Stealing the Game

by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

  “What do we do?” I said. I heard the panic in my voice. I hoped he didn’t.

  “Follow me. Now!” Suddenly Jax bolted across the alley and I blindly followed, just like I’d blindly followed his robbery idea. When was I going to learn?

  Once we reached the other side, I looked to my left and right. The two cops were nearly to the end of the alley. In a few more feet, they would turn around and see us illuminated by the lights.

  “Let’s wait outside,” one of the cops from inside the carpet shop said.

  “Good idea,” the other cop said. “My ears are still ringing from that alarm.”

  Great. Now they were coming out, too.

  Oh, by the way, what was Jax doing running toward the patrol cars??

  When Jax got to the back of the police car near the fence, he grabbed the rear bumper and slid under the car.

  Naturally, I did the same.

  We lay underneath, side by side.

  Now what? I mouthed.

  He removed his cell phone and punched in 911. “Hello?” he whispered into the phone. “I just saw two men running through my mobile park. Oh my God, there they are now. Help us!” He clicked off just as the two cops came out of the store.

  The cops started yelling to each other, asking if they’d found anything.

  “They can trace that call to your phone,” I whispered while they yelled.

  “Not this phone,” he said.

  I looked at him. Since when did he have the kind of throwaway phone favored by criminals? (Master Thief had one, of course. More than one.) How did this information fit into my guess about his secret?

  For days I’d been gathering stray bits of information, inconsistencies in what certain people had said and done, and I’d started to formulate a theory about why Jax had been lying.

  The radio in one of the patrol cars crackled to life. It was hard to hear what it was saying, but I heard “two male suspects” and “mobile home park.”

  “Jim! Travis!” one of the cops called to the other two searching the alley. “They’re running through the mobile home park next door.”

  “Mobile home park?” one of the cops from the store said with a chuckle. “Who lives in a mobile home park anymore?”

  “My cousin, for one,” the other cop said, with an edge to his voice.

  “Well, maybe a tornado will pop up and carry them away. Isn’t that what happens in these places?”

  “Just for that, I’m gonna kick your butt at racquetball tomorrow.”

  “Only if you wake up in Oz and Glinda grants you a wish.”

  They both laughed at that.

  These cops certainly didn’t seem like they were on high alert.

  Jim and Travis jogged up to the other two. The cop with the mobile home cousin started giving orders. He told Jim and Travis to take one car, and the racquetball cop to take the other. One would patrol the perimeter of the mobile home park and the other would drive through it, trying to flush the perps out. (It felt weird to be called a perp.) Meanwhile, Boss Cop would wait inside the shop for Angelo to arrive.

  Boss Cop walked toward the building as the others jumped into their patrol cars and started the engines. Jax pulled me close to him so that we were both away from the tires. The cars pulled away in opposite directions and we lay in the alley holding our breath as the Boss Cop kept walking toward the carpet-store back door. If he turned around, he’d see us lying there like worms and it would be game over.

  But he didn’t turn around.

  Half an hour later we made it to Jax’s car, which he’d parked in an all-night supermarket parking lot a couple miles away. On the fifteen-minute drive home, we didn’t talk about what had just happened.

  Instead, I asked him, “Why did you set up another basketball game with the Undertakers?”

  “Relax, Kobe. There’s no pressure to win. I just needed a place in the open where I could give him the jewelry. Last time I met him alone, he rearranged my rib cage.”

  “You could do it in a mall.”

  “I suggested that, but he refused. Said no one pays attention to what adults are doing when a bunch of kids are playing nearby.”

  “Those guys are animals,” I said.

  “It’s just for show, bro. Play it safe, let them win, no one gets hurt. Rand gets the jewels, I get rid of my debt, everyone’s a winner. Right?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Right?” he repeated. “I mean it, Chris, don’t try to make a game of it, or someone could get hurt.”

  “Right,” I said. But I didn’t look at him or speak the rest of the way home.

  I couldn’t sleep for the two hours left before I had to get up for school. I just kept going over everything that had happened during the past few days since Jax had returned home. I kept trying to focus on the little clues here and there that told me there was something else going on with him, something he wasn’t telling us. But my mind kept coming back to one thing:

  We’d actually gotten away with it.

  “Just tell us what happened, Chris,” Principal McDonald asked again.

  I looked at his kind face for a full minute before answering. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Principal McDonald sighed, clearly disappointed.

  Officer Crane bent over and stuck his face so close to mine that I could have bitten his nose without much effort. “Listen to me, you little brat, we have a photograph of your brother robbing Angelo’s Pawnshop. And he wasn’t alone. Now do you know what I’m talking about?”

  I tried to look confused. “I’m sorry, Officer, but are you arresting me? If so, you need to read me my Miranda rights. Perhaps I should talk to my parents.”

  “No one’s being arrested,” Principal McDonald said.

  “Maybe. Maybe not.” Officer Crane stood up straight so he could tower menacingly over me. “California law states that I have the right to question a minor without parental consent or presence.”

  “Knock it off, both of you,” Principal McDonald said, irritated.

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “But I think Officer Crane needs to be informed that minors can only be questioned by police if they agree to be questioned. The U.S. Supreme Court implied that schools create a ‘custodial’ situation, which means you’re supposed to inform me that I have the right to leave at any time without answering any questions.”

  Officer Crane’s face was the same shade of red as a baboon’s butt.

  “Look it up, if you don’t believe me,” I continued. “The case is J.D.B. v. North Carolina. It involves a thirteen-year-old who was interrogated in school for burglary.”

  Part of my time lying awake this morning had been spent Googling law cases in preparation for this possibility.

  “You don’t seem surprised about the photo of Jax,” Principal McDonald said.

  I stood up and headed for the door. “I’m not surprised, because I know it wasn’t him.” I opened the door. “Now, I’ve got English class and I’m already ten minutes late.”

  Officer Crane shook an angry fist at me. “You punk kid, you’re going to—”

  I closed the door behind me and hurried off to class. I might have sounded all brave in there, but my hands were shaking so much that I stopped in the boys’ bathroom to splash water on my face. Then I dialed Jax’s phone—his regular phone, not the burner he’d had last night. He didn’t pick up and I didn’t want to leave anything incriminating, so I just said, “The police questioned me about some burglary at a pawnshop last night. Wanted to ask me about some photo. Weird, huh?”

  Hopefully, that would let him know to stay hidden until he’d finished whatever he was plotting regarding Fauxhawk. I was pretty sure I was close to figuring out exactly what that was.

  DO YOU KNOW WHAT COLOR YOUR ORANGE IS?

  “WHAT color is an orange?” Mr. Laubaugh asked the class as I entered the room. He looked over at me and smiled as if nothing in the world had changed. As if I hadn’t burglarized a pawnshop, hidden under a patr
ol car, and been interrogated in the principal’s office by a cop whose breath stank of stale coffee and wet dog fur.

  “Come in, Chris. Maybe you can answer the question that seems to have stumped the rest of the class.”

  I took my seat, glancing across the room at Brooke. Her attention was focused on Mr. Laubaugh. She didn’t even look my way. Not even the usual dismissive glare. More unusual, her hand wasn’t waving in the air, demanding to answer the question.

  However, the rest of the class was looking at me. Word had already gotten around about me being hauled out of algebra by Officer Crane. By now the whole school knew.

  “We’re not stumped, Mr. L,” said Theo. “We’re waiting for you to explain the question.”

  “What’s to explain? The question is the model of simplicity: what color is an orange?”

  “Nothing’s simple with you,” Theo said. “You’ve always got some crazy twist on things.”

  “Maybe this time is different,” Mr. Laubaugh said with a grin that confirmed this time was not any different.

  “Chris,” Dave Jaspers whispered to me, “what happened with the cop? Did you see a crime or something?”

  “Was someone murdered?” Char Gleeson asked, a little too gleefully.

  I mouthed Later and turned back in my seat to face Mr. Laubaugh.

  “And to motivate you, here’s today’s prize.” Mr. Laubaugh held up a battered DVD case of a movie I’d never heard of called The 400 Blows. The cover was a black-and-white photo of a frowning boy with his face pressed up against a chain-link fence, like he was in prison.

  “Why is the cover in black and white?” asked Kevin Yee, our movie expert (as long as the movie had a lot of explosions and aliens).

  “Because the film is in black and white,” answered Mr. Laubaugh.

  The class groaned as if he’d just told them he was giving them a surprise test on everything they’d ever learned since kindergarten.

  “That’s not all,” Mr. Laubaugh said. “The film is in French. With subtitles.”

  The class’s groan was even louder, like zombies just noticing a helpless toddler.

  “French. Subtitles. That’s not really motivating us to answer the question,” Dave Jaspers said. “Might as well tell us you’re giving us a healthy tofu snack.”

  “Hey,” Karen Flannigan protested. “Tofu is awesome. And doesn’t kill animals.”

  A couple other vegans nodded approval, but everyone else ignored her.

  “How come you know so many movies and books and TV shows that no one’s ever heard of?” Clancy Timmons called from the back of the room.

  “Actually, a lot of people have heard of this film. It’s won many prestigious awards and was even nominated for an Oscar. It’s considered one of the best films ever made.”

  “What’s it about?” Theo asked.

  “A twelve-year-old boy growing up in Paris in the early 1950s who’s misunderstood by his parents and teachers and gets thrown in jail for the night.”

  Did Mr. Laubaugh just look right at me? Did he know something about last night?

  “If it’s so great, how come I haven’t heard of it?” Clancy said defiantly, as if Mr. Laubaugh was personally challenging his intelligence.

  “‘There are more things in heaven and earth,’ Clancy, ‘than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’”

  “Hamlet!” most of the class said in unison. Mr. Laubaugh had spent a whole class on the meaning of that single quote at the beginning of the semester. If you understand Hamlet, he’d told us, you understand all of life.

  I still didn’t understand Hamlet. Maybe that’s why life was kicking my butt.

  Mr. Laubaugh nodded. “Tell you what, Clancy. I’m going to let you use your cell phone to look up the movie on Rotten Tomatoes. Tell me what the rating is.”

  Clancy took out his phone and tapped it a few times. As he read, his face looked shocked. “It has a one hundred percent Fresh rating. I’ve never seen that high a rating before.”

  “More things in heaven and earth, Clancy.” Mr. Laubaugh smiled and waggled the DVD. “Now, who can tell me what color is an orange?”

  “Orange?” Cole Tish said.

  Everyone laughed.

  “Someone had to say it!” Cole said defensively.

  “You’re partially right, Cole,” Mr. Laubaugh said. “In the U.S., oranges grown in early spring or late fall are orange. But those grown the rest of the year aren’t. And oranges grown in South America and other countries near the equator are never orange on the outside.”

  “Wait,” Jeff Blanco said. “Isn’t that where we get the name for the color orange? From the fruit?”

  “No,” said Theo. “The use of orange to describe the color occurred three hundred years after the fruit first showed up in Europe. The fruit got its name from the Sanskrit word for fragrant: naranja. Which sounds kinda like orange.”

  The class stared at Theo like he’d just barfed up a Volkswagen.

  “How do you even know that, dude?” Clancy said.

  “Some kid from Roosevelt mentioned it during an Aca-lympics contest. It just stuck in my head. Sounds like a magic spell. Naranja!” He made a conjuring gesture with his hands. A girl chuckled and Theo lowered his hands, embarrassed.

  I looked over at Brooke again. Usually when Theo, or anyone else, offered some chicken nugget of obscure information, she would snort or glare or wave her hand to argue the point. Today she just sat quietly at her desk. A model student.

  “Mr. Laubaugh,” Cole said, “I don’t see what any of this has to do with The Catcher in the Rye. Is this stuff going to be on the test?”

  “I’ll get to that in a minute. But first, anyone want to answer the original question? What color is an orange?”

  If you were expecting me to answer, get used to disappointment. I had no idea.

  “Yellow?” Cole guessed.

  Mr. Laubaugh shook his head and waited for someone else to answer.

  “Green,” Brooke finally said. Usually, she answered every question defiantly, like the snapping of a wet towel against a bare thigh. This time her voice was softer. “Ripe oranges are green in most of the world. Once they start turning orange they’re actually rotting. They’re green because of all the chlorophyll and only turn orange when exposed to cold. Because most Americans think that a green fruit means it’s not ripe, the farmers sometimes expose the oranges to ethylene gas, which knocks out the chlorophyll. Some places blast them with cold or even dye the skin orange so people will buy them.”

  “Ewww,” a few students said.

  “Excellent answer, Brooke,” Mr. Laubaugh said. He walked over to her and handed her the DVD. “For your growing collection,” he said, acknowledging that she’d won more DVDs than anyone else in class.

  “I still don’t get the point,” Cole said, clearly frustrated. “I mean, why bring it up in English class instead of science class?”

  “You can’t tell an orange by its cover?” Dave Jaspers asked. “Like a book?”

  A few students chuckled.

  Mr. Laubaugh grinned. “Not bad, Dave. Not bad. But maybe I have something more subtle in mind. Something that relates to the literary themes we’ve discussed all year. What do all the works we’ve read have in common? What is the main mistake that the fictional characters often make, including our friend Holden Caulfield?”

  Everyone concentrated on coming up with an answer. Sure, we had some smart-asses in the class, but this was an advanced class and you didn’t get in here by not caring. Theo was tugging on his lower lip, the way he always did when he was thinking. Clancy puffed out his cheeks like he was about to dive into the deep end of the pool. Brooke squinted, as if she was trying to read the answer through the wall.

  Suddenly I was talking, the words tumbling out before I realized it was me speaking them. “The characters are like the orange. They keep trying to be what others want them to be. Even if it means getting gassed, frozen, or dyed. Even if it kills something inside, like the chlo
rophyll. All that wasted effort and pain to be what others think they want. Like Kermit says, ‘It’s not easy being green.’”

  The class just stared for a long minute, as if I’d just recited the Greek alphabet.

  Even Mr. Laubaugh seemed shocked. Then a huge smile spread across his face and he said, “Now that’s what I’m talking about!”

  SOMETHING TO SHOW YOU

  OUTSIDE the classroom I pulled Theo aside. “I need your help,” I said.

  “Not until you tell me what went on with Officer Crane.”

  “You know him?”

  “My dad works with him. Says he’s kind of a tool.”

  “Your dad’s right.” Other kids going by glanced at me and whispered, still wondering why the police had hauled me out of class. “It was no big deal. They just wanted to know about my brother.”

  Theo shook his head. “Man, what has Jax gotten himself into?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out. And I need your help with the research, because I don’t have the time to do it.”

  “Again? What’s in it for me?” he asked. He saw my surprised expression and gave me a light punch to the arm. “JK, man, JK. I’m just messing with you.”

  I told him what I needed: a list of the families who’d been victims of garage break-ins, from the police log.

  He looked excited. “You’re onto something, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve just been trying to look for patterns, the way we do with the stories in Mr. Laubaugh’s class.”

  “You mean like ‘If you can understand Hamlet, you can understand all of life’?”

  “Did you understand Hamlet?”

  Theo shrugged. “To me it was about a dude torn between doing what his ghost dad wants him to do and what he thinks he should do.”

  Was that life? To always be torn between two choices, never sure which is the right one? How old did you have to be before that went away?

  “Who would you go with?” Theo asked.

  “I don’t know. Personally, I don’t think any good can come from listening to a ghost.”