Justin

by LJ Alonge

  It’s Fat Jimmy who suggests that I should play the kids from Ghosttown. It’s obviously a sad little attempt at redemption, an effort to save himself from falling to the very bottom of the totem pole. It suddenly occurs to me that this is probably how the world has always worked, in every neighborhood, village, and city. Save the town by sacrificing its weak and vulnerable to the invading hordes. I come along and throw Omar under the bus, and then Fat Jimmy gets his chubby fingers around my neck and does the same to me. I get it. Similac summons me from the grass and asks me what I think.

  I look around the circle. Faces grin back at me eagerly. Everyone except Frank, who’s just shaking his head. But the way I see it, I’ve got nothing to lose. The way I see it, I’ve already hit rock bottom. The only place to go is up.

  “Yeah, I’ll play them,” I say.

  A couple of forced whoops come up from the crowd.

  “Who wants to be on my team?” I ask.

  “Whoa,” Similac says. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Who said anything about us playing with you? This should be about you making good, right? You know, bring some positivity back to the neighborhood after everything that happened?” He points across the street. A couple of guys shake their heads at the memory of the burning Q Mart. Omar is sitting at his little table, pressing the dark circles under his eyes.

  Frank gets up and brushes the dirt off his butt.

  “Forget y’all,” he says, and motions for us to walk away. Which is how I know he really is my brother.

  CHAPTER 8

  HOW TO START YOUR OWN DREAM TEAM

  We walk through the neighborhood now, strategizing. A couple of beer-soaked older guys walk past us. Ms. Mayfair is out smoking on her porch, the smoke slowly curling above her head. Back in the day, Pop built the wheelchair ramp for her house.

  “What are you boys up to?” she asks. Nosy, as always.

  “Nothing much,” Frank says. “Putting together a basketball team. You wanna play?”

  “Ha! Even if I could walk, I wouldn’t play with y’all.”

  “Plenty of kids we could ask to play,” Frank says to me as we cross the street.

  After some thought, we’ve narrowed our list down to a few kids. Long shots for sure, but with the way things are looking, it’s either them or nothing.

  First stop: Adrian Whately. Frank says he sold Adrian a package of stolen sketch pencils once, and he remembered that Adrian had calves like oranges. A quiet kid, Frank says. His school: unknown. His interests: unknown. We’re across the street from Children’s Hospital, outside a fortress. Frank says Adrian lives here. The house is separated from the street by a ten-foot steel gate with serrated spears on top. A huge oak tree in the middle of the yard stands guard. All the windows have bars on them.

  “How do we know he’ll play?” I ask.

  “We don’t. Got any better ideas?” Frank says.

  Frank grabs a broken branch and rattles it across the gate until a woman comes outside.

  She’s a big woman with little eyes set deep into her face, and she gathers a whole head of steam as she walks out toward us. She’s holding a broom in her hand.

  “What you banging on my gate for?” she asks. With one hand she grabs the gate, and with her other hand she holds the broom like a sword, the wooden edge pointed directly at Frank’s stomach.

  “Hi,” Frank says, not moving. “Adrian home?”

  “No,” she says. But behind her, we can see someone peeking through the curtains.

  “Okay,” Frank says. “We’re his friends. Can you deliver a communication for us?”

  “No,” she says.

  “Just tell him we need to talk to him.”

  As quickly as she stormed outside, she storms right back in.

  “Now what?” I ask.

  Frank says he didn’t plan on this particular outcome. I look up at the pointed spikes on top of the fence. An invading army couldn’t get over them.

  We come back the next day.

  “I found out that girl was his older sister,” Frank says. “Just gotta throw on the charm.”

  This time she doesn’t leave her doorway. But she’s dressed in a frilly yellow dress that stops just above the knee, the kind Mom wore when she first started dating Mr. Hunter. Her bright red lipstick is a shock around her mouth.

  “Did I tell you to come back?” she says to us, laughing harshly. There is something in her voice, though, a tone I imagine flirting to sound like. “I already have one little boy here. Don’t need two more.”

  “Who’s little?” Frank asks, also laughing, and I have a feeling they’re speaking in a language I don’t quite understand.

  “So young,” she says, slamming the door.

  Last shot. Frank picks me up tonight. I’m in a Predator sweatshirt, and he’s completely dolled up in a black dress shirt, khaki pants, and his one pair of good shoes—Doc Martens. His hair is gelled back. He’s got an eye-watering amount of Axe body spray on. I have to admit: He looks like he owns a Macy’s card or at least a very nice used car. On the way here he said that he’d usually get to Adrian via simple breaking and entering, but this job’s going to require a little more finesse.

  “I have doubts about this,” I say.

  “I’m not wearing my good clothes for nothing,” Frank says.

  “I am not a supporter of this plan.”

  “Just do what we talked about.”

  Frank rakes a fallen branch across the fence. Sure enough, Adrian’s sister opens the door and plants one thick hip in the door frame. Her head’s wrapped in a satiny nightcap, the kind with a million slippery colors. Her nightgown is wrapped snugly around her.

  “Let’s talk,” Frank says, his voice deep. “I got something very important I want to speak to you about.”

  “I told you two to stop coming,” she says coyly.

  “Last time. Promise. After we have our talk.”

  Adrian’s sister furrows her brow. She tucks a stray hair back into her headwrap; with her other hand, she carefully smoothes the front of her nightgown. She looks back into the house and takes a careful step out of the door frame. If I weren’t standing right next to Frank, I wouldn’t believe it. Not in a million years.

  “So?” Frank asks sweetly.

  “I don’t know,” she says, and something in her voice sounds genuinely unsure.

  “Let’s talk without all this gate business.”

  Would you believe me if I told you she walked down the little weedy path that led to the fence, swishing her hips, eyeing Frank like he was a piece of steak? Would you believe me if I told you she opened the gate?

  As soon as Frank walks in, he sits on the big leather recliner in the corner like he owns the place. I take a spot on the edge of the couch. Being in here feels like a hall of mirrors, where there are doubles and triples of everything. Everything is floral: the wallpaper, the couch covers, the carpet, the place mats on the dining table. A small bowl of potpourri sits on top of the TV. On the walls are pictures of Adrian and his sister. One of them at a birthday party, one of them on some kind of fishing trip, one of them at an A’s game. Adrian looks less and less happy in the photos, and by the time he’s sitting behind a thirteenth birthday cake, he looks furious. When his sister walks into the kitchen to grab us some lemonade, I mouth, Let’s leave. Frank gives two thumbs up, smiles big and wide.

  “Adrian!” Adrian’s sister says. “Your friends are here.”

  A minute later Adrian comes out from a bedroom in the back of the house. He’s muscle-y, about five five, and his body looks tense. He’s the kind of jumpy kid you can tell has never had any privacy, who’s always expecting someone to burst through the door. It’s true about his calves—for whatever reason, they bulge out from under his jeans like jet packs. He’s got a Green Lantern comic under his arm.

  “My old buddy,” Frank says. “Where
you been?”

  “Who are you?” Adrian says. His voice comes out froggy, like he’s not used to talking.

  “It’s me. Frank. The guy who sold you those pencils.”

  Adrian scratches the back of his neck. “Those pencils were shit.”

  “I thought you guys knew each other,” Adrian’s sister says, her eyes narrowing.

  Frank is sweating. “We do!”

  “You lying to me?”

  “Hey,” I say, “is that a Green Lantern comic?”

  “Yes,” Adrian says.

  “You mind if I take a look?”

  Reluctantly he hands it to me.

  I say, “A lot of people don’t know that the Green Lantern hated Batman.”

  Frank rolls his eyes. Adrian’s sister yawns.

  “Did you know,” Adrian says, perking up, “his girl was supposed to be Wonder Woman?”

  “Superman would’ve never let that happen.”

  “Never.”

  And that’s all it takes. Twenty minutes of talking about the genius of Stan Lee and it’s like we’re old friends. But does he want to play ball with us?

  “Yes,” his sister says, eyeing Frank. “He needs to get out of the house anyway.”

  One player down, two more to go. We turn down Seventh and enter a small plaza in Chinatown.

  “There’s no way White Mike’s here,” I tell Frank.

  “Trust me,” Frank says.

  “He moved away.”

  “That’s what he wants you to think.”

  About thirty Chinese guys line up in a perfect square. At the end of one row is Mike, in these baby-blue linens that billow softly in the breeze. He stands with his feet together, his hands straight up in the air, a picture of perfect serenity. His blond hair floats loosely around his head like a cape. Still, he has the kind of bulky frame you might expect from a good rebounder.

  Technically everybody knows White Mike. For three years he was the brawny, mohawked love interest of the main character on a Disney series for preteens. He was always getting his broad shoulders adorably stuck in a doorway or window, his attempts at love foiled by comical accidents. Let’s just say fame was not kind to him. Rumor had it that he left the show, moved out to a farm in Montana. Truth is, he moved back in with his parents in Oakland.

  Frank walks right in front of Mike so that he’s standing between Mike and the crowd.

  “We need to talk,” he says.

  “Peace,” Mike says in the hushed tone of a librarian. He takes a moment to look Frank in the eye and smile warmly, and then he turns to me and does the same. He strikes me as the kind of person who would hug you for no reason.

  “It’s urgent,” Frank says.

  “Release that urgency,” Mike says. “Release that stress.”

  Frank turns to me. I shrug. Around us, the men begin to lie down. Some of them, because they are so old, have to do it in stages, folding into themselves like pieces of paper.

  Mike lies flat on his back, his arms at his sides, the soles of his feet touching. His eyes are closed. Technically I was a little older than the show’s target audience, but I still watched. It’s a secret I planned to take to the grave. My favorite episode is the one where Mike discovers a time machine that can take him back to the moment he and his crush first met, only to learn that his head is too big for the machine’s safety helmet.

  “Mike?” I say. “You there?”

  “I’m here,” he whispers.

  “I’m Justin,” I say.

  “It’s a pleasure.”

  “I thought you were good on that show.”

  Frank gives me a look, his mouth partially open.

  “A different life, my friend,” Mike says. “A past life.”

  “How’s this life?”

  Mike opens his eyes. “Wonderful.”

  “Bullshit,” Frank interrupts. “You’ve been in hiding for, like, two years.”

  “And in that time I’ve found peace,” Mike says defensively. He gets up and bends deeply, his arms stretched awkwardly behind his back.

  This is going nowhere. I tell Frank we should leave. I tell him that an object at rest stays at rest, and in Mike we have a rested object. Instead, Frank grabs a fistful of Mike’s collar.

  “Okay,” Frank says. “Look: We have a basketball team. You’re going to join it. If you don’t, I’ll tell everyone your schedule and your phone number, and you’ll go back to having kids jumping on your back at Walmart.”

  “Easy,” Mike says, trying to free himself. “Let’s be easy.”

  “We start practice tomorrow night,” Frank says. “And if you’re not there, I’m putting your address on the Internet.”

  Mike lets out a sigh.

  Frank says, “I’m glad we’ve come to an understanding.”

  Later that afternoon I see Pop. Frank and I are walking below an overpass on our way to find some kid Frank sold a little weed to once. Rumor has it he might be a baller, too. Above us, cars rumble loudly, on their way to destinations unknown. We’re still on a high from seeing Mike, not paying attention, shouting, listening to our voices bounce off the concrete. It feels like everything is finally coming together. Then two guys step to us. They’re both my height, but older-looking. Their hoodies and jeans look too thick for the heat.

  “Yo,” one of them says.

  “’Sup,” Frank says.

  “I like that chain you got,” the other one of them says, nodding to Frank. His eyes seem to glow when he says chain.

  Frank has been jumped before, but other than a couple shove fests as a kid, I’ve got no fighting experience. My first instinct is to look for escape routes. Immediately I think of the way Omar was always talking about how karma is the one true universal rule, how what goes around comes around, and there is no escaping that. I start imagining worst-case scenarios, sneaker marks implanted deeply on the side of my face, a life of nothing but pureed carrots to eat. I look at Frank, hoping he’ll give his chain up, even though I know he won’t. I can see the veins in his neck popping, his fists curling, and that’s when Pop and his two friends walk up behind the kids, towering over them like sentries.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Pop says, a two-by-four in his hand. He doesn’t yell but speaks just above the roar of the traffic above us. “Did you know that in some cultures, petty theft is punishable by death? An irony, when one thinks about it, but one that I think makes sense given man’s impulse to dominate his fellow man.”

  Pop’s friends laugh gruffly behind him. Pop has no shirt on, and his belly hangs over his pants. His two friends, in their combat boots, stand with their shoulders thrown back, cracking their knuckles. They look different from the day we saw them at McDonald’s. A moment passes in which the two kids assess their chances against Pop and his friends, and then decide against it. They push past Frank and me and keep walking.

  “A bully,” Pop says, dusting his hands, “is just a coward with toned biceps.”

  “I didn’t need your help,” I say. “We coulda handled it.”

  “Didn’t look like it,” Pop says.

  “Nothing looks right when you’re drunk.”

  “Stone-cold sober, my boy.”

  I start to walk away.

  “Usually,” Pop says, “in these situations, one owes their hero a favor.”

  “Why would I do you a favor?” I ask.

  “Yup,” Pop says, ignoring me. “Just a quick game. I’ll come pick you up soon.”

  CHAPTER 9

  THE LAKE

  Frank and I spend days looking for a fifth player. We even make the mistake of going to Ray’s Barbers. He stops in the middle of a haircut to scold us.

  “What are you on?” he asks. Ray thinks all kids are on drugs.

  “We’re gonna win,” I say.

  “That must be the drugs
talking. What is it, PCP? Is that what y’all do now? Here’s what you do: You tell everybody your grandma in Texas got sick and you’re going to spend the summer there. Then you lay low for a month, maybe two.”

  Rumors swirl about the Ghosttown team. They took the Greyhound down to LA and beat a team from Leimert Park just for fun. One day they are all seven footers with size twenty-two shoes. The next day they are a squad of five LeBron James–size teens.

  On our mission to find more players, we end up at the lake.

  If there’s anyone with enough balls to play on our team, it’s the guys who play there. There’s almost no chance they say yes, so I don’t have my hopes up. These guys have bodies like Optimus Prime, crazily sculpted chest muscles and crazy big legs. Guys who look like they stay in the gym twenty-four/seven. Veins popping aggressively out of their biceps. We’re looking for anyone young enough to play with us. Frank and I watch the end of one game from the bleachers. The sun is setting in a glorious way, orange spreading out over the water like a spill. People are lined up around the court, shoulder to shoulder. The court is a thing of beauty: perfect lines, perfect white nets hanging off the rims. The kids with the freshest Js stand under the basket, clearing a little space between them and everyone else. I look down at my outfit—old Chucks and a Legion of Doom T-shirt—and feel like someone’s going to ask me to leave. The teams are tied at nineteen, two points away from game. A bald-headed dude brings the ball up the court. He’s been killing the entire game. He’s all brute strength and speed, a blur once he gets going into the lane. He drives into the lane, and his defender backs off him. But then the guy shoots a jumper, which is a big mistake, because he can’t shoot at all. He air-balls it right into the hands of a guy from the other team, who’s laughing. In fact, his whole team is laughing. It takes me a second to realize that they baited the guy into shooting the jumper, and he fell for it.

  “That guy sucks,” Frank says.