After the Shot Drops

by Randy Ribay

  “Oh,” I say. Then a moment later, “But if you tell someone about him, then they might understand you better.”

  He shakes his head. “Maybe. But they already think people getting shot is the only thing there is to Whitman, and talking about it will only make them think that even more. Difference between you and them is, yeah, you know about that, but you also know the other side of Whitman.”

  I nod, thinking about the sledding hill, the community gardens, the block parties and cookouts, Whitman High’s purple and gold, Bunny’s dad’s bookstore, the roof, our friends, families. But I don’t know what to say. I gaze at that aquarium like the right words are going to bubble out of the filter.

  “But you know what the worst part of all this is?” Bunny asks.

  “What?”

  “When people from back home treat me like I’ve forgotten all that. Like I’m the worst kind of person for wanting to put myself in a better position to help my family.”

  “You mean people like me,” I say, staring at that fish that won’t look at me and holding myself back from tapping on the glass again.

  Bunny doesn’t say anything.

  “Why not get Keyona to transfer instead?” I ask. “She’s been better to you than I have.”

  “Because it’s not the same,” Bunny says. “You’re like my brother.”

  I can’t even say how much that means to me, so I don’t.

  “Besides,” he adds, “if she started going here and then we broke up, that’d be awkward as hell.”

  We laugh.

  I know I should be prodding for more information about how St. S recruited him exactly, or what kind of gear they’re hooking him up with specifically. Maybe try to catch him on video admitting to St. S offering to hook me up to get him to stay. But it’s not in me right now. I mean, I still want to help Wallace, but now I kind of want to help Bunny, too.

  The thing is, I don’t know how to help one without hurting the other.

  Bunny and I walk outside to snow. It’s nothing heavy, nothing that’s going to stick. But it’s still the first snow of the season, which is kind of weird, since it’s nearly spring. We head toward his sister’s car, not saying anything else. We watch the flakes fall, thin and light and melting soon as they hit any surface.

  I guess that’s the thing. You never know when winter’s really over. It can be all sunlight and sprouting grass one day, and then cold and ice the next. Tonight, I can see my breath. The air is cooler and smells like winter clothes held close to the nose. Clouds blot out the stars and the moon. The world is still.

  Once we reach the car, Bunny breaks the silence. “So . . . you want to go blazer shopping this weekend?”

  I force a smile and look away. “Need some more time to think on it.”

  “But you’re thinking about it?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I am.”

  And this time I mean it.

  29

  Bunny

  It’s Wednesday after practice. Jess needed the car today, so I’m walking to the bus stop, the temperature still dropping. I’ve got my phone pressed to my ear, my angry girlfriend at the other end of the line.

  “Why would you do that?” Keyona says in a tone that makes me wonder what I said wrong. All I did was tell her about what was going on with Nasir. Thought she’d be excited about how I found a solution that could fix our friendship while also helping me feel a bit more at home at St. S. To be honest, I’m not in the mood to fight. My muscles are tired and sore, and the thing about my dad selling the store is weighing on me.

  “You know why,” I say, not without my own touch of attitude. “I don’t get why you’re mad about it?”

  “Because it’s stupid, Bunny,” she says right away.

  “Why’s it stupid?” I ask.

  “Shall I count the ways?” she says. “One: you could get in trouble with the state. Maybe even the NCAA. I know you know you can lose your amateur status doing something like this. I know you’ve been good so far with sticking to the rules, so why break them now? What if this gets out?”

  I shrug, even though she can’t see me. “It’s not going to. It’s not written down anywhere. And Coach said so long as Nas goes through the application process like everyone else, they can make it look legit. Nobody would be able to prove that they let him in for me. The only other person who would know that would be Nas, and why would he ever say anything?”

  “You don’t think it’s weird he started coming around again soon as playoffs rolled around?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means you never know with people,” she says.

  “I know Nas,” I say.

  “The more success you have, Bunny, the more people are going try to get something out of you. I’m just saying that you should keep that in mind.”

  None of this makes sense to me, and I feel like my head’s about to explode. “Let me see if I understand this. You’re the one that’s been going on and on about how we needed to squash that beef between us, and now that we did, you’re mad at me for it, and you’re calling him fake?”

  “Oh, everything’s cool now, is it?”

  “Yeah,” I say, getting loud. “It is.”

  “He ever apologize?” she asks.

  I switch the phone to my other ear. “Of course.”

  “Really? He apologized for not speaking to you for more than half a year? Because if he did, you must have forgotten to tell me about it.”

  I don’t answer right away, because she’s got a point. He apologized for the argument we got into when he dropped by my house, but he never said sorry for turning his back on me. But because we’re in the middle of a fight, my pride prevents me from straight up admitting she’s right. Instead I say, “I’m the one who did him wrong. I transferred. I left him behind. Not the other way around.”

  “All you did was switch schools, Bunny. You didn’t cut him out of your life. You were the one texting him and knocking on his door. He was the one who was refusing to answer.”

  I don’t want to talk about Nasir anymore, so I ask, “What’s the other reason I’m dumb?”

  “Huh?”

  “You said that was number one.”

  “Oh,” she says. Then she hesitates, like she’s trying to decide whether to keep going. When she speaks again, her voice is soft and low. “Why didn’t you ask your coach to get me in?”

  It’s the same question Nasir asked. But it was easier to give him an answer because I knew he’d understand. I don’t know if Keyona will. “I don’t know,” I end up saying like some fool.

  “Oh,” she says, that single syllable sinking on the line between us like a rock in water.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “But maybe—”

  “I have to go,” she interrupts. “Bye.”

  “Wait, Keyona,” I say, but the only response I get is the beep letting me know she ended the call.

  30

  Nasir

  It’s Wednesday night. I’m with Wallace in his sad, little-old-person-smelling, soon-to-be-evicted-from apartment watching Sesame Street. I can’t say why, exactly. He texted me saying that he was feeling down and needed to hang with someone, so I said okay even though I have homework to do. He came by a few minutes later, picked me up, and drove us over to his place, me spending the entire ride trying not to think about that glove compartment. Now we’re sitting here on the raggedy couch where he sleeps, Wallace nodding his head like he’s really learning a lot about the letter F from Grover right now.

  Bunny the kitten appears and starts prowling and purring around my legs, looking a lot healthier after about a week with Wallace. She eventually hops onto the couch and settles into his lap, and he strokes her head.

  After a while, Wallace breaks the silence. “Don’t suppose you found anything yet.” He keeps his eyes on the puppets.

  I should have known that was what he wanted to talk about. His eviction’s coming up, and what with the semifinals tomorrow night and then the
championship on Sunday, he’s running out of time.

  “Nah,” I say. “Sorry.”

  “You even trying, cuz?” he asks. “I know you’ve been spending a lot of time with him these last few days. You must have found out something.”

  “Of course I am, Wallace. But there’s nothing.”

  “So you hacked his phone? His laptop?”

  I don’t say anything.

  He sighs. Looks down at the kitten. “Sorry, little buddy, guess both of us are going to be back on the streets soon.”

  I see this for what it is—​but it still makes me feel bad. Should I tell him about the offer? I looked it up, and that could definitely get Bunny and St. Sebastian’s in trouble with the NJSIAA if I had proof. I’m almost about to mention it when I think of another way.

  “I’ll try to get you his phone,” I say. I know he’s not going to find anything on it, but maybe this will at least make Wallace feel like I’m doing what I can for him. As for his financial problems, I’ll ask my parents again if they can lend him and his grandma some money to start renting somewhere else.

  Wallace grins. “I appreciate that, cuz. Think you can get it tonight?”

  I check the time on my phone. It’s almost nine. “It’s late, man. Maybe tomorrow.”

  “Bunny’s not going to bed early like G does,” he says. “He’ll still be awake. I can drive you over there now.”

  On the TV, Grover’s using his weird, garbled voice to run through words that begin with F.

  Fantastic.

  Fancy.

  Funny.

  I sigh. “Fine.”

  Wallace scratches Bunny the kitten behind her ears, and she closes her eyes and tilts her head up like it’s the best thing in the world.

  I stand up to go, but Wallace keeps watching Sesame Street. “I want to see how this turns out,” he says.

  Grover tells us he’s about to reveal his favorite F word. Wallace goes ahead and guesses exactly what you’d think Wallace would guess. He’s wrong.

  “Friendship,” Grover says in this awestruck whisper.

  Grover’s friend Kermit comes on, and they start talking about friendship. I don’t hear much of what they say, though, because Wallace starts laying down a theory about Cookie Monster being a metaphor for a crackhead even though he’s not even in the scene. To be honest, it makes some kind of sense. But I’m not really in the mood.

  “Can we get this over with?” I ask. “You’re the one who wanted to do it right now.”

  “Yeah, all right.” Wallace says. He clicks off the TV, sets down the cat, and gets up.

  As we walk out, Bunny the kitten’s meowing like she’s sad that we’re leaving. It’s the last sound I hear before we shut the door behind us, and it gets me thinking about all the stray cats still out in the streets that nobody bothered to pick up.

  Famished.

  Fearful.

  Friendless.

  Fucked.

  31

  Bunny

  After showering, I head downstairs to catch a few minutes of ESPN News before bed. Except Jess is set up on the couch, typing away at her laptop with her books spread out around her, watching some cooking competition show.

  “Mind if I change the channel?” I ask, picking up the remote from the coffee table.

  She keeps typing. “Oh, Nasir decided he didn’t want to hang? I thought you guys were cool again.”

  “Huh?”

  “What do you mean, ‘huh’?” she asks.

  “What are you talking about with Nasir?”

  She finally stops typing and cocks her head. “Are you messing with me, Bunny?”

  This is, like, the most confusing conversation of all time. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Jess.”

  “Nasir stopped by while you were in the shower. He said he’d wait, so I let him up to your room. You didn’t see him?”

  I shake my head.

  “Huh,” she says. “Guess he must have changed his mind and slipped out while I was working on my paper.”

  “Weird.”

  “Yeah. Anyway, you still want to watch something? Give me, like, ten more minutes. I want to see who gets eliminated.”

  “Nah, that’s all right,” I say. I head back upstairs to my room, wondering why Nasir would have up and left without saying anything to me. I wasn’t in the shower long. Come to think of it, why’d he drop by to begin with, instead of texting about whatever he needed?

  I wonder if he made a decision about transferring to St. S and wanted to tell me the news in person. I pick up my gym bag and start digging through for my phone so I can text him to see what’s up, but I can’t find it. I search every pocket, like, five times. I dump everything out. I go through each item in the bag one by one.

  Still no phone.

  I search every spot in my room where it might be—​on my dresser, in the pockets of the clothes I was wearing today, on the floor—​then every spot there’s no way it would be—​under my bed, at the bottom of my sock drawer, in the twins’ bedroom. I go downstairs and ask Jess if she’s seen it around.

  “Did you leave it at school again?” she asks.

  “Maybe,” I say. It wouldn’t be the first time I put it down inside my locker while I was changing after practice and accidentally left it there.

  She mutes the TV, and I have her call my cell a few times while I walk around listening hard. But nothing. Maybe she’s right. Guess I’ll have to check the locker room in the morning.

  “Can you text Mom and Dad and let them know I lost my phone?” I ask Jess. “Don’t want them to worry, in case they text me and I don’t answer.”

  “Sure, but you better hope it turns up,” Jess says. “You know they can’t afford to buy you another one right now.”

  “Yeah, I know. Pretty sure it’s at school.”

  “Done.” She puts her phone down and unmutes the TV. Then she returns to working on her paper.

  I thank her and go back upstairs to peek out my window at Nasir’s house, wondering if I should pop over to see what he wanted. His window is lit up, but it looks cold out, and I’m still all warm from the shower. I try to catch him online instead. I don’t have any emails or missed chats from Nasir, but the green dot next to his name in my chat list tells me he’s online. I go ahead and message him asking what he needed.

  There’s nothing for a few seconds, then it shows the little dot-dot-dot that means he’s typing, so I wait. But after a few minutes, there’s still no reply. I’m thinking about how it must be a pretty long message when the green dot next to his name disappears.

  32

  Nasir

  After swiping Bunny’s phone and handing it over to Wallace, I’m trying to get this geometry homework finished. I’m usually decent at math, but all the numbers and symbols and shapes on the page melt into meaningless scribbles.

  I slam the book shut and roll onto my back. There’s this sinking feeling in my stomach. Like when you’re going up the stairs in the dark and you reach the top but your foot reaches for one more step. There’s that moment where you think you’re about to eat it, and that’s how I’m feeling. Except it isn’t going away.

  I close my eyes and press the heels of my hands against my eyelids as I ask myself for the thousandth time if I just made a giant mistake. I’m pretty sure Wallace won’t find anything—​but what if he does?

  I knew that by choosing to help Wallace, I might hurt Bunny.

  I knew that.

  But so what? Bunny will be all right. Like Wallace said, worst that happens is this ends his season. That’s far from the end of the world. Bunny will still get two more years to win a state championship. It’s not nearly as bad as Wallace’s potential homelessness. And who knows? Maybe getting in trouble would make Bunny decide to return to Whitman High, and I wouldn’t have to make a decision about his offer.

  I think about picking up my phone or opening my laptop to respond to the message he sent me a couple of hours ago, but I don’t want to lie to
him. Instead, I go to the window, I pull aside the curtain just enough to see out but not to be seen. The block’s quiet. Nothing but empty sidewalks and parked cars sitting under streetlights that wash everything in that sickly orange light. Across the street, the Thompsons’ windows are dark.

  “Still awake, I see,” says my dad’s voice, making me jump. I turn around to find him standing in the doorway.

  “Yup.” I wander over to my desk chair and sit down.

  He glances at my desk. “Schoolwork?”

  I consider telling him about everything going on. The stuff between me and Bunny. Wallace’s plan and my part in it. The opportunity to go to St. S. Instead, I shrug.

  “Bunny?”

  I shrug again. “Kind of.”

  He comes inside and takes a seat on my bed. “Want to talk about it?”

  “Why’d you move back here?” I ask, my eyes on my hands.

  “To Whitman?”

  “Yeah. After you got out of the air force, why’d you move back to the city?”

  My dad leans back on his hands. “It’s my home. I had a job waiting for me here. Family. Friends.”

  “But you had some money, right? Not like Mom has family here, and you could’ve taught anywhere. Why didn’t you move somewhere else, somewhere nicer?”

  “Like where? The suburbs?” He chuckles.

  “I guess.”

  “I went all over the world with the air force. You know what I learned, Nasir?”

  “What?” I ask.

  “A place is only as good as the people you’ve got around you.”

  This sounds like a lie adults tell kids to make them feel better. I imagine pictures I’ve seen on the Internet of waterfalls in Bali, canals in Venice, turquoise lagoons in Palawan. “Really?”

  He nods. “I’ve got history here. That counts for a lot in this world.”

  “What about Mom? She left her home. Her friends. Her history.”