by Randy Ribay
I flip the phone closed. Cheesing like a madman, I do a little dance right there in my seat. I catch the bus driver looking at me like I’m crazy in the long rearview mirror that runs over her head, but I don’t even care.
42
Nasir
Saturday morning I wake up to a text from Keyona that only contains a link. I’m kind of afraid of where it’s going to take me, but I click on it anyway.
A PDF opens. It’s a press release from the director of the NJSIAA. I sit up and read it through. Then I reread it to be sure I understand it correctly.
Sure enough: Bunny’s off the hook.
It says that they found neither Benedict Thompson nor St. Sebastian’s to be in violation of any of the NJSIAA regulations, and that it appeared the email in question had been sent from his stolen phone—though, they couldn’t determine the responsible party due to steps taken by the sender to maintain anonymity. It concludes by saying that Bunny could immediately resume participation in NJSIAA-sanctioned events.
I put my phone down.
Damn.
As I think about how Bunny’s off the hook, I catch myself smiling. I’m genuinely happy for him, genuinely happy that what I did isn’t going to ruin his life.
But then I remember Wallace, and my smile sinks like the Titanic.
I consider talking to my parents about everything, but it doesn’t take me long to decide that’s stupid as hell. They’d definitely want to call the police, and then I would end up in trouble for stealing Bunny’s phone, and Wallace would end up in trouble for the email, for all his under-the-table wagers, and for snitching.
Damn.
Why does one person’s win always mean another person’s loss?
Maybe it doesn’t have to. Maybe it’s time for me to do right by both my friends, not just one.
I check the time and find it’s about eight. I know Bunny will definitely have practice today, but I don’t know when. I throw back my covers and climb out of bed. Put on some clothes and rush downstairs, past my parents cooking breakfast, and across the street to Bunny’s house. I knock a few times before his dad answers.
“Nasir!” he says. “Good to see you. Hear the news?”
I’m kind of surprised he actually does seem happy to see me. I guess Bunny never told him about my part in this mess. “Yeah, I did. It’s great, Mr. Thompson. Bunny still around?”
“Sure is. Still sleeping, but it’s about time for him to get up.” He opens the door all the way and steps aside. “You can go ahead and save me the trouble of trying to wake him. You know how he sleeps like a rock.”
I step inside, wave to the twins watching cartoons in front of the TV and to Ms. Thompson frying bacon in the kitchen, then I head upstairs.
Sure enough, when I enter Bunny’s room, he’s out cold. I almost laugh aloud, though, because he’s wrapped in his comforter like a six-foot-five burrito, his head and his feet sticking out either end. I sit down on the edge of the bed and give what I think is his shoulder a little shake.
“Bunny,” I say. “Get up, man.”
He stirs but doesn’t wake, so I shake him a little harder. Gradually, he opens his eyes. Looks at me. Blinks a few times. “Nas?” he asks, voice groggy.
“Yeah, man. It’s me. Can we talk?”
He slides one arm out of the burrito and rubs his eyes. Then he slides the other one out and pushes himself into a sitting position. He runs a hand over the top of his head. “Get out,” he says.
“Bunny, please, I—”
“Man, you can’t do me like that and then walk in here like we’re still cool.” He nods toward the door, eyes still bleary. “Get out.”
“At least let me apologize.”
He glares at me, weighing my words. He doesn’t tell me to leave again, so I take that as a sign that he’s willing to hear me out.
“I swiped your phone.” I pull it out of my pocket and set it on his desk.
He looks at it. “Yeah, I solved that mystery.”
“And I’m sorry for that, Bunny. For real, man. I am. But I didn’t send that email.”
“Right. Then who did?”
“Wallace.”
“Wallace?” Bunny asks, pulling a face. “Is that fool really still hating on me for transferring to St. S?”
“Nah,” I say. “It’s more than that.”
And then I tell him everything. About the landlord raising Wallace and his grandma’s rent. About how he started betting against Bunny, hoping to cover the difference. About how he approached me for help when he got real desperate, and about how I gave it to him because somebody needed to. And finally, about the mess he’s locked himself into.
Then I say, “I need you to lose tomorrow.”
Bunny draws his knees to his chest and sits there staring into space for a while. Without looking at me, he says, “I appreciate you being honest with me about everything, Nas. But are you really pulling me into this, asking me to throw the game?”
“I hate that I am,” I say. “But I am.”
“Even if I agree to do this, if I get caught, you know how much trouble I could get in?”
“I do. But it’s the only way, man. If St. S loses, those dudes Wallace made the arrangement with will get what they want and will probably let Wallace off the hook.”
He doesn’t respond.
“I know it’s asking a lot,” I say, “but you can keep it close. Nobody will know. And now that you’re in the clear, there’s always next season.” He doesn’t seem convinced, so I press on. “It’s just a game, Bunny. How’s that more important than Wallace’s life?”
He shakes his head. “What’d Wallace ever do for me, Nas? Name one thing.”
“Nothing,” I say. “I know he’s done nothing but cause you trouble. Like I said, I know I’m asking for a lot.”
“Then why should I lose on purpose for someone who’s never done anything for me?”
“I don’t know,” I say.
“It’s real messed up that you’re putting this on me, Nas. I mean, I appreciate you owning up to what you did, and I can maybe forgive you, since nothing came of it besides me sitting one game. But Wallace is your cousin, not mine, and you know basketball’s more than only a game to me.” He shakes his head. “Wallace made some stupid choices. He has to deal with the consequences now.”
I look down. “Then don’t do it for him. Lose the game for me, Bunny.”
He laughs. “For you?”
His laughter makes me angry. “Man, you up and transferred without even saying anything to me about it. Not a single word.”
“It was my decision,” he says.
“That doesn’t mean you needed to make it alone. Why didn’t you even ask what I thought about it? We were supposed to be best friends.”
Bunny looks away, shaking his head. “It’s my life.”
“And isn’t anyone else part of it?” I ask, my voice rising. “I had to find out from Chops, man. From freaking Chops—down at the courts. Forget you transferring, forget you asking for my opinion—you know how much it hurt that my friend didn’t even care enough to tell me before announcing it to the world?”
Bunny draws in a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “I thought you’d tell me to stay at Whitman.”
I stand up. “Honestly, I don’t know what I would have told you. But it would have meant something to me—it would have meant that I meant something to you—if I could have had the chance to tell you anything at all. Instead, it was one more example of how you care about basketball, about your future, about winning, more than you care about anything else.”
“It’s not like that.”
“It’s not?” I ask. “Then lose Sunday.”
“Nasir, it’s the state championship.”
“Bunny, it’s a game.”
Bunny looks up at me. “A real friend wouldn’t ask me to do something like this, Nasir.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “But I wouldn’t be asking if I thought there was any other
way to save Wallace.”
43
Bunny
I spend most of the day thinking on what Nasir said. Practice doesn’t go as well as I hoped it would because I’m so distracted, and when I get home I’m acting so off that everyone in my family keeps asking me what’s wrong. Makes sense. I should be back to my old self, given that I’ll be playing in the state championship tomorrow. It still gets on my nerves, though, so instead of sticking around, I head over to Keyona’s.
She only lives a few blocks away, but it’s snowing like crazy. I’m wondering if they might even delay tomorrow’s game. Part of me thinks that would be good, since it would give me more time to figure everything out, and part of me thinks that would be terrible, since it would force me to sit with this decision even longer.
“Is basketball the only thing I care about?” I ask Keyona as soon as she opens the door.
“What?” she asks as she lets me in. “You walk through this blizzard just for that?”
“Kind of,” I say, and step inside.
Her house is warm and smells like baking cookies. Her family’s Great Dane trots up to greet me. I scratch him behind the ears for a bit as Keyona’s stepmom wanders over, hugs me, and makes small talk about the whole eligibility situation and the game tomorrow. Keyona’s little brother keeps on playing a video game in the living room. Keyona pulls me away, and her stepmom calls up a reminder to keep the door open.
Her room’s messy as always. Bed unmade, clothes all over the place, a few empty glasses on the nightstand. She pushes some stuff aside to make space for us on her bed, and then sits down on it with her back pressed against the wall.
I wander over to look at the pictures of us she printed out and tacked on her bulletin board. Even though we’ve been texting a bit about the whole stolen phone thing, we’ve never resolved anything between us.
“You okay?” she asks. “Nervous about the game?”
“In a way.”
“It’s all right, Bunny. You got this.”
“What do you think about the question I asked you?”
“You mean if basketball’s the only thing you care about?”
I nod.
“Let me guess. You tried to work things out with Nasir?”
I nod again.
“I don’t think it is,” she answers without hesitation, which makes me feel better. But she’s not done. “It’s just that when you’re really into something, you get hyperfocused on that thing, and everything else becomes an afterthought.”
“What do you mean?”
“What did Nasir tell you?” Keyona asks.
“That he was mad—no, hurt—that I never talked to him about my decision to change schools.”
“And what did I tell you the last time we talked? Like, real talked. Not texted.”
I think for a moment, mentally replaying the conversation we had on the phone as I walked to the bus stop a few days ago. “That you were mad I didn’t ask you to transfer to St. S instead of Nasir.”
“I wasn’t mad, Bunny,” she says. “I was hurt, like Nasir. Not so much because you didn’t ask me to transfer to your school, but because just like with him, you didn’t even come to me about it. You were so focused on fixing things between the two of you that you didn’t consider asking me what I thought about all of it.”
I sit down at her desk because it’s a heavy thing to ask someone about your faults and have them actually lay them out there. “Oh.”
“You’ve got to learn to ask for help.”
It would make perfect sense to bring up the whole Wallace situation right now, but I don’t want to drag her into that mess like Nasir did to me. It’s for her own good. So I nod and let the moment slide past.
“And, yeah,” she says, drawing her legs to her chest, “there are times when I get jealous of the game like it’s another girl.” She meets my eyes and smiles. “Then again, there are times you focus on me so hard that it makes everything better for a while.”
I look away. Do I tell her about Brooke? It’s not like anything actually happened. If I’d ended up kissing her, it’d be another matter altogether.
I consider everything she’s told me and decide that if I’m not going to tell her the truth about everything with Wallace, then I should at least come clean about that.
I take a deep breath. “I’ve got something to tell you, Key,” I say, and the smile drops off her face. And then I do. I tell her about that night, and she listens without saying a thing.
When I finish, she stares past me for a long time, jaw clenched, rocking back and forth a little. “Please leave,” she says, the anger barely contained.
“Key, I’m sorry, I—”
“I’m glad you told me, Bunny. I appreciate the truth, I really do. But what did you expect?” She’s still not looking at me, and her words are coming out quicker and louder. “That I’d listen to this story about how you were stressed so you got drunk and tried to hook up with some random girl—who, thankfully, had enough sense to reject you—and then be cool with it?”
“It won’t happen again,” I say.
“How am I supposed to believe you?” she asks. “I never thought you’d let it happen once.”
“I’m just trying to be straight with you,” I say. “Would you rather I hid it?”
“Of course not,” she says. “I’m glad you told me. If I would have found out about this another way, I’d probably be pushing you out the window right now instead of having words with you. But that doesn’t mean I have to be cool with it.”
I look at my palms. “Are we over?”
“I don’t know, Bunny,” she says. “I’ve got to think about it. But right now, I need you to leave.”
I sigh as I stand up. “You still coming to the game tomorrow? I want you there.”
“I know you do,” she says. “I need to figure out if I want to be there.”
“Okay,” I say. “I get it.” Then I leave, since that’s what she wants.
44
Nasir
For the first time since last year, Bunny’s staying over. He showed up on my doorstep after dinner, said he had thought about it, and claimed that he couldn’t care less about Wallace but that our friendship was more important to him than basketball.
Then he held out a ticket to the game and asked if I wanted to watch him lose.
So now we’re doing just like we used to. Video games. Nerf wars. Dunk contest on the little hoop on the back of my bedroom door. We stay up late, since the game’s not until the early evening. We get yelled at by my dad for being too loud. We even bust out my old Pokémon cards and get in a few rounds playing with half-remembered rules. We talk about the future and how amazing it’s going to be.
It’s like we’re little kids again. I think with a true friend, you always kind of feel like a little kid. You don’t have to pretend to be cool or tough. You don’t have to worry about feeling embarrassed or ashamed. You act how you want to act, and I think that deep down everyone wants to be that immature, that fearless.
Man, I missed the hell out of this.
45
Bunny
I’m lying there in the darkness on Nasir’s bed while he’s in a sleeping bag on the floor. I can tell by his even breathing that he’s fast asleep, but I’m wide awake like a kid on Christmas Eve. I can’t stop thinking about the game tomorrow.
Actually, later today, because it’s nearly three a.m.
Fairview’s got two guys to worry about. Their center’s this towering kid from somewhere in eastern Europe who has nice range. He’s headed to Duke. And their point is this short Black kid who just moved up from the South and who everyone swears is the second coming of Allen Iverson. He’s a sophomore, like me.
Eric and Drew will have their hands full. As power forward, I’m going to have to help out. Double the center down low. Protect the lane when the point drives. But I can’t be in two places at once.
Everyone else on that squad’s solid, but nothing to
worry about. One of those two gets into foul trouble or something, and it’ll be a completely different game.
Of course, we’ve got to lose in the end. But that doesn’t mean I can’t do some damage and keep it close along the way.
“Nas,” I whisper. “You awake?”
He doesn’t respond.
I slip the pillow out from under my head, whack him with it, and then drop back down like I’m still sleeping.
Nasir pops up, head swiveling back and forth. “What? Huh?”
“What?” I say, rolling onto my side.
I can see him rub his eyes by the pale light from the street lamps that leak through his curtains. “Did you just hit me?” he asks, his voice still thick with sleep.
“Nah, you must be dreaming, man,” I say, laughing.
“Oh.” He lies back down.
A car alarm starts going off in the distance. A minute or so passes before it stops.
“Nas?” I say.
“Yeah?”
“Thanks for letting me stay over.”
“No problem. Just like old times, right?”
I sigh. “Like this year never happened.”
The room falls quiet. I roll onto my back, stretch my hands behind my head, and look up at the ceiling. I wonder if it’s still snowing.
The heat kicks on, the vent blowing warm air up the side of the bed.
“Nas?” I say.
“Yeah?”
“Did I make a mistake? By transferring, I mean.”
Nasir’s quiet for a few moments. Long enough that I start to wonder if he fell back to sleep. But then he speaks. “Honestly, I don’t know, man.” He sighs. “At first, I thought so. Thought you were making the biggest mistake of your life.”
I prop myself up on an elbow. “What changed?”
He sighs. “Guess I realized I was getting it twisted. Making it all about me.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I should’ve talked to you when I first started thinking about transferring. Got your thoughts on it instead of just up and deciding.”
