On Guard

by Patrick Jones

  Mercedes wanted to put the bud in, turn up the music, and collapse into the beat. What if there was a story in the paper about her sister getting arrested? What if the scouts connected the two of them? The bass boomed along with Mercedes’s pounding heart. What if?

  “I’ll take care of you.” Cheryl slapped Mercedes softly on the shoulder and then left her alone. Mercedes faked a smile, whispered a “thank you,” and started scrolling through photos again.

  Mercedes glanced at her phone to see another missed call from her mom. In just over an hour, Mercedes would put on the maroon North jersey she wore with pride. But in the morning, she’d wait in a line for over an hour at County to see her sister wearing an orange uniform of shame. She called Jade instead of her mom.

  “Jade, this is Robert’s fault,” Mercedes said as soon as Jade picked up. Jade listened as Mercedes retold the story of Callie getting mixed up with Robert. “He’s a dead weight around her ankle.”

  “Mercy, staying in the life was her choice,” Jade whispered. “Like leaving it was mine.”

  Mercedes said nothing as the bus pulled up to a light. Green. Yellow. Red. So easy, but life didn’t give such easy directions. The only one that made sense was yellow: use caution.

  “You okay?” Jade interrupted Mercedes’s thoughts. Mercedes didn’t answer; she scrolled photos, past her sister whom she couldn’t help. She stopped on one of Lincoln from last year. He was smiling, not smirking. Mercedes frowned. Was he following Callie’s path?

  “I’ll be okay.” Mercedes took a deep breath. In just over an hour, she’d be on the court for all thirty-two minutes if she got her way. In those thirty-two minutes, nothing mattered except an orange sphere like the sun. Her life revolved around basketball, especially when the rest of life spun like a loose ball out of her control. “Don’t worry about me, Jade, I’m okay.”

  “But you’re not okay.” Jade’s soft voice dropped softer than even a whisper. “I love you so much, Mercy. That’s why I hate it when you lie to me.”

  8

  “I’m blowing it!” Mercedes kicked over a trash can in the visiting locker room. Kat followed behind and picked up the spilled garbage, muttering a torrent of filthy language.

  “That’s enough!” Coach shouted, but Mercedes heard nothing but sirens in her head.

  Unable to swear, Mercedes smashed her fists hard into the old tan lockers. The sound bounced around the tiny room like thunder. “Cheryl, don’t you ever pass me the ball again!”

  Cheryl started to speak, but Mercedes shouted over her. “Anybody but me!” She turned to Kat, snatched the clipboard out of her hands, and ripped up into tiny pieces the score sheet for the game that showed her line: zero for eight from the field, including three missed threes.

  Instead of handing the clipboard back to Kat, Mercedes punted it across the room. When she did, Coach bounded across the room and grabbed Mercedes’s left arm.

  “Let go of me!”

  Coach clutched Mercedes’s arm tighter and dragged her into the shower. With one hand, Coach pressed against Mercedes’s chest to hold her in place, and with the other, she turned on the water. “You’d better cool down, now!”

  Mercedes stood in the cold water, shivering, the water masking her falling tears. It was a game with scouts in the stands and they had to win, but she’d lost her rhythm. Mercedes wondered if she’d lost her soft shooting touch when the police locked the hard cuffs on Callie’s wrists.

  Back in the locker room, she heard Coach trying to fire everyone up even as ice raced through Mercedes’s veins. She reached up and turned off the water. Kat stood a few feet away and tossed her a towel. Mercedes stripped off her clothes and wrung the water out of them. She squeezed as hard as she could—her hurting hands aching with the effort—to get her clothes dry.

  “You ready to play?” Coach asked. Mercedes wrapped the towel tight around her. Kat picked up Mercedes’s clothes and took them into the other room. Mercedes heard the hand dryer turn on loud.

  “I want to,” Mercedes said, her voice hoarse from tears. “I don’t know if I can.”

  “If you want to change your behavior, then you can. It’s that simple.”

  From the gym, Mercedes heard the roar of the crowd as the South High team returned to the court. “You can go, Coach. I’ll be okay.” Mercedes shivered again.

  “Tell me what’s going on.” Coach leaned closer and put her hand on Mercedes’s shoulder.

  “No.” My sister is locked up, Mercedes thought, and my brother’s out with the wrong people.

  Coach shook her head. “Mercedes, I’m here for you, and so are your teammates.”

  Mercedes stared at the shower floor. “Don’t you need to get out there and coach?”

  “That’s what I am doing,” Coach said. Kat returned with Mercedes’s damp clothes and tossed them to her. “Kat, the team’s yours until I get back. Like always, do your best.”

  Kat, all five-foot-one of her, sprinted off toward the gym as if a starter pistol had just fired. “Mercedes, get dressed and then come see me.” Mercedes did like she always did: followed her coach’s orders.

  After Mercedes returned in her damp clothes, Coach said, “Tell me. It will help.” Coach motioned for Mercedes to sit by her on the bench. A bench made for quick changes, not for long stories like the one Mercedes told about her sister. How despite the surroundings they grew up in, Callie seemed on the right course until the dark cloud called Robert stormed into her life.

  “When I’m on the bus and it stops at a traffic light, I can’t stop thinking about Callie standing on the corner with Robert’s hand on her shoulder pushing her down.”

  Coach started to speak, but stopped. Mercedes sensed Coach wanted her to say more.

  “I don’t know what to do,” Mercedes confessed. “I’ve got to change what she’s doing.”

  Coach patted Mercedes again on her shoulder. “Let me show you something.” Coach dipped her left hand into her maroon North polo and pulled out a necklace. “You see this, Mercedes?”

  The thin necklace held a large pendant with lots of writing. Mercedes stared hard and read aloud the words engraved on it: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

  “What you can change is yourself. Focus on your game, not your sister’s.” Coach pointed at the gym. “I know one thing that you can change. I know you can change the score of this game!”

  With her uniform still cold and damp, Mercedes felt her game was ready to heat up.

  9

  “I don’t want you talking to any college recruiters without us around,” Mercedes’s mom said. Her father quickly agreed, but it was hard for Mercedes to take their stern tone to heart. Between her buzzer-beating three—clinching North’s come-from-behind victory over rival South—and Callie getting released from jail, Mercedes felt as if two Christmas gifts had arrived four days early.

  “Coach said the same thing,” Mercedes said as she leaned against the refrigerator.

  “You want me to screen the calls?” Lincoln asked. “I’ll act as your agent. Now, listen here, my big sister wants two first-class tickets, one for me and another for her. Now—”

  “That’s enough, Jerry Maguire,” Mom said as she placed the meatloaf on the table.

  “Who is that?” Lincoln asked. Mercedes laughed at how loudly her mom sighed. Lincoln crossed his arms and mumbled under his breath, “Don’t bust me like that again, Mom.”

  At the word “bust,” the smile that had been on her mom’s face since Callie got out of jail vanished. Mercedes’s mom wasn’t alone in hoping Callie’s release might be a turning point. Mercedes had called Callie and left a message, inviting her to the Spartans’ Christmas Classic, a tournament Mercedes knew her team would win. But Callie hadn’t called back.

  “Why was everyone laughing at me?” Lincoln asked, his tenth-grade voice cracking. Unlike tall Mercedes, Lincoln was an undersized bully t
arget. He’d need someone to protect him, and Joel wasn’t the answer. If I go away to college, Mercedes thought, who will stand guard over Lincoln? Going away to school would be the best thing for her, Mercedes knew. Yet when she thought about everyone she’d leave behind, it seemed like the worst option. Her dad worked too much and her mom worried too much, so Mercedes felt that keeping Lincoln on the right path fell on her. Just as she was on her team, in her family she was on point, always on guard.

  “Is Jade coming over for Christmas dinner?” her mom asked. Before Mercedes could answer, the phone in the kitchen rang. Her mom wiped her hands on her apron and picked up.

  “Hello?” Mercedes’s mom said into the phone, her voice so soft. A softness in contrast to the hard sound her mom’s body made as it crashed onto the kitchen floor seconds later.

  10

  “Is she going to be okay?” Mercedes asked her parents. Their mouths moved about as much as Callie’s eyes: not at all. Mercedes couldn’t see her sister’s mouth; it was hidden by a complicated apparatus to help her breathe. Other machines performed other functions. A day ago, her sister had been flesh and blood, but with one bullet, Callie had become part robot.

  “Mom, answer me.” The beeping and hissing of machines served as her mom’s answer.

  “I’m calling Jade,” Mercedes said, but her mother shook her head forcefully.

  “You’re needed here.” Her mom reached out to touch her, but Mercedes backed away.

  Mercedes stared at her sister in the hospital bed. She looks so small, Mercedes thought, like a thin tree branch surrounded by a big white cloud. “What can I do?” Mercedes asked.

  “Pray,” her parents said at the same time. Mercedes wondered where Pastor Curtis was. He was one of the first people her dad had called after he helped Mercedes’s mom off the floor and spoke with the police. Where was he? Or the doctors? Or anyone who could help Callie?

  “I’m worried about Lincoln,” Mercedes whispered. “We should have told him the whole truth, not just that she got shot, but that she might never—”

  “He doesn’t need to know that now.” Mercedes’s dad rose from the chair where he’d been sitting vigil for hours. “Anyway, once she’s better—”

  “They said she’s not going to get better,” Mercedes said through tears. Her mother began to cry with her. Mercedes’s dad wrapped his long arms around the two of them, squeezing.

  He held tight until the door opened. “How is she?” asked a tall man in a brown suit. Mercedes shook her head, not really answering. Mercedes couldn’t say aloud what she knew inside. Callie would never get better. She could not change it; she must accept it.

  The man handed her a card.

  “Detective Lloyd Wheeler, Birmingham Police,” the card said. Under his contact info, the words “to protect and serve” mocked Mercedes, who knew she had done neither for her sister.

  11

  “How is she?” Coach sat down next to Mercedes on the bus to the holiday tournament. She wasn’t the only one concerned. Rumors had spread like airborne pathogens among North students. Mercedes heard genuine concern in Coach’s voice, but she felt numb, maybe like her sister felt, if she felt anything at all. Another two days had passed—another triumph of machines over death.

  Mercedes couldn’t answer or even make eye contact. She stared at the ugly green seat of the old schoolbus. The engine sputtered as the bus stayed parked, waiting for other players.

  “Is there anything I can do?” Coach’s voice floated into her ear, but when Mercedes felt her coach’s familiar hand on her shoulder, she knocked them off like they were fire.

  “Don’t touch me!” Mercedes shouted. Coach started to talk, but Mercedes drowned her out by banging her fists hard against the smudged window. “Stay away from me or else!”

  Mercedes turned and stared at Coach but it wasn’t Coach’s face she saw; it was Callie’s face, eyes closed yet somehow seeming to stare up at her from that hospital bed. In her pocket, Mercedes’s phone buzzed, each ring a lightning bolt. Another well-wisher, another “is there anything I can do?” When Mercedes saw big-mouth Cheryl climb on the bus, she crawled over Coach, rushed past Cheryl, and sprinted into the parking lot. The cold December wind chilled her burning face and eyes. She stood motionless, her hand over her eyes, wishing she was blind. In the distance, she heard hushed conversations as her teammates boarded the bus. Then, she heard a voice nearby.

  “It’s up to you.” Coach talked as softly as Mercedes had ever heard. “It’s just a game.”

  Mercedes stayed silent, so silent that when the driver honked the horn, she felt as if she’d jumped out of her skin. Every noise, loud or soft, near or far, made her jump. “I can’t.”

  “Take all the time you need,” Coach said, but the words barely registered. Mercedes dialed Jade. As she waited for Jade to answer, Mercedes yawned. Like a full-court press, her nightmares had shut down her sleep. Mercedes, who felt fearless on the court, found herself scared to close her eyes, afraid of the bad dreams sure to come.

  12

  Jade’s car barely fit the definition. Patched and re-patched, the small green Dart was older than Jade. Hardly anybody had working cars back in Mercedes’s old neighborhood. “Climb in, Mercedes,” Jade said.

  They had talked and texted, but it was the first time Mercedes had seen Jade since Callie’s shooting. Mercedes wondered if Callie’s shooting would be a dividing line in her own life: the time before and the time after. But with Callie in a coma, Mercedes felt time stood still. Callie was a broken stoplight: no yellow, red, or green. “Mercy, you doing okay since—?” Jade asked.

  Mercedes clutched onto the door but hesitated, stuck on Jade’s unfinished question and on the inevitability of what had happened. Her mom kept saying that Callie getting shot made no sense, but Mercedes knew enough of the streets to know that her mother was wrong. She suspected her dad knew too, but neither said a word. “Mercy?”

  The cold wind shot through her. Mercedes pulled her blue and white Atlanta Dream hoodie tighter but couldn’t make her feet move. The door handle dug into her skin like a knife.

  Mercedes heard the driver’s-side door open and Jade’s tiny sneakers smack against the pavement, the sounds made louder by the empty parking lot. Mercedes wondered if her teammates on the bus were laughing and busting each other like always, or were they quiet, worrying about Mercedes? Did they even care about her? Was she just a three-point machine?

  “Mercy, can you get in the car?” Jade whispered with the same fragile tone she had on the phone, the same tone it seemed everybody used to speak to her lately. Mercedes felt Jade’s hand fall gently on her shoulder as it had a hundred times before. Mercedes waited for the warm tingling she always felt, but instead a burning sensation overcame her. She jerked away from Jade.

  Mercedes collapsed onto the ground in tears.

  “Mercy?” Jade whispered, but Mercedes couldn’t respond. Every ounce of energy served her worry, her sorrow, but also her memory. Images of Callie flashed through her mind, setting off a memory tug-of-war. Every time Mercedes recalled her sister laughing, the sound quickly became replaced by the beeping machines and hospital clatter. Every image of her smile fell victim to the image of the complicated medical devices keeping Callie alive.

  “What can I do?” Jade whispered as she reached out and grabbed Mercedes’s hands to help her up. Mercedes batted Jade’s arms away like they were two pythons primed to crush her.

  “Don’t touch me!” Mercedes leapt to her feet, but Jade grabbed onto her. Mercedes fought against her, but Jade just held on tighter until Mercedes collapsed into her arms. Slowly, Jade helped Mercedes get seated in the car and strapped the seat belt across her. When the seat belt clicked, Mercedes startled. Wasn’t that the same sound as a trigger being pulled?

  “Where to?” Jade asked, but Mercedes didn’t answer. She pressed her face against the glass, watching the buildings pass by like something out of a movie. It’s not a movie, Mercedes thought, or a dream.
It’s a real-life nightmare. Just like the ones she continued to have almost every night. Images of bullets and dead bodies haunted her nights like ghosts.

  When they arrived at Mercedes’s house, Jade parked against the curb. “What are all those cars?” Jade asked Mercedes as she looked through the cracked windshield. Mercedes knew the answer.

  “People with questions,” Mercedes said, her jaw set tight. “Get me out of here.”

  “Where do you want to go?” Jade pushed down on the gas and began driving.

  Mercedes paused and then dug her hand like claws into the car seat. “I want to see it.”

  Jade pressed down her long black hair. “It?”

  Mercedes pulled at the frayed fabric of the Dart. “The corner where Callie was shot.”

  Jade stopped the car, shook her head, and drove fast in the opposite direction.

  13

  Mercedes felt odd standing on the court, as if she wasn’t one of the team. Apart.

  Everybody spoke to her in whispers, like Callie getting shot was some kind of secret. But after Jade had showed her the article on al.com, Mercedes guessed that everybody knew the story. Nine other players filled out the court, but as Mercedes stood at the three-point line, she felt alone. The Lamar High guard in front of her was as good as invisible. She dribbled and launched her normal shot, but the ball hit Cheryl in the back, falling far short of the basket.

  “What the f—” Cheryl started, but stopped when she saw it was Mercedes who had taken the shot. Before, Cheryl would’ve busted her, but instead she said nothing. Mercedes wondered if her teammates really thought she was that fragile, that she might break if they said anything. It seemed everybody in her life had forgotten how to speak. Words came hard, sentences harder. Maybe, Mercedes thought, because all her family had was questions: Who? Why? But mostly, when?