Sunny E-Book

Jason Reynolds

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

Seitenzahl: 127

Beschreibung

Sunny is just that - Sunny. Always ready with a goofy smile and something nice to say, Sunny is the chillest dude on the Defenders team. But his life hasn't always been sun beamy-bright. You see, Sunny is a murderer. Or at least he thinks of himself that way. His mother died giving birth to him, and, based on how Sunny's dad ignores him, it's no wonder Sunny thinks he's to blame.It seems the only thing Sunny can do right in his dad's eyes is win first place ribbons running the mile, just like his mom did. But Sunny doesn't like running, never has. So he stops. Right in the middle of a race. With his relationship with his dad now worse than ever, the last thing Sunny wants to do is leave the other newbies—his only friends—behind. But you can't be on a track team and not run. So Coach asks Sunny what he wants to do. Sunny's answer? Dance. Yes, dance. But you also can't be on a track team and dance... can you?

Leseprobe

SUNNY

Jason Reynolds

Also by Jason Reynolds

Ghost (in the same series)

Patina (in the same series)

Look Both Ways

For Every One

Long Way Down (Faber)

Boy in the Black Suit (Faber)

SUNNY

Run: Book 3

Jason Reynolds

Published by the Knights Of

Knights Of Ltd, Registered Offices: 119 Marylebone Road, London, NW1 5PU

www.knightsof.media

First published 2019

001

Written by Jason Reynolds

Text and cover copyright © Jason Reynolds, 2019

Cover art by © Selom Sunu, 2019

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 Marssaié Jordan

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: 9781999642570

ISBN: ebook: 9781913311506

ISBN: ibook: 9781913311797

To the weirdos

Sunny

1

Friday

Dear Diary,

It’s been a while. And because you’re back, because I brought you back (after spiralling your backbone back into place)—backity back back back—Aurelia, for some reason, feels like she needs to be introduced to you all over again. Like she don’t know you. Like she don’t remember you. But I do. So we don’t have to shake hands and do the whole “my name is” thing. But Aurelia might need to do that. Today she asked me if I still call you Diary, or if I call you Journal now. Or maybe Notebook. I told her Diary. I’ve always called you that. Because I like Diary. Notebook, no. And Dear Journal doesn’t really work the same. Doesn’t do it for me. Dear Diary is better, not just because of the double D alliteration action, but also because Diary reminds me of the name Darryl, so at least I feel like I’m talking to an actual someone. And Darryl reminds me of the word “dairy,” and “dairy” and “diary” are the same except for where i is. And I like dairy. At least milk. I can’t drink a lot of it, which you know, because it makes my stomach feel like it’s full of glue, which you also know. But I like it anyway. Because I’m weird. Which you definitely know. You know I like weird stuff. And everything about milk is weird. Even the word “milk,” which I think probably sounds like what milk sounds like when you guzzle it. Milkmilkmilkmilkmilk. I should start over.

Dear Diary,

This is my start over.

Aurelia asked me how long it’s been since I’ve spoken to you. I told her, a while. When I was a little kid and was all yelly-yelly and Darryl wanted me to be more hushy-hushy, he gave me you and told me to put the noise on your pages whenever I felt like I needed to, which was all the time except for when I was running or sleeping. Told me to fold it up in you, so he could get some peace. So he could have quiet for concentration when we picked at our puzzles after work. Yes, Diary, we still do puzzles together. It’s still our way of, I guess, bonding. Anyway, after a while, my brain stopped pushing so much loud out of my mouth. Stopped noisey-ing up the puzzling. Thanks to you.

You know how a health bar makes you less hungry, but don’t really make you full? Diary, that’s what you are. A health bar. You take the hunger-growl out of my mind. And once I got to a place where the growl was pretty much a purr, I stopped writing in you.

But now the volume on the growl is turning up again. And even though it’s being turned up, I can feel it working its way down, pushing behind my eyes, and marching over my tongue, ready to come out. And my father, well, he still doesn’t want to be disturbed. And I don’t want to disturb him and his work, and his newspaper, and definitely not the puzzles, because the puzzles are our time. So, Diary, thanks for still being a friend. Something for me to bite down on. Something for me to whisper-scream to. Because sometimes I have too many screams up there. And they boing boing in my brain

boing boing in my brain like a jumping bean,

     boing boing in my brain like a jumping bean my brain a bouncy castle at a party nobody’s invited to.

And now I can put them in you, again.

And now Aurelia’s asking me about it. About you. Asking me about journaling. No. Diary-ing. Which sounds like diarrhea-ing. Which is sorta the same thing. Aurelia told me she thinks it’s a good thing I’ve been writing again. Even wanted to make sure I understood that whatever I write down don’t have to make sense as long as it’s really me. Really my brain and heart stuff. And that’s a good thing, even though I already knew that, because making sense makes no sense to me. Sense should kinda already be made, right? It should already exist like love, or maybe sky. You don’t have to create it or choreograph it or nothing like that. At least I don’t think you do. So none of this has to make sense, it just has to make … me, me. I’m already me, but it has to make me…something. Make me quiet and calm, and maybe also make me brave enough to do what I’m going to have to do tomorrow at the track meet, which is probably not going to be quiet or calm. That’s the real reason Aurelia’s interested in you, Diary. She thinks I don’t know that, but I know. I know because I know she knows I’m scared. That’s why I brought you back. I’m so scared. And scared don’t sound like eek. Or gasp. Scared sounds like glass. Shattering.

Scared sounds like glass shattering.

Diary, after all these years, you ever not want to be written in? On? Am I writing on you or in you? Or both? And how does that make you feel? I’ve never really asked you that. You ever just want to stay blank? Just be paper or whatever you think you are? Because I know what that’s like. And tomorrow, my father will too.

Also, Aurelia called you a journal, but you’re a diary, so I will call you by your name.

2

Saturday

Dear Diary,

I know—at least I think I know—everything has a sound connected to it. Has a tick or a boom. Or something. Like a tickboom. Or a tick-tickboom. Or a tick-bada-bada-boom-bap-bap-ooh. Or a … I’m weird. I’m not really weird. I’m just . . . tickboom. Yeah.

It’s been three weeks, and something like 1,814,400 ticks since I was watching Patina

watching Patina,

watching Patina,

       tee-nuh, tee-nuh,

tick-tick boom and come from behind and crush the last leg of her first 4x800 relay. Sounded like shum-swip!-shum-swip!-shum-swip!-shum-swip! all the way to the feta-feta-finish line. She was cheesin’, and the crowd . . . went . . . wild. Cushhhhh! Deja and Krystal and Brit-Brat went wild. Cushhhhh! Coach and Whit went wild. Curron and Aaron and Mikey went wild. Cushhhhhh! Cushhhhh! Ghost and Lu went wild. Threw their arms around me while Patty did some kind of power strut over to us, a winner. Wih- wih-winner. Wih-winner. Patty’s a winner. A big winner. Number tenner, and a grinner, a bleep bloop blinner, that’s not a word but I’m a beginner, not like Patty, Patty’s a winner, wih-winner.

Okay, I’m weird.

Diary, you know I’m also a winner. Wih-winner. Which, for me, is boring. Buh-boring. And sounds like snore. Snuh-snoring. My race always, always, always sounds like other people talking. Like no one really caring that I’m running a mile—1600 meters—faster than they can probably run a block. Like, chick chick chick chick chick chick chick chick chick, check me out! Chick chick chick chick chick chick chick chick, check me out! But no one does, until the last lap. Which is the part where I win. Week after week. Wih-wih winner . . . whatever.

I give the ribbons to Darryl. Whatever.

He says something about my mother. Whatever.

Your mother would want you to work harder. What’s wrong with you?

She’d want you to tighten that form. Widen your stride. Beat your time.

Like I always say, ROI. Return on Investment. What’s wrong with you?

The more you put in, the more you get out. That last lap, open up your lungs. Breathe. Your mother would want you to breathe.

What’s wrong with you?

And then I immediately start thinking about what breathing sounds like. I can never really find it. Always just on the tip of my tongue. And then I start thinking about what not breathing sounds like. And then, while Darryl goes on and on about my mother, I start thinking about crying. Me, crying. Not me crying right then, but me crying when I was being born. And how I didn’t. Not at first. That’s what Darryl always tells me, has no problem telling me. That I didn’t cry. Because I wasn’t breathing. And my mother was crying. Then I started breathing. Then she stopped. And I started crying.

Ships passing in the night.

She’s not here because I am. Because of me. Because something is wrong with me, Diary, which made something wrong with her. Her. She has a name. She had a name. Has. You remember? It’s Regina. Regina Lancaster. Born on Rosa Parks’s birthday, delivered me on the day of a hurricane. And died.

Dear Diary,

“Amniotic embolism.”

Those words are like confetti for the tongue. Like speaking a foreign language. Hypnotic symbolism, amniotic embolism. So much fun to say, but it means “death of my mother” when you translate it into birth-giving talk. Means her blood was poisoned. Means it caused her heart to stop. Means me, as a kid, yelling all the time looking for her, searching for a beat.

Diary, I know you already know this. It’s been written in me for a long time, so I know I’ve written it in you a long time ago. Along with questions. Questions like, do you know what it feels like to feel like a murderer? I do. At least I did back then. And I still do. Sometimes. Don’t get me wrong, Darryl has never called me that or said anything like that. If anything, he says it was the amniotic embolism that did it. But he’s always telling me over and over again that I owe it to my mother to accomplish her dreams of being a marathon winner. For her. Not just a runner, a winner. And he’s been pushing me from the beginning. I don’t really know if I mean that, like for real, but . . . I might, because it might be true. When I was learning to walk, soon as I took my first pitter-patter, Darryl probably pushed me. Like, really pushed me. That’s just how he is. Not hard or nothing. Just a little bump to make those steps quicker. Laps around the house by four. On the track by five. Marathon talk by six. As if not having a mother can be wiped away by a medal. Figured I’d start by mastering the mile.

But the thing is, the mile don’t have enough sound for me. Never did. There’s only the chick chick chick my feet make on the track for 1600 meters, which after a while sounds almost like nothing. Chick chick chick becomes chih chih chih becomes ch ch ch underneath everybody’s chatter about what they’re gonna do as soon as these last few long laps are over, scrolling on their phones, check check checking, refreshing, then scrolling some more.

I needed something else, something other than the stupid mile. Than the stupid win. So earlier today— three boring weeks, three victorious meets after Patty’s crazy comeback—I finally put some sound in my mile. Some pooshhh, or skweeb.

Diary, what does it sound like to stop? Like, skurrt! I was three laps in, coming up on the fourth. Chick chick-ing around the track, zoning out. I’m on the first turn of the last lap, no one even close to me. I’m cruising, ch ch ch heading in for the win. And then.

I changed my mind.

Just pulled up, stopped running, started walking.

Sound.

The crowd goes wild! Whaaaa? Deja and Krystal and Brit-Brat go wild. Whaaaa? Ghost and Lu and Patty go wild. Whaaaa? Curron and Aaron and Mikey go wild. Whaaa? Coach and Whit go really wild. WHAAAA?

Then the crowd goes whooooop! as the other runners gallop past me, burning whatever fuel they had left, barrelling toward the finish line.

From the sideline, Coach scream-asked what I was doing, and I just smiled and clapped for the other runners. Then Coach yelled something else mad. His words sounded like crumpled paper. Up in the bleachers Darryl popped straight up in the middle of the crowd. Some people were laughing, some mad, some totally confused. Those were the best ones. The confused ones. The faces that looked like they were made of wax, and had been melted and remodelled. Like, skwilurp bleep blurpsquish. My father’s face didn’t look like that. It didn’t look melted or squishy at all. My father’s face had the look. A look I was used to, but hated. Like a stone becoming more of a stone. And what sound does that make? I think, for my dad, the same sound that breathing makes. A sound I can’t seem to find, even though it’s on the tip of my tongue.

Dear Diary,

One more thing about today. I almost bit my tongue off. Just nibbled too hard on it the whole ride home. And if I did bite it off, it would’ve been so gross, because then I would’ve had blood on my teeth. And what if my father, for some reason, cracked a joke or said something funny that made me smile and then he would’ve had to see my cherry chompers? My bloody reds? But he didn’t. And why would he? There was nothing funny, at least not to him. He just bit down on his own tongue, and judging by the dimple in his cheek going in and out, he was biting down pretty hard too.

It was a quiet ride with nothing but the whirr whirr of the air conditioner‚ a ssssss that sounded more like air leaking out of something than seeping into it.

The cat had my father’s tongue.