Hush by Jacqueline Woodson

toward us. He leans into me and says, “I’ll need your clothing and shoe sizes.”
    I don’t realize how tense my stomach is until it starts relaxing.
    After everyone introduces themselves, Leigh asks the girls from last year to talk about the team. We sit down on the gym floor in a circle. I recognize two girls from my homeroom and a few others from seeing them around school.
    “It’s a good team,” one of the girls, who introduced herself as Mira, says. She is about my height, dark like my mother and soft-spoken. She speaks with a little bit of an accent. Like someone from England.
    “We win a lot,” a girl named Denise says. The others slap each other five and hoot.
    I hug myself. The gym is big and chilly. My new running shoes feel stiff and wrong. All the others are wearing shoes like Leigh’s—Adidas with thick soles and fluorescent stripes. The ones Mama has gotten me are a dark blue, no name brand that I have ever seen on anybody’s feet before. I sit cross-legged and try to cover my feet with my hands.
    “Okay, let’s get to running,” Leigh says. Everyone jumps up as though they’ve been stuck with pins.
    When I am the last one to rise, Leigh says, “Fast, Evie. We do everything fast around here.”
    “So you’re a runner,” Mira asks me as we jog around the track. The track is an eighth mile around and banked at the curves. Leigh said we had to run a half mile at our own pace, but everyone takes off like it’s a race, and by the second time around, I am struggling to keep breathing.
    “I don’t think so,” I say, my voice coming hoarser than I’ve ever heard it.
    “Your legs are long,” Mira says. She smiles and pulls up to the front of the group. I take a deep breath, feeling warm. My legs are long, I keep thinking. Yes. Yes. My legs are long. It is the friendliest thing anyone has said to me in a long time.
     
     
     
    “WHY ARE YOU SO SMELLY?” ANNA ASKS WHEN I get home. She is sitting at the kitchen table, studying, and I race by her to get a glass of water. I gulp it down without saying anything to her, then go over to the window and kiss my father. Mama is at Kingdom Hall. Tuesday night is her Bible study.
    The last time Mama asked me and Anna if we wanted to go, Anna said Are we gonna be tested on it?
    Mama lifted both hands and said I give up. I’ll miss you all in the New World.
    When you get there, pet a friendly lion for me, Anna mumbled. But not loud enough for Mama to hear.
    I touch my face now. It feels warm and flushed. I’d run all the way home. In the cold air, it felt like I was breaking every speed limit. Like I could run all the way back to Denver.
    “Why are you standing there touching yourself?” Anna asks, her voice rising with disgust.
    I take my hand off my face and glare at her.
    “Man,” she says. “Take me to that study group!” Then she turns the page in her textbook and puts her head down on her arm to read.
    “Was it helpful?” my father asks, his voice so soft, I can barely hear him.
    “Very! It meets three times a week. I’m gonna keep going.”
    “Three times a week!” Anna says. “What are you trying to do—get the freaking Nobel Prize ?!”
    I sit down across from her. “Maybe.”
    “You have lost your mind.”
    I lift my arm and fan the sweat in her direction.
    Anna throws a pen at me. But she’s smiling.

18
    LATER, LONG AFTER EVERYONE HAS GONE TO bed, I tiptoe into the living room and sit cross-legged on the floor. The moon, coming in through Daddy’s window, is bright and halfway pretty. I try to remember Denver, how I used to spend hours staring out my window wanting to drink every ounce of its beauty in. Maybe I knew, someplace deep, that the day would come when it wouldn’t be mine anymore. I swallow, remembering the morning I told Lulu. A part of me thought our tears were just for drama, that we’d wake up the next morning and everything would be back to normal. But as we lay across my bed, staring up at the ceiling and