by Simeon Mills
Mr. Belt finally strolled in. I focused the camcorder on his confused expression. “Weren’t any of you raised with religion?” he asked. “Or was it just Sunday morning cartoons for you? Doesn’t anybody believe in God?”
As the team assembled in a ring around Mr. Belt, Kanga slowly got to his feet.
“Respect,” Mr. Belt continued. “Respect for the dead is a major tenet of any religion or creed. You—” He pointed to a basketball player. “Maybe you’re Jewish or Hindu, or are you Native American? Any of those religions would instill some morals.”
The player blinked.
“Because what I just witnessed, a casual game of dodgeball”—he stared at the lights—“was a prime example of humankind’s crass obliviousness to all our impending deaths. I just found out that Magic Johnson is about to die.”
The team gasped. Kanga’s eyes went wide. He grabbed at his homemade purple-and-yellow jersey.
“I heard it on the radio. HIV. Magic gave a press conference earlier today, and now . . .” Mr. Belt cleared his throat. “He will die. He got HIV from somebody, and, ladies and gentlemen, that HIV will become AIDS, and AIDS will cut him down. One of you, the youth, if you continue to study science, will certainly develop a cure for AIDS. Or even HIV. But it will be too late for Earvin ‘Magic’ Johnson.”
The team inched away from Kanga, eyeing his shoddy jersey.
“Magic, if he were here, breathing his last breath, would want us to use our basketballs today. Sometimes basketball is more important than life or death. So forget what I just said about Magic Johnson. He might already be dead. Run some laps. Be healthy, boys.”
As the team jogged light circles around the Cave, my camcorder found Brooke Noon again, her face registering no hint of remorse for Magic Johnson, or even an awareness of who the man was; she merely kept typing on her laptop. Only then did I realize my own expression certainly betrayed no emotion either. Nor did any part of my body, inside or out. I had just heard it plainly: Magic Johnson was dying. Yet I felt nothing except an electric curiosity about what would happen next in my own life. A dastardly smile crept across my face, the same smile James Botty wore as he shadowed Kanga during their laps, whispering the word AIDS over and over. My camcorder focused in on Kanga: eyes wide, lips pinched together, like he was protecting a baby bird that had just hatched on his tongue. It was the look of someone appropriately mourning Magic Johnson. I vowed to buy him more Cobra Burger after practice.
• • •
Mr. Belt blew his whistle. “I have another announcement, boys. The Ceiling Fan will be late to practice tonight.”
“Nooo!” responded the team.
“The Ceiling Fan is a grown man with grown-man responsibilities. Tonight he has a job interview. Do you believe Ceiling Fan Simms can pay for his various adult needs and appetites just by being my assistant coach?”
Rye, whose sports goggles were fogged from running laps, raised his hand. “Coach, what kind of job is the Ceiling Fan—”
“The Ceiling Fan is going through a rough patch, Rye. End of story. The only reason a grown man such as himself is able to coach a freshman boy such as yourself is because the Ceiling Fan got laid off last summer. It’s a sensitive subject, which is why I don’t bring it up with him. So, when the Ceiling Fan does get here, none of you knuckleheads mention anything about job interviews or whatnot.” Mr. Belt closed his eyes. “Ceiling Fan Simms. That name should set off alarm bells, gentlemen. Back in the day, he was our entire team. The Ceiling Fan was the most persistent team member I’ve seen at the ninth-grade level. And his favorite practice drill was ballslappers. You guys wanna do some ballslappers?”
The team glanced at one another. Rye spoke: “What’s ‘ballslappers,’ Coach?”
Mr. Belt blew his whistle again. “Ready? Here’s the rules. Three guys to a hoop. The drill is simple. Kanga? You listening?” Mr. Belt blew his whistle. “Everybody gets a ball. That means everybody. When I blow the whistle”—he blew the whistle—“everybody tosses their basketballs at the hoop. The balls bounce every which way. The guy who rips down the most rebounds wins. Any questions?”
Rye raised his hand.
“What’s the problem, Rye? Didn’t I just explain the drill?”
“But why’s it called ballslappers?”
“Listen. ‘Slapping’ is a form of rebounding. You use two hands when you slap a basketball. It makes a loud slapping sound. The Ceiling Fan used to love to slap a ball or two in his day. But don’t get any funny ideas. No extra points for slapping. The purpose of the drill is not ball slapping. It’s rebounding. So don’t go trying to slap every ball in town. The way to score points in this gym is to grab more balls than the other men at your hoop.”
Rye raised a hand.
“Jesus Christ.”
“I still don’t get the drill, Coach.”
Mr. Belt blew the whistle. “Three guys to a hoop.” He blew it again. “Okay? That means if some guy grabs all three basketballs, that guy gets three points. That means the other guys get zero. If that happens, by Christ, then those other two guys are automatically in my craphouse, running laps around the Cave. But this is just the first round of ballslappers. Then we have the finals.”
Rye raised a hand, but Mr. Belt was already pushing guys in different directions, bouncing them basketballs, blowing the whistle, yelling: “Get with the system!”
I kept my camera on Kanga. He was grouped at a basket with the two fattest kids on the team. They were already scarlet in the face from laps. All the power in their bodies seemed to be directed toward breathing and swallowing. One took a hit from his inhaler and then stumbled toward the locker room with his ball. The other kid bounced his to Kanga and said, “You’re going to get it anyway.”
Kanga won the first round of ballslappers without even moving. He simply held two basketballs while Mr. Belt blew the whistle. My brother glanced at me. I gave him a thumbs-up.
“Ballslappers!” said Mr. Belt, his gaze dancing between groups of players. “Who’s in the finals? You? You? You, Kanga? Okay. Four guys, one hoop. What I mean is four balls in the air, fellas. Any questions? I want to see some slapping out there! Rebounding, you numbskulls.”
The finalists for ballslappers consisted of the three tallest players—Rye, Deano, and Kanga—but also a surprise entry: James Botty. James leaned toward Kanga and sniffed. He made a face, then spat on the floor between Kanga’s shoes. The whistle blew. The finals began. Rye easily grabbed two basketballs. Kanga grabbed zero, as he had not attempted to jump. Rye handed one of his balls to Kanga, whispering “Sorry” for being the biggest and strongest boy on the team.
Mr. Belt blew the whistle again.
Rye hauled in two balls again, but this time James slapped his rebound. James held the ball after slapping it, muscles clenched, as if he were still slapping it.
“That’s how you slap it,” said Mr. Belt.
“Yeah, James!”
“Jamey!”
Mr. Belt blew the whistle.
“Let’s go, James.”
James slapped it again. He flipped the ball to one of the spectating teammates, who caught it awkwardly, like it was a souvenir.
“Livery. You going to try jumping?” asked Mr. Belt. “Or do I got to get James here to light a firecracker in your rear end?”
James leaned toward Kanga. “You better burn that sissy costume you’re wearing. Thing’s probably covered in AIDS.”
The team doubled over with laughter.
“Shut your laugh holes!” Mr. Belt said, unable to resist a chuckle himself. “And cut the commentary, James. Now are you ready to jump, Livery, or what? Let’s go! Jump!” He blew the whistle, and what happened next is best understood by looking at a pair of before-and-after pictures taken one second apart.
The before picture: Above the rim are the four basketballs, slightly blurry in their movement. Below, on the floor, are the basketball players, hips pressing against each other for position, eyes looking up at the balls, mou
ths guessing where the balls will go next. All except Kanga. He is crouched below them, knees and elbows tucked into his body, chin against his chest. He is a compact ball of a boy hiding from the tussle above.
The after picture: Kanga’s opponents have risen slightly from the floor, their arms reaching upward for the basketballs. They have none. Where Kanga was hiding a moment ago is an empty space. He is now above it. He is now above them. Kanga’s head is eclipsing a portion of the rim. Kanga’s knees have elevated to the height of Rye’s ears. In Kanga’s hands: two basketballs. One has been collected by Kanga’s right hand, while the other is palmed by his left. If you follow the calm look in Kanga’s eyes, you will find the third and fourth basketballs. They appear to be flying away from him, terrified, as if Kanga’s next action will be to extend his neck and bite them from the air.
He didn’t bite those two basketballs. Not exactly.
Instead, in the air, Kanga quickly tossed both already collected basketballs to teammates, freeing his hands to scoop up the last two balls. When he finally landed on the ground, this is what it sounded like:
“Whoa.”
“Dang it.”
“That was four—”
“He got four balls.”
“I blinked. What happened?”
“What’s that kid’s name?”
“Has anyone ever gotten that many balls before?”
“Coach?”
“Coach Belt, has anyone ever—”
“Start running laps,” said Mr. Belt. “Everybody.”
Nobody moved.
“What are you guys waiting for? I said run!”
“Even us, Coach?” said one of the guys who had only been watching.
“You. Everybody. Start running. NOW.”
Kanga followed the team in a lap around the Cave, but this time he took giant leaps with each step, bounding. The bounds got longer and longer, as though he were testing the limits of his bounding ability. He bounded over the team manager sitting against the Cave wall.
“Kanga!” Mr. Belt was yelling again. “No! I want you over here. You stand with me, Kanga. Stop jumping, and get your butt over here.”
Kanga went to Mr. Belt.
“Pick up those balls, Livery. I want these turkeys to see you holding those balls.”
Kanga knelt down and gathered his balls, two in each arm. He and Mr. Belt watched the rest of the basketball team run laps for a good eight minutes.
“Four balls.” Mr. Belt blew his whistle. “Get over here!”
The team ran over.
“Let’s finish this drill. From now on nobody gets four balls. If anybody gets four balls—” He blew the whistle.
Nobody grabbed four balls again. But, for the remainder of ballslappers, Kanga snagged two balls every whistle, sometimes three. It was simple. He jumped, like everybody else, except he jumped higher. Kanga then rebounded every ball in his vicinity. He didn’t touch anyone. He just watched the balls, as if in slow motion, and rebounded them. He didn’t slap them. He didn’t make a sound with them. The moment his fingers touched a basketball, it was palmed. He did this with both hands. Then, if he needed to, he passed a ball to an open teammate and palmed another one.
This wasn’t our plan. The plan was for Kanga to be Kanga, not Magic Johnson. It was all happening too fast for me to process. Then James Botty, who hadn’t slapped or even touched a ball in five whistles, dug his fingernails into the homemade Magic jersey as Kanga was about to leap. The shirt ripped apart, and Kanga flopped to the Cave floor, landing on his neck.
“Hey!” somebody protested. “Intentional foul!”
“James shredded the new kid!”
“Coach, is James allowed to break somebody’s neck like that?”
The team was yelling and stepping onto the court in Kanga’s defense. Half of the team. The other handful of guys stood back silently, watching to see what James did next. James stared down at Kanga with the vacant eyes of a street dog. “I told you,” James said. “Get that AIDS off my court.”
The whistle blew.
“James,” said Mr. Belt. “James.” Mr. Belt stepped between Kanga and James. “Good hustle, James, but start running laps.” Mr. Belt watched sternly as James trotted away; then the coach’s face reverted to a boyish grin. “This is what I call basketball!”
I kept videotaping. Mr. Belt had begun grouping the boys for a shirts-versus-skins scrimmage when the scene in my viewfinder went black. A voice boomed down at me: “You’re doing it wrong!”
Brooke Noon.
I detached the camcorder from my eye and there was the team manager, inches away, dancing from foot to foot, her mouth contorted like she had a fishing hook in her cheek. The energy in her typing fingers a moment ago was now fueling her entire body. “You’re in the completely wrong place!” she said, stomping off toward the double doors leading to the cafeteria. She peeked back at me before disappearing through the doorway. “Come on!”
In the succeeding nanosecond, my processor submitted a report detailing the myriad reasons not to follow Brooke Noon into the cafeteria: she was impulsive; she was erratic; she once grabbed a handful of Joe Goodman’s hair and didn’t let go for the rest of recess; she had no friends; she was loud; she was in the 98th percentile of intelligence yet never turned in her homework; she didn’t make eye contact; she yawned excessively; additional elements of her personality were unknown due to the fact that she had only spoken three sentences to me in my entire life—all in the last thirty seconds. The report concluded by alternately flashing the phrases “UNPREDICTABLE” and “DO NOT FOLLOW” in red letters across the inside of my eyeballs.
I followed her.
I capped the eyepiece of my camcorder. I glanced across the Cave to where Brooke’s laptop was still plugged into the wall, waiting for a stray basketball to crack it in two—
“This way!” she bellowed from the cafeteria.
7
I FOLLOWED HER THROUGH THE CAFETERIA, past the trophy cases, around the pop machines, and down the drama hallway. Her arms pumped. Her shoes slapped the linoleum. She peeked over her shoulder with a bewildered expression. So I stopped. I watched Brooke open a heavy brown door and dart inside. Yet before the door could slam behind her, she asked, “Where did you go, Darryl?”
She knew my name. The Directions advised that nonessential humans not know your name. That meant you were being a model robot, which I was. I could count on one hand how many times another student had said my name in a sentence this school year, and nobody—ever—had said it like Brooke Noon just did. Like she knew me. Like I was her brother and she might holler from inside the family bathroom: Darryl? I need more toilet paper! And I would say: Get it yourself!
Or I would stop what I was doing, get a roll of toilet paper, approach the bathroom door and—
“Darryl!” she screamed, holding the door open for me.
I ran. I liked hearing Brooke Noon say my name.
Just inside the door was a ladder bolted to the floor. It led up through a square opening in the ceiling. Brooke began to climb.
I hesitated. “Should I bring the camcorder?” I added, “Brooke?”
“That’s the whole point of going to the skybox, dummy.”
Skybox? I strapped the camcorder around my neck and grasped the ladder with both hands. When I reached the top, Brooke was already clanking down a catwalk through a vast, dark space. I braced myself by grabbing the slick metal handrails: the sturdy infrastructure of an alien spacecraft. The catwalk extended through the upper regions of our unlit auditorium. Random red lights blinked among the seating below, as if to assure us the building was still awake, watching our every movement. Brooke fished a key ring from her pocket, somehow selecting the correct key in the darkness, and unlocked a door. I followed.
The next room was pitch-black. Cold. There was carpeting beneath our feet, and the air tasted like dead mice. Yet Brooke was familiar enough with her environment to approach one of the walls. She felt the surface—I heard the
scraping of her fingers on plywood—then pulled a square section from the wall, creating an orange window, bursting with light. Heat billowed in through the window, filling our tiny room. Brooke set the wall section on the floor. Then she stood still, her shoulders and head silhouetted by orange, as she peered down into the Cave.
I stepped beside her, just tall enough to see over the wooden sill. The view knocked me off balance. The sight of bleachers, double doors, backboards, lines, bricks, basketball players: all miniature versions, yet somehow more intricately rendered. The moving pieces—the players, the ball—appeared weightless and insignificant, like insects trapped in a shoebox. We were up near the Cave rafters, Brooke and myself, our shoulders separated by inches. It wasn’t just a better view up in this “skybox;” it was an artistic view. Brooke must have recognized that I was an artist like her. I felt the wires in my neck tighten, urging my mouth to say something about art. Something profound. Something only she would understand. But Brooke beat me to it:
“You’re my boyfriend now. You can’t tell anybody.”
It wasn’t a question, but I answered her. “Okay.”
“If you tell anybody, my other boyfriends will find out and beat you up. I have three boyfriends.”
“Did you take them up here too?”
“Mind your own business,” she said. “And stop staring.”
I looked back at the basketball court. “Sorry.”
“We’re not girlfriend-boyfriend yet.” She stepped away from the window, into a dark corner. “We have to touch something.” She carefully extended her right shoe from the shadows. “We have to touch shoes.”
“Can I look at you now?”
“At my shoe.”
I looked at her shoe: a dirty pink Converse All Star, two inches of red sock, and the frayed cuff of her jeans. Brooke would slap me across the face if she could read my thoughts—which I could scarcely identify as my own, as I’d never experienced anything like them before, especially for a shoe. It’s not that I wanted to remove her shoe and expose her foot. I wanted to be inside her shoe.