“So nice of you to finally join us, Mr. Cranshaw,” Coach said as I threw my bag down. I wanted to tell him that I’d basically been trapped in a teleportation thingy that zapped me back to the scariest moment of my life, but I didn’t because I knew no one would believe me. So I just sat down on the bench, kicked my half shoes off—thankfully, everybody else was focused on stretching, and not on my feet—and rolled my pant legs up.
“Sorry, sorry,” I said, unzipping my bag, but Coach had already turned his attention back to the other runners. I looked to my left and right, then over my shoulder, then quickly scanned the other side of the track to make sure there were no extra guests dressed in undersized navy-blue uniforms with badges and handcuffs checking out practice. Once I knew the place was clear of cops, I pulled the silver shoes out and slipped them on my feet, lacing them up tight. Then I threw the beat-up sneakers in the bag and hit the track.
“So today is Thursday,” Coach said as I sat down to join in on the much . . . much-needed stretching. After spending the day with fire in my legs, stretching made so much more sense now. It took maybe two seconds for Patty to notice my shoes. She smiled and slapped Sunny on the arm to get his attention. Then he saw them and gave me a thumbs-up. So corny. I looked over at Lu. He was staring at them and fixed his mouth in the way people do when they’re thinking, Not bad. And that was good enough for me.
Coach continued, “And Mikey, tell ’em . . . uh . . .” Now Coach caught a glimpse of the diamonds on my feet and got stuck. He looked both surprised and confused. It was the same expression he had when I told him to call me Ghost. “Um . . .” He caught himself and continued, “Mikey, tell the newbies what we do on Thursdays.”
Mikey said in his usual grunty way, “Long run.”
“That’s right. Long run,” Coach said. “This is about conditioning. Not speed. And everybody has to do it.”
Let me tell you, when he said, “Long run,” there were a few things I hadn’t thought about. The first was that I hadn’t had lunch because of the whole running-out-of-school thing, and I was starving and wouldn’t be able to eat until after practice. And the second was just how much I needed food to give me energy, because what Coach meant by long run was run a million miles. Especially since I’d just run about a million miles. From the school to the store, and the store to the track. Then a crazy thought hit me—was he punishing me for stealing even though he didn’t even know? Or did he? Nah, he didn’t. He couldn’t . . . he didn’t. This was just a coincidence. A bad, bad coincidence.
Coach didn’t tell us how far we would be running or anything. All he said was follow Whit.
“Where you going?” I asked as Coach started walking toward his car. But he didn’t say nothing back. That’s when Aaron told me what was going on.
“He’s getting in the Chase Mobile, or as he calls it, the Motivation Mobile,” Aaron said, patting me on the shoulder. “You’ll see.” He ran in place for a few seconds. I copied him and did a few high kicks. I felt like a gump doing it, but all that went out the window when Aaron said, “Nice shoes, man.” I was gonna tell him that I called them the silver bullets but decided that probably would’ve been too much. Plus, there was no more time for talk. Coach was honking his horn, which I guessed was the signal for the run to begin.
Coach Whit took off, and we all ran behind her off the track and out onto the sidewalk as if we were some kind of running mob of obstacle-course contestants, dodging people and car doors, ducking under store awnings and jumping over random bicycles. The pace wasn’t anything too crazy. A little more than a jog, but definitely nowhere close to a sprint. And, honestly, I was surprised at how I kept up for at least ten minutes before starting to drop back. Had to be the shoes. Sunny was up front with some of the other distance runners, like Lynn, Brit-Brat, whose real name was Brittany, and J.J. Patty was in the middle, keeping pace with Deja and Krystal Speed. She seemed to be doing okay too. In the back were the sprinters, which made sense. The new shoes were definitely helping me out, but there was only so much they could do. At about twenty-five minutes, which was longer than I had ever run, I eventually fell behind the other sprinters, putting me in last place. And that’s when I learned what the Motivation Mobile was.
First it was just a honk. One short toot. I turned around and there Coach was in his cab, his emergency blinkers on. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. He was trailing us!
Then came the long honk. Then the megaphone. Coach rolled his window down and started screaming at us—well, really just me—through it.
“Pick it up, Ghost! Pick it up!” he screeched, his voice loud and crackly. I won’t lie: knowing that he was on my heels like that, watching every step I took, definitely put the pressure on. Made me feel like I was being chased, which is always the easiest way to keep running. I knew that. A couple hours ago I had been running from invisible cops. And there was that time I got chased by a dog, hanging out at the basketball court hoping somebody would pick me to run. This older dude that everybody calls Sicko was there playing. He’s one of those dudes with a crazy eye, who never goes nowhere without his dog. He had the fathead mutt tied to the leg of one of the benches, and when I went to go pet it (stupid, I know), it got to barking all crazy, jumping at me, snapping his mouth. I backed away, but it kept lunging until finally the leash popped. It just popped! That dog chased me around the court and off the court, and I didn’t stop running until I got home. That might have been the fastest I had ever run. Well, the second fastest.
Anyway. I won’t lie. I never caught up to everybody else, even with Coach pretty much yelling at me through that stupid megaphone the whole time. He was leaning on the horn like a crazy person, everybody on the street looking at me, some totally confused and some actually cheering me on. I didn’t even come close to finishing with everybody else, but I didn’t quit. I never stopped running.
As everybody except for Sunny lay down on the track, trying to catch their breath, Coach had this cocky grin on his face as he came from his car, like he knew he’d worked us to death. “Coach Whit, who shined today?” he asked, jingling his keys.
Coach Whit stood with her hands on her head, her face and the parts between her braids glistening with sweat. “I gotta give it to Sunny, Coach. The kid stuck with me the whole time.” Sunny lit up. He wasn’t even tired. Like running eight hundred miles or however many we ran was no big deal to him. I, and I’m sure almost everybody else, felt like, I don’t know, like we had become slime.
“Good job, Sunny,” Coach said, giving him a high five. “I told you vets to look out for him, didn’t I?” Mikey and Aaron and Brit-Brat and J.J. and pretty much all the vets groaned, but I could tell they were impressed by lanky-legged Sunny. Patty jumped up and gave him five as well.
“Yo, you like an alien,” she said.