by Kobe Bryant
Reggie couldn’t decide, so he did a bit of each.
He dribbled in a few feet, stopped for a jump shot, and then saw a hand rising up to block him. Stymied, he tried to dump the ball to Twig on the low post. But it was too late. The pass was deflected, stolen, and on its way back up the court before he even had a chance to react. Naturally, Raj got the lead pass and laid it in, giving the Eagles the two-point lead. Reggie felt his guts roiling. He was throwing the game away. He could almost hear his teammates’ thoughts:
Typical bench player.
Give the ball up, stupid!
We need Rain!
And another voice, his voice, said: They’re right. Get back to the bench.
Reggie sprinted up the court, deciding that he would stick to the outside this time and avoid the ball if at all possible. Just a filler. But as Reggie crossed center court, his eyes widened.
“No,” he whispered. “Not now.”
A slow-creeping fog was leaking out from under the packed bleachers, right beneath the feet of the oblivious fans. Tendrils snaked their way across the hardwood like grasping fingers, and the fog began to rise up past his knees. He looked to Twig, almost in desperation, but his closest friend was focused on the game. The fog had come for Reggie alone, and the cool dampness settled on his skin, sending goose bumps and tingles racing up the small of his back.
Please not now, he thought desperately.
More and more fog poured in. Soon, white-gray plumes stretched toward the ceiling, obscuring the entire court, and it became hard to distinguish shapes or colors. Reggie squinted, trying to make out Peño. The sound of a ball dribbling seemed to come from all directions, muted and distant. Reggie wanted to scream in frustration.
“Four!” he heard Peño shout through the gloom.
Four, Reggie thought. Get to the point!
He was supposed to use a screen from Peño, but Reggie missed him in the fog. He stumbled blindly to the top of the circle, searching for Lab, or Twig, or anything. Condensation beaded along Reggie’s arms, joined by salty, nervous sweat. He looked around wildly.
“Hello?” he said.
“Get to the far wing!” someone called.
Reggie spun around, squinting. Did Twig say that? Or Peño?
“Someone support him!”
An Eagles player came cutting out of the mist with the ball and dribbled past Reggie. Instinctively, Reggie chased him, always a step behind, until the player laid it in. The Eagles were now up by six. The mist grew even thicker, like a fading dream. Or a nightmare.
Reggie tried to play through it, but after a few minutes, he decided to avoid the action at all costs. That was easy enough on offense, but less so on D. On that end, his searching hands found only mist, and Raj was past him, laying it up again and again. Numbly, he heard his teammates giving up.
When the final buzzer went off, seemingly hours later, the fog vanished instantly. Reggie doubled over, his hands on his knees, bile rising in his throat. He gagged, trying not to vomit.
“Why is this happening to me?” he whispered.
The Eagles were celebrating nearby: they had won by a comfortable twelve points. His teammates headed for the locker room, scowling, angry, defeated. He almost wished the fog would return to obscure their faces. Rolabi looked at Reggie, who turned away. He’d been unplayable. A complete disaster.
And that, he supposed, was to be expected. But it didn’t lessen his humiliation.
When Reggie joined the team in the locker room, he sat alone, ignoring both the annoyed looks from some players and the half-hearted encouragements from Twig. The lights seemed to dim like windswept candles. The drop ceiling sagged on its aluminum crossbeams. Reggie wondered if grana could be broken. Distorted. If it could, he should have known he would be the one to do it.
Clearly, it couldn’t be controlled. Clearly, Reggie didn’t belong on that court.
Rolabi ducked into the locker room, shut the door behind him, and stood silently in the middle of the room. His presence sent a hush over the team. Then he turned directly to Reggie.
“We are only as strong as our weakest link,” he said. “That is the lesson today.”
This time, Reggie held his gaze. It hurt, but right now, Reggie didn’t want any false sympathy. He didn’t want a pat on the back. He wanted to feel the sting of the truth.
And Rolabi wasn’t done.
“Some people let fear of failure guide them. And in doing so, they fail everyone.”
“I don’t understand,” Peño said.
“The ones who must understand do,” Rolabi replied.
With that, he turned and stormed out of the locker room, letting the door slam behind him. Nobody spoke. Nobody looked at Reggie. Rolabi was right: Reggie understood perfectly.
He’d gotten his chance, and he’d blown it.
He doubted he would ever get another one.
6
SMACK TALK
All people are magnets. They simply must choose to push or pull.
WIZENARD PROVERB
THE NEXT DAY, Reggie stayed in bed late—even for a Saturday. Gran was long gone to work when he finally dragged himself into the kitchen, ate half a bowl of porridge, and cast himself down onto the couch with a thud.
P glanced up from her book. “You look awful.”
“Thanks.”
“Want to play the word game?”
He sighed. “Not right now.”
She went back to her book. “You get to dust today.”
“Super,” he murmured, staring up at the white ceiling stained with yellow rings of smoke—most of it from his cooking. He wasn’t sure if he was worse at ball or in the kitchen.
“Are you brooding again?”
“Yes.”
“Gran says you have coping issues.”
Reggie groaned. “What?”
“I asked her why you were so grumpy lately. I thought maybe it was just because of basketball. You know . . . all the losing.”
“Yes, I got that, thank you. It’s not basketball. Well, maybe. I don’t know.”
“Maybe you should stop playing.”
Reggie sighed. “I can’t.”
“Why?”
“Because I love the stupid sport. It just doesn’t love me back.”
P thought about that for a moment. “That’s how I feel about asparagus sometimes.”
“What?”
“Well, it’s delicious, but then you eat it, and your pee smells—”
Reggie stared at her. “It’s definitely not the same.”
She nodded thoughtfully and started reading again. “Maybe like Gran and yams—”
“It’s not like a food,” Reggie cut in, sitting up. “It’s the one thing in the world I really want to do. No . . . need to do. It’s the one place I feel happy. And all it ever does is kick me in the butt. It’s like deep down I know what I am supposed to be. I know it. And yet every single day I wake up and realize I’m not. I have to look at myself in the mirror and say, ‘You’re not what you’re supposed to be.’ I’ll be doing that for the rest of my life. And yeah, maybe I can’t cope with that.”
Reggie realized he had his hands clenched into fists. He looked at them and lay down again. What was wrong with him? It was like a fire was going unchecked in his guts, flaring up.
P shrugged. “So get better.”
“And how do I do that, genius?”
“I doubt that lying there feeling sorry for yourself is helping.”
Reggie growled and rolled over. “Just read your book.”
“Gran says you have a hard time letting go,” she said. “Of Mom and Dad.”
“What does that have to do with ball?” he replied, facedown on the couch.
“Nothing, I guess. But it probably has something to do with you lying there.”
“This is great,” he said. “I’m getting counseling from my little sister.”
“Well, you can’t afford a real therapist.”
He laughed. “True enough. Now let me lie here and feel sorry for myself.”
“Can’t you dust while you do that?” she asked innocently.
Reggie thought about that, and then dragged himself up to find a cloth.
“You’re becoming more like Gran by the minute,” he muttered.
* * *
The next week crawled by. Reggie attended practices, of course, and he was the first to arrive and the last to leave. But he just went through the motions. He took his shots and ran his laps and played his role on defense. He didn’t bother with the five hundred makes. He shot from the corner and the mid-range two and missed more than he made.
At school, Reggie was even more distant than usual. He showed up and did his work, and answered questions when he was asked. He smiled when someone told a joke. He exchanged props with his teammates in the hallways. A few times a day, he jolted out of a daze, feeling like a stand-in for himself.
At home, he read the new book that Twig had found. But no matter how many times he scrolled over the text, he couldn’t learn anything that seemed important or find any clues about why his mother had given him that box. He held the box at times, but only to think about what he had lost. He took shots with his rolled-up socks, but he knew that his fantasies would never come true. One night, Reggie wondered if that fire in his belly, the need for ball, would burn out soon.
He wondered if that would be for the best.
When Friday came again, he went to school, walked home, and set off for the game early as always. It was the Dartmouth Devils tonight—a middle-of-the-road team from about an hour outside the Bottom’s perimeter—and Reggie figured the Badgers had a decent chance to win. But this time, he wasn’t fool enough to think the chance was his. He just needed to show up, play whatever small part he could, and hope not to embarrass himself too badly. That, it seemed, was the role basketball had given him. He knew now that he couldn’t control his grana—he just had to hope it would leave him alone. Reggie suspected he wouldn’t be playing today anyway, so it didn’t really matter. He tried to console himself with that. It was safer there.
So, when the warm-up was over, he found his spot on the bench, and waited.
* * *
Surprisingly, he got a two-minute run in the first quarter, and another three minutes in the second. He managed a defensive rebound and an assist, but he refused to shoot. He fully expected the rim to disappear at any moment, or shrink, or for grana to simply skip all that and drop him in a hole. He kept his head down and tried to keep his temper in check. He felt disengaged from the game, but it was still better than the alternative. He was desperate not to trigger anything. He just wanted to get through the game without any more embarrassments.
They were down three at the half. The Devils were organized and big, but they had no natural scorers like Rain, and they struggled to create. The problem was they were winning every battle in the paint. Pushing guys off rebounds, posting up, hand-checking in the lane. They were physical and persistent and rough. They also liked to talk. A lot.
“How you guys even Elite Ball with one half-decent player?”
“These kids are weak. Somebody get this boy a sandwich.”
“No good ball team is ever gonna come out of a place called the Bottom.”
But the Badgers were used to it. Reggie was used to it. He kept his mouth shut.
Rolabi led the team into the locker room at halftime.
“We are playing well,” he said, “but drills and plays mean nothing without constant execution. I can accept missed shots. That is part of the game. But I do not accept surrendered rebounds, lazy shifts on defense, or reluctance to dive for a ball. Those small gains add up to victory.”
His eyes went to Reggie, who immediately turned away.
“That means everyone. If even one brick is loose, the entire wall will tumble.”
He swept out to the gym again, and the team followed, most bouncing on the balls of their feet and clapping one another on the shoulders. Twig fell in beside Reggie, taking a last swig of water.
“Going to be a close one,” Twig said. “We’re going to need you out there.”
Reggie snorted. “I doubt it. Go get us a win. We don’t want to go O and three.”
“Why don’t we both get us a win?” Twig replied, frowning. “Take those shots, man!”
“I just need to work on my defense and—”
Twig stepped in front of him, blocking the door. “You passed up on, like, six open looks.”
“I just wanted to keep the ball moving—”
Twig folded his arms. “Play the game. Come on. You worked to be here.”
“Yeah,” Reggie said, stepping around him. “And I’m here. Let me do my part.”
He ignored Twig’s protests and walked back into the crowded gym, hearing the cheers and applause as the teams took the floor again. Twig sprinted past him, giving him a last glare.
Reggie planted himself on the bench, annoyed. What did Twig know about Reggie’s struggles out there? Twig was a budding star. Rain was first and foremost on the Badgers, of course, but Twig had really come out firing this year. He was a ball player. He had a chance.
Reggie’s eyes flicked to Gran and P in the stands. P glanced at him, and he averted his eyes, strangely ashamed. Why? He had sat on this bench a thousand times. He had long ago accepted who he was. Reggie was destined to sit here, and clap, and watch the game pass him by.
But that thought didn’t ring true. It didn’t explain why he had to be here. It didn’t explain why he shot a thousand rolled-up socks into his wastebasket every night. It didn’t explain his constant dreams of basketball glory. Anger stirred as the game began. He knew the truth of it.
He hadn’t given up on the game. The game had given up on him.
The third quarter raged in front of him. The Devils had obviously expected an easy win, and they were getting frustrated. The Badgers had come out strong to start the half, and Rain was lighting it up from the three-point line. Reggie watched his silky smooth release. He tried not to be jealous, but it was hard. He truly liked Rain. Since training camp, Rain had become a leader to go along with his skills. But in the end, Rain had the gift, and Reggie didn’t.
“Just play your role,” Reggie whispered.
He was suddenly reminded of his first year on the Badgers. It was two years before Rolabi arrived, and Reggie had been selected to the team over thirty other hopefuls after a long, grueling tryout. It had been a very proud day. Freddy Baines, the coach at the time, had said the new team was going to grow together for years and become real prospects. He said they all had a bright future. Reggie had gone home that night thinking, It’s finally happening. Gran had even baked him a cake to celebrate. She told him how proud his mom would be.
And then Reggie choked the first game. And the next. And then he was sent to the bench.
“It’s all good, bro,” Freddy said, “some guys are practice players. Maybe not always, but for now. You always play well in practice. You push Rain to keep working. That’s a big job. Everyone has to play their part, Reg.”
And so Reggie went to the bench and started showing up early for practices. Not to get ready for games, but to allow himself a few minutes to shine. Alone in the gym—that was the only time he deserved to take shots. Three years later, he was still on the bench, holding on to his spot on the team simply because he was helping Rain.
Reggie felt pressure build behind his eyes and blinked it away, horrified. Crying in front of a packed gym was just what he needed. Why was he even upset? He was in Fairwood Community Center on game day. This was what he wanted. He just wanted to be near the game.
I wanted more, a soft voice said in his head.
> The third quarter ended, and Reggie stood at the edge of the huddle, hearing nothing.
But five minutes into the fourth, Rolabi called his name. Reggie looked up, shocked, and then hurried to the scorekeeper’s table to wait for a whistle. He tried to fire himself up. He’d been spacing out for an hour, and all the energy had gone out of him. Reggie hopped on his toes.
“Lab!” he called, waving him off, and then hurried onto the court in his place.
Rolabi still believes in you, he thought. You have to play well. You have to.
The game started again. Both teams were playing man defense, so he found himself trailing or being trailed by a husky, snub-nosed small forward who seemed to go by “Pipes.” That may have been a reference to his abnormally large biceps, which even stacked up against the muscular Cash. Reggie felt like a toothpick next to him, and Pipes clearly saw him as one.
“Post me up,” Pipes said on defense, grinning. “Come on. I’ll snap you like a wishbone.”
Reggie ran around the perimeter, ignoring him. When he got the ball, he swung it back again, or hit Twig on the low post. Two or three times he got open in the corner with the ball, but there was no chance he was taking that shot. He’d seen more than enough air balls in practice. On defense, Reggie fought with Pipes as the stocky forward cut into the paint, swinging his elbows.
“Watch those teeth,” Pipes said. “Can’t afford no dentist here.”
Pipes got the ball in the post and backed up. He stepped onto Reggie’s shoe and stuck his butt out at the same time, sending Reggie toppling backward onto his tailbone. Reggie could only watch as Pipes laid it in, smirking.
“Stay down,” Pipes said. “Right where you belong.”
For a second, he had seen another face looming over him. Right where you belong. It had never actually happened, of course, but he had dreamed that scene a million times. President Talin looming over him, smiling cruelly, kicking him back down whenever he tried to stand.
“Let’s go, Reggie,” Twig said, hoisting him up. “Get him back!”