by Kobe Bryant
“He met your mother there. She was more than his match, let me tell you. His life was coming along beautifully. It ended too soon, of course. But for me, remembering him in his cap and gown always gives me joy. He had already earned his dream.”
She squeezed his fingers.
“I don’t care if you become a professional ball player. You have chosen that path. But I do care that you are happy. That you left nothing behind. You told me you love ball more than anything. You said you wanted to be a professional. You claimed that you would do anything to reach that dream. Have you?”
He thought about her story. About his father working day and night.
“No,” he said softly.
“Well,” she said. “Then I guess you know what to do.”
Gran squeezed his hand and shut the bedroom door, leaving him with the silence and his steaming peppermint tea. He took a big sip, picturing his mother sitting by the window, and his father standing proudly in his graduation cap. Reggie fell asleep smiling with the empty mug perched against his pillow, giving off the last faint whiffs of peppermint.
* * *
The next morning, Reggie woke early. When Gran came out of her room, he already had breakfast going, and the smell of bacon tempted P out of bed as well. It was Saturday, and not technically family breakfast day, but he had wanted to surprise Gran before she left for work.
Of course, he had managed to burn the bacon again. He always seemed to be hitting imagined jumpers when he should have been flipping. He laid the plates out, forcing a smile.
“A little overcooked,” he murmured.
P snorted. “It looks like a piece of coal.”
“It will do,” Gran said. “That said, it’s a Saturday, dear. It’s seven in the morning. You are aware of this, yes?”
Reggie shrugged. “I wanted an early start today.”
“On a Saturday?” P asked, yawning and shoveling down some bacon at the same time.
“Well, it’s a good thing,” Gran said. “P, you can spend a full day on your homework.”
“Homework—” P started.
“Yes,” Gran said. “And then you can explain the B you got on your last math test.”
Reggie glanced at P, surprised. P had been getting straight As for as long as he could remember, and judging by her scowl, she had been just as surprised. She dug into her potatoes.
“I don’t care about math,” she said through a mouthful.
“And I don’t care about bills, yet they seem to care about me,” Gran said.
“What are you talking about, P?” Reggie said. “You were always good at math—”
“And now I’m not,” she snapped. “I thought we were talking about you.”
Reggie exchanged a look with Gran. P was rarely moody, and never about schoolwork. She had always had an easy time with it. Reggie got good grades, but he had to work for them.
“What’s going on?” Reggie asked quietly.
P dug into her food. “I don’t need math. It’s a waste of time.”
“Soccer players should still be well-rounded in all subjects—” Gran started.
“I’m not going to be a soccer player!” P cut in, dropping her fork. “You know that. There’s only one girls’ team in the Bottom, and they’re three years older than me. And they still stink. There are no good soccer players in the Bottom, including me. Why do you keep bringing it up?”
“Patricia Lynn Mathers,” Gran said. “What has gotten into you?”
“Nothing—”
“Tell me,” Gran said softly.
There was a tense moment of silence, and then P started to push her food around.
“It was Hagatha,” P muttered.
“Not again,” Gran said, rubbing the bridge of her nose. “Her name is Agatha.”
“You’ve clearly never met her,” P said.
Reggie frowned. “What did Haga . . . she say?”
P chewed on her bacon for a moment. “Well, you know Hagatha. She always has to say something. She was making fun of me because I had my soccer ball out in the cafeteria and—”
“I told you to leave the ball at home,” Gran muttered.
“And she started going on like ‘Where do you think you’re going with that ratty old ball tied to your feet, anyway? You think you’re going somewhere special? That thing belongs in the trash.’ And obviously that’s not what I think, but she is just so annoying—”
“What does this have to do with your math test?” Gran asked.
“Oh, well, I shoved Hagatha, got in trouble, and then I was distracted for my test. So, you know, now I hate math. And obviously Hagatha was a given.”
Gran dabbed the side of her mouth, expressionless. “So we allow the opinions of others to dictate our interests now?” she asked.
“No,” P muttered. “It was dumb to get angry. I already know I’m not going anywhere—”
Reggie’s heart ached at the tone of her voice. At the defeat.
Gran leaned across the table, pointing a wrinkled finger. “Patricia, you can do anything—”
“I set my mind to?” P finished sharply. “Really? I keep hearing people say that. We can all do anything. So how come nobody does? How come everyone is in the Bottom?”
“It’s a hard road from here, yes—” Gran said.
“It’s impossible.”
P pushed her plate away and stormed off to her room. Reggie stared at her empty chair.
“Do you want me to talk to her?” he asked.
“Give her some time. I’ll talk to her when I get home. Now eat your breakfast.”
Reggie sighed and put his fork down. “The bacon really is terrible.”
She laughed. “Yes, it is. Before you become a star, you have got to learn how to focus.”
“One thing at a time,” Reggie said ruefully.
“If I have to eat one more meal of yours, I won’t live to see you become a star anyway.”
Reggie started clearing the plates, thinking about Gran’s story about his father.
“I’m going to be at Fairwood a lot this week,” Reggie said quietly.
Gran was headed for the bathroom, but from the corner of his eye, he caught her smiling.
“Good,” she said.
--
DEFENSE FIRST
Talent is a seed. To flourish, it must be watered with sweat.
WIZENARD PROVERB
REGGIE ARRIVED AT Fairwood under a hot September sun. It was a drowsy Saturday morning as usual in the Bottom, and he had taken the bus today to get as much gym time as possible. He listened as it trundled away behind him, carrying no one nowhere.
He faced the gym for a moment, watching the morning sun bake the pink bricks. The first four games seemed to hang over it. The fog. The fight. P’s expression in the bleachers. He was almost reluctant to go in. Why did he keep disappointing himself? Why did he subject himself to a game that clearly didn’t love him back? He could still just walk away.
Reggie stood alone in front of the old community center, thinking, doubting, but ultimately knowing his path. It was, as ever, through those doors. Pain and hope and risk.
Reggie walked into Fairwood, grinning as he always did when he found the doors unlocked.
He changed into his sneakers and walked to the center of the court with his ball under his arm.
He had been thinking a lot about his grandma’s story, and he had started to see grana in a different light. She had questioned if he was giving his all . . . What if grana was questioning him too? What if it was dropping him in holes and forcing hard shots and all the rest to test his resolve? What if grana was encouraging him to work? Well, it was time to take up the challenge.
“All right, grana, gym, whoever has been kicking my butt. Do it again. I need your help. I don’t know if that means falling d
own holes or disappearing rims or whatever. But I need help.”
He took a deep breath.
“I want to be good. No. Great. And I don’t know what to do. Please help.”
He waited for some sort of reply, but there was none. He sighed and went to work.
Today, Reggie didn’t even try a free throw or layup in a vain hope for mercy. He marched right to the corner and set his feet where the hoop dutifully popped into view. Reggie started dribbling, letting his muscles limber up. He tried a few jab steps, faking and then crossing behind his back or through his legs. But after five or six dribbles, Reggie looked up, ready to shoot, and paused. The hoop was gone again.
Confused, Reggie walked over to the mid-range two, where the rim reappeared again. He just shrugged and started dribbling, figuring grana wanted him to miss from there today instead.
But as soon as his fourth dribble hit the floor, the hoop vanished again.
“What . . . now I can’t even dribble?” he asked aloud.
He pushed down his frustration and tried to think. If grana really was on his side, what would it be telling him? He thought back to the games he had played this season. In fairness, he had lost the ball on the dribble a few times—or just delayed and been swallowed up by the fog.
Was he dribbling too much?
Reggie walked back to the mid-range two, took three dribbles, and put up the shot. To his surprise, he swished it. But before he could congratulate himself, the ball shot out like a meteor toward the nearest corner. Reggie quickly retrieved it, ran back to the corner, and took a three-pointer after just one dribble. He missed long, but as soon as the rebound hit the floor, the ball blasted out again, whizzing through the air and smashing into the locker room door.
“Oh,” Reggie said, instantly understanding the setup. “Right.”
He retrieved the ball, dribbled twice, and shot it . . . waiting just long enough for the follow-through before rushing to the corner and catching the ball that was now hurtling in that direction. Back and forth he ran, putting up seemingly endless transition jump shots. Sometimes he dribbled once or twice, sometimes not at all, but he never went over three, or the rim would swiftly disappear. His calves began to tighten. In time, they throbbed with every extension. His wrists and fingers ached from the hard rebounds. His eyes itched with sweat. His mouth was so parched that he sucked the moisture from his shirt. A hundred shots went up. Then a thousand.
He began to whisper each ball’s fate, and often, he knew as soon as it left his fingers.
“Make . . . Make . . . Miss . . . Miss . . . Miss, come on! . . . Miss . . . Make . . . Make . . . Make . . .”
He took a water break, then went at it again. His whispers became shouts:
“Make! Miss! Miss! Focus! Make! Make!”
Both hoops vanished at 250 makes, and, guessing at the cause, he switched to the other side of the floor. They promptly reappeared, and he went again. The time wore on. The pain intensified. Whenever he hit the ground after a jump shot, his knees buckled, threatening to give.
Finally, perhaps hours later, he rose up into a long corner three, flicking his sore wrist.
“Make,” he whispered.
The ball swished through the hoop, and he came down into a crouch, catching himself as sweat poured like an open tap onto the hardwood. He stayed like that, aching, sore, and smiling.
Eventually, Reggie shuffled to the bench and sat down, drinking deeply from his bottle. He realized he was still smiling. His body was raw, his fingers and toes blistered, and yet, he felt relieved. He had made his five hundred shots from his weak spots. That meant, of course, that he could make them again. He began to pack up his bag . . . and then his shadow rose out of the floor.
“I was thinking about heading home—” Reggie started.
His shadow shook its head, pointing to the court.
“Right,” Reggie said. “Never mind.”
He walked out onto the floor, preparing to get into attacking position. But his shadow shook its head again and gestured for Reggie to pass it the ball. Reggie hesitated. They had drilled with their shadows before, but never as the defenders. His shadow gestured sharply again.
“Fine,” Reggie said, tossing the ball over. “Can you even—”
Before he could finish the sentence, his shadow was past him, laying the ball in.
“Dribble,” Reggie murmured. “Okay. Fine. Again.”
His shadow dribbled back to the top of the circle with a casual ease that Reggie had only ever managed alone. He crouched, getting low and flat and sticking his arms to either side of him like a posturing beach crab. His shadow attacked, and Reggie tried to follow, jerking to a halt. He looked down and saw that his left sneaker was now stuck to the hardwood. The floorboards seemed to have melted into a woody brown glue, and they were steadily pulling him in. Straining, he yanked his foot free, but by the time he did, his shadow had long since scored.
Reggie looked down, checking under his shoe. “What’s this about?”
His shadow just dribbled back to the top of the three-point line.
“You know, I might just bring a flashlight next time,” Reggie muttered.
He got low again, testing his footing. As before, his shoes were sticking to the floorboards. Reggie was forced to prop himself up on the balls of his feet, his toes primed, trying to keep as little surface area on the maple slats as he possibly could. He found there was a little less stickiness that way, and he was able to slide on his toes, thereby keeping in front of his shadow—which was moving back and forth, as if testing Reggie’s maneuverability. Then it attacked.
His shadow drove hard to the left. Reggie managed to slide with it this time, staying well up on his toes. But this time, it was a fake. His shadow cut right instead, forcing Reggie to try to slide back to follow. He managed to successfully adjust his feet—but as usual, his upper body didn’t readjust in time. His torso kept swaying left with his momentum, and his shadow drove down the lane and scored a third uncontested layup.
Reggie scowled and waited for his shadow to get back in position again.
“On your toes,” Reggie murmured. “Try not to overreact. And . . . ah!”
He yelped as something large plopped onto his head. Reggie reached up frantically, felt feathers, and then promptly received a sharp nip on his fingers. A narrow, beaked face appeared, staring at him upside down with gold-flecked purple eyes. Reggie gaped back at it, unable to move. He had seen them only in pictures, of course, but there was no mistaking it: an emerald-green parrot was sitting on top of his head, and it looked oddly . . . amused. The boy and the bird stared at each other for another moment, until finally, Reggie summoned his courage and took a breath.
“Umm . . . are you a speaking parrot?” he asked.
The parrot blinked, and then proceeded to squawk directly into his face and sit upright again, out of sight but still clamped on his head. Reggie’s shadow began to dribble, ready to attack.
His shadow went left, and Reggie instinctively went with it, getting low. Once again, his body swayed on the cut, tipping the parrot. Immediately it dug its claws into his head.
“Ow!” Reggie cried. “Okay . . . get off!”
He tried to wrestle the parrot off, but it hooked its claws even deeper into his scalp, forming the world’s worst crown. For added fun, the parrot squawked into his ear, and then chortled, as if entertained. Reggie was definitely reminded of Kallo.
He scowled. “Okay. So I have sticky cement for floor and a bird on my head, and I have to defend my shadow, who for some reason is much better at basketball than I am. No problem.”
His shadow dribbled to the top of the circle again. Reggie sighed, positioned himself into a defensive stance—propped on the balls of his feet—and tried to keep his body and neck as straight as possible so as not to disturb the parrot. Mercifully, the bird settled in using slightl
y less claw.
“Well, parrot, shadow, increasingly ridiculous grana,” he said resignedly. “Let’s do it.”
He was scored on. A lot. The first twenty possessions, at least. He was so focused on his footwork and upper body position that he made bad reads and slow shifts. But slowly, inexorably, he stopped thinking about his positioning. His feet remained primed. His back straight. He focused on the movements of his shadow’s solar plexus, which didn’t seem to lie as well as the ball.
And, in time, he began to make stops.
In response, his shadow backed him into the post, and they wrestled for position down low. Reggie took elbows and shoulders and the stab of claws whenever he lost his balance. They fought until he wasn’t even sure if it was Saturday anymore, and then, finally, his shadow handed him the ball, nodded once, and vanished. The parrot took off in a flurry toward the ceiling, where it passed right through the rafters and into a momentary flash of bright blue-green sky. Reggie lay down right there on the floor. He was so tired, he couldn’t do anything else. His body felt like overstretched putty; his head like a pincushion.
“Well,” he muttered, tepidly climbing to his feet. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
10
LIGHT THE FIRE
Train your mind in conjunction with your body, or both will fail.
WIZENARD PROVERB
LATER THAT NIGHT, Reggie sat alone in his room with the book again, running his fingers across the symbols on every silken page. He had read the entire book by now, chapters like “Resonance of Surety,” “Energy in Biological Design,” “Concentric Envy,” and more, all with equally odd titles. None of them made any more sense than the first chapter he’d read. Certainly none of them explained how grana worked, and more importantly, how he could get it to work for him.
He glanced at the box. What did that symbol have to do with his parents?
“Would a slightly longer note have been too much to ask, Mom?” he said, sighing.
