Ghost (7 page)

After practice, everybody gathered around the bench, grabbed their bags, and headed off to meet their parents. I sat with my head in my lap, waiting for everyone to disappear. Or waiting for myself to. I'd rolled my jeans down—crinkled from knee to ankle—and I had put my wet shirt back on.

“Scoot over, dude,” a girl voice said. I lifted my head, and there was Patty. She sat down next to me and started unlacing her shoes, which by the way, were also pretty dope. I looked straight ahead, out at the track, those stupid white lines teasing me like everybody else. “Don't worry about today,” Patty said sweetly. “You ain't the first person to crash out like that.” She eased her heels out of her shoes. “And you won't be the last.”

I glanced over at Coach, who was standing off to the side talking to Sunny and the man standing next to Sunny, who I figured was his father. He looked like a businessman. Gray suit. Tie. Beard. Glasses. The whole getup.

“I just wanted to beat him, to shut him up.” I kept my eye on those white lines. I didn't want Patty to
see whatever might've been showing on my face.

“Who, Lu?” she asked, her voice brightening up, happy like this was some kind of joke. “Don't pay that fool no mind. He just mad he albino.”

Now I turned to Patty, because I didn't have a clue what she was talking about. Albino? Was that some kind of sickness? Was he infected with something? Or was it like he was in special ed, because if that was what albino meant, then people probably thought I was albino too.

“Albino?” I repeated.

“Yeah,” she replied. She must have sensed I was clueless, because she continued, “Wait. You don't know what albino is?”

I shook my head. Then Patty shook hers.

“So, it's basically when you born without the brownness in your skin,” she explained. “That lady who be cheering for him all crazy at practice, that's his mother.”

The woman was my complexion. Medium brown.

“And his daddy dark-skinned. So it ain't no way he could just come out white. Feel me? That's albino.”

Somebody called out for Patty, a small voice. A little girl came running toward us. “So yeah, Ghost—Ghost, right?” Patty said, standing up.

“Yeah.”

“That's why Lu acts like that. Trust me, I know. I used to go to school with him. He was picked on crazy until he started running track. Matter fact, kids used to call
him
Ghost,” Patty explained. The little girl had finally reached us. She threw her arms around Patty and squeezed tight.

“Ghost, this my baby sister, Madison.”

Madison looked at me. “Hey, Madison,” I said. She did a weird wave. Just jabbed her arm up and snapped down real quick. Then she buried her face in Patty's stomach. She was probably freaked out by my name.

“Okay, okay, let's go,” Patty said, looking over at a white woman. “Momly's waiting for us.” Then she looked at me and said, “And before you start wondering if I'm reversed albino or something, me and Madison are adopted. So no need to be weird about it, 'kay?”

“Oh, I wasn't—I—” I stammered, trying to pretend like the whole reversed albino thing didn't pop right up in my head the second she called that white lady “Momly,” which was obviously one of those mom nicknames, like . . . I don't know . . . “Ma” or something.

“It's cool,” Patty said, smiling. She picked up her bag and threw it over her shoulder. Then she bent down and lifted her sister, holding her tight to her hip, and they left. Once Patty hobbled past Coach, Sunny and
his dad started walking with her. Sunny turned around awkwardly and threw his hand up in the air to me.

“Good job today, Ghost!” he yelled, and even though I would normally think this was some kind of slick way of making fun of me, the look on Sunny's face and the way his voice sounded made me think that he really meant it. So I waved back and said, nowhere near loud enough for him to actually hear me, “Thanks.”

That left me and Coach. When we got to his cab, I tossed my backpack on the floor in the back, slammed the door, and lay down on the sticky leather.

“If you sit back there, I gotta treat you like a customer, kid,” Coach said, starting the car. I didn't say nothing. Coach turned around in his seat and glared at me. “Okay, then fine. I'm gonna run the meter. If you gonna make me drive you home in silence, I might as well get paid for it.”

Still, nothing from me. Not a word. Nothing to say. All I could think about was how stupid it felt to crash and burn on the track like that on my first real day of practice, and how Brandon Simmons would've laughed me off the planet if he was there to see that, and how I had finally beaten him up for talking smack about me and would've done it again, and how Patty said Lu had (was?) albino, and how she a white mother, and ladders
were the worst, four-three-two-one-one-two-three-four, and water bottles, and how come I didn't know any of this, and how come everybody's shoes were so good, especially Lu's and Patty's. And probably Usain Bolt's.

“. . . I swear, I almost broke my nose, kid. I mean, I just clipped the hurdle and dove face-first to the ground.” Despite his riding-in-silence comment, Coach was blathering on, probably telling me a story, but I wasn't really listening. He continued, “So I know what it's like to be embarrassed in front of your teammates. Trust me, tomorrow nobody will even remember.”

I heard that part, that tomorrow nobody would remember, and I'm not sure if I believed it or not, but I knew what I could do to help the situation. In addition to the ladders, water bottles, white parents, albino thinking, I also thought myself up a plan.

When we pulled up in front of my house, Coach put the car in park.

“Twenty dollars,” he said, trying to lighten the situation.

“Coach.”

“Nah, nah, don't try to dash on me,” he insisted. “You done already robbed me for half a day's pay.”

“But I paid you back already with all that sprinting I gave you earlier,” I groaned.

Coach did a double take. “Oh, you thought that was for
me
?” He pressed a finger to his chest.

I shook my head and unlocked the door. After I got out, Coach rolled down the window. The car slowly drifted forward. “Remember what I said, Ghost. . . .” He accelerated slightly. “Tomorrow it won't matter. It'll be a new day. A new chance!”

When I got inside my house, I didn't waste no time. I knew what I needed to do, and I knew that I had to do it before my mother got home and made me eat dinner and watch some sappy flick with her while she procrastinated doing
her
homework. See, besides working in a hospital cafeteria, she was also taking online classes (there were also textbooks in that big purse), trying to get her nursing degree. She always says she can't wait to one day trade that serving spoon for a stethoscope, and this house for a new one
not
in Glass Manor. But she hated homework. I guess I get that from her.

I dropped my backpack on the couch and headed straight for the kitchen. The drawer next to the stove was where my mother kept leftover duck sauce, soy sauce, chopsticks, menus, tape, screwdrivers, but most importantly, all her coupons, organized and paper-clipped by product. Seemed like everybody was having
a sale on ketchup, which was a good thing because ketchup always made cafeteria food taste better. Way better. Along with the coupons (and all the other stuff) were the scissors she used to cut those coupons. These weren't just regular scissors, though. Nope. These were hospital scissors. At least that's where my mom got them from, and they were big, and shiny, and heavy, like if a doctor gotta cut somebody's arm off or something, he could just use these bad boys and . . .
snip
,
snip
, bye-bye arm. Which was why I knew they'd be perfect for what I needed them for.

I grabbed the scissors and sat down on the kitchen floor. Using one foot to press against the heel of the other, I pushed my sneakers off. I yanked the laces out of both, so the floppy tongues fell forward like drawbridges coming down out of beat-up, leather, no-named fortresses. Because here's the truth—I was still so angry about what happened on the track. Embarrassed. There was so much noise inside of me. So much of everybody's laughing. So starting with the left shoe, I took those big scissors and began cutting and cutting, performing my own kind of surgery, the blades sawing and slicing into the black leather until the high parts of my high-tops were gone.

I WONDER IF
doctors ever cut off somebody's arm or leg and afterward realize that they made a huge mistake. Like, totally blew it. Because that's definitely how I felt about low-topping my high-tops, but not until I got to school the next day.

I was cool with my new shoes when I first did it. Walked around the house totally hype about how much lighter they were, which would definitely help me out on the track. But when I heard my mom at the door, I took them off and, quick, threw them in my room. I didn't really think she would notice that I cut my shoes in half, because she was usually so beat when she got home she never noticed anything but
the couch. But still, I wanted to play it safe just in case she was in a bad mood and saw that I pretty much just threw half the money she paid for those sneakers in the trash, buried under Styrofoam to-go containers, all streaky and stinky with brown gravy and french dressing. She probably would've flipped out and, knowing her, would've made me get the glue and the needle and thread and the stapler and some tape and made me try to fix them, all while giving me the speech about “the value of a dollar.” And that would've been even worse than her yelling at me or punishing me. Shoot, maybe even worse than ladders.

I was even still good with the shoes the next morning, which I was really happy about because a lot of times when you sleep on something, your sleep, for some reason, causes your mind to change. I don't know why, but it does. But when I woke up the next morning, wrapped in my blankets on the living room floor, I opened my bedroom door, peeked at my shoes as if they might have come to life in the middle of the night, and, thankfully, was still all right with them. Even after I got dressed and put them on, I wasn't too worried because my jeans came down long enough to cover the raggedy top and make them look regular.

What wasn't okay, though, were my legs. They felt
like they had been cut off in my sleep, stuffed with dynamite and hot peppers, and then reattached. So even though my shoes were covered, I couldn't hide the fact that I was walking like a senior citizen zombie, which I feared would draw unnecessary attention—the last thing I needed.

When I got to school, first I looked around for Brandon Simmons. But he was nowhere to be found. The only reason I was checking for him was because he could always sniff out stuff like raggedy shoes, or whatever, not that he would've tried me two days in a row. If he did, he would've won because my legs were barely working, but he wouldn't test me, not after what had happened at lunch. If anything, people might've been teasing
him
. But like I said, he wasn't around. Principal Marshall was, though, and the first thing he said to me was that this had better be an altercation-free day, followed by, “And Mr. Simmons won't be joining us. He's suspended,” which I have to say were the sweetest words I had heard in a while. I caught up with Dre in the hall for a few seconds. He assumed I was limping because of the fight—battle wound—and was telling me how everyone was talking about how I mopped Brandon, even the people who got chocolate milk splashed on them.

“Bro, you like a hero,” he said. “Like, you could run for class president right now and win, if you were into all that stuff.” He threw his arm around me. “Picture that . . . President Cranshaw.”

“Whatever, man.” I slipped from under his arm, laughing to keep from wincing. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Me, Ghost, a hero. Until social studies.

I wasn't really in the mood to learn about Alexander the Great, even though I did like the fact that he was called “the Great,” but what I was even less in the mood for was sitting in front of Shamika Wilson. Shamika was . . . big. Like . . . huge. She had to be almost six feet tall in the seventh grade. And she had a birthmark that covered half her light-skinned face in dark brown, like a comic-book bad guy or something. But Shamika wasn't a mean girl. She was actually kinda cool. The only problem with her was that she was super silly, and she had a laugh as big as her body. But it was a real laugh. The kind that made her bend over. The kind that Coach was faking when I first met him. So when I sat down in front of her and bumped her desk, knocking one of her pencils on the floor, Shamika leaned over to pick it up, noticing my new and improved sneakers. And then came the thunder. It just came out of nowhere, and once she
starts laughing, Shamika can't stop. And the worst part is that she can sort of pass her laugh around the room to everybody, just because the sound of it is so outrageous. So if she laughs, everybody laughs. Imagine the sound a car makes when it's trying to start, but can't. Now, speed that sound up, and crank the volume high enough to blow out the windows in heaven. That's Shamika's laugh.

“What's so funny, Shamika?” Mr. Hollow, the social studies teacher, asked, unamused. “Would you care to share it with the rest of the class?”

And that's pretty much when I started to panic. When I had that doctor moment I was talking about, when they cut somebody's arm off and then realize it was a bad idea—my shoes equaled that arm. And now Mr. Hollow was basically asking to see my surgical screwup. Oh. No. Please, Shamika. Don't share it with the class. Don't share it with the class!

Shamika couldn't get herself together long enough to even speak, so instead she just pointed at my feet. And that was all it took for like sixty other eyeballs, including Mr. Hollow's, to laser beam me and my sneakers. I tried to cross my legs, then stuck my feet farther under the seat, then pull my pant legs down, but then my butt was out. There was nowhere to
hide, and the next few seconds, with the whole class howling, felt a gazillion times worse than Brandon's stupid jokes about my mom.