Lu E-Book

Jason Reynolds

• Herausgeber: Knights Of
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Serie: Run
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Seitenzahl: 228

Beschreibung

Lu must learn to leave his ego on the sidelines if he wants to finally connect with others in the finale to the New York Times bestselling and award-winning RUN series from Jason Reynolds. Lu was born to be co-captain of the Defenders. Well, actually, he was born albino, but that's got nothing to do with being a track star. Lu has swagger, plus the talent to back it up, and no-one's gonna outshine him. Lu knows he can lead Ghost, Patina, Sunny, and the team to victory at the championships, but it might not be as easy as it seems. Suddenly, there are hurdles in Lu's way - literally and not-so-literally - and Lu needs to figure out, fast, what winning the gold really means. Expect the unexpected in the final event in Jason Reynold's award-winning and bestselling RUN series.

Leseprobe

LU

Jason Reynolds

Also by Jason Reynolds

(The Run Series)

Ghost

Patina

Sunny

For Every One

Long Way Down (Faber)

Lu

Run: Book 4

Jason Reynolds

Published by Knights Of

Knights Of Ltd, Registered Offices: 119 Marylebone Road,

London, NW1 5PU

www.knightsof.media

First published 2020

002

Written by Jason Reynolds

Text and cover copyright © Jason Reynolds, 2020

Cover art by © Selom Sunu, 2020

First published in the USA by Atheneum, an imprint of Simon and Schuster, Inc,2018

All rights reserved

The moral right of the author and illustrator has been asserted

Typeset design by Marssaié Jordan

Typeset by Laura Jones

Printed and bound in the UK

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. If you are reading this, thank you for buying our book.

A CIP catalogue record for this book will be available from the

British Library

ISBN: PB: 9781913311063

ISBN: ebook: 9781913311629

ISBN: ibook: 9781913311919

for the leaders

LU

1

My name: Lightning

I am

The man.

The guy.

The kid.

The one.

The only.

The Lu. Lucky Lu. Or as I call myself, Lookie Lu. Or as my mum calls me, Lu the Lightning Bolt, because lightning so special it never happens the same way or at the same place twice. That’s what she says. And I like the nickname, but I don’t believe that. Don’t believe lightning won’t hit the same tree, or the same house, or the same person more than once. I think Mum might’ve missed on that one. I swear, sometimes she just be talking to be talking. Plus, how would she even know that? I mean, she knows a lot of stuff about stuff because she’s a mother and mothers know stuff, but the people who went to school for that kind of thing, like weather people and meteorologists (who should be studying meteors and not weather), they don’t even know (because they should be studying meteors and not weather). Talking about it’s a 50 percent chance it might rain. A little. A lot. Today. Or maybe tomorrow. I mean, come on. And I’m supposed to just believe lightning never strikes the same place twice? Ever? Right.

You know who really made me know my mother was wrong? Ghost. One time he told me about this guy—name start with a R—who holds the world record for getting struck by lightning, not once, not twice, not three times, not FOUR times, not FIVE TIMES, NOT SIX TIMES, but . . . SEVEN TIMES! If I was Ray or Ron or whatever his name is (or was, because he gotta be dead), I would’ve stayed in the house after the second one. I mean, what was he thinking? Knowing him (I don’t really know him, but I know people like him so that’s basically the same thing), he was probably listening to a meteorologist. Or my mother, who by the way, when she says the thing about lightning striking, isn’t even be talking about real lightning. Like electric bolts in the sky? Nah. She’s just talking about electric . . . moments . . . in life. And I, clearly, was the most electric-est moment in hers. One in seventeen thousand. Albino. Born with no melanin, which means born with no brown. And honestly, I wasn’t supposed to be born at all, because my mum wasn’t supposed to be able to have kids. So a two-time special once-in-a-lifetime thing.

Until yesterday.

It was Sunday dinner, which is the same as Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday dinner except Mum always tries something new with the food. And this Sunday my dad, who normally works late, was there at the table with my mum to drop the new news on me.

“We’re having another baby.” They almost sang it out, like a song hook or something. Like they one-two-three’d it and everything.

“You for real?” That’s all I could really get out—let out—but inside my head was going, Yo you serious like really for real real talk no jokes stop playing it ain’t funny if you playing wait what nah can’t be you really really r e a l l y for real?, stretching my neck trying to see my mother’s stomach, even though she was sitting down. Dad was tucking his gold chains in his shirt—he always did that whenever he was eating—then popped me on the arm with the back of his hand. And when I looked at him, wondering what he did that for, he just shook his head real fast like he knew something I didn’t know. Like he knew something I didn’t want to find out. “Sorry,” I yelped. “It’s just . . . I can’t even tell!”

I pinched and pulled a piece of meat from the turkey wing on my plate, a recipe my mum said she got from Patty’s aunt. Tasted pretty good too, even though it seemed weird to just be eating turkey wings without the rest of the turkey. That’s what chicken wings are for. “We’re very for real.” Mum smiled. “We’re just about at three months, and they’re saying on December sixth you’ll have a little brother or sister.” I swear her face was glowing like there were lightbulbs in her cheeks. “That’s why I’ve been more tired than usual, and why I’m sometimes late picking you up at practice. Been a little sick during the day.”

“Sick?”

“Yeah, nothing serious. Normal pregnancy stuff. But that part should be almost over.” She crossed her fingers. “Oh, and . . . well . . . thank you for not being able to tell by looking at me. Trust me, I’ll be poking out soon enough. Y’know, it took a while for you to make your presence known too.”

“And the boy hasn’t stopped since,” my dad threw in.

“Isn’t that the truth.” Mum pressed her shirt against her stomach just enough to show a bump no bigger than the kind you get after a Thanksgiving meal. Only difference is it wasn’t Thanksgiving, even though . . . turkey. “Anyway, we’re telling you now because tomorrow we have a doctor’s appointment.”

“I’m going?”

“I mean . . . well, we thought about it, but it’s your championship week, you know?” She set her fork down. Folded her arms on the table. “You wanna go? Or would you rather go to practice?”

Tricky. I definitely wanted to go to the doctor to see what was going on with the baby, but not if they did what I thought they were going to do there.

“Depends. Are they going to do that thing with the . . .” I balled up my fist and slowly moved it over my stomach to demonstrate how they pull out that machine-thing that turns the baby into a blob of virtual reality with the heartbeat and all that. “And then the baby’ll show up on the screen looking like old footage of the moon landing?” A blob of virtual reality or old-school TV, when TV was basically just radio with a screen.

Dad choked on his drink.

“A sonogram.” My mother put a name to my brilliant description. “And when have you ever seen footage of the moon landing?”

“Ghost showed me.” Well, really Ghost asked Patty to pull it up on her phone because he was trying to convince us that it never happened. He heard these dudes at the bus stop saying it was all fake. Patty said she’s got a friend whose dad is a rocket scientist (I didn’t even know that was a real job!) and that she could prove the moon landing was real. And Sunny, well, he said he already knew it was real—the moon landing (and the moonwalk)—because he had been up there. To the moon. That’s what he said. Too bad his discus never goes to the moon. Sunny couldn’t get that thing to go far enough to land any place other than last place. A few weeks ago, at the first meet he ever threw at, he stepped over the line on the first two tries. Me, Patty, and Ghost started cheering for him. Like, just trying to make sure he didn’t feel bad because he was looking pretty rough out there. Even his pops joined in with the encouragement. And then everybody started clapping and screaming Go Sunny, and Come on, Sunny, and You can do it, and all that kind of stuff. Even some people from the other teams. Sunny dropped back in his throwing position and started winding up. His face looked more intense than I’d ever seen it. Like a stone. He wound and wound and wound, then whipped into a spin, and right when he flung the discus, he let out a sound like . . . I don’t even know. Like a . . . wail. Like a whale. It was wild. And the discus went maybe . . . ten feet? Maybe. I mean, the thing went nowhere. But he got it off without a foul. And was cheesing from ear to ear. We all were. He threw his hands up in the air, broke out in some kind of weird dance move and everything. Last place. But there were only three people competing, so good thing for him, last place was still . . . third place. “So, yeah. Are they gonna sonogram the baby?” I went on.

“Yep, to make sure everything is beating and growing.” My mother wiggled her fingers in the air, and even though I couldn’t see her feet, I knew she was wiggling her toes, too.

“Are you gonna find out if it’s a boy?”

“Or . . . a girl,” she corrected me.

“Right. Or a girl.”

Mum looked at Dad. Then back at me. Nodded, smiling. That was a yes.

“Well, then I’m going to practice.”

“Why?” My mother looked shocked, like I’d said I was going to the moon or something.

“So that you can come home and surprise me!”

I love surprises. Always have. My folks used to give me surprise birthday parties every year when I was younger, and even though I was never really surprised—because they did it every year—I was still happy they did it, until I asked them to just start surprising me with trainers for my birthday, so then I could surprise the world. My father surprises my mum all the time with flowers and husband-wife stuff, and my mother surprises us with stuff like turkey wings. I mean, for real for real, this pregnancy was a surprise. Maybe the biggest one ever! Like BOOM! LU, YOU’RE HAVING A LITTLE BROTHER! Or . . . sister. SURPRISE!

“O . . . kay.” My father caught eyes with my mother, and again, like they rehearsed it, they both shrugged. “Well, obviously neither of us will be able to get you from practice, and we figured you’d want to be there, so we’ve already made arrangements for, um”—he cleared his throat—“for Coach to bring you home.”

I nodded, nibbling on the knobby end of the turkey bone.

“But it’s exciting news, right?” My mother’s smile looked like it could split the whole bottom half of her face.

“Yeah.” I wiped grease from my mouth with the back of my hand. “But . . . it’s a little . . . I don’t know. It’s . . . I just thought—”

“I know.” My dad cut me off, put his fingertips on top of my mother’s fingertips.“We did too.”

What I was about to say was that I thought Mum couldn’t have any more kids. That’s what she always said. That’s what they always said. That’s what they said the doctors always said. According to them, I was a miracle. I wasn’t supposed to even be born. So another baby was almost impossible. A miracle with some extra miracle-ness sprinkled on it.

Magic.

Lightning.

Striking. Twice.

2

A new name for practice: Trying not to play yourself in front of a bunch of people

I was born in April. That’s the month it rains a lot, so it make sense that I would be lightning. But this new baby supposed to be born in December. There’s no rain in December. Just snow. So maybe this baby will be more of a snowflake than a lightning bolt. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with snowflakes. They’re all different too, except when you put a whole bunch of them together, then they’re not snowflakes no more. They’re just snow. The only other thing is they don’t really do nothing. Snowflakes just fall on things and that’s it. They just float down and land right on your nose. Sit there for a second. Then vanish. They’re beautiul, but not really that big of a deal. Not like lightning. Lightning doesn’t fall. It strikes. It flashes. Cracks things. It’s hot. Sets things on fire. That’s me. I don’t know who future-new-little-baby’s about to be, but that’s me. Me and . . . maybe . . . maybe this girl named Shante Morris. She was born in April too—I know because her mother used to bring disgusting cupcakes to school back in the day—and she definitely might be a lightning kid. She flashes and cracks, and sets stuff on fire just like me. Especially people’s feelings. Only thing is, Shante don’t look like lightning. She looks like a horsefly. And when you look like a horsefly, people might say you look like a horsefly. Especially if that “people” is Patty.

We were sitting on the bench at the track, flipping through the Barnaby Middle School yearbook.

“Yo, I swear Shante Morris still look just like . . . a horsefly,” Patty joked. It was Monday, and almost time for practice, after the last day of school, which I spent doing nothing but watching movies and checking and double-checking my last-day-of-school outfit. No slipping. Patty told me that she spent her last day, or at least her lunch period, freestyling. Like . . . rapping. As in, spitting bars. Lyrics. Rhymes. Patty. Talking about how the rich white girls at her school aren’t that great at keeping the beat, but they got good ad-libs and make funny faces, which, when you’re rapping, is super important. And then that turned into talk about funny faces outside of rapping. And that’s how Shante Morris and her fly-face came up.

The messed-up part is, Patty knew Shante couldn’t help the fact that she had big eyes. Huge eyes. Eyes the size of ears. Shante looked like that ever since we were little. Her eyes kinda made her look like she was always surprised at how disgusting those cupcakes were every year. Ha! Sorry. But that was . . . Anyway, the only reason Patty was going in on her was because Shante wasn’t around to roast Patty to death. Cook her to well-doneness. Spark her up like only lightning can. Shante had so many jokes that we would all gather around in a circle at Barnaby Elementary and just chant “Shut ’em down, Shante, shut ’em down! Shut ’em down, Shante, shut ’em down!” while she barbecued someone who thought it was funny to crack jokes about her big old eyes. One of those former victims was the one and only Patina Jones.

“Yo, she don’t even have a forehead. Just eyes. She got a eye-head, and when she blink, she can’t help but nod, too.” Patty blinked her eyes and bowed her head to demonstrate.

“Yeah, okay. Talk all that if you want. But you only saying it because she isn’t here to defend herself,” I said, and all Patty did was stretch her eyes wide like she was trying to force them to jump out of her face, and continued flipping the pages.

“And look at my girl Cotton. Ayyyye. Now, she looks cute, doesn’t she, Lu?” She held the book up for me to see Cotton’s picture, like I didn’t have to see her every day at school. It wasn’t the gloss on the pages that made it look shiny like that. It was all the Vaseline Cotton always be smearing on because she scared of being ashy and getting unexpectedly fried. By Shante. “Whatever, Patty.” Patty was only teasing me about Cotton because she thinks I like her and we should go out. But I don’t. I do. But not like that. Not all the way. But she’s cool. But go out? Greasy face? Nah.

“What?” Patty nudged me. “Yes, she does!”

Ghost was walking across the parking lot toward us. Sunny was sitting on the other side of Patty, craning his neck to see the book, all the little rectangle photos of faces and braces, fades and braids, laid out on each page. He never seen a yearbook before, because they don’t do yearbooks in homeschool.

“So, wait . . . you get these every year?” Sunny asked now.

“Every single year. And usually people pass them around to have friends sign them and all that, but I didn’t do that just because I already know what everybody will say,” I explained, grabbing the gold chains around my neck. “Have a good summer, Lu, you fine-o albino.”

“Boy, shut up.” Patty shook her head.

“Yeah, shut up,” Ghost repeated, finally reaching us. He dropped his gym bag. “I don’t know why Patty said it, but I’m sure you deserve it.”

“We just talking about the yearbook. Sunny’s never seen one before,” I said to Ghost, slapping his hand.

“You’ve never seen a yearbook?” Ghost asked. Then he thought about it, kissed his teeth. “Of course, you’ve never seen no yearbook.”

“Yo, you should just get that lady who teaches you—” I started.

“Aurelia,” Sunny made clear.

“Yeah, her.” I leaned over so I could see Sunny. “Get her to help you make one with pictures of all the stuff you did this year. Dance routines and all that.”

“You can even do like, Best Dressed, and Most Likely to Succeed, and stuff like that, too. It’s just gonna be one student picture in there, but still, might be pretty cool,” Ghost added.

“Hmm. I’d get Best Dancer . . . for sure.” Sunny nodded, then repeated, “For . . . sure. Seashore. See? Sure . . .”

“Wait, wait.” Patty put her hand up, cutting off what was becoming an awkward conversation, which for us, is a normal conversation. “Know what we haven’t seen yet?” Her eyes lit up. “The fine-o. albino’s picture!” With a smirky smile, she immediately started frantically flipping the pages, searching for the Rs. Searching for me.

“Chill, chill. You don’t need to see it.” I knew it was bad. It was always bad. In pictures I always looked like all flash no photo. Like floating gold chains.

“Oh, yes we do,” Ghost chimed in.

“No. You don’t.” I snatched the book from Patty. Stood up so she couldn’t snatch it back. “Plus, since we’re all here, I’ve got something to tell you anyway.”

“I know what it is, that you—” Patty started to go in, probably about Cotton, but I stopped her.

“Come on, come on. I’m serious.” I cut Patty’s joke short. Ghost had taken a seat, had slipped off his sliced-up high-tops and was putting on his track shoes. His silver bullets. Sunny was staring at what was left of this week’s fading green star. He had one of us draw one on his forearm every meet for good luck. And Istood in front of them, ready to make my announcement.

“Wassup?” From Ghost.

“Well, last night, I was at home eating turkey wings—”

“Turkey wings?”

“Patty—”

“Sorry, sorry,” she said. “Go ahead.”

“So, I’m eating Sunday dinner with my folks, and then out of nowhere my mother tells me she’s pregnant.”

“With what?” Sunny asked, dead serious. Me, Ghost, and Patty looked at him like he wasn’t dead serious with dead-serious faces, even though we knew he was. Dead. Serious. “Oh . . . you mean, with a human. Got it.”

“But not just any human. My little brother or sister.”

“But . . . I thought . . .” Patty’s whole face drew up like it was stuck in a vacuum cleaner hose.

“Exactly! That’s why it’s such a big deal.”

“Wow.” That’s what Ghost said. Then he got more excited. “Dude . . . wow! You’re gonna be somebody’s big bro!”

“Oh boy,” Patty huffed, but I knew she was joking. “Well, at least now you can stop pretending to be mine. Congrats, dummy.” She jumped up, threw an arm around me, yoked my neck.

“Yeah, dude, that’s big. Congrats . . . for real,” Ghost followed. “You happy?”

Happy. Hmm. I had been asking myself that all night, all day. Thought about it this morning when I said my mantra—I’m the man, the kid, the guy. Thought about it when I was rubbing sunscreen into my lightning skin, rubbing and rubbing and rubbing and rubbing. When I put my chains around my neck, my earrings in, my clothes on. Pose. Pose. Kill ’em. Smooth. And I was still thinking about it. Happy.

“Yeah,” I kinda squeaked. “I mean, of course it’s gonna be weird having a little kid around all of a sudden, but . . . yeah. I think I’m happy.” Patty cocked her head. “I’m happy.” I did a closed-mouth smile that was supposed to say, stop asking me questions, but judging by the way Ghost looked at me all squinty-eyed, I knew he knew it was something else. Luckily, before he could say something else, Sunny barged in.

“Let’s toast!”

“Toast?” You never know with Sunny. He might’ve pulled out four pieces of bread he was saving for a special occasion. Or in his head, he might be a grown-up and be really talking about a toast with the glass-clinking and all that. But then he reached down and dug his hands in the dirt and grass, snatched a clump.

“Do it,” he said in a un-Sunny-like, way-too-serious tone. So we all did it. Just held fists full of dirt and grass. “Now, together.” Sunny held his fist out, and Patty put hers to his, then Ghost put his to theirs, and I completed the cheesy fist bump—a four-fist clover—by adding mine to the mix. “Lu, we love you, and . . . ,” Sunny started, but got a little choked up. Now that was very Sunny. “And we wanna congratulate you on your baby human sibling.” Then he yelled out, “Boomticky tacky cheers!” and opened his hand and let the dirt and grass fall back to the ground. And so we all opened our hands and did the same. And I won’t lie, it was actually kind of cool. Until . . .

“Newbies! What are you doing? It’s the last week of practice and now you decide to play in the dirt? How about we play on the track? What do you all think about that?” Coach barked, right on time, as usual. Right on time, means right on the wrong time, which is no time for fun time.

I slapped my hands together, brushing dust from my palms, and headed over to the track, where the rest of the team was. Mikey and Brit-Brat and Deja and Krystal and Freddy and J.J. and Curron and Lynn, and Melissa, and . . . Chris. Chris? What was he doing here?

Chris Myers. He was a long-leg. Ran the eight hundred. And good at it too. He started off on the team but quit after the first meet. Just all of a sudden, gone. But now he was back, which was weird because it was the end of the season.

“Thanks for joining us, assistant captain.” Yep, Aaron was there too. Being a jerk. Of course. He started bumping his gums as soon as I set foot on the track. Mad that I worked my way up to co-captain as a newbie. Scared I was going to outshine him, which wouldn’t have been hard to do. Aaron was fast but not fast enough. I, on the other hand, was the fastest runner on the whole team besides Ghost, and we were basically the same. Traded first place every meet. Plus, I was definitely the flyest.

“Co-captain,” I corrected him. “Nobody’s your assistant.” I eyed Aaron from heel to head.

“Yeah, whatever,” Aaron replied under his breath. “Nobody’s my assistant . . . but you.”

“Okay, okay,” Coach started in, stopping me from saying anything else. “Let’s talk. First thing first. Let’s welcome Chris back to the squad. Though he normally runs the eight hundred, he’s agreed to step up and run Sunny’s mile, since Sunny obviously won’t be.” Lynn sucked her teeth so loud that it sounded like a single clap. Coach eyeballed her but let it slide. “We need him. We need every single one of you at your best. This is the last week of the season. The last. And I know you all want me to tell you all the good things you’ve done. I know you want me to praise you, and, honestly, you deserve some praise. But I don’t have time for that. We don’t have time for it. We’re four practices away from this year’s championship meet. And you know what I always say—”

We all knew where this was going, so we joined in and finished it for him.

“The best never rest.” There was just enough punch on it for Coach to not be mad, but we definitely dragged it out in that this-is-so-annoying way. All of us. Even Chris. Even Aaron.

“Exactly. The best . . . never . . . rest. And we are the best. And all that means is more work. We have to see it all the way through to the end. Got me?”

Everybody nodded, and a few people—mainly Aaron—chirped like a suck-uppy bird, “Got you, Coach.”

“Good.” Coach nodded. “At least the weather’s on our side. Not too hot. Nice breeze out here. So let’s stretch it out. After you knock out your warm-ups, Lu, you come talk to me.”

After the stretches and the lazy laps—Aaron always led the laps, and because of that they were always way too slow—I went through to the fence where Coach and Whit were going over the game plan for the last week of the season. Whit blew her whistle and got everybody else ready to do what we always did on Mondays—fart licks. Basically, you just run kinda fast for like two or three minutes, then run really fast for one. Over and over and over again. Brutal.

“How’s the ankle?” Coach asked, staring down at it. He asked because after our last track meet, I had a slight limp. See, I usually run the hundred metre and the two hundred metre, and even though I don’t run the four hundred metre, if I did, I’d smoke it. It’d be Aaron’s first second-place ribbon of the year. Because I’m a true sprinter. Everybody and their mama knows how I get down. Been sprinting since, well . . . a long time. But for the last month I’ve been training for a new event. An extra one. The 110-metre hurdles. And I’m not gonna lie, I . . . I just . . .

Here’s the thing. When you look at a hurdle, it doesn’t really seem like that big of a deal until you get right up on it. You gotta time it just right, and pump your heart big enough to get your leg up and over the bar. You can’t just hop it like you hop over everything else, like a fire hydrant or a park bench. You have to literally gallop over it like some kind of horse. But I’m no horse. I’m a human. A not-so-tall human.