On Guard

by Patrick Jones

  Copyright © 2016 by Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.

  All rights reserved. International copyright secured. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc., except for the inclusion of brief quotations in an acknowledged review.

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  Minneapolis, MN 55401 USA

  For reading levels and more information, look up this title at www.lernerbooks.com.

  Front cover: © pzAxe/Shutterstock.com, Susan Rouleau-Fienhage (background).

  Main body text set in Janson Text LT Std 12/17.5. Typeface provided by Adobe Systems.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Jones, Patrick, 1961- author.

  Title: On guard / by Patrick Jones.

  Description: Minneapolis : Darby Creek, [2017] | Series: Bounce | Summary: “She is the star player on her basketball team, until her sister is injured in a violent crime. Instantly, her game is derailed, and she becomes a second victim. Can she save her scholarship season?”— Provided by publisher.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2015044802 (print) | LCCN 2016012796 (ebook) | ISBN 9781512411232 (lb : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781512412079 (pb : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781512411348 (eb pdf)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Basketball—Fiction. | Sisters—Fiction. | Grief—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.J7242 On 2017 (print) | LCC PZ7.J7242 (ebook) | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015044802

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  1-39638-21281-3/18/2016

  9781512419269 ePub

  9781512419276 ePub

  9781512419283 mobi

  Thanks to the fab five of Sarah, Christine, Bhargavi, Amber, and Megan

  1

  Mercedes Morgan’s shot exploded like a bullet: fast, accurate, and painful to her enemy.

  “Three!” the point guard, Cheryl, yelled in delight. The other starters of the Birmingham North Wildcats team—Halle, Toni, and A.J.—followed with slaps and bumps.

  Mercedes didn’t acknowledge her teammates, the shot, or the score. To do so meant removing her “don’t mess with me” game face, letting down her guard, and rejoicing about something small. It was three points. The first of many she figured she’d score in her senior year.

  Back on defense, Mercedes kept her left arm outstretched in front, waiting for her chance to swat the ball from the Hoover guard. The Hoover guard cut left, but Mercedes hung tight. She closed off all good options and forced a bad pass. The other team would score, that was a given, but Mercedes didn’t want any to come from her zone. She owned it like gangs owned blocks back in her old neighborhood.

  Before the second quarter, Coach Johnson told the other players to feed Mercedes the ball. “She’s hotter than Alabama in August,” Coach said.

  As Mercedes walked toward the locker at the end of the half, she took inventory of the sparsely populated bleachers. Jade? Yes! Mom? Yes, always. Dad? No, working, also always. Little brother, Lincoln? Yes, but not happy about it. Big sister, Callie? Never.

  Mercedes knew where Callie would be, but she tried to block the image like she rejected shots. Callie never sat in the stands. She stood on a corner in their old neighborhood. There Callie dealt in danger, always on guard, not knowing when her number would come up. Not if, Mercedes thought, but when.

  2

  “Wait up!” Jade yelled as she raced toward Mercedes, her thickness weighed down with multiple rings, bracelets, and necklaces. Everything about jiggling Jade made Mercedes smile.

  Cheryl gently poked Mercedes’s side. Mercedes had been elbowed so many times on the court that her taut stomach absorbed the blow. “Jade’s so all about you,” Cheryl said in words barely audible through her laughter. The rest of the Wildcat starting five agreed. They were gathered around Mercedes’s locker as they were every school morning.

  “I don’t have time for Jade during the season.” Mercedes checked the schedule on her cell. School. Practice. Study. Family. Mercedes knew she’d only be able to give Jade the time she deserved if a genius invented a longer day, but that didn’t seem possible.

  “You lie,” Halle said. Mercedes’s embarrassed face didn’t deny it.

  When Mercedes turned to leave, Cheryl latched onto her arm, holding her in place until Jade arrived. Almost a foot shorter than Mercedes, Jade sometimes made Mercedes feel like a giraffe in the hallway, unlike the gazelle she resembled on the court.

  “Sorry I’m late,” Jade said, catching her breath. Mercedes waited for her to give a reason, but Jade just removed her backward Barons ball cap and tossed it into the overstuffed locker that they shared. Jade unloaded her bag and took out the books for her morning classes. Both she and Mercedes held AP Calculus texts.

  Mercedes tried not to be suspicious as she watched Jade. She loved the silver “Love” necklace that hung around Jade’s neck. Mercedes had given her the necklace on their one-year anniversary. She hated the green “Loyalty” tattoo Jade had inked on her left arm before they’d met—it looked a lot like the one that Callie wore with pride. Mercedes wondered if Lincoln hid one under his long sleeves.

  “See you after practice?” Mercedes asked softly, trying not to flinch. Getting a shot blocked on the court was a bad feeling, but having Jade say no to her for any reason was worse.

  “Always,” Jade said before she kissed Mercedes on her strawberry-gloss lips. “Forever.”

  3

  “You see the story in the paper?” Coach Johnson asked Mercedes at the end of a hard practice. Mercedes thought Coach pushed them more after they won than after they lost. Since they were on a four-game winning streak, each practice seemed worse than military basic training.

  “What story?” Mercedes asked, fighting a yawn. She’d been up until eleven texting with Jade, past one studying, and until two worrying about Callie. Callie had studied nothing since she dropped out at sixteen and jumped into the life of working for Robert, slinging back in their old neighborhood—what Mercedes just called the life. Some nights Callie came around the house, but mostly she stayed at Robert’s place. Mercedes didn’t know which was worse.

  Coach showed Mercedes a printed story from al.com about the first few weeks of high school basketball. It wasn’t a long story. Nobody in Alabama cares about basketball until the college football season ends and the Crimson Tide secures the national championship.

  “Am I the only Wildcat?” Mercedes asked. The attention embarrassed her at times, especially in front of her teammates. It isn’t my fault, Mercedes thought, that I’m this good. Yes, it was practice and hard work, all those little bottles of character traits that coaches sell, but Mercedes knew better. Like LeBron in basketball or the Williams sisters in tennis, some people became rulers of the court because of God-given natural ability. “I mean, didn’t the story mention Cheryl or Halle?”

  Coach pursed her thin lips. “This means there’ll be college recruiters. I want them to talk to me first. You okay with that?”

  Mercedes frowned. “Do I have to talk to them?” Mercedes’s small voice belied her five-foot, eleven-inch frame.

  “Do whatever you want,” Coach said.

  Easy for you to say, Mercedes thought. Mercedes imagined herself in college. Then she saw her sister on the street. Mercedes heard the cheers of a packed field house, and then she heard the tears of her crowded church.

  “Mercedes?”

  “Thing is, Coach,” Mercedes said, staring at her well-worn Nikes, “I don’t know what I want.”

  4
<
br />   “Is anybody home?” Mercedes called into the darkness of her house. She guessed her dad was still at work, while Wednesday night her Mom attended church. “Lincoln, let’s eat!”

  Mercedes dropped her bags by the front door and headed into the kitchen. She opened the fridge and pulled out leftover chicken stir-fry and the makings of a salad. Judging by the amount left, Lincoln probably hadn’t eaten yet. She hoped he was absorbed in video games with his goofy friends like in junior high, but those goofs never came over anymore. He had new friends that she didn’t like.

  “Lincoln, let’s eat!” Mercedes pounded hard on his door. Nothing. “Lincoln, let’s go!”

  The door opened. Lincoln glared at his sister. She’d noticed he’d been doing more of that recently, and he was participating in family time less and less. “What do you want?” he snapped.

  “Less attitude,” Mercedes snapped back, earning another glare. “You hungry?”

  “I’m good.” Mercedes glanced over her brother’s shoulder. She saw an open pizza box. She smelled the garlic, but something else too. Even with the window open, the odor lingered. She heard a cough and saw Joel, one of Lincoln’s new friends, on the floor. He wore expensive shoes.

  “Don’t let Mom or Dad catch you,” Mercedes said. “I won’t snitch you out, but—”

  “You’re right about that.” Lincoln’s once-cute smile curled into an in-your-face smirk.

  Mercedes took a step back as if to size up her younger and much smaller brother. She sighed hard. “What’s wrong with you? Don’t you see Callie—”

  Lincoln started rapping about money, but Mercedes couldn’t place the song. She wished he studied more and wasted less time with Joel. Lincoln used to be a good student, but high school had come down hard. He’d dropped out of football and refused to go out for basketball.

  “What are you up to?” Mercedes inspected him head to toe: new shoes on his feet and that smirk on his face. Their family had left their bad neighborhood, but Lincoln had brought it with him.

  5

  “Kat, what’s the record?” Mercedes asked during her team’s last time out. They were ahead by a wide margin. Coach had left Mercedes in, not so much to pile on points as to make a milestone.

  The team manager, Kat, searched her phone. Coach scowled at the sight, but a thin smile emerged when Kat broke the news. “The record for the most three-pointers in an Alabama girls’ game is ten.” Mercedes and her coach exchanged glances like co-conspirators of a bank heist.

  “Up to you,” Coach said. Mercedes wiped a towel over her short hair. “You have eight.”

  Mercedes glanced at the clock. Four minutes left. Making two more threes against the smaller and slower Bessemer team was a slam dunk. “Kat, what’s the real record?”

  Kat didn’t need to ask what she meant. “The record is fifteen threes in a boys’ game.”

  “Look, up there.” Coach pointed at three women, overdressed for a high school gym. Each held a phone in one hand and, Mercedes suspected, her future in the other. Scouts.

  “If I shoot too much, they’ll think I’m a selfish player,” Mercedes worried aloud. Her teammates disagreed, Cheryl the loudest. “What do you think, Cheryl?” Mercedes asked.

  “You get open, you’ll get the ball.” They fist-bumped as they ran onto the court.

  Mercedes cut toward the basket, took the pass, tossed back to Halle, then raced herself behind the three-point line. Left fake, right sprint. Pass. Ball in hand. Shoot the hoop. Three. The Bessemer team inbounded and tried pushing the ball up quickly, but turned it over right into Mercedes’s hands: hands that launched a three-pointer to tie the record. The Bessemer crowd booed.

  As the final seconds clicked down, the Wildcats passed to Mercedes when she got open. If she beat the double, she got the three. If she got shut off, she passed off and tried to get free. If only life was so easy, Mercedes thought. With seconds left, Mercedes launched her last shot. The cheering crowd drowned out the clanging of the orange ball off the front of the silver rim as the shot missed.

  6

  “Don’t you ever get tired?” Jade sat cross-legged on a picnic table, sipping an oversize Coke and listening to music. She never took her eyes off Mercedes shooting threes in the twilight.

  Mercedes launched another nothing-but-net shot as her answer. Unlike parks in her old neighborhood, this court had a net. This park felt safe. She didn’t need to be always on guard.

  “You were amazing the other night,” Jade said.

  “You mean during the game or after?” Mercedes asked.

  Jade laughed and almost shot Coke out of her nose. Jade’s laugh, more than her smile, figure, street smarts, or carefree personality, was what attracted Mercedes to her like a magnet.

  “Watch this,” Mercedes said. “I’ll not only hit ten shots in a row, but I’ll do it so the ball bounces right back to me. You wanna bet?” Mercedes knew there was no way in the old playground courts, where her dad first taught her to play, that she could make such a bet. Like the streets around that park, there were too many hazards to send a ball, or a life, far off course.

  Jade laughed again, but then turned her jeans pockets inside out. “I got nothing to bet.”

  Mercedes kissed Jade, then whispered, “I’ll think of something.” Mercedes dribbled the ball onto the court, found the three-point line she’d marked off, and made the first shot.

  “Nine more to go!” Jade clapped and started the countdown. Just as Mercedes had said, her shots sailed through the net, then bounced back to her. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four.

  “Mercedes!” Mercedes turned toward the voice. Callie. Holding the ball so tight she thought she might crush it, Mercedes didn’t reply as her older sister came closer. Callie didn’t acknowledge Jade or introduce Mercedes to her entourage. “Lil sis, you still playing games?”

  The sweat on Mercedes’s forehead chilled at her sister’s tone. Her blood froze solid when she saw Robert’s ring-filled hand clasp hard onto her sister’s shoulder. Not a touch between equals, more like an owner guiding his dog. “How you doing, Mercedes?” Robert asked. Mercedes shivered.

  “What do you want?” Mercedes asked the pavement below, avoiding all eye contact, especially with the youngest-looking member of the group. It was Lincoln’s new friend, Joel.

  “We were rollin’ by and saw you,” Callie said, sounding casual. Callie tried to engage Mercedes, asking about Christmas and such, but Mercedes wouldn’t speak to her. The more silent Mercedes became, the louder Callie got, finally shouting, “What’s wrong with you, girl?”

  Mercedes clenched her fists until she felt Jade’s arms wrap around her waist, making her feel safe. “Whatever, we’re out,” Callie snorted. Callie retreated with Robert and the others as quickly as she had arrived. Mercedes watched as the group climbed back into a big black SUV.

  “You okay?” Jade whispered into Mercedes’s left ear. Mercedes pulled away from Jade. She retrieved the ball and hurled it hard into the backboard. The ball bounced far out of Mercedes’s reach. Just like my sister, Mercedes thought.

  “Let’s go,” Mercedes said. She jogged toward the loose ball. “We need to study.”

  “Only way out of here,” Jade said. “Well, for me. For you—” Jade pointed at the ball.

  Mercedes ignored the ball and touched Jade’s shoulders. “I don’t want to leave you, ever.”

  Mercedes’s soft words were interrupted by a loud sound and lights. Sirens. The flashing lights triggered flashbacks to her old neighborhood. She knew what life might have been if she hadn’t found her passion for getting a game. Then there was her sister’s passion for The Game. Both had risks, both held rewards. On the court, Mercedes’s hands went high to gather a rebound. In the distance, Mercedes saw Callie’s hands held high over her head, then behind her back. As the police pushed Callie into the squad car, she turned her back, but Mercedes felt like she was the one turning her back on her sister. She’d get up and out because of her skills, while Callie’s c
hoices could only leave her down and in jail, or worse, six feet in the ground.

  7

  The back of the team bus, where Mercedes normally sat firing off jokes, seemed louder than normal, and the trip to play rival South High for an away game seemed longer than usual.

  Mercedes sat by herself, music booming in her earbuds, then coursing through her veins like blood, as she scrolled through pictures of her family. Mom. Dad. Callie. Her. Lincoln. Family.

  Callie and Mercedes were three years apart. Mercedes marveled at how much she looked, dressed, and acted like her sister for so many years, and how quickly things had started to change. In junior high, Mercedes mastered the court, at the same time Callie made her first appearance in juvenile court. Not her last. Photo by photo, sisters became strangers: Mercedes, who once did everything she could to follow in her sister’s footsteps, sprinted in the other direction. Her sister’s tight white beaters, expensive shoes, and letters on her skin were a polar opposite to Mercedes’s colorful polos, court-ready kicks, and proud letters on her report cards. Around tenth grade, Callie’s smile died.

  Mercedes wondered about her sister’s mug shot. The arrest Mercedes witnessed wouldn’t result in juvenile time. Callie was twenty, yet she clung to her old friends, habits, and haunts.

  Cheryl tapped Mercedes on the shoulder. Mercedes popped the bud out of her left ear.

  “Everything okay?”

  Mercedes hesitated. She didn’t open up to just anyone. Cheryl was just a teammate, not a soul mate like Jade.

  “Is it about your sister?” Cheryl asked. Did everyone on the team bus know? Mercedes wondered. Maybe she wasn’t avoiding them; maybe they were avoiding her. “I’m sorry to hear.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” Mercedes said, trying to sound confident. “I got game.”

  “If I was you, I’d be more worried about your sister than a game, but that’s me.” Cheryl frowned. “Maybe because I pass and don’t shoot, I always worry about the other person first. But you do what you gotta do. You’ve got enough pressure anyway with all those scouts buzzing.”