by LJ Alonge
We wander through the maze of kid stuff: the face painting, the scary clowns blowing up balloon animals, the petting zoo. Kids half our size zoom around our legs. When the crowd gets messy and we’re about to lose each other, I grab Justin’s hand, feeling his limp, sweaty fingers curve into mine. I let go when things open up at the food court. Lines run forty, fifty deep at the ice-cream stand. I can almost taste the cotton candy being spun in a big steel drum in front of us.
Adrian points to a packed area just ahead, where people are lining up for the World’s Strongest Man game.
Justin and Frank nod.
“That baseball thing looks fun,” I say.
“Baseball?” Justin says. He looks at me like I’m crazy. “You mean basketball?”
I say no, but they chant—“Bas-ket-ball! Bas-ket-ball!”—until people start looking and I have to say yes. I follow a few steps behind them, hoping they’ll get distracted by something else, maybe lose me in the crowd. The guy running the basketball game recognizes me instantly.
“No, no, no,” he says. He waves a tattooed finger.
“We didn’t do nothing!” Frank says.
The guy points at me.
“I’m not allowed to play,” I mumble.
“She cheats,” the guy says. “And I’m sure you guys do, too. You can’t play, either.”
He puts his hand over the slot where you put in coins to play. Giant, friendly-looking stuffed animals hang just above his head. Last summer I came here four, five times a night. People would walk over from the food court to watch me shoot, would whistle and hoot and scream insults at the carnies during my hot streaks. I won so many fruit baskets and gift cards they made me pay four times the usual amount to play.
“Damn.” Justin whistles after I’ve told him. “That’s the coolest shit I ever heard.”
Everyone nods, but I don’t feel any better. We’re sitting at a picnic table in the back of the fair where the lights start to peter out, right next to the stables where they keep the doomed hogs. The mud smells rusty, and it feels alive, the way it sucks and slops at our shoes. If you squint, you can see the sagging trailers the carnies sleep in just outside the gates. A DJ shouts over the intercom that someone is missing their kid. From the look of the cigarette butts, this is where the carnies chill on their breaks. Every so often a couple of kids sneak off into the true dark behind the porta potties. We’re watching the porta potties knock against each other when Mike materializes out of the darkness.
“Gentlemen and lady,” Mike says. As always, his voice sounds syrupy, like he’s just woken up from a nap.
We give him a round of dap.
“What’s going on this evening?” he asks.
Laughter rises in the distance, a noise just as bright as all of the lights. Frank explains the situation: no games because of me. And Justin throws up on rides, so no rides.
“How about there?” Justin points, embarrassed. “That tent.”
Right on the edge of the darkness, between our table and civilization, is a sad little tent that looks like it’s been left in the rain too long. Every few seconds the walls of the tent turn red from a light inside. We walk over in silence. I lift the front flap and inhale a lungful of smoke.
“Come in, come in!” a gravelly voice calls out to me. And before I can say anything, a spindly arm is pulling me down onto a pillow.
The tent was made for two, three if you’re pushing it; we sit in a circle with our knees grinding against one another like gears. Once the flap closes, all our faces are tinted by the bloodred light. The boys look at each other nervously, but I’m secretly smiling to myself, knowing that Granny had a much more believable palm-reading operation during her store’s heyday.
“In this day and age, the services of the otherworld aren’t free,” the lady says. She lights a couple sticks of incense and throws them into the center of the circle. “So who’s paying?”
Justin asks how much it is.
“Ah! I knew you’d ask,” she says, winking. “Fifteen for one read, thirty for the group.”
With how close we are, we don’t have to talk if we don’t want to. It’s in the eyes. Frank wants to go for it, have a little fun. Mike doesn’t trust the “energy.” Adrian is a no. Why not, I figure. It’ll be fun. I think of Granny trying to predict the weather and getting it wrong, wearing a big raincoat during a heat wave. When Justin sees that I’m down, he nods his head and agrees. We pool our money and hand it over.
“Just a little something for the oracle to speak,” the lady says. She pulls out her cards and begins flipping them. Her hands are smooth and slippery, like a shoplifter’s. She closes her eyes, bobs her head knowingly. “Him.” She points at Justin. “That’s your boyfriend.” She points at me.
“No,” I say quickly. My face is suddenly hot. I can’t even turn to look at Justin.
“Not yet,” she says. More quiet. She asks to see our palms, so we show them to her. More quiet.
Justin asks if she sees anything about him.
“Fire,” she says. “I see fire.”
Justin, wide-eyed, looks at Frank.
“Okay,” I say. “This is stupid. Thanks. But you’re not even doing it right.”
“I can see,” the lady says, her voice quivering, “that we have a doubter in our midst?”
“No. I just know a friggin’ scam when I see one,” I say, pulling my hand out of the circle. “Just tell us that our love lives are a work in progress and that we should be optimistic and that our dead ancestors are rooting us on from the grave. Let’s keep things moving.”
“There’s a lot of sadness in you, my love, I can see that.”
“Trust me, I’m not the sad one in this situation.”
“Okay,” she says. “So I bet you wouldn’t like it if I told you that the things you have planned—the great things you have planned—are going to hit a few roadblocks.”
“Breaking news,” I say, angrily. “Life presents a bunch of friggin’ challenges.”
“And that it’s important to be friendly to messengers of the universe before you find yourself shut out of the doors that open to good fortune.”
“Anything else?”
“The bathroom is not your friend.” She straightens her cards and adjusts her satin tunic, smirking. “That little bit of advice is on the house.”
Outside, Justin looks at his hands for any signs of change. “Probably just stupid, right?”
Everyone nods.
Adrian and Mike peel off on the walk home. The way downtown clears out after midnight, and with the lights changing for cars that aren’t there, it all feels apocalyptic. Somewhere far off something is burning; gray ash floats down all around us. Frank doesn’t notice that I see him secretly crossing himself a bunch, mouthing a million Our Fathers.
“That was stupid,” I say.
“Very,” Justin agrees.
“Yup,” Frank says.
And then he trips over a crack in the sidewalk and scrapes his knee and starts crossing himself before he gets up. He says his sister told him a story once about an aunt who picked on a psychic cousin and that cousin turned her into a goldfish. Then she flushed her down the toilet. I grab him by the shoulders and ask if he actually believes that. He doesn’t look at me.
“I don’t know,” he says.
“What the hell are you guys afraid of?”
“Nothing,” they say together.
From where we are now, the fair is just a point of light.
“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” I say. “Nothing.”
CHAPTER 6
EATEN ALIVE
The microwave says it’s 2:14. I can’t sleep. I curl up under a blanket on Granny’s La-Z-Boy and watch a rerun of Rocky II. I watch The Karate Kid. Daniel-san just did the “crane kick” and it’s still not light out. I do a couple of weak-arme
d push-ups and stop when I realize I’m wearing out my shooting arm. I spend an hour comparing the strengths and weaknesses of all the designs on my shorts, socks, and shoes.
The address for the tryouts leads me to a dingy-looking gym near the Berkeley marina. It throws a ragged shadow on the old, barnacled boats knocking against the docks. The water gives off a swampy stench. On the way over, my stomach was all knotted, jumping into the back of my throat every time the bus stopped. Now, watching two seagulls fight over a pizza crust, I feel light, confident. It’s just basketball, I tell myself. Basketball’s the same everywhere. You put the ball in the hoop.
When I’m inside, I get in the back of a line of tall, broad-shouldered boys. They are boys straight out of fitness ads: stiff posture, long torsos, overly shiny skin. Their parents stand behind them, brushing lint off their glossy jerseys. They smell like nothing, like their clothes were bought special, vacuum-sealed, just for this. The kid in front of me is listening to his dad tell him how to impress a coach, which you can do apparently by being the first in line for every drill. Inside the gym, there’s a girl throwing a ball to herself off the backboard and shooting reverse layups. I don’t see the bald-headed guy who invited me, and I start to wonder if this was all a big misunderstanding. As I inch my way to the front of the line, I can feel the courage leaving me like air from a punctured ball.
“Name?” a guy holding a clipboard asks.
“Janae Jenkins,” I whisper.
He takes a second to look at me and scans the list, pausing on every name with his finger. Someone behind me grumbles impatiently. Finally, the guy hands me a small gym bag. “Your number’s in there. We start in five minutes.”
“Is there a bathroom?”
He jerks his thumb behind him.
There’s a web of yellow tape over the girls’ bathroom. I push the door, but it doesn’t budge. A kid comes out of the boys’ bathroom next door, a paper towel balled in his hands. He shoots it into a garbage can next to me.
“Where’s the girls’ bathroom?” I ask.
He smiles and points down a dimly lit hallway. “I think there’s another one down there,” he says.
I turn down dark hallway after dark hallway until it hits me that I’m lost. Basketballs echo in the distance, and bare yellow lightbulbs buzz like insects overhead. I lean against a wall and close my eyes. This isn’t actually happening. For a second I think about the stupid psychic’s prediction—I force myself to ha-ha at the coincidence. Like spirits from the netherworld would care about when you go to the bathroom. Maybe it’s a dream, I think. Maybe it’s one of those disastrous show-up-to-prom-in-your-underwear dreams. I slap myself to make sure, and the sting gives me an angry, sinking feeling in my stomach. I feel too stupid to call out for help, to be the girl needing rescuing on a simple trip to the bathroom. No. I keep my eyes closed and keep my fingertips on the wall. I hear the sound of the bouncing balls echo down the hall as I inch forward . . . until it grows closer, louder, until I can feel the thudding in my fingertips.
I push open double doors that open onto a court as big and solemn as a cathedral. A single shaft of light from the rafters shines onto center court, where a man with a nametag that reads Coach Tucker is standing in front of all the tryouts. His voice is megaphone big, bouncing around the gym and echoing by the time it gets to me. It seems like miles and miles of glossy hardwood stretch out between us. I walk across on my toes and take a seat in the back of the group, behind a square-headed kid who I hope makes me invisible.
“This is what’s going to happen over the next week,” Coach Tucker says. An assistant—the bald-headed guy who invited me—walks up to him with a T-bone steak in a bloody plastic tray. Coach Tucker is surprisingly small, standing there in front of all the adult-boys; his fists clenched at his sides make him look like a kid throwing a tantrum. Then he pulls a steak knife out of his track jacket. Some of the guys in the audience laugh eagerly. “We cut the fat,” he says. He slices off a chunk of slick fat and throws it into the rafters, where it sticks to a beam. The coaches standing behind him nod knowingly. “That’s going to be some of you. And this piece is going to be another one of you. And so is this piece. We cut the fat until there is no more of it. Our teams are lean. They are mean. We do not play favorites. We do not engage in charity. You will learn, you will earn.”
Then it’s wind sprints. At first everyone sprints confidently, our strides long and quick, drumming like heavy rain. We run up and down, up and down, all thirty of us. We run until the ground feels like liquid under us, until some kids stumble to garbage cans to throw up. Bile pools on the back of my tongue. Coach Tucker throws pieces of fat at those of us bringing up the rear. He tells us to quit, to find a sport that rewards standing in one spot, like archery. Parents yell encouragement from the stands, reminding us that quitting is for pussies. When’s the last time they ran like this? I wonder. Every time I get close to quitting I think about the store, about how the shipments of fat-based facial crèmes always smell like something died. I’m no quitter. The girl who was shooting layups earlier stays at half-court during the water break.
“Hey,” I say. I want to tell her about the bathroom situation, but she scoots away and puts her headphones in.
Maybe she’s shy. She’ll get desperate and ask me at some point, when her bladder’s so full she can’t keep her legs still.
“I think I left my water bottle outside!” I shout. Then I sprint out behind the gym and take a leak in a lovely little spot behind a Dumpster.
The next morning something weird happens. I slip as I get out of the shower and twist my ankle. I’m more angry than hurt. I’ve stepped out of that shower every summer for the past ten years; I’m no klutz. I hate that I even think about the psychic, but I do. While I try to tape up my ankle with duct tape, I can’t help picturing her leathery face frowning smugly. By the time I get to practice, my ankle’s so swollen I have to loosen my shoelaces. It throbs as I run, and now I’m bringing up the rear, dodging the pieces of fat Coach Tucker throws at my feet.
“Just quit!” he says. “Nothing bad about quitting!”
When a kid quits, Coach Tucker sends him off with one of his steaks as a reminder of what he could have had. Our numbers have dwindled from thirty to twenty. Kids collapse on the side of the court, their cramping legs splayed out stiffly in front of them. Kids have walked off the court crying, their broad shoulders pumping like pistons. We never even touch a basketball. While we run, Coach Tucker tells long stories about the Caribbean vacations he’s taken with his famous coach friends and their wives.
“You’re still here!” he yells at me. “If you’re going to be here, don’t bring up the rear!”
“My ankle,” I wheeze.
He laughs. “You should be more like eighteen here!” That’s the other girl’s number. “Look at her go! Why aren’t you more like her?”
She’s on the other side of the court. She always lines up as far away from me as she can; I know more about the back of her head than I do the front. During a break, I corner eighteen near the water fountains.
“What’s up with you?” I whisper angrily.
She looks over my shoulder for a way to escape.
“I’m right here,” I say.
“I’m trying to make the team,” she says.
“So am I. So let’s stick together, right?”
“Sorry,” she says, sliding away against the wall, “I’m not here to make friends.”
We see the light on day four. Fifteen of us have survived; only ten of us will make it. Now, for the first time, we do drills: drills on defensive stance, drills on defensive rotations, drills on offensive spacing. The coaches move us around the floor like chess pieces. Move here, close out on the shooter, except if the offensive guy goes to the key, then you have to step up and cut off the lane, but if they swing it . . .
I’m trying to remember all the drills when C
oach Tucker asks for a volunteer, someone to show him all the rotations.
I am standing at one end of the line, slightly bending my knees, trying to be small. “Anyone?”
If we make eye contact, I know he’ll pick me. I look up at the rafters.
“Janae? How about you give it a shot.”
I have to force my feet to move onto the court. Five boys whip the ball around, but I stand in the middle of them, unmoving.
“Ah,” Coach Tucker says, “the old traffic-cone defense!”
The laughter is eager and howling.
“Everyone give Janae a round of applause.” He waves me off to the sideline. “Who brought her here? Was it you?” He points to the bald-headed coach. “You see what happens when you try to be nice?”
I pretend to wipe the sweat out of my eyes so he can’t see me cry. After practice I walk to the bus stop, stomping through the tall crabgrass, watching car after car of the other players pass me. What’s wrong with you, Janae? All I can think about is Ms. Higgin’s lesson on Flowers for Algernon last year. She made us read upside down and backward to replicate what it would be like to lose a skill we’d had our whole lives.
Behind me, I can hear someone cutting through the grass. The bald-headed coach is slapping at it as he jogs.
“Hey there,” he says, gasping. “Going home?”
“Yup,” I say.
“How’s it going?” He’s got his hands on his knees. “How you feeling?”
“Great.”
“Really? I thought you’d want to talk about what happened in there. It looked rough.”
“That? Nah, that was nothing. Never felt better.”
“Are you sure? Because if you need some help understanding things, or how they work, that’s what we’re here for.”
In his voice I hear Ms. Higgin’s nagging. She’s always badgering failing students to get tutoring after school.
“No, I’m good! See you tomorrow!”
My bus comes late today, and when I get here a piece of fat whizzes by my head. Today, finally, is a shooting day. Carts of basketballs are lined up around the three-point line. I have to stop myself from doing a cartwheel, from kissing one of the balls. The other kids take turns shooting in front of the coaches, sprinting to the three-point line, then the free-throw line, then the corner, until they’ve shot an entire rack. Twenty balls.
