Coach Kerry makes me run over and over. I run alone. I run with the rest of the team. I run short distances. I run long distances. Coach stands with her stopwatch, eyes frantically darting back and forth between me and the time. Me and the time.
I never thought about trying to figure out how fast I was really going. I was just running. But now all anyone can talk about is my time. I’ve never thought of time like this. Like something you want to beat. My dragon and my lioness haven’t run with me in a while, but sometimes when I’m out on the track with Coach Kerry and the others, I’ll think I see my lioness tearing around a corner in front of me. I think she and my dragon are happy that I’m running more, running faster, running better. They still wait for me at night, under the porch or under my bed.
Eliza is the only one on the team who can keep up with me. During our warm-up and cool-down laps, I pull back to match her pace. She’ll look over at me, shake her head, and grin so wide it’s like the crescent moon is trying to imitate her smile.
“Damn, girl,” she says, and she’s laughing but it isn’t a mean laugh, it’s a laugh full of awe and happiness. “Where you been hiding all that speed?”
Everyone wants to know where my “new” speed came from. They don’t know what I know – that it was always there, simmering under the surface, waiting for me to figure it out. I just needed something to run for, something to flip the switch inside me, so that my dragon and my lioness could lead me outside and show me how to run.
My steps are in time with Marcus’s heartbeat, and even though I can’t stand to be close to him at the hospital, what I’m doing is helping him. I don’t think anyone would understand. Not even Aaron. Only my dragon and my lioness understand what running really is for me. Only they hear the beat of my feet. Only they know that every breath I take when I’m running is a breath for him and that as long as I keep running he’ll keep breathing.
Now I practice in the afternoon, out in the open, under the sun – no more late night moonlit runs for me – and it takes a while for me to get used to it. It’s strange running with anyone but Aaron and my dragon and my lioness. I can’t get used to people watching me, judging me, questioning me. Like one afternoon Coach Kerry pulls me aside after practice and says in a low voice that when the season officially starts I might want to have a doctor prove I’m clean.
“Clean?” I ask, not sure what she’s saying.
“You know, that you aren’t taking anything to help your performance.”
My shock and offense must show on my face, because she holds her hands up and shakes her head. “Wing. Wing.” She says my name twice in such quick succession that it sounds like she’s a small child imitating a telephone.
“Wing,” she says again, “I don’t think that. Of course I don’t. But I know what the other schools will say. Maybe even some of the other students or faculty here. It’s a good idea.”
“Does anyone else on the team have to get tested?” I spit.
I’ve never spoken to Coach Kerry, or any other teacher, like this. She frowns, her weathered face morphing right before my eyes. Switching from supportive coach to irritated disciplinarian. She takes her sunglasses off, eyes narrowed.
“No one else is as fast as you,” she says. “And with you just coming out of nowhere, no training, never been on the team before, Wing, you’ve got to know that this whole thing is gonna look suspicious. You know I’m not the bad guy. Stop trying to make me out to be. I’m sure Aaron has been coddling you.”
“Aaron does not coddle me.”
“I’m not blind,” she says. Then she sighs, long and loud, as if she’s exhaling this whole conversation, getting it out of her system. “But maybe you’re right.” I start to relax. “Maybe it isn’t fair to ask you to get tested and none of the other girls. How about this? I’ll ask the whole team to get tested.”
We all test clean. It turns out that Vanessa, the girl who has been the least welcoming, the one who was laughing the loudest and saying that I was some kind of community service project for Aaron, is pregnant. She didn’t know. Doesn’t know who the daddy is either.
It makes me wonder about Monica. If she’s ever had a pregnancy scare. I might have put her and Marcus up on their pedestal, thought they were perfect, but even I’m not that naive.
Coach Kerry doesn’t drop Vanessa from the team. She tells her she can let the team know whether she’ll still be with us in January. “Take the holidays to think it over,” she says. Later, in the bathroom, I ask Eliza what “it” is.
“The baby,” says Eliza, looking at me like I’m an idiot. “She’ll get rid of it.” She says it so nonchalantly. Like it’s no big deal. “What the hell is Vanessa gonna do with a baby?”