stories, each one better than the last, all of them making me feel like I was being warmed. I got to tell him more about the team. I didn’t have much else to really talk about, because the team is the only part of my life that is not this house. Or Aurelia. The team is the bada-bada-bangbang. Is the zip and zap and what-what, so they are who I have to talk about.

I reminded him that Ghost was the one who jumped the gun.

And Lu is the albino one who looks like he’s been to the Olympics already.

And Patty is the only girl in the crew.

Darryl thought the fact that I said crew was funny. Then he asked me if I liked Patty.

I asked why he was asking.

He said because whenever I say her name, my face does a weird thing.

I asked what kind of weird thing.

Darryl smirked, then flipped through the photo album, back toward the beginning. One of the first pictures—a Polaroid of him and my mother at a Chinese restaurant. They were young. Close to my age. And scribbled on the border was, D & R’s first “date.” Darryl pointed to the image of him, pressed his finger on his own goofy photographed face.

And I could feel mine going all melty melty, skwilurp bleep blurp squish.





Dear Diary,

When we got to the track, Darryl got out of the car and walked over to the stands and took a seat in the exact spot he normally sits in during the meet. Coach was already there. When I think about it, Coach is always there. It’s almost like he lives on the track. He’s never late.

He shook Darryl’s hand. Shook it long. Then told me to head to the track. Told me this was just like any other practice, so I needed to stretch and do warm-up laps. The usual.

I watched Coach and my father talk. I couldn’t hear what they were saying because they stepped way back from the track. There was a lot of hand movement, and some arm folding, but ultimately it looked okay. After my two laps, Coach met me at the throwing circle. He had his crate of discuses just like the day before.