With my Spanish book open to hide my magazine tucked inside, I’m reading an article about how numbers can provide clues to your life’s direction. The girl in the picture beside the article looks crazy-confident, like she knows exactly where her life is headed, and I’m trying to get a little bit of that.
Coach Hill blows her whistle, long and hard.
“Carli, watch out!” a few of my teammates shout.
I look up in time to miss a ball flying toward my head. It bangs loudly against the bleachers behind me.
“My bad,” Vanessa, my backup, says with a way-too-sorry look on her face. I didn’t see what happened, but I’m guessing she missed another one of Jordan’s hard passes. It’s really not her fault, though. Coach Hill plays me so much that Vanessa hardly ever touches the court. And now, with the playoffs so close, everyone’s putting on the pressure for her to step up.
“Why don’t you go ahead and take her out for the rest of the season?” Jordan, our point guard, yells at Vanessa. The bestie can be a little overprotective. She’s standing with her hands interlaced on top of her head—deep dimples in her milky brown cheeks even when she’s mad.
If you only knew, I think before saying, “I’m fine,” and get up to get the ball.
“Well, hurry up, then,” Jordan says, and jokingly gives me the middle finger.
I smile, happy she’s playing with me. We’ve been kind of distant this week. She’s been complaining that I’ve been too quiet, that I’ve been keeping something from her. But there’s no way I can tell her about quitting the team. And I can’t tell her about my parents, either. Telling her would make it too real.
At least we’ve had Rex to talk about. She’s convinced the kiss was at least partially for me. You see, he broke up with his girl hours after catching me.
Jordan knows because she has a cousin who has a best friend who has a boyfriend who plays basketball for Woodside who said that Rex broke up with his girl on the bus and everyone heard. Said she cursed Rex out so bad for leaving her that he had to hold his phone out of the window so he wouldn’t have to listen to it all. Sounds crazy, I know. Why not just hang up in her face? Maybe because he’s too sweet.
As I walk to get the ball, which bounced two rows down and rolled to the opposite side of the bleachers where the band always sits, I reach to touch the hospital menu in my back pocket, to make sure it’s still there. I’ve been secretly carrying it everywhere with me since Saturday. Gonna write my number on the back and give it to Jordan to give it to Rex when he plays at our school Monday. I don’t even have to tell you how bad I wish I could go (holding-my-pee-until-the-end-of-the-movie bad). But I’ll be at home recovering from surgery.
After I retrieve the ball, I overhead pass it back to Jordan as hard as I can.
Jordan catches the ball and immediately drives down the lane for a layup, her tongue hanging out of the side of her mouth and the wristband on her left arm pulled up over her elbow.
“You ain’t Michael!” I jokingly shout.
She makes the layup. “Oh, I’m not?” she asks, and walks the ball way out beyond the three-point line. She shoots and it drops.
“Oooooooo,” the team says in unison. But I’m not even surprised.
Jordan has known since elementary school that she wanted to be the female version of Michael Jordan and has been pushing toward her dream ever since. I wonder if it has to do with her name.
I’ve been reading about this theory called normative determinism, which basically says that people’s names can influence what they want to do with their lives. If Jordan is any indication, it’s definitely true. Either way, I’m happy for her, I really am. But sometimes I get jealous that she has a dream and I don’t.
“Okay, let’s get back to work!” Coach shouts.
And back to the magazine. Here’s what the article’s telling me to do in order to get a clear look at my life’s direction: write the numbers one to ten and beside them, list things that have happened the corresponding number of times this week.
Can’t be trivial things, like how many Jelly Belly Buttered Popcorn candies I ate or how many times I’ve spotted Sabina Karlsson (this black model with red hair and freckles like me) in a magazine. Although I have been seeing her everywhere lately. They have to be things with meaning. Things with weight (with the way my life has been going, I should have no problem there).
And after I make the list, signs are supposed to start popping up with more frequency. Signs. Yeah, only the things I’ve been following since the fifth grade when one saved my life.
It was a Sunday. Daddy was getting ready to visit his parents’ grave. I wanted to go, but he always insisted on going alone. So I went outside to practice my ball-handling skills in the driveway, hoping that when Daddy came out to get in his car, he’d be so pleased that he’d take me with him.
The basketball rolled into the street, and I ran after it without looking. Then a giant swallowtail, the largest butterfly in North America, swooped in. I’d cut one out of the Houston Chronicle after reading about its six-inch wingspan the day before. Tacked the photo up on my wall.
And there it was, in all its majesty, flying right in front of my face. I stopped suddenly, and a car whizzed by me so close that it felt like death giving me a cold hug.
And now, when the world is coming at me faster than ever—and I have to decide which parent to live with and how to tell my team I want to quit basketball and what to do with my life—I’m supposed to up and stop looking for signs just because Cole made me feel stupid? Exactly. So here goes:
1. Number of shoes Daddy removed before going to sleep on the sofa Saturday night after the hospital. On Sunday I woke before dawn and saw him asleep with his long legs hanging over the sofa’s edge in the same clothes from the night before. I removed his other sneaker, covered him with a blanket, turned off SportsCenter, and went back to my room.
2. Number of Lucille Clifton poems I copied in my prettiest handwriting and placed on my wall while waiting to hear the kettle whistle from the kitchen on Sunday. Mom makes tea first thing every morning.
3. Number of words I said to Mom and Daddy when I walked into the living room. Is. It. True. Cole was still asleep. Mom looked confused. Initially, Daddy looked scared, like a little kid who’d just gotten in big trouble, but his lawyer side came through.
4. Number of sips Mom took of her tea as lawyer Daddy summarized the same details Cole had given me the night before. As usual, Mom tried to keep her cool. But her right pinky finger wasn’t having it. It was tapping the hell out of her mug. Her right pinky was pissed.
5. Number of minutes that elapsed between the end of the conversation and Daddy leaving to buy boxes from U-Haul.
6. Number of exchanges Mom and Daddy had before Daddy moved out. All averaging ten seconds and all about which thing belonged to who.
7. Number of times per hour I begged Mom to tell me the reason they were splitting up.
8. Number of times this morning I thought I heard a knock at my door and got up and checked, but no one was there. Cole hasn’t been in my room since Saturday night. Four days.
9. Number of times Daddy called me last night. The Rockets were playing the Clippers and he wanted me to study the rhythm of James Harden’s step back. Normally I’d be annoyed, but every time I saw Daddy flash across my iPhone’s screen, I was five years old again, hearing his keys jangling at the door, telling me he’s home.