He stood there with his towel around his neck. The kids behind him had gone quiet, the way kids do when they know they're watching something they're not supposed to.
"You missed it," he said. Not mean. Just checking.
"I saw the last lap and a half. From right here." I swallowed. "We got here when you were at two thousand. Coach Ogletree said you went five thirty-one."
He looked at me strangely.
"You went four twenty-four five at the mile," I said. I was talking too fast, but I couldn't stop. "And then you went sixty-six nine, and then sixty-seven two on the sixth lap, and Coach Haskell said the sixth lap is the one where you find out, and then you went sixty-five two, and then the last one in sixty-four five. Sixty-four five, Luke. On the last lap. After seven of them."
"How do you know that?"
"I listened," I said. "I stood here and I listened."
He looked at me for a long time. I don't know what he saw. A big man in steel-toed boots with chicken feathers still stuck in the wiper blades of his truck out in the bus lane.
"I thought I lost it on the sixth," he said finally. Quietly, like he was talking to himself. "I felt it go. I could feel the sixty-seven. I came through and saw the clock and I thought, That's it, that's gone, just run for the win." He wiped his face with the towel. "And then somebody on the backstretch yelled my name like they were mad at me, and I don't know. I got mad back. And then I was doing the math again."
Haskell made a little noise beside me, something like a laugh.
"Who yelled it?" Luke said. "I thought it was you, Coach."
"Wasn't me," Haskell said.