The Wizenard Series

by Kobe Bryant

  To young athletes who commit to doing the hard work. The process always pays off.

  —KOBE BRYANT

  PROLOGUE

  Before asking when, tell yourself how.

  WIZENARD PROVERB

  THE BUZZER WENT off, the game ended, and one boy sat alone.

  Fairwood was a riot of noise. The visiting team and their fans were laughing and cheering. One spectator had brought a foghorn and was letting it wail like the awakening of some prehistoric monster. But Reginald Mathers and his teammates were quiet. The West Bottom Badgers moved slowly among one another. Curt nods. Sunken shoulders.

  It was the first game of a new season, but it felt like an ending.

  Reggie looked down at the palms of his hands. Professor Rolabi Wizenard had brought them magic, actual magic, and they had still lost. It seemed as if all the promise of training camp had leached through the polished hardwood floorboards and disappeared forever. Of course it had.

  Tonight, Reggie had been promoted to the first sub off the bench, and he had failed spectacularly. He’d played five minutes, maybe, and been terrible the entire time. Turnovers. Missed jumpers. Burned on defense again and again. Reggie had let down the Badgers. Of course he had.

  Reggie watched his teammates exchange half-hearted encouragements. Some looked near tears. He stared at his hands again. Reggie felt bad for them. Them. That was the word written in the lines of his palms. Them instead of us.

  A minute later, Reggie followed his teammates into the locker room.

  “Right back where we started,” Twig said softly, breaking the silence.

  Reggie’s closest friend sounded defeated. Dazed. Reggie felt his stomach aching.

  Lab, the Badgers’ starting small forward and corner sharpshooter, shook his head. “I thought it was going to be different this year.”

  “We needed those threes at the end,” Peño said, his eyes locked on his younger brother.

  Lab scowled. “We needed less turnovers before that—”

  “You needed to get a rebound!” Peño shouted. “Not a single second-chance board—”

  “Hey!” Rain said, cutting in. “We all need to get better before next week. Period.”

  The room fell into unsettled silence and a few last glares. No one was going to argue with their star player after the incredible game that Rain had just played, but the tension remained. Reggie sensed resentment, and something sharper too.

  Professor Rolabi marched into the room, stopped, waited. As ever, he wore his black pin-striped suit, pleats ironed sharp enough to cut butter, and a candy-apple-red bow tie. His strange leather medicine bag hung closed at his side, its secrets locked away. His ice-blue eyes found Reggie.

  “We need more from you,” Rolabi said. “We need everything from everyone.”

  The professor stormed out again, and a new silence loomed so heavy that Reggie thought it might flatten him. Twig gave him a sympathetic pat on the knee, but Reggie barely even felt it.

  Rolabi had called him out in front of everyone. He had basically blamed Reggie.

  He vaguely heard the others saying goodbye as they left. Finally, Reggie was alone, still wearing his yellow uniform, and he shuffled out into the empty gym. Someone had turned off all but one row of garish overhead fluorescent panels, which cast just enough light for shadows.

  Reggie walked to center court, listening to his footsteps echo in the rafters. His chest felt as hollow as the gym. He had given everything to this sport, and it gave him nothing back. It pushed him away. It rejected him.

  Of course it did. He had expected something different this year. He wasn’t even sure what exactly . . . but after months of magic and hard work, he thought they could at least win.

  “Well,” Reggie said softly. “It was a nice thought while it lasted.”

  He didn’t even know who he was talking to. Rolabi or Fairwood or grana itself. He supposed it didn’t matter. Magic was good for stories, but it didn’t belong on a basketball court.

  Reggie nodded sadly, fixed his duffel over his shoulder, and headed out into the evening. The Bottom was waiting for him, as it always was.

  THE

  BOY AND HIS BALL

  Self-doubt is the beginning of defeat.

  WIZENARD PROVERB

  ON SATURDAY, REGGIE woke to the smell of coffee, black and strong, wafting in beneath his bedroom door. It was the aroma of Gran’s morning. Coffee first, then the sweetness of brown sugar on porridge, and finally a spray of cheap perfume before the clatter of the front door as she left for her shift at the diner.

  Six days a week. Ten hours per day. That’s what the smell of coffee meant.

  Reggie waited until she left, trying to fall back asleep. But his mind was awake and roaming. It was on blown ball games and missed chances and the lies Rolabi Wizenard had told the team. Lies. A harsh word, maybe, but Reggie couldn’t think of a better one. The professor had claimed that if they faced their fears, they could beat anyone. He had offered them hope.

  Reggie had almost believed it. Twig had shown him that picture book, The World of Grana, and it had all seemed so grand and mystical. The Wizenards had come to save the day. It was a nice story. And that was all.

  Reggie rolled over and stared at the sole object perched atop his dresser—a small wooden box without a hinge. The front was engraved with an intricate, hand-carved symbol. His mother had given it to him the year she’d died. She’d told him that she and his father had found it, and that it was very important, and that they wanted Reggie to hold on to it for them and keep it safe. He had dutifully stored it away and only opened it again years after they’d been killed, when he was eleven. While playing around with the box, he had found a false bottom and a note tucked inside.

  It read: He has emptied it. You must fill it. He will try to stop you at all costs.

  Reggie had swiftly tucked it away again, though the thrill of discovery remained. It was the sort of message that heroes found in Gran’s old stories. There was even a villain, whoever he was. At first, Reggie had no idea what the note meant, or why his parents had left it for him specifically. Over time, though, he’d formed dozens of theories, each more appealing than the last. Intergalactic warriors, dragons and knights, monsters and spies. Then, last summer during training camp, he had landed on an explanation that made so much sense, it had to be true.

  Reggie slid his legs off the bed and stood up, stretching his arms over his head and wincing as his fingernails scraped the loose stucco on the ceiling. His bedroom seemed to be shrinking rapidly by the day.

  Small as it was, the room had everything Reggie needed: a narrow cot, an old dresser that doubled as a desk—he could remove the lower drawers and slide a stool into the gap—and a coffin-size closet, which was more than sufficient for his meager collection of clothes. Most importantly, he had an empty trash bin in the corner with a backboard drawn on the wall above it in chalk. That bin had been the recipient of a hundred thousand game-winning socks.

  Besides, it could have been worse: P had to share the other bedroom with Gran, who snored so loudly, the windows rattled.

  Reggie went out to get a drink. Their apartment had four rooms: a bathroom, two small bedrooms, and a larger space that served as kitchen/dining/living room all in one. Butterscotch carpet covered the floors—even in the bathroom—all bordered by soap-green walls dotted with framed photos. They lived in a co-op apartment on Swain Street, infamous as the “Bottom of the Bottom” and widely considered to be the worst neighborhood in the entire country of Dren.

  He poured himself some juice and stared out a window, watching the
sun crawl over the Bottom cityscape. Shadows fled into narrow alleys or under sagging covered porches. Homes and buildings shed shingles and paint like molting birds. A few cars trundled down the street, most spewing regular puffs of black smoke.

  “Heads up!”

  He turned as P charged toward him with her ratty old soccer ball at her feet. Reggie’s little sister was rarely without the ball—it had been their father’s and probably predated even him. The yellowed patches were all worn and sprouting thread, and any logos had long since washed away. The ball was basically a third foot, and as P passed by, she rolled it between Reggie’s legs, whooping as she continued toward the fridge.

  “A little morning nutmeg for you!” she called over her shoulder.

  “Funny.”

  She poured herself a glass of juice, still rolling the ball around. “Brooding again?”

  P was eight years old and had only been one when the accident happened. She looked like Reggie, even if she didn’t want to admit it: skinny arms, chicken legs, dark skin, and a broad nose between copper eyes. She even had the same unruly black curls, though P left a few scant inches for braids where Reggie kept his short. Thankfully, she had at least been spared the scar that ran down his chin—Gran said he had taken a fall when he was little and split it open.

  “I don’t brood,” he said.

  “Is it because you stank yesterday?” P asked.

  Reggie rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Remember when we talked about honesty?”

  “And how it’s always the best policy—”

  “No,” he cut in. “We said that sometimes you can be too honest.”

  She downed her juice and wiped the orange mustache away. “That does sound familiar.”

  Reggie sighed. “What are you doing today?”

  “Kick around the park for a bit. Then homework so Gran doesn’t yell at me. You?”

  “Got practice,” he said. “Rolabi is probably going to make us run twenty miles.”

  “Come play soccer instead,” she suggested brightly.

  “I’ll play when you do,” he countered.

  That was a sore spot, and he knew it. P loved kicking the ball around by herself, but she refused to try out for a team, despite an invitation from the school’s coach. Reggie had tried a million times to convince her to go for it, but she flat out refused.

  P glared at him, then nutmegged him again on the way to her room. “No thanks.”

  She disappeared inside, and Reggie stared down at the city again. The morning sun caught the top of a huge bronze statue dominating the intersection at Finney and Loyalist. It was a depiction of a scowling President Talin, turning moss green as it aged, all of it speckled white compliments of the Bottom’s many pigeons. He was the second Loyalist Party president since the Split and even worse than his predecessor: Talin had ruled for twenty-nine authoritative years. He was far away in the capital city, Argen, but the statue was a reminder of his watchful eye. Reggie despised that statue more than anything . . . well, except for Talin himself.

  He checked the clock over the stove. It was time to start getting ready for practice.

  “Well,” Reggie said softly. “This should be fun.”

  * * *

  Reggie arrived at Fairwood early, as usual. He loved the time before practice. It was quiet and hopeful, and even a bench player like him could shine for a while in an empty sky. There were no cheers for makes, but there were no groans for misses either. It was a fair trade, given his percentages.

  Reggie laced up his sneakers, pausing for a moment to run his fingertips along the soft white leather. Gran had bought the shoes for him at the start of the season, and he knew very well what they represented. Hours and hours of overtime at the diner. Old hands worn raw from hot, soapy water and feet blistered from pacing tile floors. His school shoes were the same. His clothes. Everything had been bought with Gran’s sweat. And though he loved the white sneakers, guilt seeped in every time he looked at them.

  She believed in him. And she was wrong.

  Reggie launched into his normal warm-up routine—shooting casual jumpers from around the floor. He only had one rule: he always tried to make five hundred shots a day. He wasn’t even sure where the rule had come from, but he was very diligent about following it.

  As usual, Reggie began to rack up layups and free throws, the two easiest shots for him to hit. He practiced his form studiously. He tried to shoot like he was standing atop a crumbling mountain. He flicked his wrist. Pointed his toes. Kept his elbow in line with the hoop. He did everything that Rolabi had said.

  Twenty minutes and 113 makes in, Reggie hit a turnaround jumper on the post and ran to the free-throw line. He set his feet, dribbled once for focus, and then looked up to shoot.

  “Oh no,” he murmured.

  The hoop was gone. The glass backboard remained, as did the black metal struts stretching down from the ceiling. It was all there . . . except for a rim. Reggie looked around.

  “Rolabi?”

  He slowly walked under the backboard, then jumped and swatted, checking whether the mesh was invisible but still there. Nothing. Reggie had seen enough grana at work to know such things were possible. But he had yet to figure out how it worked, or why. In fact, he still knew almost nothing about grana apart from one important fact: it seemed to skip over him.

  The other players often spaced out during practices, consumed by their visions. Sometimes they disappeared and returned, then alluded to strange adventures. But not Reggie. He had of course experienced magical things during training camp, in the presence of Rolabi Wizenard and the whole team: the tiger, the castle, the crumbling mountaintop, the collapsing walls of the gym. But on those occasions, he had always assumed he was riding on his teammates’ coattails. Grana had otherwise ignored him. That in itself wasn’t a surprise.

  But why was it showing up for him now?

  “I hope you’re more useful for everyone else,” Reggie grumbled.

  He had a flash of hope, turned to the far hoop, and sighed. That one was gone too.

  “Figures.”

  He tried to think back to that picture book about Wizenards and grana that Twig had found. There didn’t seem to be anything in there about actually controlling grana. Reggie cleared his throat.

  “Well, grana. Magic. Whatever you are. I command you to bring the hoops back.”

  He waited for a moment.

  “Please?” he added hopefully.

  But the gym stood silent. There was no flash of magic. There was, of course, nothing.

  Just an idiot, a basketball, and nothing to do with it, Reggie thought glumly.

  He plunked onto the bench, figuring he would wait for the others to arrive. Grana liked them. Rain would probably get six hoops. Reggie rolled the ball around in his hands, feeling thoroughly miserable. When he looked up, the rims had reappeared. He grinned and started across the floor.

  “See, we can get along—” He stopped, nearly at the free-throw line. “Hey!”

  They had vanished again.

  “This isn’t funny!”

  Annoyed, he trudged back to the bench. And, once again, the hoops reappeared.

  “I get it,” he said. “Grana is a big, stupid jerk!”

  He flinched and looked up, hoping he wasn’t about to get crushed by a falling boulder or something. But as before, Fairwood just stared back at him.

  Hoping to calm his churning mind, Reggie started jogging around the perimeter of the court, dribbling as he went. As he rounded a corner, he paused and noticed something odd. The hoop materialized, but only when Reggie stood inside the corner. When he jogged along the sidelines or stepped closer to the hoop, it blinked away again. Reggie continued on, frowning. He tried the next corner, then another. Each time, the closest hoop returned. Did grana want him to shoot corner threes? Was it that malicious?

 
“You asked for it,” he muttered, and stopped at the next corner.

  Reggie loosened his shoulders, dribbled twice, and set up for the jumper. He wasn’t exactly sure why he was so terrible from the corner. A matter of angles, probably. It was supposed to be the easiest three-pointer to make, which only made his endless misses more infuriating. Reggie put up the shot. The ball clanked hard off the front rim and bounced away.

  “Happy?” he asked loudly. “I suck at corner threes. I knew that already.”

  He grabbed his rebound and moved to another spot on the floor . . . but once again, the hoop disappeared.

  “Perfect,” he said. “Only four hundred makes to go. I’ll be here for a month.”

  Reggie reluctantly started shooting corner threes. The next shot missed left. Then long.

  “Just drop!” Reggie shouted after missing a fourth attempt.

  He could feel his temper rising. When he ran to the corner and turned back for another attempt, things got worse. The hoop had shrunk to no bigger than the roll of masking tape Gran kept in the linen closet. Reggie rubbed his forehead in exasperation.

  He switched to his deepest, most Rolabi-like voice: “Go back to normal size. Now!”

  The tiny rim didn’t budge. Reggie took the shot, setting his feet and watching the ball arc perfectly toward the waiting hoop . . . where it plunked off the little metal circle and bounced away. He ran after it, thoroughly angry now.

  “I thought grana was supposed to help people!”

  He retrieved the ball at center court and turned back to the hoop. It was gone again. He stared at the backboard, fuming. Grana had helped his teammates. Naturally, it was taunting him.

  “I just want to play ball. We all know I stink. We all know I’m not going anywhere. If you’re trying to remind me of that, congratulations. You win. Reggie stinks. Now, are we done?”

  He looked around, saw nothing, and then nodded.

  “Good. Bring that hoop back right now and we can go on ignoring each other—”