“Wait, Coach—”
“Sit!” he shouted, pointing at the wooden bench. Everybody looked at me as I started walking. But they weren’t laughing, and instead just seemed shocked and concerned, which was probably the only reason I didn’t take off running, away from the track, and off to the basketball court or Mr. Charles’s or anyplace else. Instead I did as Coach asked and sat down. “And for the rest of you, mind your business,” Coach warned the team. “If I hear anything about this—anything at all—you can give your uniform right back. Am I clear?”
The team, shook about the prospect of having to hand over their sweet new jerseys, grumbled and started their warm-up laps.
I stayed right there on that bench the whole practice. And Coach never once looked over at me, not even to check that I was still there. It was like he didn’t even care. As a matter of fact, I could’ve just gotten up and left, but that seemed like a bad idea, because I felt like if I left now, I could never come back, and my life on the track team would be over. For good. So I just sat it out and hoped for the best. But I don’t know what the best could’ve been. I was caught. Didn’t really think it would happen. And even though I had already told Coach the shoes were a gift from my mom, I still had to tell my mom how I got them at some point, and I’d planned on telling her that Coach got them for me, and then hope and pray that she never thanked him. When I think about it now, that was the stupidest idea ever. Wow. Anyway, the point is I wasn’t a thief. I mean, I guess I was. But I wasn’t a criminal. I’d never swiped nothing before! I was just a dude who needed some new shoes to run in.
After practice, everybody came over to me, doing the best they could to hold their words in but sending me all their what did you do’s with their eyes. They each gave me five as they left, and it was like they were giving me my final five, the one that said, We don’t know what’s about to happen to you, but hold your head up. The one just before I’d have to walk the plank.
“Let’s go,” Coach threw at me, once everyone had left. His words knocked against my chest like knuckles. A two-piece. Let’s. Go. I grabbed my bag and followed him to the car. As I opened the back door, he spat, “Up here,” delivering two more to the ribs. He threw everything in the backseat as usual, then opened the passenger-side door. I closed the back door and got up front. As we rode through the city, neither of us said a thing. Coach didn’t look over at me or nothing. He just bit down on his bottom lip, and occasionally he would shake his head like he was picturing the picture of me in that store over and over again. I thought about trying to explain myself, but what was I going to say? I didn’t steal them? Because I did. So I just sat there, my legs becoming wooden with fear.
When we pulled up in front of my place, Coach cut the car off and opened his door.
“Where you going?” I asked, because he never got out the car except for the time he had to ask my mom if I could go on the newbie dinner, but that had been weeks ago. The routine was, he pulled up out front, dropped me off, waited for me to get inside, then pulled off. But he never, ever, got out the car.
“What you think I’m doing, Ghost? I’m going to tell your mother what you did.”
OH. NO. I fumbled at the handle trying to get the door open and scrambled out of the car.
“Coach, no. Please,” I begged. I ran around and got in front of him, holding my hands up as if I was trying to use some kind of magic force to push him back. Oh, man. I’m sounding like Sunny. But . . . hey. “Please, please, please,” I pleaded, but Coach pushed past me. He was storming toward my house, and there was nothing I could do to stop him. I grabbed his shirt. “Coach!” He spun around. A tattoo I had never noticed before peeked from the now stretched-out neckline.
“Ghost,” he said, his eyes closed. “I’m only gonna tell you this one time. Let me go.” His voice was flat. Hard. Scary. I let his shirt go and put my hands together.
“Please, Coach. You can’t tell my mother.” It was like a rerun of the first Coach bailout when he came and picked me up from school and I said pretty much those exact words. And here I was again asking him not to snitch on me. It’s not that I was scared of being punished or getting in trouble with my mom. I was, but that’s not why I was begging. I just didn’t want to add to the problems. I mean, I’m her only child, the reason she was working so hard, and I went out and did something stupid. But the only reason I did something stupid was because I knew I couldn’t ask her for the money. And the reason I couldn’t ask her wasn’t because she wouldn’t have gotten the shoes for me. It’s because she would have. She would’ve done anything to get them. I knew that. And I just didn’t want her to have to give up something—something else—for me to have some stupid shoes. And now because I stole them, she would be disappointed that I didn’t come to her and feel even more guilty. She’d think she was a bad mom on so many levels. But I couldn’t just tell Coach all that. I didn’t have the time. So I fell to my knees and pressed my hands together. “Coach, please. I know I messed up, but please. Please, Coach.” The words began to break up in my throat. “Please.”
Neighbors outside were looking at me act a fool. Coach noticed them too and knew that this just wasn’t a good look, so he told me to get up and get back in the car.
“Just tell me why,” he said, after slamming his door. He put his hands on the steering wheel and stared straight ahead. “Why, Ghost?”
“What was I supposed to do? My mother don’t have no money for running shoes. I couldn’t put that on her!” I replied.
“Ask me!” Coach said, now laser-beaming straight at me. I clenched my jaw as a marble of anger and frustration and fear rolled down my throat. “Why didn’t you just ask me?”
“Because you ain’t my father,” I snapped. “Why would I just expect you to help me? Why would you?” I felt like my entire body was now shaking. “I mean, you got me on the team, and thank you for that, and you bailed me out with my trouble at school and I thank you for that, too, but you . . . you . . . you just not . . . why you care so much anyway?”
“What are you talking about, Ghost? I care about all of you. Why you think I’m out there every day coaching y’all?”
“But I’m different. You know that. You heard my secret. You heard it. That ain’t normal,” I explained, my voice now straining, ripping into its own confetti. “And I get teased and laughed at all the time because I live here. And I look like this. You don’t live here! You don’t look like this!” Now stupid tears were welling up in my eyes. “You don’t know what it’s like, Coach. You don’t know.”