Sasquatch in the Paint

by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

  Coach waved them all in closer. “Look, you all did fine today. Theo, you just tried a little too hard, tried to force things. But as we keep practicing the plays, you’ll relax, get more comfortable. Let’s give it a week and see where we stand then. If it’s not working, we’ll make some changes.” Coach rubbed his hands together enthusiastically as the boys moved toward the locker room. “It’s a process, boys. A process.”

  Process, Theo thought. Another word for square one.

  LATER that afternoon, Brian and Theo were on the park swings, watching the pickup games while eating Butterfingers and drinking Gatorade.

  “You’re not going down there again, are you?” Brian asked, glancing at the basketball courts.

  Theo shrugged. “I don’t know. The team is counting on me. Actually, they’re counting on me to keep screwing up, and I don’t want them to be right.” He didn’t mention that Coach had said they’d give the new plan a week and then “make some changes.” Translation: kick Theo off the team.

  “Remember my motto: no good comes from physical activity. Especially in a public place.”

  Theo laughed. “Your two greatest fears: exercise and sweaty strangers.”

  “Add crappy drinks to that list.” Brian frowned at his bottle. “Since when do we drink Gatorade? It seems to counter the whole point of eating candy bars. Candy bars aren’t just about having a sweet treat; they’re also about defying the smug health tips of our parents and teachers. We’re shaking our fists at society, rebelling against their sensible lessons. Each bite of a Butterfinger is like a Boston Tea Party, and we’re throwing over crates of tea that symbolize our teenage repression. Candy fuels the teen revolution!”

  Theo looked at him. “Is it any wonder our only friends are Daryl and Tunes?”

  “Point taken,” Brian said, biting into his candy bar.

  They watched the games in silence. Well, as silent as it could be with Brian munching and slurping.

  From up here, Theo noticed how smoothly the kids moved around the court. Like they were ice-skating. Nothing like the way he moved on his long, stupid legs. Sometimes, he felt as if his body were recovering from a painful accident rather than just adjusting to a growth spurt.

  “We have other friends,” Brian suddenly said. While Theo had been thinking about having stilts for legs, Brian had been obsessing over Theo’s comment about friends.

  “Like who?”

  Brian thought. “Brooke talked to us today. That’s progress.”

  “She didn’t talk to us. She threatened me.”

  “That’s progress. First threats, then an invitation to her cool house.”

  Theo did a perfect imitation of Brooke’s snort and they both laughed.

  “Okay,” Brian continued, “what about Rain? She seems nice. And she’s a girl. Not like Brooke, who is eighty-six percent cyborg.”

  “Rain is not our friend. She’s…” Theo struggled to find the words.

  “Hygienically challenged? Did you see her eat food we’d already had our diseased mouths on?”

  “My mouth isn’t diseased.”

  “Dude, everyone’s mouth is diseased. The adult mouth contains five hundred to a thousand different types of bacteria. Even a cleanliness freak like me, who brushes after every meal and carries a secret stash of Scope, has one thousand to a hundred thousand bacteria living on each tooth surface. If I ignored my dental hygiene altogether, like Marty Fenster in social studies, I’d have a hundred million to one billion bacteria on each tooth. Each tooth! Rain ate food our teeth touched!” Brian was so upset he had to take a big swig of Gatorade to calm himself.

  “What about the two micrograms of rat poop and hairs the government allows in candy bars?”

  Brian studied his Butterfinger a moment, then took a big bite. “Acceptable risk considering the reward.” His face brightened. “Hey, maybe that’s what Rain is?”

  “Rat poop?”

  “No, an acceptable risk considering the reward. After all, she’s a girl. She talked to us without needing to copy our homework or borrow anything. Just to talk. That’s huge, dude.”

  Girls. It seemed as if, since they turned thirteen, more and more of their conversations ended up being about girls. They’d start out talking about the cool animation in a new Batman video game and end up talking about how hot Catwoman was. Or they’d be discussing an awesome scene from a zombie movie in which some greasy undead guy is ripping out someone’s gooey insides, and suddenly they were arguing about whether, if your girlfriend was turned into a zombie, you’d be able to cut off her head. And now their conversation about mouth bacteria had drifted into talking about Rain.

  Theo had a philosophy about girls (yes, even though he’d never had a girlfriend). According to him, there were two types: Desert Girls, and Dessert Girls. Desert Girls were the kind you could be trapped with on a desert island and they wouldn’t complain about the bugs or the food or not having the Internet. They would help build the boat that you’d need to escape, and talk cheerfully the whole time about what a great adventure this was. Dessert Girls, on the other hand, were the kind who stood at dessert buffets pointing out the different things they would looove to eat but couldn’t because of the calories. They would gossip about the other girls who did take dessert and how they shouldn’t because they’d bloat up. They never noticed anything or anyone but themselves and whatever it was they wanted. Which, in this case, was dessert.

  Rain definitely wasn’t a Dessert Girl, but he couldn’t imagine being trapped on a desert island with her either. She’d probably build the boat by herself. And eat all their pineapples and coconuts. And sail away without him.

  “You know,” Brian said, “we’re thirteen. We really should be going out with girls. I don’t necessarily mean on a date, but maybe hanging around with them. Talking to them. Working up to being alone with one, like at a movie. Alone in a crowd. You know what I mean. If we start now, we might have a date by senior prom.”

  “We’re too young.”

  “Or too chicken.”

  Theo nodded. “Yeah, there’s that.”

  Theo tried to imagine himself on a date with Sissy. Burgers and shakes at Red Robin. A movie. Something not too violent, but no romantic comedies either. Something beige. Something out of an Archie comic book.

  Theo’s dad had offered to drive him to the multiplex and pick him up again if he ever wanted to meet a girl there. Thankfully, he hadn’t pushed it any further. Theo would act when he was good and ready. Problem was, he’d been feeling good and ready for a while now, and he’d done nothing about it.

  “Who would you ask out?” Brian asked. He took a last swig of Gatorade and sat staring at the three kids on the court playing horse.

  “Sissy Chen. You?”

  Brian shrugged. “So many to choose from.” It came out in a sad, defeated voice.

  “Dude, you’re smart and funny and the coolest guy I know. There are plenty of girls at school who would hang out with you.”

  “I think I heard that line in an old John Hughes movie.”

  “In all the John Hughes movies. That’s why I remembered it.”

  They laughed.

  “See? That’s all I want,” Brian said. “A girl who would know what I’m talking about when I mention John Hughes movies. Especially Breakfast Club.” He took another bite of candy. “Maybe I want Molly Ringwald.”

  “She’s probably older than your mother by now.”

  Brian sighed. “Man, thirteen sucks. No wonder it’s an unlucky number.”

  “I know. Suddenly everyone’s piling on all this new responsibility, but without any respect. When you want to do something new, they say, ‘You’re only thirteen.’ But when they want you to do more work, they say, ‘You’re thirteen now, not a kid.’”

  “Hey, try going through all that while at the same time learning Hebrew.”

  “At least you got an awesome bar mitzvah party out of it.”

  “True. I got like a thousand bucks in gift cards. G
ot my new laptop with them.”

  Laptop. That made Theo think about how he had snuck down to spy on his dad’s computer.

  Theo suddenly realized he was feeling—not guilty, surprisingly—but angry. Yet he didn’t know about what exactly. “You know what bugs me most? When you’re thirteen, parents still want to see you as innocent, but I don’t feel so innocent. They sigh when you take down the Harry Potter posters and put up Fall Out Boy and the Killers. They wince when you don’t want to make an ice-cream run like you used to. And you feel so guilty, because everything you do or don’t do seems to hurt them.”

  “I told my dad I didn’t want to watch America’s Funniest Home Videos anymore and he actually got tears in his eyes.”

  “That’s what I mean. They want us to stay cute and cuddly, like a kitten. But sometimes I feel mean and selfish. Sometimes I don’t care about the homeless or the baby seals or starving children in Africa. Or even that I hurt his feelings because I don’t want to listen to Motown classics. Sometimes I just feel…”

  “Sexy?”

  Theo laughed. “Maybe, I don’t know. What I do know is that I’m not the kid that people see when they look at me. Even my dad. It’s like they think that if you feed vegetarian kibble to a dog all his life, when a piece of steak falls on the floor, he won’t go for it. But he will. He’ll gobble it right up and sniff around for more. Because he’s a dog, and that’s what dogs do.”

  “Yeah, but it’ll probably give him diarrhea.”

  “That’s my point. Adults keep telling us that everything we want will give us diarrhea. Girls will give us STDs. Video games will make us violent. Rock music is bad for our hearing.”

  “My uncle used to follow Phish around to all their concerts and now he has two hearing aids, so they were right about that one.”

  Theo frowned at Brian. “Dude, you suck at these talks.”

  He shrugged. “Plus, all this talk of steak has made me hungry.” He wrestled his body out of the small swing. “Time to head home. You coming?”

  Theo kept his eyes on the boys shooting baskets. “I’ll catch you later.”

  “Suit yourself,” said Brian. “Just don’t take any more punches, okay?”

  “I’ll try,” said Theo, in all seriousness. Because one of the three guys on the nearest court was Asian Kid. The one who’d punched him Friday.

  THEO avoided the court Asian Kid was using. Instead, he went to the court farthest away, where some sixth and seventh graders were playing. They were happy to have him, not because he was better than they were (he was average), but because he was older and still wanted to play with them.

  “We’re just fooling around,” Skinny Neck said. He nodded toward Jeremy and the others. “We’re not that intense.”

  “That’s cool,” Theo said.

  Skinny Neck was right. They weren’t intense. In fact, they were so relaxed that no one seemed to take the game seriously. They joked around a lot, took impossible trick shots, and constantly chatted during play. When someone missed a shot, they made fun of him, and the object of the ridicule would also laugh.

  Theo hated it.

  This was no way for him to improve his game. Even though some of the players were actually better than he was, no one was really trying. No one cared about the score. They were just a bunch of friends playing an endless game that would last their entire childhood.

  Part of Theo understood that. Admired that.

  Yet he still hated it.

  He wanted to become better, and they weren’t cooperating with his plan. Even when he scored on someone, the kid would just smile and say, “Good shot.” They said it after anyone made a basket, so it didn’t really mean anything.

  After the third game ended, they all took a break. Theo had filled his Gatorade bottle with water from the fountain. He drank from it while the other boys horsed around, joking and talking about some trouble their friends had gotten into at school. The only difference between when they were playing and now was that no one was dribbling a ball.

  Theo was deciding whether or not to leave when he suddenly saw Asian Kid coming toward him. Maybe he’s just going to use the bathrooms up the hill, he thought. Or the drinking fountain.

  But Jeremy was staring right at him. When he got within a few feet of Theo, he brought his closed fist up.

  “Hey, man,” Jeremy said. “Sorry about yesterday. My bad.” He extended his fist.

  Theo fist-bumped him. Jeremy nodded, turned, and walked back to his pals.

  And that was that. Apology. Fist bump. All is forgiven.

  Theo smiled. Cool.

  Theo played one more game with the Happy Jokesters and decided to leave. Playing these guys wouldn’t help him, yet he wasn’t good enough to play with Jeremy and the others, which would make him better. He needed to figure this out. He had just started up the hill when he saw R. J. Thompson walking down toward the courts.

  R.J. was the star athlete of the high school where Theo would be going next year. R.J. was only a junior, but he was the leading scorer on the football, basketball, and volleyball teams. R.J. was tall (though not as tall as Theo), lean, muscular—and black. Out of 689 students at the high school, there were 36 black students. And every one of those 689 knew who R.J. was.

  He was walking with two white kids, both seniors whom Theo recognized because others were always pointing them out at McDonald’s or Best Buy, as if they couldn’t believe these gods walked among the normal people. R.J. and his friends were talking and laughing like they knew that no matter what they did, it was cool, no matter what they said, it was funny.

  Theo had never spoken to R.J.—they’d never even met—but as they passed now, they both looked at each other and half nodded, like two undercover cops trying not to blow each other’s cover.

  As they neared the basketball court where Jeremy and his friends were, the players all greeted them enthusiastically as if to say, “Finally, we can play some real ball.”

  For a moment, Theo wondered if R.J.’s life was what his dad had in mind for him. Did he envision Theo swaggering into rooms like a gunslinger? Theo sighed and walked on. He thought about his dad, Mr. J, Coach, and R.J. until his phone buzzed to tell him he had a text message.

  Caller Unknown: Really? Ur playing with little kids now? What would Dr. J say?

  Crazy Girl/Rain. Theo looked around. Where was she?

  Theo: How did u get my number?

  Caller Unknown: Please. My dog could hack ur number and she only has 3 legs.

  Theo: What happened to the other leg? U eat it?

  Caller Unknown: Hahaha. But not as funny as u at practice today.

  She’d seen him at practice. How? Coach didn’t allow spectators. Where had she been hiding?

  Theo saw the time on his phone and realized he had to hurry home before he was late for dinner. He texted as he jogged.

  Theo: Why r u following me?

  There was no answer. Maybe she was home already and her mom had her doing chores.

  Then, Caller Unknown: U need a personal trainer, dude. And fast.

  Theo: Why do u care?

  Again, no response. Theo kept staring at the screen. He had finally started to type another message when a voice made him lift his head.

  “Where is she?” Motorcycle Guy demanded, standing in front of Theo with his red-flame helmet tucked under one arm. He leaned forward until his face was within inches of Theo’s and yelled, “Where’s Rain?”

  WHERE’S Rain?

  If this were a Bruce Willis Die Hard movie, Theo would have had a funny comeback line to put Motorpsycho—his new nickname for the guy—in his place.

  Where’s Rain? Have you checked the rain forest, pal?

  Where’s Rain? You go straight up about five thousand feet and turn left at the cumulonimbus cloud on the corner.

  Where’s Rain? Get naked, swing a dead chicken over your head, and chant. Then you’ll have rain.

  But Theo didn’t have a team of million-dollar Hollywood writers comi
ng up with witty hero dialogue. So, with the guy screaming in his face, all Theo could come up with was, “I dunno.”

  Motorpsycho stared without expression. It was getting dark out, and his long black hair and black leather outfit made his body seem to disappear. His angry face floated in front of Theo like a severed head.

  “You think this is a joke?” Motorpsycho asked. His harsh accent came from the back of the throat and picked up a lot of phlegm before the actual words came gargling out. “Do you?”

  “No,” Theo said. He most certainly did not think this was a joke, as the trembling in his legs proved. “It’s just that I don’t really know her. I only met her a few days ago.”

  “And yet you came running to assist her. Big hero.”

  Motorpsycho was about six feet tall—shorter than Theo—but even in the darkness, his extra thirty pounds of muscle were an obvious presence. One thing kept running through Theo’s mind: Don’t hit me. Don’t hit me. Don’t hit me.

  Well, two things.

  Don’t kill me. Don’t kill me. Don’t kill me.

  “Is that not true?” Motorpsycho insisted. “Aren’t you a big hero?”

  Theo shrugged. “Not really. I wasn’t thinking.”

  Was that as lame and cowardly as it sounded? Theo lowered his head in shame.

  “Did she tell you where she is staying?” Motorpsycho asked. Suddenly his voice was softer, almost gentle, like they were now pals. Facebook friends liking each other’s vacation photos and sharing videos that made fun of Justin Bieber.

  He poked Theo hard in the shoulder. “Well, did she?”

  Theo shook his head.

  Motorpsycho frowned. “Do you think we are fools? You kids always think everyone else is a fool.”

  “No, I don’t think anyone’s a fool,” Theo said. “I really don’t know what you’re talking about. I just met her Friday. I only found out her name today. If you’d asked me yesterday, ‘Where’s Rain?,’ I would’ve thought you were talking about actual rain.”

  Theo couldn’t stop babbling. Through the sound of his own chattering voice, he remembered Motorpsycho saying “we” (“Do you think we are fools?”). Was there more than one of him?