Who Do You Love(31)
Author: Jennifer Weiner

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In his new sneakers, Andy ran through the spring and the summer, timing himself as he did laps around the park, getting ready for high school track-team tryouts in August. Because Lori was working, Mr. Sills had agreed to drive him. Stopped at a light, about to get onto the highway, his friend had patted his shoulder and said, “You’re going to do just fine.”

Andy didn’t answer. He rolled down the window, letting the hot air and the city sounds come through, and pushed the door lock down, then pulled it up, then pushed it down again, rolling his water bottle back and forth in his free hand.

Roman Catholic, Andy’s new school, was downtown, right in Center City, at the corner of Broad and Vine, and it didn’t have a track of its own. All of its meets were away meets, and most of its practices were held at the Penn campus. Mr. Sills dropped Andy off at Franklin Field, said “Good luck” one more time, then drove off to go fix an air conditioner.

It had been warm the week before, but that afternoon in August the temperature had soared into the nineties. Andy counted thirty boys sweating on the infield, some of them doing stretches, others standing in groups, talking. A man in a Roman Catholic T-shirt with a whistle around his neck introduced himself as Coach Maxwell. He had a blunt face like a clenched fist and a short, stocky body that seemed to be made entirely of muscle. His khaki pants were crisply pressed; his plain black sneakers were as pristine as if they’d just come out of the box.

Coach Maxwell reached into his pocket and removed a stopwatch. The two men beside him, Andy saw, both had pads of paper and pens. “Okay, fellas,” he said, and lined them up and told them what to do.

At his direction, the boys ran sprints, then hurdles, the quarter-mile, the half-mile. They did standing long jumps and running long jumps. Coach Maxwell would watch, occasionally saying something to one of his assistants. At the starting line for the mile, with eight other guys, some of them in fancy running cleats, Andy thought coolly, I’m better than you are. He had put in more time, all those mornings on his paper route, all those afternoons in the park. He’d worked harder, and he could suffer more.

There was no pistol, just the coach yelling, “Go!” At the sound of his voice, Andy sprinted to the front of the pack, pushing himself until his lungs burned, grabbing the lead and holding it, fighting off every challenge, leaving the second-place finisher at least ten lengths behind him.

When they were done, Coach Maxwell sent the boys to the bleachers. Andy could feel their eyes on him, could catch snatches of their conversation, could hear his name repeated. Then the coach called Andy down, and put his hand on his shoulder, the same way Andy had seen Ryan Peterman’s father do. “You’ve got something special,” he said. That blunt face relaxed long enough for a brief smile. “Too early to tell how much. Too early to tell how special. But you’ve got something,” he said. “Did your mom or dad ever run?”

“Basketball,” he told Coach Maxwell. His heart was swelling. You’ve got something special. He wondered if his dad had felt this, this kind of pure happiness, like he’d swallowed the sun, sinking a game-winning three-pointer, or stripping an opponent of the ball. “My dad played basketball.”

Coach Maxwell clapped his hands once, calling the boys together. They sat on the first two rows of bleachers, shoulder to shoulder, listening. “You’re gonna work harder than you ever imagined,” he said. “We will run sprints. We will run laps. We will run suicides. We will lift weights. We will do burpees and squats and lunges and jumping jacks until you wish you were never born. There’s no game,” he said, thin lips curling, blunt face contracting even more tightly as he let the distasteful word out of his mouth. “No game, no ball, no points, no substitutions. No cheerleaders shaking their ta-tas. No band. No homecoming. It’s just you and the track and the clock. It’s the most elemental thing there is—the simplest and the hardest. Not every boy’s cut out for it. Boys get bored. Boys get tired. They don’t want to put in the time it takes to build the FOUNDATION that is the KEY to SUCCESS.”

Andy had nodded. He didn’t care that there was no band or cheerleaders at track meets, that football and basketball players got all the glory. Scores and goals, ribbons and medals, all of that took a distant second place to the joy that he felt when he ran, the sensation of being entirely in his body, every worry and concern left behind, feeling the ground beneath his feet, the air against his skin, moving so fast it was almost like time itself had to hurry to catch up.

“You put in the EFFORT, you get the RESULTS,” Coach Maxwell roared that August, his red face getting even redder, a thin mist of saliva surrounding his mouth, and when he asked, “Are you ready to work hard?” all the boys, Andy included, shouted some version of assent.