“What’s that mean?” I asked, because the numbers nine, five, and eight meant nothing to me. They’re not points or nothing like that. At least I didn’t think they were. I actually wasn’t even really sure if you could score points in track or not. Just seemed like the kind of sport you just win ribbons and medals or whatever.
“That was his time for the one hundred meter.” Coach pointed up the track toward the start line he had had everybody sprinting from the day before. “From there”—he moved his hand to the finish line—“to there. Nine seconds and fifty-eight milliseconds. The boy is like lightning.”
I looked at the distance and in my head counted, one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, and pictured myself running. Nine seconds seemed like a pretty long time.
“But that ain’t even that fast,” I said. Plus it just didn’t seem like one hundred meters was all that long. I mean, I had just run it the day before in what had to be six or seven seconds. Couldn’t have been more than eight.
“You don’t think so?” Coach asked, flashing a sly grin. “You think you can beat that?”
I looked at the distance again. One Mississippi, two Mississippi . . . “I don’t know.” I shrugged. “Probably.”
This was when the best day ever went bad. Coach told me to try to run one hundred meters in nine seconds and fifty-eight milliseconds—Bolt’s time. He stood at the finish line with his whistle in his mouth. I rolled my pants up to my knees and my shirtsleeves up to my shoulders just like I had done the day before.
“On my whistle,” Coach said, holding up the stopwatch. “On your mark, get set,” and then, badeep! I took off down the track running as fast as I could, legs pumping, arms pumping, heart pumping, until I got to the finish line.
“Ohhhh,” Coach howled excitedly. I felt good. Knew that I had proven my point. I bopped over to Coach with my hand up, ready for the high five. But Coach never lifted his hand.
“Not even close!” he yelped. “Not. Even. Freakin’. Close. You ran a twelve-five.” And before I could even respond, he barked, “Back on the line!”
I jogged back to the start. Coach blew the whistle. I ran. He blew the whistle. I ran. Again, and again, and again. Each time I came in a little slower than the last. My head started swimming, my chest burning, and my legs got all gooey, like all the running was turning my bones to liquid or something.
After the fifth try, Coach yelled out, “Fourteen seconds? Fourteen seconds? On the track, that might as well be fourteen minutes! Are you kidding me?”
I bent over and planted my hands on my knees. My legs were shaking, but only on the inside. Like my muscles were . . . shivering. My heart was pounding as fast as my feet had pounded the track. Maybe even faster. My stomach was flipping, and I just knew that my french fries were gonna come out as mashed potatoes all over the place. Coach walked over, his shadow making the red track burgundy around me. He leaned in and said lightly, almost as if he were whispering to me, “Back on the line.”
That’s when I lost it.
“What . . . what? What . . . again? I . . . need . . . a break,” I panted. “I’m tired.”
“Tired?” Coach squealed, and I could hear the smile in his voice. I glanced up and there it was, big and chipped and wide like whatever words were hiding behind those teeth, he was struggling to keep in. So he let them out. “You know who’s really tired, son? Your principal.” Coach put his hands up, palms facing me as if to stop me from even thinking about responding. Then he continued, “No, no. You know who’s really, really tired? Your mother. She’s so tired. So tired. And she’s gonna be even more exhausted when she hears about your suspension.”
“Come on, Coach,” I begged. “That’s messed up.”
“Come on, nothing,” Coach said like every old black person says when they don’t have a good comeback. He grabbed my shoulder and stood me straight. “Bending over cuts off your air,” he said. “We stand straight up at all times. Understand?”
I nodded, now understanding what was happening. I was being punished after all. This was Coach’s way of telling me that I better stop acting up in school. If this was what the consequences of getting sent to Mr. Marshall’s office were going to be every time, I’d rather have him just call my mother.
“Now, Mr. Better Than Bolt, get back on the line.”
Coach made me do the sprint two or three more times before finally letting up, and the only reason I think he let me stop was because my sprint had broken down into that weird, sloppy trot the tall skinny kid, Sunny, had done at the practice the previous day. My shirt was gone. I had peeled it off and thrown it on the field just in case the wet cotton was weighing me down or something. My legs had pretty much clocked out, but instead of letting me just sit down and rest, Coach told me to walk it off.
“Walk it off?” I asked, annoyed and confused and almost ready to cry.
“Yeah, just walk around the track. It’ll cool your body down slowly.”
But I didn’t want my body to cool down slowly. I wanted it to cool down immediately! So, yeah, at this point I had pretty much made up my mind that track was the dumbest sport ever. I mean you gotta move to warm up, and move to cool down? Don’t make no sense. Cooldown should be, I don’t know, some juice and an Icee or something like that. Not no walk.
Once I finished the first lap, Coach told me to take one more, and about halfway around the second lap of me mumbling under my breath about how stupid all this was, I could see the other runners—my new teammates—showing up, dropping their sports bags and water bottles and all that on the track, some of their parents trailing behind.
“This is gonna be it,” Coach was preaching to everyone as I finally made it back to the other side of the track for the second time. “Ten girls, ten boys. Just so we’re clear, this doesn’t mean you still can’t be cut. It just means you ain’t cut yet. Now, I’d like to keep it this way, but that’s totally up to you. Got that?”
Everybody nodded, including a woman with braids who looked too old to be on the team even though she was dressed in running clothes. I had first noticed her from the other side of the track and figured she was somebody’s mother . . . until she didn’t sit down with the rest of the corny kids’ cheering squad.
Coach went on about how this was the third day of practice for the spring season, and how he wanted to make sure we all knew each other, or at least make sure all the vets knew the newbies. I was still standing back, sort of outside the circle, as Coach started rattling off everybody’s name.