by Kobe Bryant
He looked up and froze. The orb had returned.
It was floating over center court like a miniature black hole, wobbling and wavering and unstable. Alfie couldn’t look away. Like a real black hole, the orb seemed to be inexorably drawing him in.
Alfie took off, running for the orb like he was in the hundred-meter dash. He had just about grabbed it when the orb zoomed out of reach, and the rest of the team joined the chase. Once again, everything descended into chaos as the players scrambled and shouted and laughed. Rain ended up on the ground, Peño and Lab collided, and Big John tripped. The orb was too cunning.
It finally flew into a wall and vanished, and Alfie slumped, disappointed.
“Still up for that scrimmage?” Peño asked.
“Nah,” Rain said grumpily. “Let’s just get out of here.”
No one argued. Alfie sat down and slipped off his shoes, wrinkling his nose at the sour smell. His mom was going to spray his bag with lavender again. He made a mental note to sit as far as possible from Big John tomorrow. He had an excellent nose when it came to lavender.
Alfie sighed, put his shoes away, and took out his cell phone to text his mom for a ride.
“A waste of time?” Reggie asked loudly. “Why?”
Alfie looked over, frowning. Reggie almost never raised his voice.
“Because he lost,” A-Wall said.
“Who cares!” Rain snarled. “What did that game have to do with basketball?”
“Everything,” Reggie replied. “It was about playing defense the right way. As a team.”
Rain sprang to his feet. “It was a stupid game. You play D by stopping the ball. And you win by scoring. By me scoring. And we aren’t getting any closer to winning by me not working on my shot. This is a big year for me.”
“You mean for us,” Lab said, sounding a little hurt.
“Yeah,” Rain said. “Rain Adams and the West Bottom Badgers.”
He stormed out, slamming the doors, and the rest of the team fell into a moody silence. Alfie was stunned. Rain rarely lost his cool. Alfie looked at Reggie, making sure he was okay, but he was just shaking his head. Alfie glanced at the doors again. Why was Rain so upset over a drill?
The team began to file out, and Reggie walked over to Alfie and extended a fist for props.
“See you tomorrow, Twig,” he said.
Alfie met his fist, smiling. No one had ever given him props before.
“Yeah,” he said. “Thanks.”
“I guess you don’t need heart to be the number one prospect, after all,” Reggie said.
Alfie shrugged. “Maybe not. I bet you need it to be more than a prospect, though.”
Reggie looked at him for a moment and then headed for the door, laughing.
“Twig the Sage.”
Jerome and Big John were the last to leave. But just as they were walking for the exit, Big John hung back, letting Jerome go ahead. Alfie felt his heart pounding. He had never been alone with Big John. He grabbed his duffel bag and started for the door.
He was halfway there when Big John approached him.
“So you still think you starting, huh?” he said.
Alfie froze. Should he just run? No. That was the old Alfie. He turned to face Big John. “I don’t know.”
Big John walked toward him, eyes narrowed. “And you think you deserve that? To start over me? In this place? In the Bottom?”
“I don’t know.”
Big John stopped in front of him, eyeing him up and down, measuring him.
“That’s your problem,” he said. “You don’t know anything.”
“Why do you keep going after me?” Alfie asked. “You know it’s not my choice whether I start or not.”
“Because you don’t belong here. You ain’t a real Bottom kid.”
Alfie had rehearsed this conversation a million times since yesterday. He wanted to connect with him. He wanted Big John to know that he was just here to play ball the same as him.
“I live in the Bottom too—” Alfie started.
“The burbs,” Big John cut in. “The nice parts. The rich boy part. And here you are taking more stuff away. You know where I live, Twig? In the real Bottom.”
Big John stepped so close that Alfie could feel his breath on his face.
“I got nothing there, man. Nothing. Just ball to get me out. And you came to take it.”
“I came to play basketball,” Alfie said. “I don’t want to take anything.”
“But you are. And until you prove you deserve to be here, you don’t.”
“Then I’ll prove it,” Alfie said quietly, holding Big John’s eyes.
Big John seemed to reconsider him. He opened his mouth, closed it, then snorted.
“We’ll see. Go put some meat on those bones, boy. You ain’t doing nothing as a twig.”
The doors slammed behind him, and the words stayed. Alfie suddenly felt tired. Weak. His courage was a distant dream. It had taken everything he had not to back away from Big John.
I thought I was getting stronger, he thought glumly. I’m not. I’m just pretending.
He started for the doors. His father would remind him of the same thing later.
He always did.
In a flash, the doors moved upward, out of Alfie’s reach. The floor sloped and became pockmarked with hundreds of shallow grooves. Alfie yelped and threw himself down as the whole gym teetered and rotated, as though a giant had picked up the building and turned it on its side. Alfie started sliding and just managed to grab on to two of the handholds, clinging there.
The floor had become a cliffside.
“Help me!” he shouted. “Someone, help! Big John! Rolabi!”
There was no answer. Alfie clung to the floor and stared up at the door, which still stood upright, as if perched on the edge of the cliff. Then he glanced over his shoulder. The ground below was a hundred feet away, and solid brick. His eyes filled with tears, streaming down, clogging his throat.
“Please!” he screamed. “Somebody.”
He clung there desperately. Seconds ticked by. His fingers began to ache and burn.
“Anyone!” he cried.
He knew he couldn’t hold himself up for much longer. No one was coming. Just the fall.
He pressed his forehead to the hardwood. He had to get up there. He had to try. He swung his feet around until he found small grooves for his toes. And then he started to climb.
The grooves were loosely spread and shallow, so he had to stretch and grip with every ounce of strength he had. His muscles raged. His fingers shrieked. But he had no choice but to go on, and so he kept climbing. When he finally reached up and touched the doors, the gym straightened, and he found himself lying face-first on the ground. His whole body was throbbing, stretched, worn.
We are climbing every minute of the day. How can we be weak?
Alfie lay there, his cheek pressed against the floorboards, soaked with sweat and tears and snot and unable to even lift a finger. He smiled. For the first time in his life, he felt strong.
ALFIE STARED AT the bathroom mirror—his reflection cracked and marked with stains. His face was gaunt and sallow as ever. Angry zits dotted his cheeks. He ran his fingers over them, considering.
He’d left the gym last night feeling strong, but it hadn’t lasted. His father had made him walk through his “hall of accomplishments”—a room in their basement filled with trophies, ribbons, and medals. He had been a collegiate ball player and had lots of success, but he had never made it further. It was bad coaching. Bad teammates. Bad anybody but Alfie’s dad.
His fingers fell on a zit, nail waiting above it. He wanted to pick. Not just to get rid of the zit. To get rid of something. To stare at his reflection and scream: “I am in control.” He tried to fight it. Willed himself to stop. But the weakness was there. H
e reached for his cheeks.
He stopped as words began to appear in the mirror, written this time with silvery ink.
Alfie stared at the words and lowered his hand. Then he nodded and walked out.
He realized to his surprise that Rain was sitting on the away bench. Alfie sat down on the far end, watching Rain take out his shoes. Rain stared at something inside his bag for a moment, and his expression became . . . sad. Even guilty. Alfie wondered what was in the bag.
“How you feeling today?” he asked.
Rain turned to him, raising his eyebrows. “Fine. You?”
“Nervous, I guess. It’s been a little crazy. Don’t know what to expect.”
Rain started to laugh. “Yeah . . . it’s been crazy, all right. Since when do you talk?”
“I always talked,” Alfie said defensively. “Just nobody wants to listen.”
Rain seemed to consider that. “So why aren’t you avoiding me like the rest of the team?”
Alfie stood up and stretched, glancing over at the others. “I don’t think they’re avoiding you. You got upset yesterday. That’s all right. We all do sometimes. I do, well . . . a lot of times.”
“I basically said I was the team.”
Alfie grabbed his ball. “Who can blame you? It’s what you’ve been told.”
He started onto the court, taking an experimental dribble through his legs. He didn’t dribble much during games—Freddy yelled at him whenever he tried. No threes! No dribbling!
His job was just to stand by the net and get rebounds. It always felt a bit . . . stifling.
He put up a three-pointer and hit it, smiling despite himself.
“So there, Freddy,” he muttered.
“Gather around,” a deep voice said. “Put the balls away.”
Alfie glanced at the clock. Nine already. Rolabi had appeared.
Alfie and Rain joined the others, and he noticed a lot of dark looks directed at Rain. Strangely, Alfie felt defensive. Rain wasn’t so bad. He was cocky, to be sure, but Alfie could use a little more of that himself. Alfie wondered if they could even become friends, given Rain’s newfound lack of options. He found himself standing closer to Rain in a show of support.
“Today we are going to work on offense,” Rolabi said. “We’ll start with passing: the foundation of all offense. What do all the great passers have?”
Alfie had no idea. He considered himself a pretty good passer, but he wasn’t sure what made him one. He just threw the ball where it needed to go and never really thought about it. It was likely part of his not wanting to shoot and get lectured—he was a pass-first kind of player.
“Vision,” Peño said.
“Very good. A great passer must be quick and agile and bold. But mostly, they must have vision. Both of what is and what will soon come. They must see everything on the floor.”
Lab looked confused. “So, we just have to practice seeing more?”
“Yes,” Rolabi said. “And the best way to start is by seeing nothing at all.”
It suddenly went dark. Not just nighttime dark, when streetlights and the moon turned the streets of Alfie’s neighborhood to sullen shades of gray. This blackness was complete, as though there had never been light before and never would be again. Full. Close. Almost heavy. Alfie felt a tingle run down his neck and spun around warily.
In the dark, we only have our fears.
Alfie flinched. I’ve never seen darkness like this, he thought.
Then this is a good place to start.
Alfie tried to stay calm. He heard breathing and shuffling and whispered conversations as the others argued and panicked. They were still in the gym. Nothing had changed. But he was uneasy. He felt like someone was creeping up on him and he’d be attacked. Every muscle was tense.
If you feel like this in the dark, you feel it in the light too. You have buried the unease.
Suddenly the darkness diminished, interrupted by an orange, flickering light. Alfie stood in a long corridor of rough concrete and arched stone, the walls inset with countless black steel doors. The orange light came from the ends of the corridor, behind and in front of Alfie, but he couldn’t see the source. He whirled around, his heart pounding.
“Professor Rolabi?” he called.
His voice echoed in either direction. Both paths were identical. Endless corridor and countless doors. The doors were unmarked and black as night, each with a simple ebony door handle. Alfie chose a direction and started walking, then running, then sprinting until he was dripping sweat.
He stopped, bent over, gasping.
“Risks are frightening things,” a deep voice said.
Alfie looked up and saw Rolabi standing in front of him, his head brushing the ceiling.
“Where am I?” Alfie asked.
“So many doors, yet you didn’t try a single one. Why?”
Alfie stood up, hand grasping at a cramp in his side. “Well, I don’t know what’s behind them.”
“Exactly,” Rolabi said. “When we fear the unknown, we avoid it. We let our fears define the possibilities around us. We imagine that this one leads to failure. Here loneliness. Here heartbreak. The world becomes cruel.”
Alfie frowned, turning to the closest door. Unmarked. Ominous.
“Go on,” Rolabi said. “Release another tiger.”
In one motion, Alfie pulled open the door and stepped inside. The space surrounding him was black, but he smelled must and rot and heard his teammates shuffling around and, over that, Rolabi’s deep voice explaining the drill.
Don’t assume that darkness contains danger.
Alfie thought about that. About waiting for Big John to taunt him. Or for his dad to lecture him. For acne to form. For himself to pick. He was always waiting for something bad.
In a sense, he was always in the dark. How would he get out of it?
Open doors.
“We will go until one team wins,” Rolabi said. “The losing team will run.”
“You really like making us run,” Big John complained.
“Never underestimate the value of sweat. It can forge the greatest change.”
Alfie perked up at that. He had been thinking about the mystery of the disappearing sweat for two days now and about the image he had seen of the silvery beating heart. Was Fairwood somehow collecting their sweat? If so, gross. And more important . . . why?
“Starters versus last year’s bench,” Rolabi said. “Starters will go first. Find the ball.”
That proved to be a challenge. Alfie walked around like a zombie with his arms in front of him, jerking every time he felt a wall or bleachers or another wandering player. Eventually, he kicked something, jumped about a foot in the air, and then listened to the ball bounce away.
“There it is! I just kicked it!” he shouted.
“I’m on it!” Lab said, followed by a flurry of activity. “Got it!”
“Now into position,” Rolabi said. “Line up beneath the net.”
That took another few minutes. Alfie heard the defenders getting into position at half. Everyone was talking and grumbling and thoroughly disoriented in the pitch-blackness. He sensed this was going to be a complete disaster. He felt around him and touched a shoulder.
“Who’s touching me!” A-Wall shouted. “Stay away, ghost!”
Alfie almost apologized, but then leaned closer. “Boo!”
“Ah!” A-Wall shouted, and Alfie had to stifle a laugh.
“Okay, I’m going!” Peño said, though where he was moving, Alfie had no idea.
It was indeed a disaster. Not only did his team lose the ball, but Alfie ran straight into a very broad chest and ended up on his butt for the second time in three days. Fresh pain shot through his tailbone, which was still sore from his last unplanned trip to the floor. He rolled and groaned.
“Sorry,�
�� Devon said.
“No problem,” Alfie wheezed, slowly climbing back up.
“Switch,” Rolabi said.
The bench didn’t make it to half.
“Hmm,” Rolabi said. “Perhaps we will work up to complete darkness.”
Out of nowhere, a glowing scarlet orb appeared, floating about six feet up in the air—or perhaps sitting on the bleachers. Someone picked it up, and the shape went bobbing off through the darkness.
The glowing helped. Alfie managed to catch the ball on the first try when it came to him, and he made a pass to Lab. But when they reached half-court and the other team, play broke down again. It was impossible to find his teammates, and he lobbed the ball right into the triumphant hands of Jerome—which he knew only because Jerome shouted: “Stolen!”
“Switch sides,” Rolabi said.
Neither the bench nor the starters could get past the defenders. Alfie had tripped three times already, but he was getting better. His other senses had adapted somewhat, and he found he could focus on his teammates’ individual voices and breathing. Everyone had their own tune: a mix of squeaks and huffs and short gasps of breath. It was the world’s strangest orchestra.
Finally, Peño managed to break through and catch the ball on the far end. The fluorescent lights blinked back on, forcing Twig to squint and shield his eyes.
“The starting team wins,” Rolabi announced. “Water break.”
“That’s it, boys!” Peño said.
He walked over and surprised Alfie with a high five.
“Thanks,” Alfie said, flushing.
Rain was already heading for the away bench, and Alfie could tell that he was feeling lonely. Alfie knew all about that. He joined him and took a drink, finishing the bottle at once.
“That was crazy,” he said, wiping his chin.
“Yeah,” Rain replied. “Though compared to the tiger, it was nothing.”
“True.”
“The losing team will run at the end of practice,” Rolabi said. “The winning team can decide then if they want to join them.”
