The Very First Kisses
CARLI
Nobody ever warned me about love. Nobody ever warned me that when the greatest thing in the world hits you too hard, too fast, the blast can crush the organs in your belly, send heat flying up the right side of your face, and make your heart forget how to beat normally.
I’m trying to stay in my body, on the sidelines of the gym, but the pain in my belly is making the sound of the bouncing basketball grow fainter. The fluorescent lights keep giving way to darkness.
The boy is the only one who can see the pain. The boy at the free-throw line in his high socks with his high-top fade and his inverted triangle face, drenched with tenderness. The boy who just came out of nowhere, blowing me a kiss in the middle of his game. Who even blows kisses these days? But it wasn’t corny like you’d think. It came from somewhere deep, like all of his years and hurts and hopes were attached to it—his whole history.
And now our histories are mixing.
Pain on high, feeling like I’m about to die, an old fact flickers at the front of my mind:
The very first kisses were blown in Mesopotamia as a way to get in good with the gods.
Tacked that up on my bedroom wall after Bradley Dixon blew me a kiss in the fifth grade. The next day he told everyone the kiss wasn’t meant for me.
The boy drops the basketball at the free-throw line and runs toward me, just off the court.
Darkness briefly takes me, but the sharp sound of a whistle blown scares the darkness away. I bite some skin peeling on my bottom lip and try to stay in the gym. Keep my focus on him.
He’s wearing number twelve—ten less than the number on the jersey underneath my warm-ups. I need to take off these stupid polyester pants, this jacket. I’m burning up, drenched in sweat. Zipper. Where’s the zipper? My fingers fumble to find it, but the pain . . . the darkness . . . I can’t fight it anymore. I’m losing myself to it . . . falling.
His arms around me, and my insides light up with his down-slanted, hooded eyes. It feels so good the way they’re staring into mine. For a second I’ve never felt so alive. Then I’m gone.
REX
I miss a shot. An easy shot. My mid-range jumper always drops. Always. But man, I can’t stop thinking about that girl. About how she passed out in my arms. How, for a second, I thought she might’ve been dead, and it was somehow my fault.
I was so scared I started crying. I didn’t even stop when I saw her chest rising. Rising and falling, again and again, underneath her royal-blue warm-ups. It took four whole breaths for my eyes to convince my head of what my heart was afraid to trust. Good thing my back was to everyone else.
“Carli!” her team’s trainer called out, running onto the court. She was a tiny woman, five feet at best. “Lay her down flat on the floor,” she ordered with a steady downward motion of her right arm.
I did what I was told.
“Carli!” she shouted again, and lifted Carli’s legs up about twenty degrees.
Kneeling beside Carli, I leaned in close and said her name for the first time, feeling the ar wobble in my throat.
“Back up, back up,” the trainer yelled at me. “Give her some space!”
She could hang that up. I wasn’t going anywhere. I reached down and scraped Carli’s big, sweaty hair off the sides of her face. Even in a ponytail, it was everywhere. I was about to say her name again—
“I said back up!” the trainer yelled, like I can only imagine a mama would after she’s repeated herself for the last time and you’d better listen this time if you know what’s good for you.
I stood, backed up, and Carli’s eyelashes fluttered like she didn’t want me to leave. But the rest of her team immediately crowded me out. I stayed close, though, looking over the tops of their heads, watching her eyes tremble and go still.
The trainer waved something under her nose that made her eyes open wide, but only for a second. Then the paramedics came and rolled her out on a stretcher.
I hope she’s okay. She has to be okay, right? They wouldn’t let us keep playing if she wasn’t okay. Right?
“Hustle back! Hustle back!” Coach Bell shouts, running up the sideline, swinging his short arm in a wide circle.
Twenty-eight seconds left in the game and it’s tied 71–71. Focus, Rex, I tell myself, and sprint back. We can’t lose to Gaines and let them get their confidence up. They’ll be our biggest competition at the state championship, only five weeks out. We gotta shut these boys down now.
I’m coming up behind their point guard, Russell Price. Can’t stand this dude. He thinks he’s so much better than he actually is. He dribbles the ball between his legs—once . . . twice . . . three times—trying to look cool. Then he tries to pass to his shooting guard, but the pass is lazy and slow.
Thanks, I’ll take that. I steal the ball and sprint back up the left side of court. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Russell coming up behind me on my right. You ain’t slick. I switch the ball to my left hand so he can’t steal it back. The crowd is chanting, “Rex! Rex! Rex!” Nearing the basket, I cross back to my right, leap, and cock the ball back for a nasty dunk. But Russell tackles me hard to the ground.
“Number-one player my ass,” he says, still on top of me.
With the back of my head and tailbone throbbing, I quickly shove Russell off of me. All I want to do is get up and knock this fool out. I can almost feel my fist meeting his sweaty cheek, see his head whipping back over his right shoulder before he falls limp to the ground. But the referee blows his whistle and wakes me from my rage. Then he holds his fist in the air and signals for two regular foul shots.
“What?” I shout, and quickly hop up to protest the call. “It should’ve been a flagrant!”
Coach Bell agrees. He’s on the sideline yelling, “Flagrant!” and banging his forearms together in an X above his head.
The crowd is booing in agreement, too.
“If that wasn’t a flagrant foul, I don’t know what is!” I shout, walking behind the ref. “This ain’t football. You can’t tackle somebody like that.”
But the ref ignores me.
“Man, this is some bullshit!” I yell at the back of the ref’s balding head.
The ref immediately makes a hard T with his hands to signal a technical foul.
“Are you serious?” I shout, throwing up both of my arms.
Danny, our point guard, grabs me and pulls me away from the ref before I get another tech.
At the free-throw line, I calm down. This is exactly where Carli caught the kiss usually meant for Mom.
Wait, before you try to play me, blowing a kiss has been a part of my free-throw routine since I was eight and discovered Jason Kidd on YouTube. I figured if a ten-time NBA All-Star and two-time Olympic Gold Medal winner could blow kisses as part of his game and not be lame, then so could I.
Every time he went to the free-throw line, he blew a kiss, took one dribble, and shot. To tell his wife and kids he loved them. Every time I go to the line, I blow a kiss, take three dribbles, and shoot. To tell Mom I’m sorry.
But today, Carli was there instead. And I swear it was like she was a gift straight from Mom. See, I pray to Mom every day. Figure she should have some clout, hanging with the celestial bodies and all.