Ghost (Track #1)(15)

“You okay?” Coach said, jogging over. I looked behind me. Lu was just finishing the sprint and was now staring back down the straightaway. I looked at my hands and knees. They were black and white with track burn. “Come on.” Coach grabbed me by the arm and helped me up. “Walk it off.”

But walking it off had a whole other meaning for me this time. It meant walking, in my dirty, soggy socks, down the track to get my sneakers, which might’ve been more embarrassing than any joke anyone has ever cracked on me. And walking it off also meant actually walking it off. As in, walking it off the track.

“Just sit this last one out, son,” Coach said, before turning back toward the other sprinters all yukking it up. Even Mikey. And especially Lu. “That’s enough laughing. On the line!” Coach barked, lifting the whistle back to his lips.



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.