Sunny

by Jason Reynolds

  I said, Anything?

  He said, anything, but I just needed to tell him what that was. So.

  I told him I wanted to dance.

  He said, Dance?

  I said, Dance. And then I hit my routine. Just blooepp’d it right out of me.

  Dear Diary,

  I have to admit it wasn’t my best exhibition of my dancing ability. My booms and ticks were a little off, probably because I was just so . . . I don’t know. This was Shakespeare-level stressful. Plus, it was still kind of a new routine Aurelia was teaching me. I hadn’t really mastered it yet.

  Coach didn’t know what to say, so he didn’t say nothing. For a while. Maybe ten seconds. Felt like ten minutes. Ten hours. I could hear Curron from the track saying something, and I couldn’t make out what it was, but I knew it was about me because I heard Patty shut it down. Then I heard Whit shut Patty’s shutdown down. Coach glanced over to the track just for a moment, then turned back to me, his expression still stuck as if he was wearing a plastic Halloween mask of his own face. Honestly, I thought he was going to laugh, so I looked down, that way I wouldn’t see it. But then he told me to look up. As usual.

  Wow.

  That’s what he said, Diary. Wow.

  And then he told me that unfortunately he doesn’t know any dance squads, dance groups, dance teams, dance troupes, or dance clubs. Not sure why he had to say it all those different ways, but I could tell he didn’t mean it in a mean way. Still kind of stung, though. But then the strangest thing happened. I mean, I still can’t believe it, even right now as I’m writing this to you. In you. Coach stared at me for few more hour-minute seconds, mumbling something under his breath. Mumbling, mumbling, mumbling. By the way, I just realized something—mumble is the sound of mumbling. Kind of like milk. And I had that milk feeling in my stomach still when all of a sudden Coach told me to do the whoosh part again. And that’s how he said it.

  He said, Sunny, do the whoosh part. The whoosh part. The spin. That’s what he was talking about.

  Whoosh is the sound of spinning.

  I was confused, but I did it. I followed directions because Coach is . . . Coach.

  I whooshed. He told me to do it one more time. So I whooshed again. And then he told me to follow him.

  Diary, I was so, so, soooo confused. One second I’m one second away from guts on the ground, the next second I’m boomticking in front of Coach, and the next next second I’m standing at the back of his cab, watching him dig around in the trunk. And you know what he asked me, Diary, after tossing duffel bags and jerseys and other kinds of things to the left and to the right? You know what he said after he slowly stepped back, holding the thing he’d been looking for?

  Do you know what a discus is? That’s what he said.

  I just said yes.

  And then Coach asked me if I wanted to try throwing it. For the team.

  And I asked him why I would ever do that. I’m a runner. At least I was.

  And Coach spun around and said, Whoosh. Then he spun again, looking like an amateur dancer, but like a proper discus thrower, and said, Whoosh.

  And . . . I understood. It was dancing. Discus was dancing. Discus was . . . disco.

  I said yes.

  I mean, I said I’ll try.

  Dear Diary,

  There’s a song by that lady, Cher, I was telling you about. The lady I named the chair, Chair, after. Yeah. It goes, Do you believe in life after love?

  But it sounds like, Do you bee-LEEEEEEEVE in life after love?

  after love? <—echo

  after love? <—echo

  Dear Diary,

  Patty, Lu, and Ghost caught me talking to the discus. I was sitting on the bench, waiting for practice to be over, and was imagining the metal disk as a spaceship with tiny aliens inside and my job was to figure out how to throw it back into space or something. To Planet Discobulus, maybe. A planet made of sparkles and glass and beats that make the aliens pump their fists and wave their arms around like snakes. And maybe that’s how they communicate. Or maybe their language is just bass. Like, oont, oont, oont, oont, oont And right when I was oonting, Lu and Ghost and Patty walked up.

  Ghost asked me if I was talking to the thing.

  Patty told him the thing was called a discus.

  Ghost asked if I was talking to the discus.

  I told him I was. Because . . . I was.

  Lu asked what I was doing with it.

  Patty asked why Lu and Ghost were asking stupid questions.

  Then she asked a smart one. Really, the only one. Why did I quit running Saturday?

  I told her, and them, I was tired of it, and actually quit running today. Quit the team.

  And the crowd goes wild. In a bad way.

  Until I told them I danced for Coach.

  And the crowd goes silent. In a weird way.

  Then the crowd goes laughing. In a laughing way.

  Then Coach comes over. And the crowd goes home.

  But only after Coach told them that I am—will be—the Defenders’ first discus thrower. Cushhhhhh.

  Dear Diary,

  Guess what? The cat finally let go of Darryl’s tongue. And when it did, I happened to be sitting in the car next to him with a discus in my lap. Maybe it was the discus that scared the cat away.

  What’s that? Which is all he said.

  What’s this?

  I told him it was a discus, that I would be throwing it. Then he asked how I could practice running the mile and throwing the discus. And then I told him I quit running the mile. And me saying that was like taking a heavy cat, a lion, off my back—digging the claws out—and shoving it along with the other cat right back in Darryl’s mouth.

  When we got home, I ran upstairs to change my clothes and to kiss my discus. Not sure why, but I kind of just feel like it needs to know I love it if it’s going to work with me. If we’re going to do this thing together. I know . . . weird. But it wasn’t like, smoochy smoochy muah muah smoochy smooch smoochington, or nothing like that. Just a regular one.

  When I got back downstairs, Darryl was sitting in his chair in the living room with a needle and thread, finishing up fixing the hem of his jacked-up pants. While I poured myself a glass of water (honestly, I just wanted to wash my lips off), Darryl laid his pants across the chair and went into the family room, where he stood over the big table, puzzle pieces scattered all over.

  This is the way it goes almost every night, unless Mr. Nico comes by. Mr. Nico is the reason for all the puzzles in the first place. I didn’t know this when I was younger, but when Darryl made his first business transaction thingy, it was with Mr. Nico. He invested in Mr. Nico’s company, which is a puzzle company. It’s called Puzzle Peace. You take a picture, e-mail it in, and they send you a puzzle of the picture. Simple. Only catch is there is no map or key. The boxes come with nothing on them. You don’t know what you’re going to see until you see it. So when I was growing up, me and Darryl would work on puzzles of my mother every single day. Darryl had taken so many pictures of her, and them, almost like he wanted us to have enough images to piece together for the rest of our lives. Constant surprises. Nonstop discoveries. He used to always tell me that he wanted to make sure I knew her. At least, her face. Her smile. And I did. I do. I have to figure out how to make her—how to put it together—all the time. How to start with the edges, the borders, and work in, using my imagination. That’s what Darryl taught me. And whenever we finish one, Mr. Nico brings another. Especially since free puzzles are the only “Return on Investment” my father ever gets.

  Mr. Nico also smokes cigars with Darryl whenever he’s here, and always asks my father if he wants to date his sister. Her name is Ms. Linda. One time Nico even slipped us a puzzle of Ms. Linda’s face. That one was really a surprise. I thought she looked pretty, but we never finished it.

  But Mr. Nico didn’t come tonight. So Darryl didn’t have to do that funny-sounding laugh he always does whenever he’s asked if he’d date Ms. Linda. Instead he
stood over the table, studying the pieces of a new puzzle, moving them around, looking for the corners and edges. I joined him.

  And asked him if he was mad at me.

  He said mad’s not the word.

  Then I asked what the word was.

  He said he bought TV dinners.

  So the word was not now.

  Dear Diary,

  The word is “gross.”

  The word is “dry.”

  My TV dinner tasted like a commercial break.

  And not a funny one, but one of the ones about life insurance. I have no idea what life insurance is, but apparently old people need it, because that’s who’s always on those commercials. And that’s what my food tasted like.

  A life insurance commercial.

  Or eating a puzzle.

  Dear Diary,

  Do you remember my room? I just realized that you’ve been in here the whole time, but you’ve been stuck in a dresser drawer with old toys piled up on top of you. Do you remember what the walls look like? That soft green, like the color of grass just before it gets hard in the heat? And the ceiling, flat and white? An occasional circle—a home for a lightbulb that adds more white to the white. Do you remember the carpet that looks like yarn and like yawn? Or the big plush zebra in the corner? Do you remember the baby crib? It’s still there.

  Dear Diary,

  You’re gonna throw the discus, Sunny. Sun D Runny. How you feel?

  I feel great. I think. I mean, throw a little discus to the other side of the world. Know what I’m saying? Know what I’m talking about, walking about, Sunny?

  Yeah, I got you. You scared Darryl gonna be mad about it?

  He always mad.

  True, true. He be so mad I wonder if maybe it just feels like happy to him.

  Probably, but it don’t feel like happy to me. Happy to me feels like tweep tweep, beedy bip bip booyow. That’s happy. Not this blah blah he’s doing. Not this urrrrrrrgh, derrrrrrr, burrrr crap. That’s mad. And maybe sad.

  Was that scatting? Did you just scat? Do you wanna do jazz? You could probably be a jazz singer. You got the right name.

  I think that was jazz. But I’m not sure. Just sound. But if sound is jazz, then yeah. I’m Sunny the Jazz Man.

  Relax, Sunny the Jazz Man, be Sunny the Discus Man first.

  Or the Disco Man.

  No. The Discus Man.

  Okay, but after that, I’m scatting on the world, like a scoobidee doo day deeeee.

  Yikes.

  Whatever. You think maybe they got jazz dancers?

  You the one who should know!

  I know, and I do know. They do have a kind of dance called jazz. But it don’t really remind me of flippity flap flam zingalee zay weee. But I bet I could make a new kind of jazz dancing that goes better with scat.

  Sounds like a plan. Then you’ll still be tickboom, except now you’ll be tickboom scat, which if you ever wanted to change your name, would be a good one to consider.

  Tickboom Scat? But why would I want to change my name?

  Because your father don’t seem like the type to have a kid named Sunny.

  But maybe my mother was. Aurelia said she was fun. She was even a dancer. But not a good one.

  Just like you.

  No, just like YOU. I’m a good dancer. Even excellent, sometimes.

  Of course. What was I thinking? You are none other than Alvin and the Chipmunks Ailey.

  I don’t get it.

  You wouldn’t.

  Whatever. She also said Darryl could dance too.

  Ha! That’s hard to believe. Maybe he was the real inventor of the Running Man.

  I don’t get that one either.

  Forget it.

  Forgotten.

  Rotten.

  Cotton.

  Patty.

  Patty?

  Patty.

  Okay.

  Dear Diary,

  Sorry about that last one. But talking to you is talking to you, and sometimes I need to talk to me. I don’t know if that makes sense, but you know how I feel about making sense.

  Good night.

  5

  Tuesday

  Dear Diary,

  It’s Tuesday, and Tuesday is my favorite day until Thursday, because Tuesday is when me and Aurelia go to the hospital and Thursday is when we go again. I know what you’re thinking. Hospitals are places people don’t like to go, which is exactly the reason I love them. My grandfather works there, and we have a thing we do to bring some happy to the people who don’t want to be there, but have to be.

  Aurelia always brings me breakfast on these days—sausage sandwiches. So we skip the pancakes with all the cooking and measuring, and jump to the eating—by the way, sausage sandwiches are always a quadrillion times better than TV dinners, that’s for sure.

  At the hospital we never have to sign in. Ever. It’s like we’re VIP people or something. VIP. Not VIP people. That would be Very Important People people. And even though I consider myself kind of a people person, I’m not a very important person person. Just a VIP. Actually not even a VIP. Just a kid who doesn’t have to sign in at the hospital because everybody, especially Ms. Melinda, who sits at the front desk, knows I’m Dr. Lancaster’s grandson.

  Me and Aurelia sat down in the waiting area. There are always other people waiting, some possibly even waiting for their grandfathers too, but for different reasons. Many people’s faces look like water. Like if you poked their cheeks, their skin would ripple forever. A lot of times they sit in the chairs in an uncomfortable way. In a way that makes me feel like they feel like they don’t have arms. Like they can’t quite turn. Can’t adjust. Can’t feel normal until that grandfather they’re waiting for comes walking through the double doors.

  Then my grandfather came walking through the double doors. More like he came strutting out. He always struts. The old dude walks like walking was made just for him. Like, ooh, yeah, ooh, yeah, you see me, walking walking wallllking. He walks like he’s holding back from dancing.

  Diary, do you remember Gramps? You remember him, right? Well, he’s still as good as he was the last time you heard about him. He’s still helping people, still bouncing back and forth from the waiting room, to his patients’ rooms, to his office, which is kind of like a tattoo shop. The only difference is the tattoo shop had posters of the outside of people’s bodies, and my grandfather’s office had posters of the insides of people’s bodies.

  His office is where he always takes us first. Which is where I told him Darryl was mad.

  Gramps asked why.

  And I told him because I quit running.

  And then Aurelia shouted, FREEDOM!

  Gramps ignored Aurelia, asked me why I quit, since I’ve been running my whole life.

  I told him, I’ve only been running because of my mother. Because of my father. Because of my mother.

  He said because my mother was a runner.

  Duh. (I didn’t say that, but I thought it.) What I said was: And she was also a dancer. So, I’d rather move.

  He looked at Aurelia.

  She looked away.

  Gramps said running is moving.

  I said, no, dancing is.

  Gramps’s face turned into a question mark.

  And mine, into a period.

  Dear Diary,

  Me and Aurelia don’t come to the hospital to visit Gramps. I mean, we do, but we don’t. We come to visit other people’s Grampses. And other people’s Aurelias. And sometimes, even other people’s Sunnys. We go to visit patients. Not to bring them cards or flowers or gifts. We bring them something much better. The boomity boom and the tickity tick. I’m talking the boom tick, tickboom! But first we have to walk through all the beep beep beeps it takes to get to the cancer ward. Diary, how could a word that rhymes with “dancer” be so bad? Not to mention “answer,” “prancer,” and “romancer”?

  Speaking of romancers: Mr. MacAfee. He has no hair. Nowhere. He’s recovering after having another tumor cut out of him. A
nother night under the knife, another day on the drip. That’s what he said when Gramps asked him how he was. But he loves Aurelia. Always teases her by saying her name felt funny in his mouth. I laughed at that because that’s what I love most about it too! Ah-RAIL-yuh.

  Ms. Jenkins. We never met her before. She’s new to the ward. Breast cancer. She’s young, and when we came in, she was still adjusting her wig. We told her it looked good, because it did. She didn’t believe us. She was also looking at a life insurance commercial. I told her she didn’t need that. That’s only for old people.

  J.J., whose real name is Jennifer—I used to call her Mrs. Jennifer, but she doesn’t like to be called Mrs. anything, and even though she’s too old for me to call her by her first name, she used to insist I call her just Jennifer, so I used to call her Just Jennifer, which eventually became J.J.—has lung cancer. She wears the reddest lipstick I’ve ever seen.

  Ian, who is my age and reads manga comics all day, has a brain tumor, Gorgeous John (his real name) has cancer in his pancreas, Ms. Felicia has stomach cancer and only watches the news, and always gets mad when we come in, and says the world’s in too much danger for dancing. But we dance anyway, and anyway, she likes it.

  Me and Aurelia dance for each of them.

  Five, six, seven, eight . . .

  Shrug and shrug and kick and slide back, clap and dab and body roll, spin

  Shrug and shrug and kick and slide back, clap and dab and body roll, spin

  And they all laugh and bop and clap and smile. Today Ms. Jenkins even snatched her wig off and swung it around in the air like a hair flag.