IA_B.O.S.S.

by John Darryl Winston

  “Yes, Coach,” said Ham, bouncing up and down on his toes.

  “And finally,” said Fears, “the glue that holds the Railsplitters together, the general on the floor, the spark that lights the flame that guides us to the harvest of success …”

  Soul let out an extremely loud phony yawn and everyone started laughing. Fears gave him a nasty look.

  “Now where was I?” asked Fears.

  “Harvest of success, Coach,” said Ham.

  “Harvest of success, our captain and silent soldier,” continued Fears.

  Naz’s head snapped around. That’s one of my nicknames.

  “Number seven, Young,” said Fears as the team applauded.

  As the players were getting dressed, Naz noticed most of the team was crowded around Ham. He was showing them something.

  “What’s up?” Naz asked Milton.

  “Ham’s got a tattoo,” Milton replied. “My mother would cut my arm off if I came home with something like that on it.”

  Harvis shook his head. Naz got up to see what the others were raving about. When he looked through the group of boys crowded around Ham, he could see on Ham’s forearm one more reason to distrust him. It was a tattoo of the symbols: the sword, the serpent and the eye that formed the letters, IA.

  “Wait,” said Fears, raising his arms. “I have one more. I’ve lost players before, but this one holds a special place with me.” Fears pulled the last jersey out of the box. “I’m dedicating this entire season to number double zero, Raleigh Duplessis. May he rest in peace.”

  Some of the boys gestured the cross on their chest as Fears stood up and put his fist in the middle of the War Room. Harvis joined Fears, covering Fears’ fist with his open hand, and the rest of the team followed.

  “Deliver us, Young,” said Fears.

  They all stood with their heads bowed as Harvis recited:

  First game, last year, as we bow our heads in reverent silence

  Erase past fears and vow instead to never perpetuate the violence

  A Young man stands alone said Capone

  A time for Individual Achievement

  But today it’s his team that defines him it seems

  In this ultimate Bulldog bereavement

  A vexed Mayan sprung from a carnal cage

  To display confusion and rage

  Naz looked at Ham through the huddle of boys as Harvis continued.

  The Matrix of the Exclave’s Mr. Andersen,

  Naz not Neo, Soul, not Animal the names

  We look to the sky and all around us for in a God we trust and pray

  To protect us, to bind us, to help us to find us the god in us all some day

  There is no courage without Fears, as the fears that we conquer unfurl

  Like it or not the good books have said there will be a Harvest for the world

  We gather what we plant, as we reap what we sow and the circle is complete again

  We pay respects to our fallen in the midst of us ballin’

  no tears, we all say amen.

  The team said amen in unison.

  “RAILSPLITTER ON THREE, RAILSPLITTERS ON THREE, ONE, TWO, THREE,” yelled Soul.

  The team yelled “RAILSPLITTERS!” and they were off.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  GAME

  The game was anticlimactic. Fears’ practices were so intense, the game was a walk in the park by comparison. At the onset, their opponents, the Trenton Bulldogs, were no match for the hungry Railsplitters. But the game was more than enough to thrill the bleachers full of Lincoln fans, which included Meri’s first surprise.

  At Meri’s bidding, all of the Market Merchants came and sat together to support and cheer for Naz. They had made their goods exchange there and were apparently giving him a paid day off. If that wasn’t enough, Miss Tracey and Dr. Gwen were also there. Naz had told Dr. Gwen about the game and she said she might come in lieu of therapy that day. But more amazing still, was D, sitting there next to Meri. How could Meri have pulled that off? Getting Mr. Tesla and the other merchants there was probably easy enough; she had all of their phone numbers stored in her phone, the same with Dr. Gwen, but not D. He had described her in detail to Meri, so much so that if Meri were an artist, she could have painted a perfect portrait of D. Meri was resourceful, as resourceful as any nine-year old could be, but still.

  He hadn’t seen or talked to D since the day Artie died. He shook the thought from his head. He was afraid to ask for her phone number then, afraid she would say no. It had to be the right time, when he knew she would not refuse him.

  In the first quarter of the game, Naz was so distracted he couldn’t stay out of his teammates’ way; his attention was on Meri and D, well, really D, as the two talked and laughed non-stop—what could they be taking about? That smile! Meri sat bouncing on her hands while D sat calmly with her legs crossed. Meri leaned over and said something in D’s ear. D turned to Meri, hand over her open mouth, her glasses sliding to the tip of her nose as she erupted in laughter. She turned back to the game and Naz, pushed her glasses back up, nodded, and he nodded back, missing a defensive assignment in the process and allowing one of the Trenton Bulldogs to score easily.

  Naz’s lack of focus literally came to a head when he saw Pauling sitting next to Miss Tracey in the midst of a conversation. Just then a masterful pass by Harvis found the side of Naz’s head and caromed out of bounds—what could Pauling be talking to her about? Naz was oblivious to the crowd’s laugher at his expense.

  In spite of a ten-point, first-quarter lead, Fears benched his starters. They were playing too passive. By halftime, Lincoln barely held on to a two-point lead.

  The team stood perfectly still around Fears in the War Room.

  “My guys … my guys,” said Fears calmly. “Are we having fun yet? I’m just asking be it’s 29-27. You know what? Let’s do this.” His voice began to get louder. “How about the starters play the third quarter and the reserves play the fourth, and we’ll let the chips fall where they may?

  The boys were clearly afraid to respond.

  “I mean, I, I don’t understand.” Fears continued to get louder. “Kaseltree … Bender … you got 5 rebounds between ya and—”

  “Those were all mine, Coach—” said Soul.

  “Shut up!” Fears bellowed.

  All the boys jumped.

  “You’re playing soft, son,” Fears looked at Soul. “like you’re afraid you’re going to hurt somebody.” He looked at Naz. “And you’re missin’ a good game, son. If you’re more interested in your little friends in the stands than the game, maybe you should join them,” Fears yelled.

  Naz looked at the floor.

  Fears settled down a bit. “Young … are you not feeling well, son?”

  Harvis stood expressionless.

  “Martinez is the only one that showed up tonight.”

  Ham smiled and began to sway back and forth.

  “You know what? I’m sorry. It’s not you guys; it’s me,” said Fears, calming down. “I apologize; I set the bar too high. I had you guys all wrong. It’s not about winning or losing, but how you play the game. So let’s just go back out there and have some more fun.” With that, he walked out.

  Everyone looked at Harvis, while Soul put his fist in the middle of the circle as Fears had done before the game.

  “Let’s play.” Harvis pushed past Soul’s fist and left.

  The other boys followed until there only was Soul and Naz.

  “I think Coach is upset,” said Soul.

  “You think?”

  In the second half the Railsplitters came to life. Soul was fierce, but in control, Milton played over his head, Harvis was back to his surgical precision and Ham was, well, Ham was Ham. But it was Naz who put on a show as if he were a magician. In his first game ever, he led the team in steals, and finished second in scoring only to Ham, as the Railsplitters beat the Trenton Bulldogs by more than thirty points.

  During the drive home Miss Tracey was acti
ng overly nice, congratulating Naz on how good he was and going on about how surprised she was that he could play that well. They even stopped at a restaurant where Miss Tracey insisted Naz and Meri order whatever they wanted. Naz and Meri didn’t talk much. They didn’t trust Miss Tracey and didn’t know what to think. They were just in a hurry to get home, Meri to show Naz her other surprise and Naz to see it.

  At home, Meri flew up the stairs and into her bedroom with Naz in tow. Her computer was already on and in less than a minute she had found the page she was looking for.

  “There,” she said, eyes wide open as if she had just solved a murder mystery of her own. It was a Wikipedia page.

  “What?” asked Naz, not sure what she was trying to show him.

  “Read!”

  Naz was still reeling from his debut on the hardwood, the excitement of having everyone there that meant any and everything to him. He was soaring from seeing D again, sitting next to Meri. It was all Naz could do the second half of the game to not think about what D and Meri were talking about, and he knew she would probably never tell him. But now, she had surely outdone herself.

  He was staring at a familiar yet unrecognizable face with a caption that read:

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  SURPRISE

  Dr. Cornelius Andersen

  “I just figured, with all that you can do, your dad had to be somebody special,” said Meri as she looked at Naz. “Well?”

  He was speechless.

  “You said he was a teacher. Turns out he was a lot more than that, I mean look at all this.” Meri beamed as she moved her curser along the page. “He was a doctor, and a professor at Harvard. Look at all these awards. It says here he worked with Einstein … well one of Einstein’s theories. We talked about him at school. Look! He even won the Nobel Prize. Naz?”

  Naz wasn’t listening; he was fixated on the page—this is my dad. This is what he looked like, his hair … his eyes. This is what I look like. Again, he was at a loss for what to feel, what to say. He felt anger because he had no father, sadness because his father had died, and he was somewhat overcome with a feeling of joy as he saw what his father looked like for what felt like the first time.

  Meri continued. “It goes on to say he was also a world class illusionist that lost favor with the scientific community when he began to delve into the paranormal, eventually shrinking into obscurity the last ten years of his life before he … Naz?”

  Naz hadn’t paid attention to a word Meri had spoken or read.

  “Print this.” He pointed at the page on the screen.

  With a few clicks of her mouse Meri’s printer engaged, a single page scrolled out, and Naz had a picture of his father complete with mini biography. Not saying a word, he turned to leave her room.

  “Wait!” She reached in her pocket. “Here.” She pulled out a piece of folded paper and handed it to him.

  He unfolded it to find a phone number with the initial D under it. He looked at her with a sheepish grin on his face as his heart fluttered. Yes, she had indeed truly outdone herself. He wanted to pick Meri up and give her a big hug, but he and Meri never did things like that, sappy stuff he liked to call it. Their mother used to hug Meri and tell Naz and Meri she loved them all the time, and Meri would respond in kind, but Naz was always silent. Now that their mother was gone, Naz and Meri never spoke to each other in those terms.

  “You owe me,” she said smugly as she turned and continued reading the page on her computer.

  Naz nodded, knowing she was right. He walked into his bedroom with a picture and bio of his father in one hand and D’s phone number in the other—Christmas never felt like this—and jumped right on his bed without taking off his clothes or even pulling back his sheets. He pulled his phone out of his pocket, set it next to him on the bed, and stared at the picture intently. After a while he began to read the bio, but the picture kept drawing him back to it.

  Then he looked at the piece of paper with D’s number on it and imagined her writing it there. Did Meri asked her for it, or did D just give it to her? I’ll grill Meri later about it. But what was he going to do with the number? I can’t just up and call her. He looked at his phone. I wouldn’t know what to say. He rehearsed things he would say if he got up enough courage to call. Everything seemed corny, lame, or contrived—it has to be natural or she’ll know it’s rehearsed. She seems smart like that. I know, I’ll send her a text, something simple … real simple. That way nobody’s pressured. But what to send? The first thing he typed he thought was too mushy and deleted it. The next time it was too smart—I don’t want her thinking I’m an egghead. She does wear glasses. She might like eggheads. He went back and forth for an hour before he decided on something. He sent:

  Goodnite

  He cringed and waited in anticipation. A few minutes later she sent back:

  Good game ;)

  When he looked at his phone and saw her text, he couldn’t describe the feeling that had come over him. For a moment he forgot how to breathe; then he took a deep breath. He looked at the text over and over again, imagining what she looked like texting and how she must’ve felt sending it. Assuming Meri didn’t give her his number, he wondered how she even knew it was him texting her. Naz was feeling things and ways he had never felt before deep in the pit of his stomach, a feeling so strong he wasn’t sure he could control it. He paced back and forth then fired darts into his dartboard for a while.

  He thought back to what Dr. Gwen had said about strong emotions triggering the voice. She had also once hypothesized it was a voice from the past, possibly his father’s. And with that his thoughts went back and forth between the picture and the text, anticipating, even welcoming the voice, but all was quiet. Maybe he had conquered it. Maybe it was gone for good. He read in the biography about his father delving into the paranormal and wondered—could the voice be connected in some way? It gave him an eerie feeling, but he would’ve given anything to hear his father’s voice right then, even if it was from the grave. Before he would fall asleep that night he would go back and forth between the picture and the text, again and again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  PRE-STORM

  Naz spent the rest of the weekend thinking about the picture of his father and D’s text message. He asked Meri to print another copy of the page so he could keep one on his nightstand and the other folded in his pocket. On his Saturday errands for the Market Merchants, his mind was everywhere but on his errands as he accidentally went on his old route consequently delivering the wrong goods to Piccolo’s. Twice he was startled by the sound of a car horn letting him know he was crossing the street unaware of the traffic as he studied the picture of his father or D’s text.

  Saturday evening and all day Sunday he obsessed over what to do—should I text her again? Should I call her? No. Then she’ll think I’m too anxious, plus I haven’t figured out what to say anyway if I do call her. Meri wouldn’t give him any help. She wouldn’t tell him anything she and D had talked about, not even how she got D’s number in the first place. Naz tried convincing Meri she was on his side, but that didn’t seem to motivate Meri to divulge any information. She agreed about them being on the same team, but told him just like on the court she had already passed him the ball, he just needed to stop being a coward, take the shot, and call her. Naz knew she was right, but that didn’t make it any easier.

  All weekend long Meri kept her head in her library book, and even though Naz hated reading with a passion, he couldn’t wait for her to put it down so he could take a peak, but she never did. Naz was a glaring skeptic when it came to anything out of the ordinary, anything on which he couldn’t see definitive proof. He just didn’t believe in the bogeyman or little green men from Mars, and when his mother was alive, he often found himself kicked out of Sunday school for being the proverbial “Doubting Thomas”. But he couldn’t deny there was something mere logic couldn’t explain about the voice and the sleepwalking, and he wondered if some part of his father, any part
at all, could shine some light on events past and present.

  In Fears’ class the next day Naz had all but lost patience. He had to do something. He never saw D in school unless it was at the girl’s bathroom. That’s it, she’ll be at the drinking fountain near the girls’ bathroom about the same time I met her the first time. Why wouldn’t she be there, the Monday after our first game last Friday? He was being silly, a hopeless romantic, and he knew it. He was reaching, but he had grown desperate. Although Naz was a skeptic about lady luck and father fortune, he would adopt them now, for the first time, where matters of the heart were concerned. He just wasn’t courageous enough to stare the possibility of outright rejection in the face. He would take his chances at the fortuitous water fountain again. She would be there; he just knew it, or at least he hoped, and if she were, it would most assuredly mean they were meant to be together. But he had to get past Fears first.

  Fears wasn’t in a good mood and hadn’t been since Artie’s alleged suicide. The only time he seemed himself was on game day. He only gave out busy work in health class—worksheet after worksheet while he sulks at his desk, doodling. Health used to be fun: now it was boring. It didn’t make sense. Fears said he had lost players before—being a teacher in the Exclave he must’ve lost a student or two as well. He hadn’t seem particularly close to Artie. He had even made jokes from time to time at Artie’s expense. Naz thought Fears was feeling guilty, maybe even a little responsible because of the jokes he had made about Artie’s weight—but Coach thought he was helping Artie develop character … a thicker skin. Was Fears thinking his strategy had backfired, that maybe he should have covered the topic of suicide in class sooner? He was the health teacher, and it would have been his responsibility to see the signs if they were there and prevent Artie from killing himself—but Artie didn’t kill himself, and I’m gonna prove it … somehow. Naz had to get out of there.