Justin

by LJ Alonge

  “Nah,” I say. “That was just smart defense.”

  The point guard dribbles down the court with 100 percent control. On the whole, his team is older than the team they’re playing against. Their arms are still ripped, but they look a little softer. The point guard passes the ball into the post, to this guy with goggles who hasn’t shot all game. He’s at least six five, and he’s got that grown-man’s beard. For some reason, he’s being guarded by this short, stout guy. He looks to pass to the wing, the same pass he’s made all game, but he fakes it and turns to the basket for a hook shot. Game over. The losing team walks off, yelling at each other for letting the game slip away.

  “Hey, Frank,” I say. “Did you see that? That was all strategy.”

  “I wish I could get ripped like that.”

  Frank suggests we ask one of the players to be on our team. Maybe the tall, goggled guy. Maybe the little Hulk on the other team. He says they looked like the best players.

  Now that the game’s over, the teams playing the next game step onto the court. And that’s when I see her, the tall girl from Bushrod the other day. She stands under the basket and tosses in a couple of lay-ups with each hand. Then she slowly moves away from the basket, and after a few minutes, she’s all the way out behind the arc. Her hair is in a ponytail that runs down her back and shakes side to side every time she puts up a jumper. Her form is perfect: back straight, feet pointed toward the rim, elbow in close. It’s the kind of form that would make my dad cry out with delight. She sends the ball on its way with a quick flick of the wrist. It arcs high in the air and spins like it’s on some planetary axis before dropping straight through the net. She’s draining shots again and again; the ball barely hits the net and makes the kind of splashing sound that travels all the way around the court. None of the guys on the court talk to her.

  We’re almost the same height, but somehow the girl seems more comfortable standing there. When she’s not shooting, her arms hang easily at her sides. I move through the crowd and stand on her side of the court. She’s not even looking at anything except the rim, as if none of us are here. When she shoots, she runs after the ball, brings it back to the three-point line, and starts again. I count five dudes warming up with her. Mostly they’re older guys, with fading arm tattoos and chests that look both hard and soft at the same time.

  It’s only after someone shoots for takeout that they realize there are eleven people on the court.

  “I had next,” the girl says.

  “Yeah,” a guy with a headband says. “You got next next.”

  “Nah, I’ve been here,” she says. “You can have next next.”

  “AJ,” the dude says, turning to someone else, “who had next?”

  “Pretty sure you did,” AJ says.

  At which point I feel it’s necessary I step in, if for no other reason than the fact that Don Quixote would’ve done the same.

  “Sirs,” I say, “I believe the lady had next.”

  And next thing I know, I’ve been punched in the head, knocked to the ground, and from what I can gather, there’s a scrambling as phones are pulled out. Various OHHHHs ring and echo all around me. The ground is liquid under me. I feel myself being half dragged to the side of the court. As I try to get up, there’s more commotion, and I know intuitively that Frank has jumped in from the sidelines to raise hell. But these are grown men, not high-school kids, and as I’m about to get up, Frank comes flying into me. We both fall into the bleachers.

  I can almost hear the Internet cables surging as people upload their videos.

  I have to hold Frank back for his own good. As we walk back to the water fountains, I tell him he’s got blood running out of his nose.

  “Fuck you,” he says. “So do you.”

  There’s a throbbing around my right eye. As I splash cold water on it, I can hear the ball bouncing back and forth up the court. They’ve started the game without her. But after a couple of minutes, Frank’s laughing. He says anyone who’s never lost a fight has never really fought. It’s almost pitch black at this end of the park. A tallish figure walks up to us. I can feel Frank tense up.

  “That was dumb,” the girl says. Not what I was expecting to hear.

  “Yeah, thanks a lot,” Frank says. “We were trying to help you.”

  “Don’t need anybody’s help. This stuff happens to me all the time. I’m used to it.”

  “Whatever,” Frank says. He moves closer to her in the dark. “You were at Bushrod the other day.”

  “Yeah,” she says. She says she lives in Sacramento during the school year but stays with her grandmother during the summer to work at her store in Fruitvale. At night she tries to find a few runs, but no one will let her on. She’s tried everywhere. She came to Bushrod with her cousin to check it out and see what kinds of players we had. She wasn’t impressed.

  “You’re a lot finer with jeans on,” Frank says.

  She smacks her lips.

  And do you know what I do next? I start to cry. A big massive level-five hurricane of gulps and tears and snot. Think about everything that’s happened in the past two weeks: I’ve burned down a good friend’s store, duped my mom and stepdad into buying me shoes I know they can’t afford, and just gotten my ass kicked in front of a girl I’d never met but am already in love with.

  “Yo,” Frank says. “You crying?”

  “Nah,” I say, pretending to blow my nose into my shirt.

  “Yeah, man. You are.”

  “Frank! Goddamn it!”

  My eye’s just about swollen shut, but in the darkness I can feel her looking at me. Somehow, I know it’s the kind of look you give to a bird with a broken wing. I’m sure she’ll never be into me, not with the two first impressions I’ve given her. But, in a way, it’s liberating. Now I don’t have to worry about being this Casanova, this man of a thousand women. And that feeling is kind of nice, I guess. Kind of freeing.

  “Janae,” she says.

  “Justin,” I say.

  With nothing left to lose, I tell her everything. I tell her about the boys from Ghosttown, how they’ll probably beat us and suck our spirits from our bodies. I tell her we’ve got no chance. I tell her about White Mike and Adrian, how they might not even play but that they’re the best we got. I tell her I’m the worst.

  “I’ll play,” she says, shrugging. “When do we practice?”

  CHAPTER 10

  POP

  The next morning Pop shows up at the house. He’s yelling at Mom through the door, asking if she would consider taking him back. He’s completely sloshed, I can tell. He’s singing random lyrics from Barry White songs. From my room I can hear Mom say that if he doesn’t get off the property, she’s going to call the police.

  “Babe!” Pop shouts.

  “Don’t babe me,” Mom says.

  “Don’t babe my wife,” Mr. Hunter says.

  “Who died and made you king?” Pop says.

  “You did,” Mr. Hunter says, “when you left this family.”

  “I did not leave this family via free will.”

  Mr. Hunter snorts. “Well, you shouldn’t even be here right now.”

  “Why not open this door and tell me what I should or shouldn’t do to my face?”

  Mr. Hunter has the spindly legs of a long-distance runner; no doubt Pop would crush him like an empty soda can if things ever got physical. But with Mom standing there, Mr. Hunter says maybe he will open the door. Maybe he’ll open the door and show Pop what a real man is. Pop laughs and says he’s waiting. Mr. Hunter says he’s sure that’s what he would want, for him to go to jail on an assault charge and leave Mom wide open for the taking.

  Mom says she no one’s freaking property.

  “Sorry,” Mr. Hunter says, slinking back to their bedroom.

  It goes on like this all morning. Mom calls the police, but they never com
e.

  “I’ve heard people sayyyy,” Pop sings, “toooo much of anything ain’t good for you.”

  I put on my shorts and Chucks and head for the door.

  “And where do you think you’re going?” Mom asks.

  “It’s a long story,” I say.

  Mom gives me a look. The look.

  “He got me out of a tight spot the other day. He says I owe him.”

  “Owe him what? He’s your father. That’s what he’s supposed to do.”

  “Does it sound like he’s leaving?”

  “So what are you going to do?” Mom asks.

  “I’m going to make sure he doesn’t come back.”

  When I get outside, I eye Pop warily. The smell of beer cuts through the smells of the early morning. He puts his hands up to show he means no harm. We walk in silence for a few blocks. He walks out in front of me, sometimes reaching up to slap a stop sign. A garbage truck pulls up next to us, and burly guys in neon vests fling giant bags of trash into the compactor. Pop pulls a cigarette out of his pocket.

  “Want one?” he asks.

  “No,” I say.

  “Just testing you.”

  When we get to Bushrod, Dad takes his coat off, folding it delicately and laying it under the basket we used to play on. In the movies, this is the part where you play against your dad, where you hash things out, maybe settle old scores with the most intense game either of you have ever played. Afterward he moves back in, reunites with Mom, and you guys live happily ever after.

  “Let’s play to twenty-one,” Pop says.

  He pulls a partially deflated ball out from under a bench nearby. Pop dribbles it through his legs and lays it up.

  “It’s a little on the flat side, but it works. So are you playing or not?” he asks, breathing hard.

  “Why won’t you leave me alone?” I ask.

  He doesn’t answer. Instead, he steps behind the three-point line and shoots. He waits a second, then cheers when the ball goes in.

  “One game of twenty-one,” he says. “Then I’ll leave you alone.”

  “Whatever.”

  He checks the ball to me, and I check it back to him. He shoots, almost from half-court.

  “Three–nothing,” he says.

  I find myself playing harder. I don’t know why, but I go for blocks and steals. I back him down. I elbow him in the chest and back.

  “Game point,” I say, checking the ball to him.

  His shirt is soaked all the way through. He’s wheezing. He peels his hands off his knees to check the ball back.

  When I drive around him, he doesn’t even move. I raise my hands when I lay it up like Champion of the World.

  “That’s it,” I say. “Leave me alone. Don’t talk to me; don’t ask me to play ball again.”

  Pop sits down heavily. He leans over and spits out blood. He’s laughing. “It was never about ball, Justin. Never.”

  CHAPTER 11

  AN UPDATE ON OMAR

  I think about Omar a lot. I dream about him, actually. He appears in my dreams sometimes right in the middle of the sky, like the moon, his face brown and unhappy. Sometimes in other dreams, I’m running through dark woods, tripping over branches and running into tree trunks. There’s somebody hunting me, and I know it’s him. It’s possible I might have this dream for the rest of my life.

  A few days ago it rained unexpectedly, and the last of Omar’s shit was soaked through. He sat there in the rain, not moving. After the storm passed, he packed up all his stuff into a grocery bag, leaving only the plastic folding table, which someone had snagged by the next morning. Frank says Omar went back to Nigeria, but I don’t want to believe him. I want to believe that there’s still time to fix things; I want to believe that it’s possible to undo things you wish you’d never done.

  CHAPTER 12

  ALL-STARS

  At night, my crack team of ballers gets together. By then the kids at Bushrod are gone. The trash from their games circles the court like remnants of a wasteful civilization. We are a sad collection of talent, horribly out of place under the court’s floodlights. Adrian doesn’t have basketball shorts, so he wears jeans. White Mike is always looking over his shoulder, expecting someone to notice him. Janae scowls at everything except the rim, which, in secret moments, she almost smiles at. On the first night, Frank and I stood to the side and watched Janae, Adrian, and Mike warm up. They said nothing and stood awkwardly near each other, the only noise coming from the clanking rim. Frank usually comes to practice tired, having spent all day entertaining Adrian’s sister via bootleg DVDs and stolen Candygrams (“Nothing ever happens,” he complains, his voice heavy with disappointment). But that night Frank stands with his arms folded across his chest, looking like a satisfied coach.

  “I’m a genius,” he says.

  “We’re going to get killed,” I say.

  “Oh, yeah. That’s a fact. But at least we’ll be out there.”

  Adrian’s too shy for most conversation. He’s resistant to Frank’s wet-fart jokes or my flailing attempts at Klingon. White Mike admires Adrian’s closeness to the “majesty of silence.” He says there are monks in Tibetan villages who don’t come close. The most we get out of Adrian is a grunt/snort thing when he zooms up the court to chase a rebound or corral a loose ball.

  “What’s your problem?” Frank asked him the other night, his hands curling in pseudo sign language. “Say something.”

  Adrian shrugged. Often, when we’re done playing, he’ll sit at half-court and use his fingers to trace strange shapes in the dirt that none of us can make out. Muskrats perched on the pyramids? Dinosaurs entering a pharmacy? Seven-eyed bison? It’s the work of a kid who dreams in a different dimension. But that night he wiped some sweat off his forehead with his finger and drew stick figures in the dust. It was so simple, it took me a second to recognize myself. But there I was, standing a head above everybody else, not the ostrich-necked caricature I usually think I look like, but a simple mass of arms, legs, neck, head. It was almost elegant. I didn’t notice I was smiling until I saw Adrian smiling back at me.

  “My biceps,” Frank interrupted. “Make them bigger.”

  And what about White Mike? He comes to the court in a hoodie and sunglasses. He can’t really dribble or shoot or pass, and he jogs in a heavy-shouldered rumble up and down the court.

  “I know where my strengths lie,” he said once, after Frank begged him to shoot a wide-open lay-up. He passed the ball to me, and I made a bank shot from the free-throw line.

  It’s become an unspoken rule to discuss his past with a certain delicacy.

  “Funny how we’re all kinda friends now,” I offer tonight.

  “Funny, indeed,” Mike says.

  “Never would’ve thought I’d be hanging out with a kid like you.”

  “A kid like me?”

  “Who was, like, on TV and stuff.”

  “What’s past is past. I think that’s a good thing. Everyone you meet has had multiple lives, multiple versions of themselves in this one life.”

  And so I stay up tonight thinking about all of us, the misfits and outcasts, our hair cut weirdly and our arms praying-mantis long, our secret pleasures too dorky, our gifts too embarrassing, our pasts too painful, waiting for a chance to find one another.

  Even Janae, in her own way, has started to come around. She’s our best player. Frank won’t admit it, probably because he didn’t pick her (the fact that she’s a girl might have something to do with it, too), but the rest of us know it. It’s hard to describe, but watching her is like watching a great dancer or listening to a great singer or watching a dolphin jumping out of water. It’s watching someone do something they’ve been designed to do. Her shot is automatic, relaxed, and smooth.Her wrist barely flicks, all the movements so connected, it’s hard to distinguish one part from the next. Frank
watches her jealously, but I like to stand at hovering distance while she warms up.

  “Hi,” I say as she takes practice shots from three.

  She flicks her wrist, and the ball travels in a soft arc, hitting the front of the rim. She steps back and goes through her motion again, trying to figure out what went wrong. Little beads of sweat gather at the edge of her forehead.

  “Stop staring,” she says.

  “Sorry,” I mumble.

  Tonight I’m standing closer to Janae than I ever have before. We’re playing two-on-two, and it’s my turn to guard her.

  “Get closer,” Frank says when I guard her. She’s a bucket away from winning.

  “I’m already close,” I say.

  “Closer.”

  Because we’re almost the same height, my chest hovers close to hers. It doesn’t seem right to have my hands swarming around her body, so I keep them close to my sides. To my surprise, she doesn’t smell like anything at all. When she gives a head fake, my mouth brushes against her cheek.

  I step back and put my hands up like I’ve been caught in the middle of a crime. “Sorry,” I say. “Sorry.”

  But as soon as I step back, she puts the shot up, and before it’s even halfway to the rim, she calls game.

  CHAPTER 13

  HERE GOES NOTHING

  The boys from Ghosttown show up in a purple minivan. I expected something different, a luxury bus maybe. A private jet. Something shocking or intimidating. There’s something about the minivan that reduces their terror factor a ton.

  There’s a crowd gathering now. A few people bring blankets so they can watch the slaughter from the grass. Ms. Mayfair is here, and so is Ray the Barber, taking bets on the side. Similac and the rest of the boys park themselves under one of the baskets. They look at us with these satisfied smiles, like we’re on the way to the electric chair.

  All the guys from Ghosttown wear arm sleeves and headbands. Some of them still have the tags on their shoes. They stretch nonchalantly with tearaway Windbreakers half-open. They don’t even warm up seriously. Instead of shooting lay-ups or jumpers, they chuck the ball one-handed from half-court or shoot the ball backward from the sideline. One of their players does 360 dunks so easily, it looks like he’s not even trying. He jumps so high, it looks like he might need a parachute.