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The jav lands over the track again, this time beyond the shot-put area.
All the coaches are there. I hear Turner say that he’s called the AD. I don’t know what the AD is so I just ask the judge if I can go yet because my team is cheering and I want to be part of that even though I have no idea how to be cheered for.
Daddy is still standing. He is wiping his cheeks—either sweating or crying. Daddy doesn’t sweat.
“Stay,” Coach Turner says. “We’re fighting for this one.”
I stay.
I keep my eye on Daddy. He’s walking down, now, toward the team.
The field judge comes back with a distance. Two ninety / two hundred and ninety feet / impossible. They all argue.
“You’ll mark it,” Coach Turner says.
The field judge finally marks it in the book. I have officially thrown two hundred and ninety feet. I have no idea what this means, really. A man with graying hair and a Trojans track jacket extends his hand to me and says, “Congratulations, kid. You just set a new world record.”
AD means Athletic Director. I know this because he tells me as he puts his arm around my shoulder, grins wildly, and asks Coach Turner to take a picture of us together. Then Coach Turner wants one, so they switch places. Coach Aimee is already over with the team.
I thank the field judges and then walk by myself to the bleachers.
Daddy has been given / has purchased an official Trojan Track and Field windbreaker and a baseball cap. He walks out to meet me and hugs me / holds me by the shoulders and smiles / hugs me again.
“Happy birthday,” I say.
“Thank you.”
“You look like an American,” I say, nodding at his new hat.
“I feel like man of the world,” he answers.
“How does that feel?” I ask.
“Very proud of you,” he says.
Everything goes silent / familiar silent. I look at the bleachers / everyone is frozen. Daddy is frozen in a proud half hug with me. Coach Turner and the AD are frozen, walking behind me, one of them laughing. Coach Aimee is frozen with a bitchy look on her face while she talks to Giselle Masterson. I didn’t want time to stop / don’t know who stopped it / hope it’s not random like sneezing.
I slide out of Daddy’s frozen hug. Like a me-shaped hole.
I walk around the frozen landscape / Zeno’s Claymation / I am the only thing with motion. All else is in the arrow.
“Am I proud?” I ask.
I do four handsprings across the grass. I am proud of handsprings.
I sing the song that helped me memorize all the state capitals. I am proud of knowing my state capitals.
x equals how I’m lying about being proud.
x equals how I’m not lying about being proud.
I can’t grasp that I’m on the track team and that I just broke a world record. I know it happened, but I know I can’t claim it as my own. It’s complicated / Diana Ross.
I walk back to Daddy and slip into his hug again. My arms around him / time moves again / I answer his question.
“I’m proud to be your daughter.”
It was the only thing I could think of.
Daddy and I break the hug / he is no longer smiling. I am high-fived and fist-bumped and Kevin almost gives me a chest bump he’s so pumped but he realizes at the last minute that he can’t do that.
“DUDE! TWO NINETY! THAT’S SICK!”
“SO SICK!” Kelly says.
“IT’S GUINNESS BOOK OF WORLD RECORDS!”
I suddenly just want to be with Daddy / do not deserve anyone being this happy for me / need to be in a room by myself.
“Truda Becker, please report to the field judge,” comes over the PA system and the AD, Coach Turner, Daddy, and I end up standing on the track with the head field judge and her cell phone on speaker while the rest of the team trickles out of the stadium.
The field judge says the person on the phone is a state track official.
“We’ve had complaints,” the phone speaker says. “Of drugs.”
The AD says, “Is there a drug that would make a kid this age and size throw two hundred and ninety feet? Because if there is one, I have yet to hear of it.”
“We’ve had complaints,” the speaker says again.
“I don’t take any drugs,” I say.
“You can file all you want, and we can test her if we have to,” the AD says, “but as of right now, a world record was set on my district’s track and I’m calling the goddamn papers.”
Heels are dug in. Even the other team’s coaches are fighting for me and my Paleolithic. One says, “I watched every damn throw, and it was real as anything.”
Daddy takes me gently by the arm and walks me toward where the celebration was happening only a few minutes ago. The track team has gone back to their locker rooms / families and fans have gone back to their warm cars. Daddy has me tucked into his new windbreaker and we walk up the stairs out of the stadium.
“I’ll meet you right there.” I point to where Carrie usually picks me up outside the locker room. “In five minutes.”
“We need to celebrate,” he says. I picture going out to McDonald’s with other kids my age. He continues, “I will make a meringue!”
Rubber Bullets
OPEN EYES
Mama is waiting on the front porch when Daddy and I pull into the driveway.
“I don’t even know how to get into my own house!” she says.
“You do not live here,” Daddy says. This is a bad sign.
“I just came from the most enlightening therapy appointment of my life,” she says. “We have to talk.” She winks at me, but has no idea how bad her timing is / ironic for psychics, I know.
“Truda just broke world record,” Daddy says. When he says it, he smooths down his new gear and adjusts his hat.
“I don’t have a lot of time. The dog’s in the car,” she says.
On cue, the dog starts yapping.
Daddy says, “I do not think you heard me. Your beautiful, talented daughter broke world record today. WORLD RECORD!”
I don’t hear her reply / this explanation will do / because Richard arrives in the driveway via the side window of box #11. He walks directly to me and hugs me. Won’t let go. It starts to scare me. Until he leans down and whispers, “I have the keys to the car. We have to get out of here.”
I can’t tell when to trust Richard / this is the time to trust Richard.
Our parents stand in the driveway talking. Mama says something about how her therapist opened her eyes and Richard and I scoot closer and closer to the car until we can jump in, start it, and Richard peels rubber as he races down the street.
“She’ll never leave us now,” Richard says. He’s breathing like he just ran the steeplechase.
“Wouldn’t be a bad thing,” I say. “As long as the fucking dog doesn’t come back with her.”
“Not the mother. The sister.”
“Oh.”
“They’re a team,” Richard says.
I DISAGREE
Richard’s imagination fires rubber bullets. I don’t disagree with him out loud just yet / little sisters follow rules.
First, I hand him a test.
“I broke the world record today,” I say.
“That’s impossible.”
“I’m serious. In javelin.”
Richard’s frown digs deeper between his eyebrows. “Where?”
“At the meet.”
“You broke the world record today?”
“Yes. I did.”
“I don’t know how to feel about that,” he says.
Stop time. Car frozen / Richard frozen / I step out the passenger’s door even though we are driving sixty miles per hour. I walk around the car / get to Richard’s side / open the door. I inspect his head.
Inside his head there are no feelings about my breaking a world record. He’s telling the truth. Someone took all his nice words / pride. Left him with confusion and yardwork at Karen’s place / an imaginary mother-daughter team / no AFT3RMATH. Rubber bullets sound bouncy, but they actually blind and kill people all the time.
I get back in the car and start time again.
“They’re not a team,” I say. “She’s just lying to you.”
“It doesn’t make any sense,” Richard says. “Mama knew we needed her—Daddy can’t do anything but hammer shit and Carmichael is just a clone.”
“Mama’s not a bad person and she tried her best,” I say. “And our sister is lying because she’s a liar. That’s all. That’s all it’s ever been.”
“Why?” he asks.
“Because she can? She likes attention? She hates us? Whatever. Who cares? She’s gone for good and yet you let her call you! Why?”
“In case of emergencies?”
“Bullshit.”
“She’s blood,” he says.
“Bullshit.”
He looks at me / is out of answers.
I say, “She knows your secrets. That’s why.”
I am the stopper / starter of time.
I am the thrower of spears / energy.
I am the siren / I will tell you.
I will deconstruct the boxes and one day we will all be free.
Paparazzi
RESCUE
We can’t park anywhere near our house. We only went to the next town and circled back. Richard was saving me from my mother. And I didn’t need saving because she had just had her eyes opened in therapy. And now we’re trying to find a place to park but there are TV vans everywhere. Just like in the movies.
I don’t want to talk to anyone.
But Daddy. Daddy in his new school-colored windbreaker coat is talking to these people. Lights / microphones / Mama’s car is gone.
“We have to save him,” I say to Richard.
A horn honks behind us.
Richard stops the car and I stop time. I weave through all the frozen reporters and camerapeople and lights and gawkers and neighbors and I take Daddy by the hand and pull him stumbling toward the car.
I start time once we’re all safe inside.
“We’re going out to eat!” I say.
“To celebrate Tru’s world record,” Richard says.
Daddy is speechless in the back seat / maybe an effect of moving through frozen time / tongue needs to catch up.
I say, “The meringue will have to wait.”
NATIONAL TEENAGE HERO
Richard asks why Mama left again and Daddy says, “TV vans make her nervous. She will be back later.”
“Back for how long?” Richard asks.
“I want her back forever,” I say.
“Me too,” Daddy says.
“But not with the dog,” Richard says.
“We have worked out new marital contract,” Daddy says. “No leaving or yelling or making bad days.”
“Sounds good to me,” I say.
Richard doesn’t say anything else but for once, he isn’t scowling about it / might be breaking free. He decides we should go a few towns away so no one recognizes me. We go to a classic diner well after the dinner rush and ask for a booth in the back. We sit and I take off my jacket and put it on the back of my chair.
“You’re still in your uniform,” Richard says.
“We are Trojans!” Daddy says, pointing at my sweats and his windbreaker.
I look down and see that the only thing I’ve changed is my shoes. I am technically still wearing record-breaking clothes. “We are Trojans,” I say. I make Daddy fist-bump. He hates new things, but he fist-bumps me.
“I wish I could have seen it,” Richard says.
“It was incredible, son. Your sister has magic in the arm.”
I nod at this. I do have magic in my arm. I can now stop time / make it rest like Zeno’s arrow / move inside it.
Richard says, “God, I’m hungry,” pulls his smartphone out of his back pocket and opens N3WCLOCK and says, “It’s eight forty.”
Daddy and I look at the menus. I decide on a Belgian waffle.
Richard does things on his phone while the waitress comes with small glasses of ice water and utensils-in-a-napkin bunches.
Daddy asks her, “Is anything here homemade?”
“All our pies and cakes. Fresh every morning.”
I add, “You can’t go wrong with breakfast.”
Richard reads on his phone / aims his rifle. “It says here that you didn’t really set a world record.”
“Can I get youse started with something to drink?”
“Water is fine,” I say.
“Coffee,” Richard says.
“She set world record,” Daddy says. “Put the fucking machine away or I will make cook deep-fry it.”
Richard freezes. The waitress freezes. Daddy is breathing and blinking and he relaxes his shoulders or else I’d think time stopped again.
“I would like two farm-fresh eggs poached and rye toast, please.”
“Any meat with that?”
“No meat,” Daddy says.
“I’ll have the Belgian waffle, please—with just butter and syrup.”
“Powdered sugar?”
“Yes, please. Oh. And a chocolate milkshake,” I say.
Richard says, “I’m going to wait in the car.”
“Order food, Richard,” Daddy says.
“You can’t make me eat.”
I say, “We’re celebrating. Please. Order food.”
Richard looks from his phone to me, and then back at his phone. “Why can’t I tell you what I’m learning? People are fighting about this. Online! Right now! We’re missing it. I want to at least see the TV. You’re my sister. I want to set them straight. They probably never even held a javelin, let alone threw one.”
“Are you that girl?” the waitress asks. She adds, “You are! You’re her!”
I say, “My brother wants two eggs over easy, French toast, and bacon.”
Richard nods. “And a small orange juice.”
Daddy says, “She is the girl, but please we eat without interruption.”
“Yes, sir,” she says. She looks back at me. “You’re a national teenage hero!”
“She is magic,” Daddy says.
The waitress stops at the front counter and says something to the woman there. The woman then turns up the volume on the TV. The athletic director and Coach Turner are live outside Trojan stadium.
“So talk to me a bit about the future of Truda Becker,” the reporter guy says.
“I’ve already gotten calls from all the big track schools. They all want her,” the athletic director says. “But I tell ’em we get to keep her another year because she’s only a junior!”
“Olympics 2024 are a given,” Coach Turner says. “Such a natural talent.”
“We’re very proud of all our Trojans, but it has to be said—you don’t get an athlete like this very often.”
“What do you think about the rumors of drug enhancement?” the reporter asks.
The athletic director starts to say the thing he said at the track three hours ago—about how if there’s a drug that makes my arm magic, then he’s yet to hear of it, but I don’t want to hear it again / play this game / be a national teenage hero.
I stop time and move the chess pieces around.
x equals Freeze! Step away from the pie counter.
First thing I do is take Richard’s phone from him / zip it into Daddy’s windbreaker pocket. Then I unplug the TV in the diner / scramble the cable box by hitting the reset button. Back in the kitchen, the cook is frozen scraping off his grill and humming along with the radio. I unplug the radio / take the radio and put it in the trash can in the ladies bathroom. I stop there and look at myself in the mirror.
To understand anything is to understand energy.
The energy of stopped time weighs a ton and my shoulders hurt from holding the diner / town / world in place. But hot damn, I do look good in this uniform. Go Trojans.
EGGS
I return to the table and start time again. Richard stares at his hands. The waitress tells me from behind the counter that she’s working on my chocolate shake. Daddy says, “I do not believe eggs will be farm fresh.”
I laugh. Richard laughs / seems to not care where his phone went. He says, “So weird, but my hands are tingling.”
We ignore him. The woman behind the pie counter is gesturing angrily at the TV with its remote, saying something in Greek.
“I’m glad Turner said that thing about you having natural talent,” Richard says, still shaking the pins and needles out of his hands. “That must be nice.”
“They were nice,” I say.
“No. I mean having a natural talent for something,” he says.
“You have a natural talent for school,” I say.
“It’s school. Memorization and regurgitation. That’s not like being able to set a new world record.”
“I don’t know. It’s too soon to tell,” I say.
Daddy listens but only repeats himself when he speaks. “I do not believe eggs will be farm fresh.”
“It will all be delicious,” I say.
Richard says, “Yeah.”
“So how do we get home so I don’t have to talk to any of those reporters?” I ask.
Daddy frowns. “Why do you not want talk to reporters? You are magical girl who broke world record.”
“I’m shy,” I say.
Daddy laughs. “Shy! Truda! You have never been shy! You talk to everyone since you were little girl.” Sister hated that / everything about me. Always younger / more adorable / talking to strangers.
“Never in front of cameras. And not after revealing that I’m a freak.”
Both of them look at me in a way that hurts my feelings.
