Page 39 of Wicked Hungry

His father is having him rebuild this classic Ford, a ’65 Mustang convertible. Quite a sweet ride, although it will be a while before anyone will be driving it.

We are now running the second lap, and Coach Gutierrez tells us to run a little sprint or two if we want. “Just a short one, okay?”

We see some people pumping their arms, kicking high, basically breaking a sweat and making an effort to run fast. There are some out here who I remember running with in middle school, but there no track stars running fast and making it all look easy. Those people? They are all already on the team. Enrique and I run in stride, and I feel a pleasant burn in my legs, feel my breath go in and out. It feels so good, it’s almost enough to forget the hunger and the pills that are letting me run.

Suddenly Enrique starts sprinting.

There’s a strange disconnect, like the world around me is lit with moonlight, and I run like the wind.

Together we pass ten people.

We slow down and the light goes back to normal. We let the momentum carry us around the turn, then slow down to a jog until we get to the coach. He looks at us like he’s never seen us before.

“Do I know you?” he asks.

“Stanley Hoff,” I say. “And this is Enrique.”

Enrique nods. “I have been running all summer.”

He looks at the clipboard again. “Enrique Ramirez Gonzalez?”

Enrique nods.

“Great,” the coach says. “We’ll see how you all do in the four hundred.”

I notice he has some senior with a clipboard there to record people’s times. “For right now stretch out slowly, nothing dramatic okay? It’s not a flexibility competition—that’s how people rip tendons.”

So we stretch. Enrique appears to have his own routine, which I follow. It’s pretty elaborate, actually. We are stretching parts of our body I didn’t know I could reach or feel. People look at us again, but I feel great. Not only pain-free, but warmed up and loose for once.

It’s our turn finally. Me and Enrique are all warmed up, and I feel like a spring, flexible but ready to explode. The coaches have been really eyeing Enrique. I bet they don’t know what to make of him. A Mohawk-wearing Mexican doing his own stretching and calisthenics routine.

There are ten of us in our heat. Seven girls and three guys. The girls look pretty fast though. I know one of them, Jennifer Martinez. She was in my seventh grade language arts class. She smiles at me and I smile back. Then the coach whistles, and we run.

Enrique and I pull out ahead in the first hundred meters. When I was in middle school cross-country, I used to run longer distances but this is just one lap so I pull out everything I’ve got. Again, the light goes funny around me and I feel an itching in the backs of my hands, around my knuckles. Enrique matches me stride for stride, and I have this strange urge to bite him.

But that’s not the only problem.

Zach is in our heat. And he’s right behind us. Then he pulls up even with us.

“You know, Stanley,” Zach says, matching me stride for stride, “meat is murder.”

I don’t know where he finds the breath. I pull my legs along fluidly, trying not to waste a movement, my arms pumping smoothly as well. We aren’t slowing down, and the light stays silver.

My legs burn; my heart thunders in my ears. We come into the final turn and Zach somehow pulls ahead.

Then there are just a hundred meters or so left, and I want to let my body fall into a jog, want to jump off the streetcar and slow down. But we keep running. Start sprinting, actually, running on the balls of our feet. And I feel like I’m making progress, running faster still, but I can’t even look at Enrique. I just try to blot out the pain and keep running forward. People jump out of the way ahead of Zach, who hits the line at forty-eight point one; Enrique and I come in together at forty-eight point seven.

The coach behind us yells, “Jog it off, you three.”

So we keep jogging around the track. I stay close to Enrique, and Zach tags along.

“My body is my temple,” Zach says.

“Take your temple somewhere else,” Enrique says.

“As you like it,” Zach says, and speeds up ahead of us. He doesn’t even seem winded.

My knee is warm but painless. Part of me wants to run off the track, pull off my sneaks, and run barefoot into the woods. Another part of me is asking if we’re on the team now, and what was the price? What was in those bitter pills?