Twerp (21 page)

I was shaking my head. “It doesn’t matter ….”

“
It doesn’t matter?
I’ve never seen anyone run so fast.”

I shrugged at her.

Then Devlin said, “Maybe next year, when you’re in junior high, I’ll race you.”

The way he said that, for some reason, just cracked me up. I started to laugh.

“What’s so funny?” he yelled.

“I’m sorry,” I said, but I kept cracking up. I couldn’t help myself.

“I’ll race you right now! You think I won’t? I’ll race you right this minute!”

The more he yelled, the funnier he sounded. I was laughing in his face, which I guess he deserved, but I was also laughing at myself, at what a fake I was. I turned and started to walk back toward the infield.

“You’re a punk!” he yelled. “You’re nothing! Did you hear me? You’re nothing!”

I called back to him, “Maybe you’re right. But I can outrun you backwards.”

He kept yelling, but I couldn’t hear the words anymore.

I looked up and saw Willie standing and smiling with the rest of the semifinalists near the starting line. He stepped forward as I jogged over to them. “Four-point-seven, huh?”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“What are you sorry about?”

“I don’t know.”

He laughed at that, even though I didn’t mean it as a joke. I couldn’t bear to look him in the eye after I hadn’t warned him, after I’d let him race the first heat against Eduardo.

“You know what?” he said. “I think I might run a four-point-six … just to see what it feels like.”

“I hope you do.”

Except he
wasn’t
going to run a four-six. He’d just run the race of his life at five-one. He was never going to know what a four-six felt like. That was the truth, whether he knew it or not.

But then at once I realized:
I
could run a four-six. I could run it for both of us. Willie deserved to run it more than I did. He deserved to know what it felt like. But the world doesn’t care who deserves what. The world doesn’t care, period. It had coughed up two quintessences of dust, me and Willie, and I could run a four-six, and he couldn’t. There was no rhyme or reason to it. It was just how things had worked out. If one of us was going to run a four-six, it would have to be me. Maybe, then, it wasn’t
exactly
true that nothing mattered. Maybe what mattered was doing what you could do … for the sake of the guys who couldn’t do it themselves.

I wasn’t going to let Willie down.

Mr. Greetham separated me and Willie for the semis. I’m sure he did it on purpose since we had the two fastest times. None of the other ten runners had broken five-point-five. So Greetham put Willie in the first semifinal and me in the second. I smiled at Willie and wished him good luck as he walked to the starting line. He ran a good race, and he pulled away at the end, but without Eduardo to push him, I knew the time wasn’t going to be as fast.

Greetham called out, “Five-point-three.”

I looked down …. I couldn’t bear the thought of how bad I was going to beat him in the finals.

Then Greetham called out, “Next semifinal, to the starting line.”

As I walked to the line, I had one thought:
I’m going to run a four-six
.

That was the thought that carried me through the race, the reason I pushed myself not to ease up at the end even though the race wasn’t close. I bore down and leaned forward as far as I could crossing the finish line. Then I held my breath and waited for Greetham to call out the time.

“Four-point-seven,” he said.

The kids in the bleachers cheered again.

I turned to Greetham and stared at him. “But I didn’t slow down!”

“You got ragged at the end. The effort was right there, though.”

“I want to run a four-six.”

“That’s going to be tough. You’ve run two races already.”

“I’m
going
to run a four-six.”

He got a big grin on his face. “Then don’t
talk
about it.
Do it!
”

There were four runners in the finals. I had no idea who was going to finish third or fourth, but I knew Willie was going to finish second and I was going to finish first. I also knew I was going to run a four-six … 
because I could
. Greetham gave us a couple of extra minutes to catch our breath before he lined us up again. While we were standing around, Lonnie called my name from the edge of the bleachers. He waved me over. I glanced around to make sure I had time, then walked over to him.

“You crazy son of a gun,” he said.
“Four-point-seven.”

“I’m going to run a four-six in the finals.”

“So I guess Willie took care of Eduardo for you.”

“Yeah, he beat him. I didn’t think he would.”

“It should’ve been you who put him in his place.”

“For God’s sake, Lonnie, let it go!”

“I don’t mean nothing bad by it, Jules. You know I don’t like the guy. Maybe I don’t know him like you do. So we can agree to disagree if you want. But I’m not taking it back either.”

I turned and started to walk toward the starting line.

Lonnie called after me, “You mad, Jules?”

“No,” I called back, but didn’t turn back around.

“Then get mad! Run that four-six!”

That’s the thing about Lonnie. He’s got his faults, for sure—I mean, the guy’s only human. But he gets to the heart of the problem. I’d coasted in the first heat. I’d thought too much in the semis. I wasn’t going to run a four-six unless I got mad. Real mad. Whether I got mad at Lonnie or at myself or at the world didn’t much matter. I just had to get mad.

So I decided to get mad at the world. That was the biggest thing, and it included Lonnie and me, and even God, so I figured if I was going to get mad, I might as well get mad at the world. I mean, look at the way the world is. I don’t even mean the huge stuff like earthquakes and disease and hunger. That kind of stuff is too awful to wrap your mind around. Or Eduardo’s parents getting killed, or Lonnie’s mom getting her tongue cut by the Nazis. If I got worked up about stuff like that, I’d feel like even more of a fake. Who am I to get mad at things like that? It would be like a mosquito getting mad at the cold weather. You don’t like it, if you’re a mosquito, but what the heck are you going to do about it?

What I got mad at was how things never seem to work out just right. Nothing in the world is ever perfect. It’s like Shakespeare says: the elements are mixed. There’s
always a smudge somewhere that ruins it, whatever it is. You scrub and scrub, but you can never quite get rid of the smudge. Plus, even if you
did
get rid of it, you’d remember that it used to be there, and then
that
would ruin it. What I mean is, nothing is ever pure.

Except running a four-six in the final.

Four-point-six seconds. Forty yards.

That would be a pure thing. Time is pure. Forty yards is pure. Running is pure. If I ran a four-six, that would be that. It would be done and perfect, like a diamond. No smudge. I could tuck it away, and it would always be there to remember and think about and hold on to when the rest of the world got to me.

I wanted it bad.

Willie was waiting with the other two runners back by the starting line. The three of them were chatting, which I doubt they would’ve been doing if they thought they had a chance.

“You sure you want to run this race?” Willie called to me.

I smiled at that. “Yeah, I’m sure.”

“The way you keep wandering off, seems like you’ve got other things on your mind.”

“No, just this.”

“ ’Cause you
know
you’re going to have to run your behind off.”

“I know,” I said, still smiling.

“I’m gunning for you, Julian.”

“I know that too.”

“We’re
all
gunning for you—me and my new buddies Scott and Wayne. We’re all three of us gunning for you. You better run your best race, or else we’ll run right up your behind.”

Right then, as weird as it sounds, I loved Willie.

“Runners to the starting line!” Greetham called out.

The four of us walked over to the starting line. Then we waited. None of us spoke again, but Willie did this thing with his legs, kicking them out to the side as if to get them as limber as possible. It was the first time I’d seen him do it, the first time I’d seen anyone do it. I thought about doing it too because it looked like it might serve a purpose, but I didn’t want to steal Willie’s move.

Then Greetham yelled, “Runners ready!”

I took a deep breath and held it.

“Set!”

I said to myself,
Four-point-six
.

“Go!”

From the first step, I was out in front. After maybe six steps, I was clear. I couldn’t hear the runners behind me. For a split second, but not even a split second, I almost eased up, but I caught myself and began saying,
Four-point-six, four-point-six, four-point-six
. As I said it over and over, the
beat got faster. As the beat got faster, I felt myself running faster.
Four-six-four-six-four-six
. Way back behind me, Willie started to yell. It was the bravest, most hopeless yell ever. It sounded as if he was yelling for my sake, letting me know the race was over, telling me to run that four-six for both of us. I put my head down and began to yell too, straining in a way I never had before, straining with my legs but also with my guts and my throat. I was leaning forward, way out over my body, lunging toward the finish line. Then an instant later I ran past it, and I eased up and listened ….

Greetham called out, “Four-point-seven.”

It felt like a stab in the heart when he said that. I looked up at the sky and took a deep breath. There wasn’t a cloud anywhere, and the sun was washing across my face, and I was breathing hard in and out. I began shaking my head. Willie came jogging over to me. I heard his footsteps, and I turned to face him, but I couldn’t bear to look him in the eye. He gave me a hug and said, “Nice job.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

He laughed at that, then patted me on the back and jogged off.

I started walking away from the finish line, away from the rest of the runners and the cheers from the bleachers. I walked to the end of the track and then to the eight-foot fence that surrounded Memorial Field. Half a minute
passed before the fact that I was still the fastest kid in school began to sink in. By then, I could hear kids from the bleachers spilling out onto the track, running across the infield, calling my name, asking me where I was going. It must’ve looked pretty weird to them because I was acting like I’d lost. They had no way of knowing I
had
lost. They’d heard Mr. Greetham call out “Four-point-seven.” It was just a number to them. If he’d called out “Four-point-six,” their reaction would’ve been the same. To them, the difference between four-seven and four-six was nothing.

To me, it was like a stab in the heart.

I stood at the fence, with my back to Memorial Field, and felt sick about what a fake I was. I knew it wouldn’t be long before Lonnie or Jillian or maybe even Greetham came up behind me and asked me what was wrong. I was trying hard to snap out of it, to pull myself together.

That was when Eduardo showed up on the other side of the fence. He came out of nowhere, just like he had at Adventurers Inn. I put my arm over my eyes and pretended to wipe sweat from my forehead. But it was no use. As soon as I looked at him, a couple of tears leaked out.

“You are unhappy to be the winner?” he said.

I coughed. “I thought you were going to win.”

“No, you are much faster.”

“But I couldn’t catch you.”

“I
am
hard to catch,
Julian
. For many years, I have
played
fútbol
. I am very fast and very tricky, and very hard to tackle when I have the ball. But in a race, without a ball, you are faster. I thought you knew.”

That made me smile, despite how I felt on the inside. “I didn’t know.”

“Still, you should be happy you are the winner.”

“I wanted to run a four-point-six.”

“What time did you run?” he said.

“Four-seven,” I said, “all three races.”

“That is very fast,
Julian
.”

“But not fast enough.”

He paused for a second, then said, “
Now
I understand.”

“I don’t think you do, Eduardo.”

“You wanted to run a perfect race.”

“I wanted to run a four-six, whether it was perfect or not.”

“Then we will borrow
Señor
Greetham’s stopwatch, and I will time you next week. If you do not do this thing next week, we will try again the
next
week. And if not then, the
next
week. The summer is long. It is not an impossible thing to do.” He got a big grin on his face. “Then, afterward, I will teach you how to dribble. You will love
fútbol
. It is a beautiful game. You will love it very much, I think,
Julian
.”

That cracked me up. The way he said it cracked me up.
He
cracked me up.

“You’re a real fifth grader, Eduardo.”

“
Sí, Julian
. I am … until September.”

I shook my head at him, which made him smile. Then I turned and jogged back toward the infield.

Well, I guess that’s it, Mr. Selkirk. I’ve kept this thing going longer than I ever thought I could, and I’ve learned a lot about myself and about life. I even read and liked
Julius Caesar
. So I’ve learned a lot about Shakespeare too, which should be a definite plus going into junior high in September. As for the summer, the only thing I know for sure is that I’m going to run a four-six forty if it kills me.

You can take that to the bank.

June 29, 1969

I don’t think it’s fair, Mr. Selkirk. School
is over. Next week is the Fourth of July. If you stop and think about it, you’re not even my teacher anymore. So how is it fair that I have to keep writing? I’ve filled up nine composition books, which doesn’t even count the work I did in the rest of my classes.
Nine composition books
. That’s a lot of writing for a sixth-grade English class. That’s a lot of writing for a
high school
English class, if you ask me.