TO DO: Introduce myself (which I should’ve done a while ago)

I SHOULD PROBABLY introduce myself. My name is Patina Jones. And I ain’t no junk. I also ain’t no hair flipper. And most of the girls at Chester Academy are hair flippers who be looking at me like my mom some kind of junk maker. But ain’t none of them got the guts to come out of their mouths with no craziness. They just turn and flip their dingy ponytails toward me like I care. Tuh. I guess it’s no secret that it’s never easy being the new girl. And I get to be the new girl in two different places—on the Defenders team, and at Chester. Lucky me. But at least the Defenders I can deal with because I know, for a fact, I can run.

I’ve been running track for three years now, thanks to Uncle Tony. Well, not just him. It really has more to do with my mom, dad, Uncle Tony, and Maddy. My whole family. But let’s just say Uncle Tony okeydoked the idea into my brain. See, it was my dad’s birthday, and also a few months before my mother’s legs were taken, and we were celebrating with cupcakes—real cupcakes, not pretend ones—that my mother had baked in honor of him. Yellow cake, strawberry icing, Dad’s recipe. It had become a tradition that I loved, even though it always made me sad. It was really just a chance for everybody to sit around and for the oldheads to crack jokes and tell me and Maddy stories about him. Maddy never knew him. And even though I did, and I remember him—I’ll never, ever forget him—there were a lot of things I just didn’t know. Like how he used to make beats, and sell instrumental tapes to aspiring rappers and singers in the neighborhood. And how he used the money he made from that to put himself through culinary school to become a pastry chef. And how he loved letting me lick the batter off the spoon before baking a cake, but not nearly as much as he loved seeing me chomp down on the finished product. But apparently, according to Uncle Tony, none of these things were as sweet to him as seeing me run.

“Your daddy called me when you took your first step,” Uncle Tony, peeling the paper from his cupcake, explained in the middle of an I-remember-when session. “I answered the phone and Ronnie just started yelling, ‘She did it, Toon! My baby did it!’ ” Toon was what my dad called Uncle Tony, a nickname from when they were kids back when Uncle Tony was obsessed with, you guessed it, cartoons.

“He sure did. He was so proud his Pancake was walking,” Ma confirmed, smirking like this memory didn’t bother her, even though the shine in her eyes said different. Maddy, who was too young to really care about any of this, listened in, cupcake icing smeared all over her chin. Didn’t really make sense for me to wipe her mouth until she was done making a mess. The things you learn.

“But when you started running . . .” Uncle Tony shook his head. “That’s when he really lost it. He’d send me videos every other day of you dashing back and forth across the room. Little fat legs just movin’! But you’d have thought you’d grown wings and started flying or something the way Ronnie was acting.” Uncle Tony licked pink frosting off the cupcake and went on. “I don’t know what it was about seeing you move like that. But your daddy loved it. You were definitely his Pancake, but you were also his little sprinter.”

Before then, I never even thought about running. It didn’t even cross my mind, even though I used to smoke all the boys in gym class at school, including Lu, who would get all in his feelings and be almost about to cry. Lu would be so salty, frontin’ like he wasn’t impressed, which didn’t matter because running ain’t mean nothing to me anyway. Not like . . . for real. But after hearing Uncle Tony talk about my dad like that, something clicked. And one night, a few months later, after Ma’s legs were gone, after a crazy moment with Maddy—and I do mean crazy—that I’ll also get to later on, I asked Momly and Uncle Tony to sign me up on a team. And they jumped to it because to them, it was also a good way for me to, I guess, deal with all the changes I was going through. Balance out all the unregul . . . um, wild stuff.

So proving myself on this new track team—the Defenders—was still just . . . running. Even if it was “elite.” I mean, no matter how you look at it, it’s still, listen to your coaches at practice, and wait to hear the gun at the meets. Then . . . run. Nothing to it. But proving myself at Chester Academy (also “elite”) was trickier—way trickier—because there were no practices, no coaches, and no starter pistols telling me when to leave everybody in the dust. Matter fact, ain’t even no dust at Chester, and running ain’t nothing these girls are concerned with at all. Unless it was running their mouths.

Chester Academy is one of those schools that go from kindergarten all the way up to twelfth grade, but the different levels are broken into three wings of the building. The south wing, which was where the high school was. The east wing, which was sixth, seventh, and eighth grade. And the north wing, which was elementary, Maddy’s domain. Yep, she’s at Chester too, and she loves it, but that’s because this the only school she’s ever been at. She’s never been in a school where you didn’t have to wear pleated paper bags. She never went to a school with boys, and yes, boys make school really, really annoying sometimes, but they also can make it pretty fun. Or at least funny. Maddy never went to a school with mostly black kids either. She’s only known life as a “raisin in milk,” as my Ma puts it, where lunch is sautéed prawn, which ain’t nothing but a fancy way to say cooked shrimp, and this stuff called couscous, which is basically just grits without the glob. Me, I’m a proud product of the Barnaby Terrace school system, where we ate nasty rectangle pizza (I don’t miss that part) and drank chocolate milk for lunch. Where we played pranks on people and traded candy while talking trash after school. Where we had . . . fun.

Chester . . . well, I ain’t had one second of fun at Chester yet. Matter fact, when I walk down that busy hall in the morning, I keep my eyes down. Focus on the floor because I ain’t got time to get stunted on by a whole bunch of rich girls whose daddies own stuff. Not like cars and clothes, though they got those, too. But stuff like . . . boats. Ain’t even no water nowhere near here, but these fools got BOATS! And they don’t just own their houses, they own buildings! And businesses! Not like a corner store or a weekend dinner-plate situation or nothing like that. I’m talking biz-niss-sizz. My dad . . . he wanted to start his own business, another one of those birthday stories. A cupcake shop. And maybe if he didn’t . . . never wake up . . . he would’ve done it. But I bet he wouldn’t have bought no boat. But that’s who these girls’ daddies were. What they did. And if your daddy got himself a boat, and a building, what does he get you? Probably some kinda crazy pet, like a horse. (Can you even teach a horse how to guard your house?)

The other thing about these girls is that it seems like they ain’t never been told they can’t do nothing. Never. I mean, they be wearing full faces of makeup and everything. Do you know what my mother would do if she saw me with my whole face made up for school like I was about to go on some kinda fashion photo shoot or something? She’d probably try to run over me with that wheelchair. But here, at Chester, as long as your face is selfie-ready 100 percent of the time, you got a chance. A chance at what? Well, I don’t really know. All I know is, I ain’t got one.

What I got is track. I got Ghost, Sunny, and I can’t believe I’m gonna say this . . . Lu. That’s what I got. Who I got. So I don’t really care about the selfie-readies.

Well, that’s not totally true. I care a little bit.

“So . . . what y’all do this weekend?” I asked Taylor Stein, Teylor Dorsey, and Becca Broward. It was Monday, in history class, which meant it was also the second day of the worst group project of all time in the history of life. The four of us had been lumped together last Friday to start on this assignment about an important woman from the past, and in two weeks we would have to do a presentation on her. On Friday all we did was nail down who we were going to focus on. My first choice was my hero, Florence “Flo Jo” Joyner, but none of the girls in my group knew who she was. Seriously? How do you not know one of the flyest runners to ever take a lap? There was a woman named Madeline Manning, who was probably the best American eight-hundred-meter runner, and that’s my race, but still, Flo Jo was it. Plus, those nails . . . She looked like she raced during the day and was in a singing group at night.

So, anyway, then I tossed out my second choice, which was Harriet Tubman, who to me, was also a pretty good suggestion. Running from slavery and then coming back all those times to free everybody else—like a relay through the Underground Railroad—and Uncle Tony said she might be the new face of the twenty-dollar bill. That’s major. But the girls weren’t feeling that, either. And these are the moments I miss not going to school with Cotton, because she would’ve been like, “Yo, you know how crazy it would be to see my face on money? Like a hundred-dollar bill? I’d be framed in every corner store in the hood—your girl, lookin’ like money, on money!” But that’s not how the conversation went in my history group. Instead it was all, Harriet Tubman’s just too serious. So when I asked who they were thinking about, Becca, who was one of these girls who swore she was gonna be a star when she grew up, said we should do the project on this lady named Sally Ride.

“First woman in space,” she said, strangely pointing up at the ceiling. Okay. I can’t front. Not a bad suggestion. But then Taylor said, for the second time, all these choices were too serious, as if the topic wasn’t a serious topic. I mean, it’s hard to be seen as important if you ain’t never been through nothing serious. But Teylor, who goes by TeeTee (one of the few nicknames) decided to add her two cents (by the way, I’d want my face on the penny, because pennies be everywhere and they’d get my skin tone right) and muddy up our brainstorming session with the . . . uh . . . brilliant suggestion of Taylor Swift. Becca didn’t say nothing. And I wanted to shoot it down, because we already had a Taylor and a Teylor in the group and I just couldn’t take another one. But thankfully, Taylor hit TeeTee with a swift no.

So since serious was all I kept hearing on Friday, I decided to keep Monday light by trying out some of that “Momly-Ma special.” Some good ol’ small talk. And no, I don’t know why I care, why these girls in my class matter to me, except for the fact that I’m just trying to make the best of the situation. I figured weekends had to be a common bond. I mean, it don’t matter who you are, Saturday is Saturday.

“This weekend, well . . . ,” TeeTee started. She used the long, skinny part of a pen cap to scrape grime from under her nails. “Saturday, I hit the mall.”

“Me too,” Taylor followed.

“I know you did, because you were with me!” TeeTee squealed to Taylor, clenching her fingers into a bear paw to check her nails. Oh, I guess I should make clear that TeeTee and Taylor are best friends. Besties. Another word I don’t like. It’s just stupid. Bestie and best friend take the exact same amount of time to say. It ain’t like an abbreviation. That’s like me calling my teammates my teamies. Anyway, not only are Taylor and TeeTee best friends, but they’re also cousins (cuzzies) and pretend to be sisters (sissies). They’re like attached at the ponytail and call themselves T-N-T, which is funny because most of the time I just wished they’d explode.

Here’s my issues, not with bestie-cousin-sisters, but with group projects: (1) One of the group members always has to volunteer their house for everyone to go over to and work on the presentation, which was never really a good thing because (2a) ain’t nobody coming to my house and I don’t wanna go to theirs, and (2b) only one person in the group actually does any work, which brings me to (3) that person is me. So as the T(a/e)ylors started going on about whether or not they should both take a T-shirt—the same exact T-shirt—back to exchange it for a smaller size, and Becca was off in space, it was me who reached into my backpack and pulled out printouts of images of this Mexican painter lady, Frida Kahlo. I’d swiped them from the Internet over the weekend. Frida Kahlo was who we all settled on on Friday, by the way, with the help of Ms. Lanford, who figured political stuff, sick stuff, service stuff, and art stuff could all be explored in the life of this one artist. I was cool with it. I mean, she wasn’t Harriet or Flo Jo, but this lady, Frida, wore suits, stood up to dudes, and had issues with her legs. Good enough for me.

After a few seconds of the other girls looking at the images, I got tired of waiting for them to ask how my weekend was. Not like they would’ve cared about me cooking Maddy’s breakfast, making sure she ate her dinner, doing Maddy’s hair, church with the Ma (and the stinky Thomases), then letting Maddy crawl in bed with me last night while I counted all the beads in her hair, one by one, hoping she’d be asleep before I got to ninety, plus on top of all that, finding time to research Frida Kahlo for this project and not go to the mall. Oh, and I had to run. But still, I was waiting for them to ask. Waiting for them to be normal. Or at least treat me normal.

“Well, I had a track meet,” I threw out there, out of the blue, not like I really wanted to talk about that, either, but I was willing to just try to connect or whatever.

“Whoa. This lady is in desperate need of some tweezers,” Taylor said, actually pinching the paper between Frida Kahlo’s eyes.

“Came in first in the eight hundred meter,” I lied, still waiting on someone, anyone to say something about it. To acknowledge me. But before anyone did, Ms. Lanford popped over to check on us.

“How are we doing, ladies?” Ms. Lanford was now standing beside our desks, which had been pushed together into a square, all of us facing each other, the pictures of Frida—bright-colored self-portraits including monkeys, birds, and flowers—spread out.

The girls all flashed toothpaste-commercial smiles and gave different versions of “Good.” I bit my bottom lip and prayed for the bell.

After school I never waste time at my locker. I scurry down to the end of the main corridor, eyes darting from forward to floor, through the mess of hair flippers, the wrath-letes (kids who feel like it’s a sport to make everyone’s life miserable), the know-it-alls, the know-nothins, the hush-hushes (super quiet, super shy), the YMBCs (You Might be Cuckoo)—the girls who wear all black and cover their backpacks with buttons and pins—and the girls whose boyfriends, brothers, and fathers all wear khaki pants. Every. Day. I know this sounds kinda mean, but it’s real. So real. It’s like a rich kid obstacle course, and once I make it all the way to the end, I walk through the courtyard to the north wing, where I then have to maneuver through the younger version of all those same categories. Except way cuter. And less annoying. And the cutest and least annoying of them all (in my opinion) is Maddy, who I always find waiting for me just outside her teacher Mrs. Stein’s, who she calls Mrs. S’s, door.

“Ready?” I ask, awkwardly wrapping my arms around her detachable hunchback she calls a backpack, only way I can get a hug in with that thing on.

“Yep.” She turns around and throws the peace sign up to her friends, then turns back and squeezes me, tries to lift me. It’s something she’s been doing for a while. She has a weird obsession with being strong, with proving she can lift heavy things. She got it (and the peace sign thing too) from Uncle Tony, who used to do push-ups with Maddy sitting on his back, counting in a cartoon voice. Mickey Mouse. Goofy. Goofy. Anyway, after Maddy’s cheese and squeeze, we head out to meet Momly, who is always there on time to meet us in the car pickup line.

I’m sure I don’t have to tell you what the ride home was like. Maddy . . . talking.

Mona got glue in her hair. Again.

I picked Willa up.

Lauren cried six times.

You know Willa, right? She bigger than me.

Mrs. S’s birthday is on Thursday. I think she’s turning like eighty.

She’s so lucky she gets to spend it at the farm.

We’ll try to get the cows to moo “Happy Birthday” to her.

Oh, don’t forget you have to drive me to the farm on Thursday, Momly.

Mrs. S reminded us. So I’m reminding you.

Hopefully Lauren won’t cry the whole time.

Anyway, Riley wouldn’t pass the ball to me at first. But then she did. And then I passed it back. And then she passed it to Rachel. And then . . .

While Maddy . . . Maddied . . . I changed my clothes in the backseat. It was my daily shape-shifting routine, which wasn’t a big deal because I always wore my shorts under my skirt, and a tank top under my button-up, so that by the time we reached MLK Park—my homework started—and I told Maddy what I told her every day, that I’d help her with hers after practice, I was ready to jump out and run from my motormouthed little sister and hit the track. Which, I gotta admit for me, even with just a second-place ribbon, was sometimes more home than home.