Sunny(8)

Ghost asked me if I was talking to the thing.

Patty told him the thing was called a discus.

Ghost asked if I was talking to the discus.

I told him I was. Because . . . I was.

Lu asked what I was doing with it.

Patty asked why Lu and Ghost were asking stupid questions.

Then she asked a smart one. Really, the only one. Why did I quit running Saturday?

I told her, and them, I was tired of it, and actually quit running today. Quit the team.

And the crowd goes wild. In a bad way.

Until I told them I danced for Coach.

And the crowd goes silent. In a weird way.

Then the crowd goes laughing. In a laughing way.

Then Coach comes over. And the crowd goes home.

But only after Coach told them that I am—will be—the Defenders’ first discus thrower. Cushhhhhh.





Dear Diary,

Guess what? The cat finally let go of Darryl’s tongue. And when it did, I happened to be sitting in the car next to him with a discus in my lap. Maybe it was the discus that scared the cat away.

What’s that? Which is all he said.

What’s this?

I told him it was a discus, that I would be throwing it. Then he asked how I could practice running the mile and throwing the discus. And then I told him I quit running the mile. And me saying that was like taking a heavy cat, a lion, off my back—digging the claws out—and shoving it along with the other cat right back in Darryl’s mouth.

When we got home, I ran upstairs to change my clothes and to kiss my discus. Not sure why, but I kind of just feel like it needs to know I love it if it’s going to work with me. If we’re going to do this thing together. I know . . . weird. But it wasn’t like, smoochy smoochy muah muah smoochy smooch smoochington, or nothing like that. Just a regular one.

When I got back downstairs, Darryl was sitting in his chair in the living room with a needle and thread, finishing up fixing the hem of his jacked-up pants. While I poured myself a glass of water (honestly, I just wanted to wash my lips off), Darryl laid his pants across the chair and went into the family room, where he stood over the big table, puzzle pieces scattered all over.

This is the way it goes almost every night, unless Mr. Nico comes by. Mr. Nico is the reason for all the puzzles in the first place. I didn’t know this when I was younger, but when Darryl made his first business transaction thingy, it was with Mr. Nico. He invested in Mr. Nico’s company, which is a puzzle company. It’s called Puzzle Peace. You take a picture, e-mail it in, and they send you a puzzle of the picture. Simple. Only catch is there is no map or key. The boxes come with nothing on them. You don’t know what you’re going to see until you see it. So when I was growing up, me and Darryl would work on puzzles of my mother every single day. Darryl had taken so many pictures of her, and them, almost like he wanted us to have enough images to piece together for the rest of our lives. Constant surprises. Nonstop discoveries. He used to always tell me that he wanted to make sure I knew her. At least, her face. Her smile. And I did. I do. I have to figure out how to make her—how to put it together—all the time. How to start with the edges, the borders, and work in, using my imagination. That’s what Darryl taught me. And whenever we finish one, Mr. Nico brings another. Especially since free puzzles are the only “Return on Investment” my father ever gets.

Mr. Nico also smokes cigars with Darryl whenever he’s here, and always asks my father if he wants to date his sister. Her name is Ms. Linda. One time Nico even slipped us a puzzle of Ms. Linda’s face. That one was really a surprise. I thought she looked pretty, but we never finished it.

But Mr. Nico didn’t come tonight. So Darryl didn’t have to do that funny-sounding laugh he always does whenever he’s asked if he’d date Ms. Linda. Instead he stood over the table, studying the pieces of a new puzzle, moving them around, looking for the corners and edges. I joined him.

And asked him if he was mad at me.

He said mad’s not the word.

Then I asked what the word was.

He said he bought TV dinners.

So the word was not now.





Dear Diary, The word is “gross.”

The word is “dry.”

My TV dinner tasted like a commercial break.

And not a funny one, but one of the ones about life insurance. I have no idea what life insurance is, but apparently old people need it, because that’s who’s always on those commercials. And that’s what my food tasted like.

A life insurance commercial.

Or eating a puzzle.





Dear Diary,

Do you remember my room? I just realized that you’ve been in here the whole time, but you’ve been stuck in a dresser drawer with old toys piled up on top of you. Do you remember what the walls look like? That soft green, like the color of grass just before it gets hard in the heat? And the ceiling, flat and white? An occasional circle—a home for a lightbulb that adds more white to the white. Do you remember the carpet that looks like yarn and like yawn? Or the big plush zebra in the corner? Do you remember the baby crib? It’s still there.





Dear Diary, You’re gonna throw the discus, Sunny. Sun D Runny. How you feel?

I feel great. I think. I mean, throw a little discus to the other side of the world. Know what I’m saying? Know what I’m talking about, walking about, Sunny?