by Kobe Bryant
“I’m doing my best, Mom,” he said. “I don’t know what to do about Lab, though.”
He spoke to her often—whenever Lab was out of earshot. He spoke to her while he did his chores and before bed and when he was reading. He asked her how she was feeling. Told her he missed her. Asked her what to do with Lab. Sometimes it was prayer-like, other times conversational, but he needed those talks. They made him feel less alone.
He took another swig and was preparing to head back out when he noticed Big John getting changed alone at the end of the bench. He was putting his shoes on with exaggerated slowness, and he looked sort of . . . haggard. His eyes were puffy and ringed with dark circles.
“Hey, dude,” Peño said.
“Yo,” Big John replied.
“You good?”
Big John glanced up at him, and for just a second, Peño thought he saw Big John’s upper lip quiver. But Big John caught himself and forced a lopsided smile.
“Yeah. Tired is all.”
“I . . . uh . . . didn’t know about the two jobs.”
Big John shifted. “Catching some overtime is all. Got home late.”
“Your mom don’t mind?”
Big John laced up his shoes and stood up. “She asked me to. Lost her job.”
“Oh.”
Peño knew that Big John had two little sisters as well. His dad had died years ago, his older brother not long after. One to sickness, the other to violence.
“Yeah,” Big John said gruffly. “She’ll get another one. Just got to fill in for now.”
“Sorry, man—”
“I don’t need pity,” he said. “It’s fine. That’s why I’m here. I got to get to college, man.”
Big John hurried onto the court, and Peño watched him, troubled. For all his and Lab’s problems, Big John had it worse. He’d lost two people instead of one, and he was stuck trying to keep his family afloat now.
Peño looked around the gym. They weren’t all going to make the DBL. Rain could, maybe. The rest were long shots. Nearly impossible odds. Even, or especially, him. He knew it, much as he didn’t want to admit it. It wasn’t just his height—his shot wasn’t reliable, and it was tough to get anywhere without a steady jumper. He played against scoring point guards better than himself all the time.
But what else could they all hope for? There was no future in the Bottom. If Peño didn’t make the DBL, he was stuck here—working the same kind of backbreaking jobs as his dad, if he was lucky enough to get one. How could he face that? He had to make it. They all did, despite the odds. For now, he just had to leave it at that.
Peño headed back to the court—pointedly staying on the opposite end from Lab. He worked there until Rolabi showed up and called them in. Peño noticed belatedly that while he was avoiding Lab, everyone else seemed to be avoiding Rain. He looked around, confused. What did he miss?
“Today we are going to work on offense,” Rolabi said. “We’ll start with passing.”
Peño perked up. He had always prided himself on his passing.
“The foundation of all offense,” Rolabi continued. “What do all the great passers have?”
“Vision,” Peño said immediately.
He knew what it took . . . He watched any DBL games he could get on their stations, studying the moves through the static and playing them again and again in his mind later. Sometimes he wrote down notes while he watched, much to Lab’s amusement, or sat so close, he could trace his fingers from one play to another.
“Very good. A great passer must be quick and agile and bold. But mostly, they must have vision. Both of what is and what will soon come. They must see everything on the floor.”
“So, we just have to practice seeing more . . . ?” Lab trailed off.
“Yes,” Rolabi said simply. “And the best way to start is by seeing nothing at all.”
Peño probably should have expected something weird. It was the sixth day, and strange things happened when Rolabi gave them a lesson. But Peño wasn’t ready for sudden blindness. He cried out and waved his hands, rubbing his eyes to clear them. But the darkness was impenetrable.
Peño felt someone trod on his shoe and yelped. “Hey, watch it! That’s my toe!”
“Well, how do you want me to avoid it when I can’t see anything?” Big John said.
“How about you try not moving? You’re like an elephant.”
“Is that a crack about my weight?” Big John snarled.
“Well, it ain’t about your memory.”
Peño raised his arms to ward off any blows, but he couldn’t tell where the voice was coming from. Everything was a jumbled mess of shouts and heavy breathing and curses.
“How is this helping us with vision?” Lab yelled over the other voices.
“Vision is an interesting term for it,” Rolabi said. His voice seemed to fill the darkness. “In this case, it isn’t only reliant on eyes. We can hear what is happening. We can feel it. We can predict it. If you can do that, your eyes are a bonus.”
Someone began to dribble. Peño tried to focus on the sound, feeling the familiar vibrations beneath his feet. He loved that sound. It calmed him a little, and he breathed deeply, taking in the humid, sharp musk. This was Fairwood. Even in the darkness, he knew this place.
“The game is simple. The attacking team will start on one end of the floor. The other team will wait for them in the middle. The attacking team will pass the ball up the court. They cannot dribble—only pass. If they get to the far side, they win. If they lose the ball, then the other team gets a turn. We will go until one team wins. The losing team will run.”
“We can’t see anything,” Peño said, waving his hands around. “This is impossible.”
“You are all very focused on what is impossible,” Rolabi said.
Peño felt something hard and rubbery bounce right off his forehead.
“Not cool, Professor,” he grumbled. “You could have hit my nose. That would have been the end of my modeling career. My family would have been devastated, man.”
“What are you modeling, baby clothes?” Big John said. “Doll shoes?”
“Clearly, it’s how not to grow facial hair,” Vin said.
Peño rubbed his upper lip self-consciously. “Everyone is a comedian in the dark.”
“Starters versus last year’s bench,” Rolabi said. “Starters will go first. Find the ball.”
Peño sighed. That meant him. He set out after the ball, shuffling and constantly feeling his way to avoid running into anything. It only half worked, and his knee collided with the wall.
“There goes my career,” he said, rubbing the sore spot.
He continued the search, jerking every time he touched something. Lab finally managed to scoop up the ball and get it to Peño, and after another few minutes, they formed what was hopefully a line under the net. The defenders were supposed to be waiting for them at half, but Peño had no idea if they were all set up correctly or not. Rolabi refused to offer any guidance.
“Okay, I’m going!” Peño announced.
“We don’t even know where you are, stupid,” Lab said.
“I think that’s the point, idiot,” Peño said.
“This should be fun,” Twig muttered.
“Here!” Rain shouted.
Peño took a few steps toward the voice and then bounce-passed it, hoping the noise would help Rain locate the ball in the dark. It bounced only once, so he must have caught it.
“Who’s next?” Rain asked.
“Here. Pass it!” Lab called, and Peño heard squeaking shoes closing in.
There was a bounce, a pained groan, another bounce, and then silence.
“A little higher,” Lab managed, his voice unusually high-pitched. “Keep moving!”
They slowly worked their way down the court—or so he hoped—and Pe
ño tried to facilitate things as best he could. If they moved slowly enough and used very short bounce passes, the drill seemed easy enough. But when they made it farther up the court, the sounds of his team began to intermingle with the defenders. All of a sudden, the air was full of shouts and warnings and squeaking shoes. Peño froze with the ball, trying to decipher the voices.
Finally, he picked out Lab’s voice and tossed it to him. He must have missed, because he heard a clanging like an old pinball machine. The ball was bouncing around under the bleachers.
“Oops,” he said.
“Switch,” Rolabi said.
It took the bench team even longer to find the ball and get started, and then they promptly lost it. Peño was secretly pleased—he couldn’t have Vin performing better than him at these drills. He had to start proving why he was the starter.
And why is that? a deep voice seemed to whisper in his ear.
Peño nearly toppled over, surprised by the voice in the dark. “Who said that?”
“Who said what?” Lab asked. “Everyone’s talking, Peanut. You got the ball?”
“I’m over here!” A-Wall shouted.
“I said ball,” Lab snarled, “not A-Wall.”
“Hmm,” Rolabi said. “Perhaps we will work up to complete darkness.”
An orange light appeared, like a perfectly spherical bonfire. As Peño approached it, he realized that the basketball was glowing with an internal light. He gingerly picked it up, but there was no heat. Stranger still, the light didn’t radiate from the ball—not even to his fingers.
“This is weird,” Peño said, bouncing the ball back and forth between his hands.
He followed his teammates’ voices until he felt the wall and then turned to face what he assumed were the defenders. It was a lot of guesswork. He had never experienced full darkness before. Even at night in his room, some light always snuck in from the moon or streetlights, and always from Lab’s small night-light.
This was something else entirely. The team was trying to function in the darkness. Move around and pass and play. It seemed ridiculous . . . and yet he had to admit that it was interesting to use his other senses. He never really thought about them on the court. It was a visual game.
“You guys ready?” Peño said. “Go!”
It was definitely easier with the lit-up ball. The problem was, it was also easier for the other team to find it . . . which they soon did when someone picked off one of Peño’s errant passes.
“Stolen!” Jerome announced—clearly the thief.
“Nice pass, Peño,” Lab said.
Peño scowled. “I can’t see who I’m passing to. What do you want from me?”
“Vision,” Lab muttered.
“I’m going to pass it into the side of your head next time,” Peño said.
“You couldn’t hit the side of a barn.”
“Well, luckily your head is bigger than that,” Peño said.
He lifted his fists, pretending to box with him, and connected with something soft.
“Ow!” Vin said. “Who did that?”
Peño bit his lip and quickly scurried away.
As the drill continued, Peño began to take control. He was a vocal player at the best of times, and in the darkness, he was the clear leader on the court. He called out everything and demanded that others do the same. Before long even Twig was shouting out what he was doing. It was a nice change, and Peño wondered if the talking would continue when then the lights came on.
Finally, after Rain managed to break through the line of defenders and receive a pass, Peño sprinted down the court as fast as he dared, waving his hands and shouting for the ball.
“I’m open!”
The pass came sailing through the air like a meteorite through the atmosphere, and Peño snatched it, preparing to turn and pass it to the next player. Instead, the dusty lights flicked back on, and he realized he was standing on the far baseline. They had made it across the gym.
“The starting team wins,” Rolabi said. “Water break.”
“Yeah boy!” Peño said, walking around and high-fiving his team—minus Lab, who was still avoiding Peño, and Rain, who had stormed off to the bench by himself.
“What’s up with that?” Peño asked A-Wall, gesturing to Rain.
A-Wall shrugged. “He said he was the team yesterday.”
“Oh,” Peño said. “Perfect.”
It seemed the team was getting more disconnected with every day of training camp. As they downed their water, Rolabi asked that each player say something honest, and they began to roll through one player at a time. Most of the statements were pretty standard: things to improve, goals for the season, bench players saying they wanted to start.
When it came to Peño, he strutted right up to the front and turned to the team.
“This year we are going to win the national championship, baby. Mark my words.”
“How?” Rolabi asked.
Peño frowned. “By . . . winning all the games?”
“Interesting,” Rolabi replied, though it didn’t sound like he was interested at all.
Peño returned to the bench, feeling a bit deflated. He suspected Rolabi wanted him to dig a little deeper, but he just wanted to play. Winning meant more games. More travel. More ball. That was what he really cared about. The more they won, the more they played. He didn’t really care about the glory or the fame or any of that. For him, the EYL trophy symbolized a long playoff run and, importantly, more basketball. If he could play ball every day, he’d be thrilled.
Rain was the last to go and apologized. The team just stared at him. No one moved.
A leader always has to take the first step.
Peño sighed inwardly, and then stepped up and gave Rain props. “We’re good.”
Everyone seemed to murmur their assent.
“Let’s scrimmage for an hour,” Rolabi said.
“No tricks?” Peño asked suspiciously.
“Just working on our vision. Rain, Vin, Lab, A-Wall, and Devon versus the rest.”
Peño froze. He wasn’t playing with Rain or Lab? They always played starters versus bench; it was ingrained into their practices. Were these the new starters: Vin instead of Peño and Devon over Twig? Was Peño being relegated to the bench? What had he done wrong? He looked at the professor, but when he caught those flashing emerald eyes, Rolabi said nothing.
Don’t put me on the bench, Peño thought desperately. Please don’t leave me behind.
Rolabi took a ball out. “We focus on one actor and miss the others in the background. We watch one card as the dealer palms a second. We watch the ball but miss the game.”
He held the ball out for the jump, and Twig and Devon hurried to either side. With Big John on the same team as Twig, it seemed Big John would slot in as a power forward and let Twig have the center spot. Peño reluctantly fell in behind them, wondering how he could get himself back into favor. Was he being skipped over because of his height? His issues with his left hand? He knew he wasn’t as in shape as he should have been. He held his round stomach. Maybe he could get a jog in after practice. Run home, maybe. He had to try and earn his spot back, starting now.
“We can see so much, and yet, we choose not to,” Rolabi said. “It is an odd decision.”
And then Peño went blind again. No, not blind. A strange blockage appeared in front of his eyes, leaving only his peripheral vision on either side. He felt like the whole world had been split in half. Peño tried not to panic. It was just another test. He had to try and get better at these. He turned his head around experimentally, trying to regain his bearings. It was incredibly disorienting, but he could still see a little. He just had to keep his head on a swivel.
He could do this.
“I can’t see!” Big John said. “Well . . . sort of!”
“Ready to pl
ay?” Rolabi asked.
“Just to be clear,” Peño said, “does everyone feel like they’re talking to the hand?”
“Yeah,” Jerome murmured.
So everyone had the same thing. That made it easier to plan. Peño kept his head sideways and peeked at the ball from the corner of his eye. Rolabi wanted him to push against the current. Well, it was time to swim.
The ball went up, passing out of his vision again, and the scrimmage began with Twig slapping Devon in the leg and the ball finding its way to Vin. Vin scooped it up, turning his head like a leery rooster. As he dribbled down the court, Peño hounded him, constantly moving his head back and forth to keep Vin in sight. He used his hands for guidance too.
“Call for screens!” Peño shouted. “Tell us who’s around you!”
Vin tried to fake left, but Peño followed—hearing the squeak of his shoes and the shift of the ball even before he saw anything. He even felt Vin’s dipping shoulder with his outstretched fingers. Blocked from the net, Vin passed the ball to Rain on the wing.
“You’re alone!” Peño called, letting Reggie know there weren’t any screens coming.
Rain went for the drive, gaining the corner on Reggie and heading directly for the net. But then he did something very unexpected—he passed the ball to an open Lab in the corner.
“Cover the wing!” Peño said, looking for Jerome.
He was too late. Lab caught the pass, lined up the shot, and hit it.
“I can see!” Lab shouted. “Nice pass, Rain!”
Peño frowned as Lab ran by. “Like . . . fully see?”
“Not anymore,” Lab muttered. “Just when I was shooting.”
Peño couldn’t make sense of that, so he put it out of his mind. They were already losing to the new starters. He got an inbound pass from Twig and started up the court, realizing he could at least go right this time—no more invisible wall. Turning his head constantly, Peño watched the others form up and made mental notes of their positions. He felt like an army general carefully marking his troops out on a map. His stopped at the top of the circle and hit Jerome on a sharp cut.