Daddy brings up the state championship, the fact that it’s only five weeks away.
Mom and I trade glances.
Cole is staring at the TV, high up in the corner of the room, looking like he’s about to cry.
Daddy wants to schedule the surgery for this Monday, as in the day after tomorrow.
The doctor brings up the necessary presurgery lab work.
Mom brings up school.
The surgery will be scheduled for this Friday.
I’m free to go. In the meantime, if I start feeling another attack coming on, I need to find somewhere to lie down so I don’t hurt myself fainting. I was lucky this time.
REX
First thing I do when I get on the bus is head straight to the back. Doubt anyone wants to sit next to me. But to be safe, I take the very last seat, toss my backpack in the one across from me, put my headphones on, and arrange my face to match the mood I should be in.
Not only did Coach give us (really me) a thirty-minute locker-room speech about the need to focus, he made everybody make ten free throws in a row before we could get on the bus to go home. Mind you, it’s a Saturday night, i.e., date night, and it’s still gonna take us another forty-five minutes to get all the way back out to the boonies. Phones have been blowing up. Nya has already texted me twice.
But I’m not worried about any of that. All I want is some private time with Carli. I want to sit back, with no eyes over my shoulders, and find her on IG to make sure she’s okay. Scroll through her pictures and stare at her face.
Josh, our backup small forward, walks up the aisle and eyes the seat across from me that I’ve clearly already claimed with my backpack.
No music playing yet, but I slide the left side of my headphones above my ear. “Nah, that’s me,” I tell him.
“Well, you’re sitting over there. So which one is it?” he asks, hate smeared across his round, red-cheeked face. Dude stays trying to start some shit. He can’t stand me because I took his starting position when I moved out here this year.
It’s too bad for Josh. Heard he’s been praying for a letter from Michigan State. But graduating this year with the playing time he’s been getting, he’ll be lucky if he gets to play at the YMCA. Jokes, but he probably won’t be playing D1.
But what am I supposed to do? I have goals, too. Lofty-ass goals at that. Your boy is trying to be one-and-done.
“Dude, you got all these seats,” I say, floating my extended arm across the width of the rumbling bus. All I need to add is presentiiiing. Thirteen rows, twelve players, two coaches who always share the first row, and one trainer. Josh was the last one to get on the bus. He’d better find the trainer and double up with him.
“But what if I really want that seat?” Josh says with a hard, directed nod of his big head.
A few players look back to see what’s going on.
“You wanna sit beside me that bad, huh?”
Josh shoves his short, curly bangs away from his face. “Not as bad as I wanna kick your ass.”
All I can do is laugh. This fool must think that because he has the body of a linebacker and I’m on the lean side that he could take me. Clearly, he doesn’t know me. He doesn’t know about all the scraps I’ve gotten into roaming the streets as a kid in my old neighborhood.
Josh walks off, throwing a weak “asshole” over his shoulder, and settles into a row toward the middle of the bus. The lights lower and the grumbling bus starts rolling.
Finally. I slide my left headphone back on, find Khalid in Spotify, and snuggle up with Carli.
Ten minutes later, thanks to her brother’s IG, I know Carli Renée Alexander is more than okay. Man, let me tell you. She’s perfect. And she’s in the hospital—not dead. It’s not like I really thought she was dead or anything, but it’s good to know she’s alive and well. And I’m playing a game at her school in a week! Doubt she’ll be there with the surgery and everything, but her brother is on the JV team, which plays right before our game. So I can give my number to him.
Twenty minutes later and I’m still digging. I’m not one of those crazy stalker dudes or anything. I just can’t stop looking for new pictures of her face. She has this cute little button nose, sprinkled with freckles, and these dark brown eyes that pop out of her pale brown skin and take hold of me.
Man, I can’t even tell you what I feel when I look at her face. It’s better than stepping into an empty gym before the sun comes up. Better than walking through the pines after it rains and having a stray drop land on my nose. Better than thumbing through Mom’s old poetry books, finding words I can feel. Or listening to her old records. Or staring at her old beetle collection. Looking at Carli’s face, it’s like I get lost to some kind of force. Sounds stupid, I know, but I’ve never felt anything like it before. Anything close.
I look up to grab a Snickers bar out of my duffel bag and notice most of the team crowded around someone’s seat toward the middle of the bus. I slide my headphones off and hear people cracking up.
“It must’ve been that big-ass afro,” someone says in a low voice.
“He likes big ’fros and he cannot lie,” someone else says in the rhythm of that old Sir Mix-a-Lot song.
Everyone laughs.
I think about Carli’s big red hair, about Nya’s natural puff. A knot forms in my chest and I stand up.
“Oh my gosh, Becky, look at her ’fro. It is so big. She looks like one of Rex’s girlfriends,” someone continues in the Valley girl accent from the song.
Everybody busts out laughing again.
More knots, pounding harder. It’s not like it’s the first time I’ve overheard my new teammates talking about me. I usually ignore it. But them bringing Carli and Nya into it is different. It’s like all the air around me, the engine rumbling beneath me, everything inside me is begging me to shut it down.
As I walk down the aisle, I see a light coming from a seat. Closer, and I peep over our shooting guard’s shoulder and see Carli passing out in my arms on Josh’s phone..
Illuminated faces all around and I swear I want to knock the laughs right out of their mouths. Our point guard, Danny, kneeling on the seat in front of Josh, is laughing so hard he’s in tears. Out of everyone, I thought he could’ve been my friend.
Leo, our backup point guard, sees me and elbows Danny. Danny looks up at me guiltily, turns around, and sits down.
Josh (of course it’s Josh) continues in his Valley girl voice. “I can’t believe it’s just so round . . . it’s like out there. I mean gross. Look, she’s just so . . . black.”
That does it. I reach over the back of the seat and snatch the phone out of his hand. “Say something else about my girl and your phone is as good as gone.”
Someone says, “Oh shit,” and everyone ducks off back to their seats.
Wait, did I just call Carli “my girl”?
The hard pounding in my chest answers with a thousand pissed-off yeses.
Josh stands up. “Give me back my phone!” he whines like he’s five years old.
And my five-year-old self knows exactly how to respond. “What phone?” I ask, and slide it into my right warm-up pocket.
“What’s the big deal? I wasn’t even talking about Nya. I was talking about that girl who passed out. It’s not like you know that stupid girl.”