by Kobe Bryant
He juked to the left and went right. As he expected, the orb zipped out of the way . . . reading his obvious fake and shooting like a bullet to his left side. Rain spun back, his right hand outstretched, and closed his fingers on the orb. Instantaneously, the gym was gone.
He found himself in a dark room.
The floor was a dull gray, like the concrete floors of the basement, and it stretched off forever into shadow. Everything around him was black. A terrible fear settled over him. It sat in his stomach and in his bones. It made his skin crawl. Every muscle in his body tensed. It was the starkest fear he had ever felt, and Rain shivered and hugged himself.
Why had the orb taken him here? What was he supposed to do?
A flicker of movement caught his eye—a shape in the darkness.
“Hello?” he called. “Who’s there?”
The shape moved again. Rain’s breath caught in his throat; his heartbeat filled the room.
A man began to form in the blackness.
“Dad?” Rain whispered.
His father stepped into the light. “Hello, Rain.”
He was leaner than Rain remembered, with a patch of black curls drawn back into a widow’s peak. His eyes, once almond-shaped, were now smaller and darker. But his features were the same—Rain knew them perfectly. He stared at old photos every day. He replayed memories of days they had spent together. He tried on faded jeans that his dad had left behind to see when he would finally fit into them.
He never let him go.
“Hi,” Rain said softly.
He had dreamed of the reunion. Dreaded it. Planned it. He always thought he might run to him, embrace him. But now he felt reluctant. Wary. He stayed where he was, watching him.
“You’re surprised to see me,” his dad said. “Why?”
“I thought—” Rain felt his voice catch. “I thought you might be dead.”
“Thought . . . or hoped?” his dad asked, raising a thin eyebrow.
Shame flooded through him. But it was hard to lie here. Impossible, maybe. It felt like all the darkness was a mirror now, and everywhere he looked he saw his fears. So he didn’t bother.
“I . . . hoped, I guess,” Rain admitted.
“Why?”
Rain looked away. “Because that would explain why you never came back.”
“Ah.” His dad spread his hands out. “Well, as you can see, I’m not dead. And you knew that, in your heart. That’s why I’m here, isn’t it? Because you were afraid that I was alive.”
His dad stepped closer. His small eyes narrowed. His hands beckoned for Rain.
Rain didn’t move.
“Even through that fear, you wanted to bring me back. That was your plan. That was why you drove yourself to be the best. Why you worked so hard.” He searched Rain’s face. “Something else frightened you too. What was it?”
Rain stared into the darkness, not daring to speak. The answer flashed before him.
“Tell me,” his dad insisted.
“That you chose to stay away,” Rain said. “That you abandoned me. Larry and Mama too.”
He felt tears slip down his cheeks. He tasted them on his lips.
He was furious they were leaking now, after so many years of holding them in, but he couldn’t stop them. The shame of it made them spill even faster. He didn’t want to cry in front of his father. He didn’t want to show how much it hurt. That it still hurt every single day that he had left. It hurt so bad, it was hard to breathe some days.
Rain wanted to be stronger and angrier, but still the tears fell until his mouth was full of them.
“I did,” his dad replied. “I did abandon you. And your mother. And your brother.”
He stepped closer. He was only a few inches away now. Rain could smell the aftershave. The smoke. The smells that had haunted him for four years.
“But that’s still not it,” his father said. “It’s deeper. What is it, son?”
Rain felt his hands shaking. That word. That broken promise. More came flooding out now, pouring through broken walls. His dad was right. The scars went deeper still.
Rain turned to him, not bothering to wipe away the tears.
“Why?” Rain whispered. “Why did you leave?”
“I wasn’t happy there,” his father said. “At home. At work. I wanted to get away.”
“But why?” Rain shrieked, losing all control, not caring in the least.
His father smiled. It was cold, though. A smirk more than a smile.
“Now I think I see it, but you tell me. Why did you really think I left?”
Rain didn’t answer for a moment. He just breathed raggedly, staring at his father.
But the truth was flashing around him. It was in the nights awake. The hours spent in front of the mirror. It was in every desperate, last-minute shot. It was in his forced isolation.
“That I wasn’t enough,” Rain said finally. “I wasn’t worth staying for.”
More tears rushed out in a wave. The last dam had broken. It was the truth, of course. Rain had tried to cast it away. He had tried everything to change that. He had tried to be stronger and faster and a better player. He had tried to take it all on. But nothing had worked.
Because in the end, he felt like he had failed his father.
“Makes sense,” his father said. “And so you isolate yourself. Your team can’t let you down like I did. And you can’t let them down either. So you play alone. You dream alone. You crave isolation.”
“Do you have a new family?”
“Yes. A two-year-old boy. Strong. Going to be a baller, I would guess.”
That struck deeply. Rain wiped his nose with his sleeve. Snot and tears came away.
“Are you ever coming back?” he asked, not sure what he wanted the answer to be.
“That depends.”
“On what?” Rain asked.
He smiled. “On you.”
Rain understood immediately. So his plans had been valid. If he became a professional baller, if he made money and left the Bottom, his father would come back. But is that really what he wanted? A father who was there for the money? That wasn’t part of the family he had envisioned. But was it better than nothing? Why couldn’t he just have the family that he wanted?
Rain stared at the man in front of him . . . the man that he had idolized for so long.
“You aren’t real,” Rain said. “But my father is alive, really . . . isn’t he?”
“I have not lied,” his father said. “No one can lie in this place.”
Rain nodded, though it was painful to hear. His dad had left them and stayed away because he wanted to. He hadn’t called or written once. He had simply abandoned them.
For a moment, Rain felt like he might fold up on himself. The air seemed to leak out of him. His shoulders slumped. His stomach hurt. But despite the weight of it all, he didn’t collapse.
He had seen his fears, and he was still standing.
“You can go now,” Rain whispered.
His dad stared at him for a long moment, and then he faded into the darkness. Rain broke into a sob, burying his face in his hands. Even now, after everything, he wanted to chase after him. He wanted him to come back. To watch one of Rain’s games. To tell Rain he was worth it.
Rain dropped to his knees and wondered if he would ever leave this room.
“You will see him again. If you continue down this path, he will come back,” a deep familiar voice said. Rolabi appeared beside him, and Rain felt strangely . . . relieved to see him.
“Why am I here?” Rain murmured. “What do you want from me?”
Rolabi was quiet for a moment. “A friend once asked me why, of all the things I could have done with my life, I chose to coach basketball. Why I spent my time focusing on a mere game, as she put it. I told her I don’t. I focus o
n people. Sport brings us together like nothing else. It reveals our hearts. When the objective is simple, it’s the people who make the difference.”
“What are you saying?” Rain asked.
“I am saying that if you want to become a better basketball player, you have to become a better person. We all have dark rooms. We all have scars. A champion pushes on regardless.”
“It’s so hard.”
“If it wasn’t, it wouldn’t be worth doing.”
Rain thought about that for a long time. Then he pushed himself to his feet.
“Is my fear . . . Is it gone?”
“No,” Rolabi said. “That is a much longer road. But today, you saw which way to walk.”
The dark room vanished, and Rain was back in the gym, standing under the pale lights.
“You all right?” Peño asked, hurrying over.
Rain thought of how desperately he had missed his dad. Of the scars he had kept hidden for so long. They were revealed now, exposed. So many of his past choices made more sense to him. He was covered in scars. Rife with fear. And still he kept walking.
That made him stronger. That answered his question. He was worth staying for.
Rain nodded. “Yeah, I’m all right.”
RAIN WALKED INTO the gym the next morning and felt lighter. It should have been the same. As always, the floorboards creaked and complained with every step. The air smelled of mold and sweat and rot. The lights were dim. But today, Fairwood was different. Maybe everything was different. Last night, Rain had taken the note out of his bag, crumpled it, and thrown it away.
“What up, brotha?” Big John said, gathering a rebound. “You look tired.”
“I am,” Rain replied. “Didn’t sleep much. But . . . I don’t know. I kind of feel awake too.”
“That makes no sense.”
Rain snorted. “What does these days?”
“Good point.”
He sat down and put his shoes on. He didn’t turn to the banners today. He was done reading them until he could add his own. He stared down at his bag. No note. No old memories.
Just a ball.
Rain stood up as Rolabi walked past the bench onto the court. The rest of the players hurried over. Rain noticed that for once Rolabi wasn’t holding his familiar black medicine bag.
He stopped, hands clasped, green eyes sweeping over them. They fell on Rain.
The mountain stood in the pupils, whole again, snowcapped and beautiful.
“We have two days left of our training camp. And two left to catch the orb. After the camp, we will return to three evening practices a week until the start of the season. We will practice everything we have discussed here again and again until it becomes second nature. In your free time, you will focus on your mind. Read. Study. Learn to see. The mind and body are intertwined; if you neglect one, the other will fail.”
Rain frowned as the professor turned and started for the front doors.
“There’s no practice today?” Peño asked.
“Oh yes,” Rolabi replied. “You just don’t need me.”
“What should we do?” Rain said.
Rolabi glanced back. “I leave that to you.”
The doors blew open under a blast of wind, and Rolabi strode out into the morning sun. That was normal enough by now. What followed wasn’t. The doors slammed shut behind him and then disappeared altogether into the wall, leaving only impassable cinder block. Rain shifted uneasily. The only doors in or out of Fairwood had just vanished. The team was trapped.
“Perfect,” Peño muttered. “I guess he’s making sure we don’t go home early.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Twig whispered, looking around the gym.
The words were barely out of his mouth when a deep, grating rumble sounded from somewhere inside the walls, like a sleeping dragon roaring to life. The floors began to shake, and then the two longer walls flanking the court began to move. No. They began to close. The walls were sliding forward like a monstrous car wrecker, and the team was caught directly in the middle.
“Impossible,” Vin breathed.
“Possibility is subjective,” Lab said sarcastically. “Any ideas?”
The walls pushed on, sliding over the hardwood, tearing the banners from the walls.
Rain’s eyes fell on the remaining door—the one for the locker room. He sprinted for it but as he approached, it faded into the cinder blocks. He cursed and slapped the wall. “Now what?”
“Maybe we need to score the ball again?” Vin suggested.
The team grabbed their balls and ran onto the court—taking an array of jumpers and layups and three-pointers until they were all drenched in sweat. The walls continued on relentlessly.
“This is useless,” Lab said. “We did shooting two days ago. He wouldn’t repeat it.”
“What would he finish with?” Rain murmured.
There were no doors, no windows, no escape. What were they supposed to do?
“We need to stop the walls,” Devon said.
Rain had barely heard him speak the entire camp, but his voice blasted across the gym now. He ran to the bleachers and heaved, but despite his strength, the bleachers hardly moved.
“Help!” he cried.
The team sprinted over. The bleachers were comprised of one large segment about thirty feet long and ten rows deep. It was made so long ago that they’d used steel, and it was incredibly heavy. Even with ten of them, it was backbreaking work, and they fought to turn the structure.
“Turn it sideways!” Rain shouted. “On three! One . . . two . . . pull!”
The team heaved again, crying out. Rain pushed with everything he had, driving his legs into the ground. They were just in time. The ends of the bleachers were only a foot from either encroaching wall when they slid them into place. Rain bent over, gasping, sweat pouring down.
He watched in morbid fascination as the walls finally reached the bleachers, almost gently making contact on either end. Then there was a terrible shriek of metal, and the enormous steel bleachers began to fold upward in the middle as if made of straw.
“Try the benches!” Twig shouted, heading for the away bench.
Rain grabbed the other, but even as he turned it sideways, he knew it would do nothing.
“Rolabi!” Peño called. “Help us! Someone!”
Peño started beating on the bricks where the front doors had once stood, but his fists barely made a sound. Rain knew that no one could possibly hear them outside—the walls were thick and solid. The team was trapped, and there was absolutely nothing they could do about it.
“He did all this training just to kill us?” Lab wondered aloud, almost in a daze.
Vin was trying his cell phone. “No reception!”
Rain turned around numbly, watching as Fairwood was torn apart and crushed. In a strange way, it almost felt fitting. The banners were gone. The benches. All of his old memories.
They were all destroyed. His whole world was coming together with him in the middle.
Maybe he had taken too long to find his scars. Rain stared down at his hands, numb, waiting for the end. For once, he didn’t think about what he needed to do, or his future, or how to bring his family out of the Bottom. He thought about sitting down for a late dinner with his mama. He thought about playing ball out front with his brother. He thought about visiting his gran and how long it had been since he’d done that. He wanted those things, and nothing else really mattered.
“Look!” Devon shouted, pointing upward.
Rain followed his gaze hopefully . . . but that hope was quickly dashed. There, floating some twenty feet above the court, was the black orb. He could already feel its icy chill on his arms.
“Great timing,” Peño snarled.
The walls had slid onto the court itself now. The team would be dead in minutes.
“Someone can get out of here!” Twig said. “You vanish, remember?”
“Only for people that haven’t gotten the orb yet,” Reggie said. “It will only work for them.”
Lab and Peño looked at each other across the gym. Rain could see it in their faces: neither brother had caught it. One of them could still escape this—but only if he left his brother behind. He thought about Larry. Could he leave him? Of course not. How would the brothers choose?
“Get up on the bleachers!” Lab cried.
The team scrambled up onto the folding bleachers, which were reaching higher and higher as they were squeezed together into an inverted U, grinding and pushing together to form an almost-even surface. The team pulled and heaved themselves up onto the buckling steel.
Lab reached for the orb.
“It’s too far!” he shouted.
The walls were getting close to each other now—chewing and pushing and crushing everything before them. The team looked around in desperation, and for a second, it seemed like they had failed again. Rain had no ideas. No inspiration. He stood there, frozen.
He was supposed to be the leader. He was supposed to tell them what to do. But he realized now that he couldn’t. He didn’t have all the answers. Sometimes he was afraid, and lost, and needed help. He needed his teammates to take the lead sometimes. But maybe he had never given them the chance. Maybe he had waited too long.
And then Devon climbed down onto all fours, bracing his arms and legs against the still-bending metal benches.
“Come on!” he shouted. “Make a pyramid!”
Twig, A-Wall, Big John, and Reggie immediately dropped down beside him. Rain stared at them, realized he was just a block, just a means to get Peño and Lab to the top. He was a part of the team and nothing more. He didn’t think twice. He climbed on their backs, Jerome and Vin beside him. The base was wobbly and unsteady, and the human pyramid tottered but held. Rain grimaced as Peño climbed over him, digging his shoes in. Lab scurried up from the other side.
Rain couldn’t see what they were doing. He was focusing on his hands, on his job. If he gave out, the whole pyramid would fall. He knew they were all hoping that if someone got the orb, the walls would stop. He wanted to believe that they would all be saved. But there was a distinct possibility that whoever disappeared would live and that everyone else would be crushed. It didn’t matter. Not really. His part was here.