50 pages • 1 hour read
Lu
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Chapters 7-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 Summary: “A New Name for Dad: You Gotta Be Kidding Me! For Real for Real?”
Wednesday morning, Lu helps his mother make another fruit sculpture. On Wednesdays, Christina runs a “Hump Day” special, which means she will only make and deliver fruit sculptures in the shape of a camel. Christina sends Lu to deliver a rare Hump Day special sculpture, ordered by Patty’s mom Bev Jones for Skunk, who has been helping the family.
Lu arrives at Skunk and Cotton’s house to deliver the sculpture. When he arrives, Skunk calls for Cotton to come outside. Feeling awkward, Lu shares a piece of his tangerine with her. This results in Patty teasing Lu at practice that afternoon, again saying that Lu has a crush on Cotton.
Ready to practice hurdles again, this time with his contact lenses, Lu approaches Coach, who is on a phone call with his wife. Lu notices that Coach looks concerned, and he explains that his newborn son’s allergies are acting up. Lu and Coach set up the hurdles and Lu begins practicing using the counting method coach developed, but again he finds himself unable to successfully hurdle. Coach instructs Lu to take out his contacts. Coach reminds Lu to lead with the knee and follow the counting pattern, and Lu successfully jumps all the hurdles. When he finishes, Coach tells him to get back on the line and start over.
After practice, Lu notices that one of his diamond earrings is missing. Sunny and Ghost help Lu look for the lost earring, but they are unable to find it. Ghost says at least Lu did not lose something like an Olympic gold medal, like Coach did himself. Ghost explains that Coach had an Olympic gold medal, but that Coach’s father stole it and sold it for the drugs that killed him.
This story haunts Lu on the ride home as he realizes that Coach’s father trading the gold medal for the drugs that killed him “equals Coach’s gold medal in the hands of Goose. My dad” (133). Lu asks his mother why she and Goose are having him run on a team coached by “a man that Dad did dirty?” (134). Christina explains that the story is not hers to tell and suggests Lu speak with Goose that night.
While Lu sits outside waiting for Goose to arrive home, Cotton walks by. She sits with Lu in companionable silence for a while, not pressuring him to speak. When it gets dark, Cotton asks Lu if he needs a hug. They hug, and Cotton leaves for home.
Goose finally returns home, and before speaking to his father, Lu takes out his contacts. Lu asks Goose if he still has Coach’s gold medal, which Goose admits. Lu asks him how he could do such a thing, and Goose bursts out: “I wanted to be him, Lu!” (141). Goose admits that even though his family took care of Coach when they were growing up, Goose always felt that Coach was better than him at everything.
Goose admits that Coach’s teasing about his stutter seriously hurt him: “My mother basically took care of him, and then around other people he’d just trash me” (142). Lu realizes that his father holds onto lingering hurt and bitterness against Coach. Lu makes Goose promise that he will return the medal to Coach at practice tomorrow. Goose tries to make an excuse, but Lu does not relent. Goose reluctantly agrees and Lu, before going inside for the night, tells Goose that he lost one of his earrings.
Chapter 8 Summary: “A New Name for Protection: A Shield… that Looks Like a Heart (Made of Fruit)”
Lu wakes up late the next morning and finds his mother already working on the day’s sculpture. He asks if the design is a heart, but Christina says it is a shield, which she says is “kind of the same thing, huh?” (145). She tells Lu that she spoke to his father after Lu went to bed and tries to explain how Goose’s stutter affected him growing up. She asks Lu to “imagine if you’re the one in your class who struggles. Who’s teased” (146), and Lu states that he does not have to imagine it, having always been teased because of his albinism. Christina reminds Lu that while his father has made mistakes in his life, he is human, and that sometimes “jokes cut deep” (147) and can have a lasting impact on someone.
Christina and Lu drive across town to deliver the heart-shield sculpture. Lu enters an office complex building and finds that the delivery is for a business called Sword and Stone, which makes collectible swords, shields, and armor. Lu asks the owner, Maria Gonzales, about the meaning of the name Sword and Stone, and she explains the legend of King Arthur pulling the sword from the stone and proving he was the one true king. When Lu returns, he sees his mother standing alongside the car, throwing up because of her pregnancy. For the rest of the day, Christina locks herself in the bathroom. She briefly opens the door to tell Goose that he needs to take Lu to practice.
Lu stares at himself in the mirror, repeating his usual mantra before practice. As he puts on his chain and earring, he realizes that he has been using his mantras as a shield, a way to “get ready for battle” (156), whether that be a race, or dealing with bullies like Kelvin. He also realizes that his jewelry is another kind of shield, passed down from his father. Unsure of his true motivation but following his instincts, Lu takes off every piece of jewelry and puts it back on his dresser.
Goose shows Lu the gold medal he plans to return to Coach. Lu holds the pristine medal carefully the entire way to practice “like it was a person. Like it was my little sister. Like it was a heart” (158). When they arrive at practice, Lu and Coach set up the hurdles and Lu takes out his contact lenses. As Lu takes his position to run, he hears the car door slam and knows Goose is approaching Coach.
Coach and Goose sit on the bench together, talking, while Lu watches from afar. He sees Coach rubbing his face and pinching the bridge of his nose. Later, Lu asks Goose what he and Coach talked about, but Goose only tells him that both men had things to say to each other and it “turns out we both kinda wanted what the other had” (167). For the rest of practice, Goose stays to help Lu walk back to the starting line after jumping the hurdles. He thanks Lu for seeing something “in me, that I didn’t even know were there” (164).
Coach ends practice, the last one before the championship, with a speech reminding the Defenders that he loves them and is proud of them. He tells them that the team is about the race “you’re running when no one’s looking” (166). Goose and Lu head home, stopping to pick up flowers for Lu’s mother, and find her asleep on the couch when they arrive.
Chapters 7-8 Analysis
These chapters emphasize Lu’s personal development and the formation of his convictions about what is right, and how to fix one’s wrongs. These burgeoning convictions distance him from his father, as symbolized when Lu loses one of his gold earrings during track practice. When his mother points out that his father will be upset about the missing earring, Lu flatly says: “What he gonna do, take these chains off my neck? [...] Because he can have them” (133-134). The earring, a gift from his father, shows that Lu is gradually pulling away from him as he forges his own path and struggles to reconcile the harm his father has caused.
Lu shows integrity and moral fortitude when he learns that his father still has Coach’s Olympic gold medal. This information does not sit well with Lu: “Those five words made the ride home feel like my skin was a suit I was too big for. Uncomfortable. Tight. Weird” (132). He feels physically uncomfortable knowing this information, but instead of sitting with it he decides to do something about it. He confronts his father, which makes Goose admit that he kept the medal because Coach’s teasing from when they were kids ate away at him. He tells Lu about his jealousy of Coach: “I wanted to be him, Lu!” (141). Goose’s admission shows the extent to which teasing from his youth affected his actions, and how these emotions have stayed with Goose into adulthood and continue to shape his actions, or inaction.
Lu is firm in his resolve when Goose tries to make excuses for why he never gave back the medal: “He doesn’t even know it was me. And the more time that went by, the harder it got” (143). Much like the hurdles Lu struggles with, Goose explains that the more time that passed made it harder for him to overcome his own hurdles. Lu insists that his father needs to return the medal: “Dad, you gotta give it back to him. You always telling me about fixing mistakes” (143). Lu believes that his father can still right the wrong that he did so many years ago and concludes the confrontation by telling his father that he lost his earring. Again, this illustrates that Lu wants to distance himself from his father’s wrongdoings and to show the differences between them.
While validating Lu’s anger, Lu’s mother also offers an important reminder: “All I’m saying is, he’s human too. And sometimes jokes cut keep. Deeper than we think. And if we don’t deal with them, if we don’t figure out how to somehow get over them, move past them, we have no idea what they can do to us” (147). This enables Lu to empathize with his father and understand that good people can make harmful errors. This lesson also causes Lu to realize that he too needs to somehow move past his lingering hurt from Kelvin’s bullying and anxiety about track. He realizes: “I always say my mantra as a way to get gassed up, get me ready to go face whatever. Practice. Races. Kelvins [...] maybe it was kinda like my version of armor” (155-156). Not wanting to repeat his father’s mistakes, Lu takes off his other earring and gold jewelry. He reflects on the meaning of wearing the jewelry: “Maybe for me, my kind of armor was made out of gold and diamonds. Made out of fly. Maybe it was passed down to me by my dad to somehow protect me from what got him” (156). His father gave Lu the gold jewelry to encourage him, a way to appear cool in front of others so that he would not enduring teasing because of his albinism. Lu, feeling ready to face the challenges before him, takes off his jewelry, showing that he no longer needs armor as a shield.
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