Stealing the Game

by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

  “The news is that not only hasn’t he been attending Stanford Law School for the past year, he hasn’t even been living at the address he says he has.”

  “That’s impossible,” I said. “We’ve sent packages to that address. Food, birthday presents. He Skyped me from his apartment holding the Arkham Asylum Xbox game I sent him. He gave me a FaceTime tour of his place, showed me his roommates, John and Herb.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you, dude. There are no John and Herb living at the address you gave me.”

  “Maybe you wrote it down wrong,” I said. My voice was rising with fear and anger.

  He read back the address I’d given him. It was correct.

  “Four undergraduate girls live at that address. The lease is in the name of Elizabeth Graham. I checked with the university and she’s definitely enrolled. She’s a senior and she’s lived at that address for two years.”

  I was walking through a quiet neighborhood on my way home. I’d stayed out about as long as possible without causing suspicion that would release a barrage of parentally concerned questions: Where were you? Who were you with? Were there drugs? You can tell us anything. But seriously, were there drugs?

  “Hey, did you hear about Roger?” Theo said, interrupting my thoughts.

  “What about him?”

  “The Garage Bandits hit his home today while everyone was at work or at school. Got a couple old laptops and four mountain bikes. His dad was royally pissed, man. Those bikes were worth a couple grand. They even took his little sister’s bike, which she just got for her birthday last week.”

  “So?”

  “That’s a coincidence,” Theo said.

  “What?” I said.

  “That they broke in the week after she got a new bike.”

  I paused. “Yeah, that’s weird. You thinking maybe it’s not a coincidence?”

  “I don’t know yet. What do you think?”

  “You’re the detective, dude. I’m just a guy trying to figure out what’s going on with his brother.”

  “Right. Sorry to drop the bomb on you, man. But it looks like Jax is mixed up in something he doesn’t want you or your parents to know about.”

  That much I already knew, so I thanked Theo and hung up. Within seconds my phone buzzed with a text message from Jax.

  Good news, SP. Got you a rematch with the Undertakers!

  HOW WOULD YOUR PARENTS REACT?

  “OH my God!” Dad shouted, looking at my face as I walked through the front door. “What happened? Are you okay?”

  “It’s nothing,” I said. “Accident at basketball.”

  “Accident? What kind of accident? Did the backboard fall on you?”

  Mom walked over to me and calmly studied my face, looking into my eyes. “Pupils aren’t dilated. You dizzy?”

  “No.”

  “Did you vomit?”

  “No.”

  “Any loss of memory?”

  “No.”

  “Did you fold your laundry this morning like I asked?”

  “No.”

  She kissed my cheek and smiled. “He’s normal. No concussion.” I forgot to mention that Mom did a year of medical school before deciding to become a lawyer. She said she preferred the musty smell of courthouses to the medicine-y smell of hospitals. She patted my cheek. “And fold your laundry already, young man. It’s been sitting in the hamper for two days.”

  Yeah, about laundry. I like to just fish out the clothes from the clean hamper as I need them. Saves the whole fold-and-put-away step. Mom does not agree with my genius plan. “I’ll do it now,” I said, anxious to get away so I didn’t have to answer any more questions.

  Dad didn’t look convinced about my health. “Maybe we should take him to the emergency room. Just to be safe. Get some X-rays, maybe an MRI.”

  “I’m fine, Dad,” I told him.

  “Are you a doctor?” he asked.

  “Are you?” I answered sharply. I immediately wished I hadn’t, but Dad had a tendency to worry too much over every little thing I do. Mom was always the calm one, cleaning out my bloody wounds while Dad cringed. On the other hand, when I was sick it was Dad who spoiled me by fetching me ice cream from the store or sitting and watching whatever shows I wanted. If I really wanted Dad to flip out, I’d tell him that I shoplifted earrings that afternoon. And if I wanted him to start climbing the walls and walking on the ceiling, I’d tell him about Jax’s lies. Or that Jax had arranged for us to play the same vicious guys again. I didn’t even want to think about that possibility. What would I come home with then—broken ribs, missing teeth?

  “No, wise guy, I’m not a doctor,” Dad said. “I’m just a dad who’s concerned about his son. Sue me.”

  Mom laughed. “If you do, I know a good lawyer.”

  Dad frowned at her. “Really? Lawyer jokes at a time like this?”

  Mom put her arms around Dad. “He’s already iced it, sweetheart. The nose doesn’t look broken. He just needs a couple Advil, more ice, and a good dinner.”

  “Good dinner” consisted of Chinese takeout they’d brought home after work. Over my orange chicken and spring rolls I answered all of Mom and Dad’s questions about school, even though they were the same questions I got most every day. Who’d I hang out with? What questions did the teachers ask? When’s my next quiz? Dad studied me like he was my lawyer visiting me in jail and wanted to know if any of the other prisoners had tried to shank me. Mom pretended to be focusing on her curry chicken and fried dumplings, but I could tell she was weighing every answer as a sign of how it would affect my getting into Stanford.

  Sometimes I think my greatest work as a comic book writer is the elaborately positive life that I manufactured for my parents. Thanks to my creative answers to their questions, they thought I was hugely popular in school, high-fiving guys on my way to class, every girl’s object of affection, and the favorite student of every teacher, even the ones whose classes I was struggling in. In my carefully constructed Bizarro World, girls talked to me all the time, and I had deep friendships with kids of every race, religion, and creed (though I’m not sure what creed means). Actually, that last one was mostly true. Basketball brings all kinds of kids together, and I got along with everyone on my team. But I wasn’t close friends with anybody. Nobody I would confide secrets in unless I had to, like I’d had to with Theo. No one knew about me being a designer baby. Heck, no one even knew I drew comics.

  I was friendly to everyone but friends with no one.

  Today with Brooke had been the closest I’d come to spilling everything. But, in the end, I hadn’t. I’d sipped my lemonade and iced my face. If this were English class, Mr. Laubaugh would say that icing my face was a perfect metaphor for how I kept people at a distance, like I was freezing them out. I immediately thought of Brooke, how she’d appreciate that idea and I should text it to her—and how I never, ever would. Point made.

  Suddenly the doorbell rang and I grabbed the interruption as an excuse to escape more questions about my imaginary life.

  “I’ll get it,” I said, jumping up and racing to the front door.

  “Wait,” Dad said, as if he’d forgotten to tell me something. But too late. When I pulled it open, Hannah Selby stood in the doorway with a learning-is-fun smile.

  She brushed past me into the house and said, “Where are we doing this?”

  “Doing what?” I asked.

  Mom and Dad appeared in the doorway looking guilty.

  “We told Hannah to start the tutoring tonight, Chris,” Dad said.

  “No point putting off getting those math and science grades up. Right?” Mom added.

  I just stood there, forcing myself not to yell at them.

  “Right,” I said coldly. But the glare I shot Mom and Dad told them I felt betrayed. The way fans felt when Christian Bale said he wasn’t going to play Batman anymore.

  Mom cleared off the Chinese food and set us up at the kitchen table. “Study hard,” she said as she left the room. I could tell
she felt bad. Good. She should.

  “We will, Mrs. Richards,” Hannah said. She unpacked a bunch of books, tablets, and pencils from her briefcase. Then she sat down and looked directly at me. “What happened to your face, Chris?” she asked.

  “Basketball,” I said.

  “Wow. Middle school is a lot more violent than I remember.”

  “It wasn’t at school. It was at the park. We played some club team called the Undertakers.”

  She laughed. “Really? They call themselves that with a straight face, huh?”

  “They’re pretty good, so they can get away with calling themselves pretty much anything.”

  She touched my face with her fingertips as she examined my bruises. Her fingers felt cool and soft, kind of soothing. In a gentle voice she said, “You’ll get them next time. It’s your house, right? No one comes to your house and gets away with disrespecting you.”

  I didn’t say anything. This was not the first time I’d gotten hurt playing basketball. I’d had cuts, bruises, sprains, black eyes, bloody noses. And, to be honest, I usually thought they made me look cool. Like a battle wound or something. But this wound wasn’t the result of a fair battle—more like a sneak attack. That didn’t count.

  Hannah pulled up her right pant leg. A three-inch scar like a fat white worm curled around her knee. “Cleats during a soccer game in college. Tore a huge flap of skin open.” She tugged up her right sleeve and exposed a jagged reddish scar on her forearm. “Field-hockey stick in high school. Took twenty minutes to stop bleeding.”

  “This reminds me of that scene in Jaws where they compare scars,” I said.

  She laughed. “That’s the best scene in the movie.”

  “Except the opening where that girl gets attacked and she’s being jerked around the water like a swizzle stick.”

  Hannah frowned as if she’d swallowed a bug. “Like a swizzle stick? That’s a good simile—and a disturbing one.” She pointed to my backpack. “Want to start with science, or math?”

  “Science.” My policy was to postpone as long as possible anything to do with math.

  “Okay. Get your textbook out. Who’s your teacher?”

  “Ms. Kaiser.”

  She thought for a moment. “Then you should be on Chapter Fifteen.”

  “How’d you know?” I said, surprised.

  “I tutor a lot of students from your school.”

  “Yeah? Like who?”

  She named a bunch of kids. I knew most of them. It made me feel like less of a loser to know that so many other kids were also being tutored.

  I slowly rummaged in my backpack, stalling. I knew she was hired for an hour, so every minute I burned up with idle chatter and slow-motion movements was one minute less of algebra. “Have you heard about all the garages being broken into?”

  “Yeah. Officer Rollins stopped by a couple houses where I tutor to warn the parents.” She grabbed the science book out of my hands. “You done stalling? I promised your parents a full hour, and that’s what they’re going to get.” She took out her phone and started the timekeeping function. “The hour starts…now.”

  Turned out it wasn’t so bad. Hannah was good at explaining things, even something as complex as the periodic table, which to me looked like ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. Even so, my eyes started to close sometime during her explanation about gases and solids.

  “Hey,” she said, nudging my arm. “You looking for me to add another scar to your collection?”

  “Sorry,” I said. I sat up straighter, sipped some of the iced tea Mom had poured for both of us.

  “You know, Chris, I don’t come cheap. So don’t waste your parents’ money here.”

  “Right,” I said. “I won’t.”

  She looked at me and sighed. “Why isn’t methane gas on the periodic table?”

  “Because it’s a compound, not an element. It’s made up of the elements carbon and hydrogen.”

  She smiled and clapped her hands. “Very good. You know what produces a lot of methane?”

  I shook my head.

  “Farts,” she said.

  I laughed.

  “Don’t laugh,” she said, but with a smile on her face. “Methane is a greenhouse gas and all the farting from people and animals is a danger to the environment. Did you ever light a fart?”

  “No. But I’ve seen it in movies.”

  “Movies get it wrong. Dumb and Dumber, Dennis the Menace, Nutty Professor 2, they show an orange flame when someone lights a fart. In reality, it would be blue.”

  “How do you know?” I teased.

  “Two college chemistry courses. And a few fraternity parties. Frat boys love doing that stuff.”

  We both laughed.

  “How’s it going?” Dad asked, poking his head into the kitchen.

  “I’m learning a lot about chemistry,” I said.

  “Great,” Dad said. He waited, said “Great” again, and left.

  The rest of the session went pretty well, even the algebra. Hannah didn’t rush me or get impatient when I didn’t understand a concept. In fact, I was just getting the hang of figuring out a nasty variable when the front door opened loudly and I heard Jax saying hi to Mom and Dad. A couple seconds later, he walked into the kitchen, went straight to the refrigerator, and helped himself to a beer.

  He leaned against the wall and grinned. “The return of the Dynamic Duo, huh?”

  I could smell the beer on him. This wasn’t his first.

  Hannah’s cell-phone timer buzzed. “Time’s up for tonight. Good job, Chris. See you next week.”

  “Next week?” I said.

  “Your folks have me coming once a week to start. If you need more help, we’ll add an extra day. Sound good?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “What time do you usually get home from school?”

  “Depends how long practice runs. Usually I’m home by four. Why?”

  “Just need to know when to add the extra sessions if we need them.” She must have noticed the panicked look on my face. She smiled. “Don’t worry, we probably won’t need them.”

  She started packing her stuff into her canvas bag. She was very pretty, in an Older Woman kind of way.

  “How’s it going, Hannah?” Jax asked.

  “Fine, Jax,” Hannah said, with icicles hanging from each word.

  “Come on. You’re not still mad about prom, are you?”

  She looked surprised. “Prom? That was years ago. Why would I care?”

  “Because you asked me to take you to the dance, but I had already asked Tina Mayfair. You’ve hardly spoken to me since.”

  “I’ve hardly seen you since. That was senior year and we weren’t in the same classes. We went to different colleges. You majored in poli sci and I majored in education. You went to Stanford and I went to the University of Arizona.”

  “Go, Wildcats!”

  “I didn’t have time to attend games, Jax. I was busy working two waitressing jobs and studying the rest of the time. We didn’t all have full scholarships. I’ll be paying off student loans until I’m thirty. So don’t think we ever had anything in common.”

  Jax looked confused, then a little embarrassed. “Oh,” he said. “Okay, then we’re good?”

  She looked him up and down with the same disapproving expression that Mom gave him the night he’d told them about dropping out of Stanford. “I’m good,” she said. “I’m not sure what you are.”

  Jax grinned again, but it was a strained grin. “Ouch, that’s brutal.” Then he slipped around the corner and disappeared.

  Hannah looked at me sympathetically. “Sorry about that, Chris. It’s just that I’m a little surprised about Jax. We all had such high hopes for him. Maybe that wasn’t fair. Anyone can crack under too much pressure.”

  Were we still talking about Jax—or me?

  She shrugged. “Still, no one expected him to end up like this.”

  “I get it,” I said. “Neither did I.”

  She nodde
d at my sore face. “The Jax I knew in high school wouldn’t have let that happen. He would have protected you.”

  She grabbed her bag of books and left.

  I stood alone in the kitchen a moment. She was right. The Jax I knew wouldn’t have let that happen to me. He’d have stopped the game or told Fauxhawk to get out of the park and take his punk team with him.

  But not this Jax. This Jax had just stood by and watched.

  I’d been making excuses for his behavior long enough. I needed to confront him right now with everything I knew.

  I jumped up and headed for his room, feeling like a gunslinger walking down Main Street for a showdown.

  THE BRO CODE

  I WALKED up the stairs as Mom shouted, “How’d it go, Chris?”

  “Fine,” I shouted back, and hurried up the stairs. Parents are like Wi-Fi: you have to get beyond their broadcast range if you want any privacy.

  Jax’s door was open, so I burst into his room, my face hot with anger. “I want to know what’s going on and I want to know right now!”

  He was lying on his bed reading a book. He threw something at me.

  I caught it in midair. A bag of frozen peas.

  “Put it on your face. The swelling’s starting to come back.”

  “Since when do we have vegetables in the house?” I asked. Mom hadn’t cooked a dinner since I was old enough to order from a take-home menu. Dad occasionally made pancakes or omelets. Our freezer held only ice cream sandwiches—and Hot Pockets for emergencies.

  “Since never. I bought them at the store on my way home. They work better than ice packs, because they conform to your face.”

  I stared at the frozen peas, trying to decide whether to throw them back at him or press them to my face, which actually was starting to throb again. I went with my face. “I’m serious, Jax. I want the truth.”

  I expected him to grin and say something cheesy like “You can’t handle the truth” or another line from a movie. But he didn’t. He just sighed and nodded for me to sit down. I sat on the chair at his desk.

  “I know you haven’t been going to Stanford,” I told him. “I know that you haven’t even lived at that address you gave us.”