Center of Gravity

by Shaunta Grimes

  Jay Jay shakes his head and says, “Spinning isn’t allowed.”

  “But it’s fun.” The guy in the T-shirt spins his keeper again.

  “We call next game!” Marvel slaps a hand on the edge of the table just as one of the younger boys slams his keeper against the table and misses a block.

  “Game over!” The short girl dances a little. “We won!”

  “You just walked in, Marv,” another boy, leaning against the wall, says without moving. No one is playing on the other table, and I wonder why.

  “So what? Did you call next game?” Marvel asks.

  The boy hesitates, and Petey goes to the table. He waves Oscar over. “Come on, O.”

  Jay Jay looks at me and rolls his eyes. “Trust me, we need all the practice we can get.”

  “Go ahead,” I say. “I’ll watch.”

  “You sure you don’t mind?” He’s already at the table. Marvel bounces at his side, practically coming out of his skin.

  I feel a little left out, but what exactly am I supposed to say? “It’s fine.”

  “You can have next game,” Jay Jay says. “Slap the table.”

  “What?”

  He comes back to me, takes my hand, and slaps it down on the edge of the table. “Say ‘next game.’”

  “Next game.”

  “Good.” He lets me go and takes his place next to Marvel. “Let’s do this.”

  I stand for a few minutes and watch as Oscar drops the ball to start the game. They all go hyperfocused, bouncing on their toes and working their players. The ball shoots toward Marvel’s defense, and he grunts and uses both of his palms to spin his players. I start to say something, but before I can, Jay Jay hip checks the younger boy and says, “You know spinning’s illegal!”

  Marvel’s bottom lip pouts, but he stops spinning and the ball rolls to Jay Jay’s offensive players. He shoots, hard, and scores.

  Petey groans and says, “Get your head in the game, O!”

  I wander away before Marvel drops the ball again. My head is still lost in Jessica’s announcement of a snack that involves cookies and, probably, milk. If I can find the cafeteria, maybe I can see if Half-Orphan Girl’s archnemesis lives there.

  The milk cooler.

  If there is one and I can find it, maybe I can look through it now, while the boys are occupied. I’ll find a lost kid I don’t already have and put that carton aside so I can pick it up and at least look like a normal person.

  It’s still weird, but it’s secret weird. At least until I have to try to ride Oscar’s sister’s bike home with an old milk carton in my hand. I wish I’d thought to bring my backpack.

  I leave the game room and head back to the hallway. I’ll ask Jessica. Maybe make something up about an allergy or something. Need to inspect the cafeteria for rogue peanut butter.

  Yeah, nothing weird there.

  All I want in the world right now is to find out that the Greater Los Angeles Community Center only serves juice boxes.

  There’s a massive bulletin board lining one side of the hallway, covered in flyers advertising piano lessons and pooper scoopers and used cars for sale; business cards for local barbers and dentists and manicurists; pictures of kids at an aquarium, playing plastic recorders, running races.

  There’s a woman standing at the board. She’s about my mom’s age. In fact, she looks enough like my mom from the back to make me stop and stare. She’s petite, with long, light-brown hair in a braid down her back, and she’s dressed in nurse clothes—lavender scrubs and thick-soled white shoes.

  She’s looking at a flyer printed on lime-green paper with little strips cut at the bottom. Each strip has a telephone number written on it. She rubs her fingers together at her sides, like she’s trying to stop herself from grabbing one of the strips.

  As I pass, she turns and looks around. “Augie?”

  I look around, too, and see a little boy, maybe four years old, come toward me from the front desk where I wrote the address that wasn’t really my address on Jessica’s pink page.

  Jessica stops the nurse on the way out and says, “Don’t worry, Mrs. Norton. I’m sure someone will call.”

  “Are you sure you can’t help me out?” Mrs. Norton says. “I just need someone on Thursday afternoons.”

  “Oh, wow. I wish. I love Augie. But I’ve got work and summer school. I just can’t.”

  Mrs. Norton picks up the little boy and walks out of the community center.

  I look at the lime-green flyer she’d been staring at.

  It reads: Regular, responsible sitter needed for four-year-old boy every Thursday from 4:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.

  It’s tacked next to a giant poster advertising the Third Annual Foosball-Palooza Tournament. Grand prize, in giant numbers, $1,000.

  A thousand dollars for foosball?

  There’s a white sheet of paper at the bottom of the poster, with a pencil hanging by a string. A list of what looks to me like team names is listed on it, followed by the names of the kids on each team.

  I run my finger down it until I get to an entry that says: The Losers—Jay Jay Sampson, Oscar Montoya, Petey Lewis. There’s a name, Aaron Casey, that’s scribbled out, and Marvel Lewis is written under it. My mouth tweaks into a half smile. For some reason, I love that they call themselves the Losers.

  There’s an envelope full of flyers with information about the tournament. I take one and fold it into quarters.

  “Tessa?” I turn around. Jay Jay is standing in the doorway to the game room. “Want your turn?”

  “What?”

  “You slapped the table. You can take Marvel’s place.”

  “You guys are doing this?” I lift the folded flyer.

  Jay Jay’s smile fades. “Yeah.”

  “The winner really gets a thousand bucks?”

  “You know Andre Whittaker?”

  My eyebrows lift. Andre Whittaker is only the most amazing soccer player. Ever. I saw him play once, when my dad took me to a game in Denver. “Sure.”

  “He’s from around here. He sponsors the tournament. It’s huge.”

  I shove the flyer into my back pocket. “Cool.”

  “So, ready?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Hey, Tessa.” I turn and see Marvel standing in the doorway to the game room. “I’ll take your place if you want.”

  “I’m coming.”

  “The Losers are going to win this thing,” Petey is saying as I follow Marvel and Jay Jay back into the game room. He’s strutting like a crow. “We’re going to kick butt.”

  “Not if we play like we just did,” Oscar says.

  “Don’t be such a loser.” Jay Jay pushes Oscar’s shoulder with one hand.

  “We are Losers, nutjob.”

  Jay Jay takes Marvel’s place at the Foosball table and waves me over to the offensive spot. He doesn’t look at me, though. He keeps talking to Oscar. “Don’t be the wrong kind of loser, O. We are going to kick butt.”

  I wonder if he thinks he’s doing me a favor, taking over the goal. Or if he just thinks a girl can’t play defense. I wait until he looks at me, then ask, “Can I take the keeper?”

  For a second, I can tell he’s going to say no. I’m still not totally sure why. Offense is his position, after all. Or at least it was when he was playing with Marvel. But then he shrugs and moves down the table.

  I open and close my hands, trying to relax them. “You guys call yourselves the Losers?”

  “Why not?” Petey spins his players, even though there’s no ball on the table. “Everyone else does.”

  I bounce on the balls of my feet and say, “Okay, let’s go.”

  Marvel stands on his toes and leans over to drop the ball in the center of the table. I roll the bar, controlling my defenders, swinging their feet forward and back, as Oscar whacks it toward my goalkeeper. I connect and send the ball careening up to Jay Jay’s offense.

  “Holy crap,” Jay Jay says under his breath. Petey frantically works his keeper, but Jay J
ay is faster and sends the ball into the goal.

  Marvel drops the ball again, and Oscar gets control of it. I move my hands to my keeper’s bar and block his attempt at a goal. I knock it to my defense, then up to Jay Jay, who is almost too busy staring at me to react fast enough. He recovers, though, and sinks a second goal.

  Marvel retrieves the ball, but Oscar puts a hand on his arm to stop him. “What is this?”

  “What?” I ask, suddenly embarrassed.

  “Are you some kind of prodigy or something?”

  Heat rushes up from my chest, over my face. “Do they have foosball prodigies?”

  Maybe I should have pretended that I hadn’t spent hours playing foosball with Megan and Denny in their basement. If we had a team in the tournament, I think, we would have called ourselves the Wrinkles in Time. And we would have won.

  “You are so on our team,” Jay Jay says. “Holy crap, you’re our secret weapon!”

  “I am?”

  “Hell yes, you are!” Oscar says. “Sorry, Marv. You’re out.”

  Marvel’s face screws up, his pale eyebrows burrowing down, his mouth scrunching. “Not fair.”

  “Don’t worry,” Petey says, wrapping an arm around his little brother and scrubbing his knuckles into the boy’s crew cut. “You’ll be our water boy.”

  “Our mascot!” Jay Jay says. He looks back at me and shakes his head. “Oh man. They’ll never see a girl coming.”

  Story of my life. “Are we going to five?”

  “Five?”

  “Goals? How long does our game last?”

  “Right. To five.”

  Marvel looks so sad, but he lifts his chin and reaches for the ball again. The exhilaration of the first part of our game evaporates as fast as it came. I’m left with a headache that I rub with my fingertips. “Okay.”

  Jay Jay puts a hand out to stop Marvel from dropping the ball. “What’s wrong?”

  I look around. All of the Losers are watching me. Another group of boys stands nearby, waiting for their turn and getting antsy because we’re not playing. I have no idea why they don’t play on the other table. Maybe it’s broken. “I feel bad, taking Marvel’s spot.”

  “It’s okay,” Marvel says. “Really. We need you on the team.”

  Jay Jay’s face turns serious again, and he says, “Drop the ball, Marv.”

  SIX

  Good thing: Once I am deep into foosball, I forget all about snack time.

  Bad thing: Just as Jay Jay sinks the fifth goal in our fourth game, the guy in the Greater Los Angeles Community Center T-shirt—the one who reminds me of Denny—stands in the game room doorway and says, “Okay, snack time,” and reminds me again.

  My stomach curdles, like it’s full of sour milk.

  I could just sit it out. Go hide in the girls’ bathroom.

  For a few seconds I think, Yeah, that could work.

  But not forever.

  If I couldn’t sit it out in Denver, I sure can’t here. If there are milk cartons, I need to see if there’s a kid that I don’t have in my collection.

  It doesn’t matter that I don’t want to.

  * * *

  I follow the boys as they start out of the game room, and I’m about to veer off toward the girls’ bathroom anyway, because I might at least be able to be last in line, but Jay Jay grabs my arm before I can and says, “I think we might actually be able to win this thing.”

  “There are only two foosball tables,” I say. “How big of a tournament could it be?”

  “Oh no,” Oscar says, behind me. “It’s a huge thing. They set up a dozen tables in the basketball gym down at the Boys and Girls Club. There’s TV cameras and everything.”

  “TV?”

  “Sure. And Andre Whittaker is there. Every community center in the city has teams. Us. The Boys and Girls Club. The Y. And that’s just this area.”

  “It’s only local news,” Jay Jay says. “But Andre Whittaker really will be there. He shakes every player’s hand. Want to eat outside?”

  Marvel reacts like someone just suggested math homework or a root canal. He says, “But we might get first turn at foosball.”

  Jay Jay looks at me again, then back at Marvel, who has lost interest because Jessica is handing him a little blue bag full of tiny chocolate chip cookies.

  Beyond Marvel I see the one thing I hoped wouldn’t be there. A big silver cooler full of pint-size milk cartons.

  “Why couldn’t it have been juice boxes?”

  “What?” Jay Jay looks where I’m looking.

  Maybe there are entirely different lost kids on West Coast milk cartons, and the first one I pick up will have a picture I’ve never seen before.

  I’m not super hopeful of that, though. The whole point is to spread the kids’ faces all over the country so someone, somewhere, might see them. I have kids in my box from every part of America.

  I take the bag of cookies when Jessica hands it to me.

  Unfortunately, all of the milk cartons have been arranged so the cow faces forward and the kids face backward. Oscar picks up a carton without even turning it over, and I feel almost sick with a mix of jealousy, that he can do that, and anxiety, over whether or not he has a kid I don’t have.

  Jay Jay picks one next. He palms the carton and looks back at me, then slowly turns it over, and I see a face I instantly recognize.

  I reach for a carton, turn it, and put it back. Again. Again. Raheem. Jocelyn. Sharona. I know those kids. I have them in my shoebox in the cubby over the bed that isn’t really mine, in the room that isn’t really mine, in the house that’s not really mine or my dad’s.

  An older kid reaches over me and picks up Jocelyn. “They’re all the same. Just take one.”

  They aren’t. They aren’t remotely all the same. I pick up another carton, hoping it’s a kid I’ve never seen before.

  I glance up at Jessica, who is definitely watching me now.

  Please, don’t make me stand here with my new friends staring at me and kids I don’t know getting frustrated behind me and Jessica starting to notice how weird I am.

  Please.

  The milk carton has Elizabeth Dixon’s five-year-old face on it.

  Jay Jay asks, “Are you okay?”

  I tighten my fingers around the carton in my hand, and I’m stuck. I want to just take it and go outside with Jay Jay and the others. But there might be a kid in the milk case that I don’t have yet.

  I put it back and start turning cartons again. Fast. I’ve done this before. Lots of times. Everyone will know, now, that I’m a total freak.

  Before Jessica can step in, though, I finally find a boy I don’t have. He’s older, fifteen, with a mop of dark hair and brown eyes. His name is Seth.

  Jay Jay doesn’t seem to notice my panic. He says, “Ready?”

  Oscar, Petey, and Marvel stand by the door that leads outside. They aren’t paying attention to me at all. When I look back, Jessica has returned to handing out her little blue bags. The line is moving again, and I think, Maybe I won’t lose these maybe-maybe friends quite yet.

  * * *

  Marvel runs ahead and slaps his hand down on the top of a wooden picnic table that’s attached to a tree with a big chain. Apparently, hand slapping is the dibs tool of choice in Los Angeles. He tears open his cookies while the rest of us catch up.

  “Do I get a costume?” he asks.

  Petey sits beside him. “Costume?”

  “If I’m mascot. Duh.”

  “Sure,” Jay Jay says. “We’ll find you something awesome.”

  “So, why exactly are we giving first ups on the foosball table to the enemy?” Oscar looks at me like he’s sure it’s my fault.

  “Don’t be a jerk, O,” Jay Jay and Petey say at the same time.

  “Don’t you think we need to evaluate our game plan?” Jay Jay asks.

  “All right.” Oscar pops a cookie and chews carefully. “So she’s good. I’ll give her that.”

  “She’s not good,” Petey says
. “She’s great!”

  He says it like Tony the Tiger on the Frosted Flakes commercials, lifting one pointer finger toward the sky, and a burning blush raises over my face.

  “Fine. But what was that thing at the milk case?” Oscar asks me.

  I thought I was clear for today, except for the whole trying to ride a bike all the way home with a milk carton in one hand thing, so I am caught off guard. I swallow wrong and cookie crumbs lodge in my throat, making me hack up a lung.

  Petey thumps me on the back while I cough until my face is as hot as a sunburn and my still-aching eyes stream tears down my cheeks.

  “Jeez,” Petey says. He hands me his milk carton, still half full, so I can take a drink.

  Even after all that, I might have been okay if the cow side was facing me. But instead, I see a little girl with blond braids and a name I don’t recognize.

  Please, no. This is not going to happen.

  You are not going to try to take home everyone’s milk cartons, Tessa Hart. You are not.

  In Denver, it was bad enough that I couldn’t get rid of my own carton. At least I never tried to hoard anyone else’s. But no one had ever handed me one with a kid on it that I didn’t have already. And after a while it was hard enough to find one kid I didn’t have, much less happening to see another one on someone else’s carton.

  I’d thought about searching tables and trash cans if I couldn’t find one—but this was different. I close my eyes and tighten my fingers around Petey’s carton.

  “Are you okay?” Marvel asks. “You don’t look so good.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “So are you going to tell us or what?” Oscar sits across from me at the picnic table and leans forward on his elbows.

  I expect Jay Jay to tell his friend to stop being a jerk again, but he doesn’t. Instead, he stands behind Oscar and looks at me like he’s expecting an explanation, too.

  “It’s not a big deal,” I say.

  Oscar reaches for Petey’s milk carton, and I pull it out of reach. “Right. Until we let you on our crew and Marvel stops practicing—and you go all guano crazy on us.”

  “Guano?”

  “Bat poop,” all four boys say.

  “Sorry, Tessa.” Jay Jay sits beside Oscar. “We do need to know what’s going on.”