by Kobe Bryant
“Told you he was a witch,” Big John said.
“I stand corrected,” Peño admitted.
Devon shuffled down and then found himself facing a steep staircase—the floor had morphed into huge steps that built up toward the far wall. Rolabi was perched on one in the middle, seemingly unaware of the changes to the gym. The team broke into another argument, but Devon was beginning to enjoy himself. He leapt up the steps, passing one teammate after another.
Sweat beaded and fell, covered him in a sheen. He felt his worries leaking away.
“A little help, big man?” Peño said.
He was gripping the end of a step, clearly about to slip, and Devon hoisted him up.
“If I wasn’t about to pee myself, I’d give you props,” Peño muttered.
Devon laughed and kept climbing. Around the next turn was a valley, and he sidled down one end and then exploded up the other, pulling just behind a struggling Twig. He stayed in second place, not wanting to take the lead. He leapt over holes and hurdled obstacles and relished the exhaustion.
He was almost disappointed when they stopped for another shot. But he didn’t need to wait long—Rain missed his attempt, screamed at Rolabi, and then stormed off to the bathroom. Apparently, Rain didn’t like to miss. But so far, he seemed to do a lot of that.
“Everyone, grab a drink,” Rolabi said. “The laps will continue shortly.”
As Devon downed the majority of his bottle in one thirsty gulp, he knelt and put one hand to the floor. It seemed like regular hardwood, but it couldn’t be. What was this place? How was this all happening?
Did he dare ask someone? He looked at Twig. The words caught in his throat, and he coughed a little, summoning his courage. This was good practice. Just a question. That was it.
“The floors . . . They were moving, right?” Devon asked.
“Yeah,” Twig said.
Devon looked away, not wanting to stare at the pockmarks on Twig’s cheeks.
“Just checking.”
Devon left it there, but he was secretly pleased. He had asked someone a question, and even had a conversation. Sort of. Still, Twig was the first kid he’d talked to other than his sister in years. Nana would be proud. He finished his bottle with a shake of his head. He had a magic coach and a gym that could shape-shift, and he was busy thinking about a tiny conversation. His priorities were a mess.
Rain returned from the locker room, still looking a little distant, and the drill resumed. Devon continued to excel—always staying just behind the leader. Finally, after what must have been another thirty laps, Reggie hit his free throw. Most of the team looked ready to collapse.
“So you got the cardio too, huh?” Peño said to Devon, wiping his face. “Figures. You can bench-press me and my bro and then run laps around us. I can bench-press a sandwich to my face.”
He patted his belly mournfully. “Think I can borrow some abs?”
Devon laughed. He didn’t know why, but Peño made him feel at ease. He was the shortest on the team by far—his head was in line with Devon’s chest. He was squat and perhaps a little flabby, and he had about seven mustache hairs that moved with his quick smile.
“Water break,” Rolabi said. “Bring your bottles over here.”
They gathered in a seated circle around Rolabi, who dug into his bag and pulled out a potted flower. Devon’s mouth fell open. His nana loved flowers and constantly showed him pictures of her old garden. Things like that didn’t grow in the Bottom anymore. No one knew why, though his nana said acid rain was to blame—apparently it used to fall all the time when the industries were booming. He had never seen a daisy in person, and he couldn’t wait to tell his nana later.
Rolabi gave no instructions. He just stood there and stared at it intently. Devon looked between the coach and the daisy. Maybe they were just supposed to admire it. He certainly liked it.
Peño was sitting beside him, legs flopped out in front of him. He seemed confused.
“What are we supposed to do with the flower?” he asked.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Rolabi replied.
Peño looked at the daisy for a moment as if trying to figure out the answer. “No.”
“We are going to watch it grow.”
“Why?” Lab asked incredulously.
“Small, nearly imperceptible things make the difference between victory and defeat.”
Devon thought about that. He was used to staring at nothing, so he figured he might be an expert at this. He shifted and felt himself relax. The flower didn’t seem to be moving, but he focused on the petals anyway and rested his hands on his knees, trying to take deep breaths like his nana had taught him when he was feeling anxious. She said breathing was the enemy of panic. He closed his eyes for a moment, relaxing.
Then he felt someone watching him. He opened his eyes and found Rolabi sitting on the other side of the potted flower, cross-legged, hands on his knees. Everyone else was gone.
“Why did you come to this training camp?” Rolabi asked.
Devon looked around, alarmed. He wondered if he had fallen asleep.
He hesitated. “I . . . I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do.”
Devon fidgeted, sensing there was no point in lying.
“I knew my parents wanted me to try. To . . . you know . . . make friends.”
“I’m not concerned with what they wanted. What do you want?”
Devon was silent for a long time. He wasn’t exactly sure. He wanted lots of things, of course, but there seemed to be one connector. One problem that tied everything else together.
“I want to stop being so afraid,” he whispered.
“Of?”
Devon looked away. “I don’t even know anymore.”
To his surprise, Rolabi smiled. “People think fear is a specific thing. Spiders or heights or speaking in public. Not always. Sometimes fear is just darkness itself. In those times, we need only find who turned out the light, and why, and where the switch has gone.”
“How do you do that?” Devon whispered.
“Simple. You learn to see in the dark.”
The others reappeared, and Rolabi was tucking the daisy into his bag.
“Water bottles away,” he said. “We have one more lesson today.”
Devon hurried to the bench, glancing at the professor. That conversation hadn’t felt like a dream. There was no blurring at the edges, no tiredness when he snapped back into reality. It had felt more like the vision from the first day. He shivered at the memory of it. The frightened faces.
Rolabi was now setting up a sort of obstacle course, pulling objects from his bag and tossing them around haphazardly, yet there was nothing random about where they fell. In moments, a full circuit had been assembled, and when he was done, Rolabi took out three basketballs and placed them at half-court.
The team warily gathered in front of them.
“You will complete the circuit,” Rolabi said. “A layup on the first hoop and a shot from the elbow on the other. When you return, pass the ball to the player who is first in line. Three may go at a time. You may begin.”
It seemed simple enough. Devon wasn’t thrilled about having to take the shots, but at least everyone would be busy and there wouldn’t be much time to watch one another. He hoped he could make the initial layup, at least. But before they could begin, Rain started screaming.
A chorus of shouts and cries followed. Devon whirled around, bewildered, and then looked down. His stronger left hand was gone. His wrist now ended in a fleshy wall, perfectly flat, as though there had never been a hand there at all. He ran his right fingers through the empty space and felt nothing. The hand had simply vanished.
“What is this?” Big John shrieked, his cheeks quivering.
“An exercise in balance,” Rolabi said. “Proceed.”
“No!” Lab said, storming out of the line. “This is too much!”
He started for the bench, seemed to remember something, and whirled back to Rolabi. “And give me back my hand, you wack job!”
Devon felt the smooth stump again, too stunned to think. He vaguely wondered how he would he tell his parents. And Keya. They would be devastated. He pictured his nana’s reaction: “You’re still doing your homework!” He frowned. Well . . . the other three would be sad.
“Shall we begin?” Rolabi said.
There was a long pause, and then Rain picked up the ball with his left hand and started the circuit. Devon looked uncertainly at his missing hand as he moved up in the line. He could barely play offense with his left hand . . . he had no chance with his right.
When he received a pass, he awkwardly dribbled with one hand toward the hoop. It felt like he was dribbling with a wooden club, not part of his own body. It got worse from there. He hit the bottom of the backboard on the layup. He lost the ball four times through the cones. When he emerged, thoroughly humiliated, he tried to pass the ball through the vertical hoop and missed by ten feet. His right hand wasn’t just weaker—it was useless.
He finally made it back to the line and threw the ball to Reggie, his cheeks burning. His performance was even more awful than he could have imagined. He didn’t make a single layup or jump shot. He wasn’t even close on the passing drill. As an hour or maybe even hours rolled by, frustration set in and made his efforts even worse. He rushed, fuming, and chucked wild shots. At one point, Devon retrieved his rebound—exasperated after yet another air ball—and passed to the front of the line. At least, he tried. The ball sailed wide and smacked Vin in the head so hard that he toppled over.
Devon froze.
He saw it again and felt his stomach turn. A boy on the ground. People shouting. Crying. Devon always hurt people. That’s what he did. He was a big stupid brute, and he always would be. He felt the weight of that fact settle in. He shouldn’t have come here. He could never be a Badger.
Regret is another word for self-pity.
Devon felt a little stirring of anger at the voice. What did Rolabi know about his past?
It’s the truth, he fumed. If you knew me, you would understand.
If you knew yourself, so would you.
Devon glared at the professor, his body shaking. He could still leave. He could forget about this whole stupid idea. He didn’t want to face the past. He didn’t want to remember what he was. Maybe he did have a cage. But it was safer there. He could hide and be done with this.
Rolabi’s green eyes turned to Devon, shimmered, and held him in place. The gym was gone.
Iron bars sprang up in front of him, leaping out of the floor and racing for the ceiling. They bent and converged over his head. The lights dimmed. Soon there was only the cage, and darkness beyond, interrupted by some ominous orange glow, like firelight. Devon gripped the bars with his remaining hand, panicked.
“Hey!” he shouted. “Rolabi! Anyone!”
He spotted a door on the side of the cage. He ran to it and heaved, but it was locked. He found the lockbox and the keyhole and tried to shake the door loose but couldn’t. He was trapped.
“Let me out!” he said.
The darkness seemed to close in. Even the meager firelight was fading. He shook the bars again, frantic, trying to break the door down. He lowered his shoulder and charged into it, bouncing clean off and clattering to the floor. He lay there, shoulder bruised, watching the dark.
“Why don’t you just ask the jailor?” Rolabi said.
He was standing outside the door, in a spot that Devon knew had been empty a moment ago.
Devon climbed to his feet. “Rolabi! Yes, please. Let me out.”
“Who said the jailor was me?” he asked.
Devon heard something jingle. He looked down to see a key ring dangling from his shorts. He unclipped it and held the keys up in his trembling hand. Just ask the jailor.
“When will the sentence end?” Rolabi asked.
Then he was gone, and so was the cage, and Devon was back in Fairwood. He whirled around. The team was arguing. The practice seemed to have ended. He stood there, shivering, looking down at his remaining right hand. It had seemed so real. He’d felt the bars. The cold.
Devon rubbed his forehead. There was no such thing as magic. It was impossible.
“Tell that to him,” the grumpy voice said.
“I am not talking to a gym,” Devon muttered, heading for the bench.
“So talk to yourself,” the voice said. “That’s much less crazy.”
Devon scowled and plopped onto the bench. He ran through the day in his mind. He had made his way through a shape-shifting gym, stared at a daisy, lost a hand, ended up in a cage, and was now talking to a gym. He had come to this training camp for normalcy. That was proving to be tough.
Devon changed his shoes and shirt and started for the doors, ignoring the others. He kept picturing the cage, even here. He felt as though he could almost touch the cold metal of the bars. As he reached for the doors, he heard the grumpy voice:
“What did you do that was so bad, anyway?”
Devon paused, his fingers on the handle. “I left my cage,” he whispered. He hurried out just as the first tears clouded his eyes.
DEVON RAISED HIS left hand to wave goodbye, hesitated when he saw the stump, and then awkwardly waved with his right hand instead. His nana waved back and drove away with no mention of his missing hand.
An old paper bag rolled past his feet, heading toward a rapidly growing pile that was forming in the corner of the parking lot. Piles formed at odd places throughout the Bottom, like coral reefs slowly spreading out across the concrete. Over time the garbage grew sodden and began to decay into a multicolored mush, which only made the smell worse. He knew the trash was a Bottom problem only—his nana had taught him all about the rest of Dren. She had actually been outside of the Bottom—when she was a little girl, before the ban on its residents. She had even been to Argen.
Argen was the nicest region—pristine white streets, wide boulevards lined with trees. It was the seat of President Talin’s loyalist government and about as different from the Bottom as possible. His nana said President Talin had always hated the Bottom, but she never said why.
It seemed obvious to Devon. It was a dump.
As he stepped into the gym, Devon felt his stomach give a familiar anxious flop. Every night since training started, he’d told himself that the next day’s practice would be different. That he would talk and be funny. His new teammates didn’t know him. So why couldn’t he be the joker? The smart one? The cool, composed one?
He could be anyone he wanted. And yet, he had chosen brooding, troubled Devon. And every morning he made the same choice again. He was silent. Afraid. The same broken, timid brute he’d been since what seemed like forever.
Devon sat down at the end of the bench and pulled on his shoes, listening to the others.
Their conversations only made him lonelier.
“She definitely likes me, man.”
“My brother doesn’t have to do nothing . . . you know? I got every chore going.”
“You see the Aces last night? Porter was on fire, man. Just draining threes like crazy.”
Devon had seen the game—they had a lone television, and his dad always caught games with him when he got home. Devon wanted to talk about it. But the words died on his lips, and the front doors of Fairwood swung open at the same time. Rain and Freddy walked in, and Devon could immediately sense their uneasiness. Freddy looked like he might turn and run. His eyes were darting around, looking for something. No . . . someone. Devon frowned. What did he want?
They said their hellos, and then Freddy got to the point.
“Rain tells me there are some problems with Rolabi.”
Devon looked from Rai
n to the rest of the team. Realization dawned on him. Were they going to fire Rolabi? Some of the reactions to Freddy’s announcement seemed relieved or at least unfazed, but Twig and Reggie looked as concerned as Devon felt. Had there been a vote? When had that happened? Why had no one asked him?
Because they don’t want you here, he thought glumly.
“Were you on any of these teams, Frederick?”
Devon jumped and turned to the north wall, where Rolabi Wizenard was staring up at the banners. Devon heard sharp intakes of breath and muttered curses from the others as they realized he must have been listening. Freddy looked like he might faint and took a big step back.
“What . . . Where did . . . ?” Freddy said.
“I suppose you were too young,” Rolabi said. “It’s been so long. Can I help you?”
“Yes,” Freddy said. “Can I speak to you privately?”
Rolabi walked toward them, stopping just a few feet from a petrified Freddy.
“No need,” Rolabi said, his eyes flicking around the group. “Go ahead.”
Devon turned to Freddy, but he was gone. Everyone was. Devon was sitting alone.
“I was quite a large child growing up.”
Devon flinched and turned to find Rolabi sitting on the bench beside him.
“I . . . can imagine,” he said.
“Tall, of course, but also broad. Strong. My mother said I was born of the mountain.”
Rolabi smiled—the first time Devon had seen him do so. It made his face soften—the long scars on his cheeks crinkled and faded into his warm brown skin, and laugh lines formed at the corners of his eyes.
“I could dunk at seven,” Rolabi continued. “I broke the net at eight.”
“That’s kind of awesome,” Devon said.
“But I stood out, I suppose. And I always asked myself: What is the purpose of strength?”
Devon frowned. “What do you mean?”
“If we are stronger than others, or wealthier, or wiser . . . why? What do we do with our difference?”