7
WORLD RECORD FOR THE BEST FRIDAY EVER AFTER THE WORST WEDNESDAY AND THURSDAY
FRIDAY MEANS TWO things. The first is that it’s the last day before I can take two days off school. I like to think of it as a non-altercation suspension. Plus the weekend was when me and Ma actually did stuff—and not just watch movies and avoid homework—because she didn’t work on weekends and took early morning online nursing classes to get them out of the way. And when she was done, we would clean the house (I was in charge of the living room), Ma would give me her version of a haircut (she always got most of it even), then give herself one, and then we would go over my aunt Sophie’s house. Aunt Sophie is my mom’s younger sister, and she’s like the coolest lady ever. She has a tattoo on her arm that says SWEETIE PIE that I never asked about, but always stared at just because I can’t wait to get one. But mine ain’t gonna say nothing like that. Mine’s is gonna say WORLD’S GREATEST or, of course, GHOST.
Anyway, on the weekends, Aunt Sophie and my mom sit around and play cards and crack jokes and eat corn chips with cheese dip and drink beer, and sometimes they let me and King, Aunt Sophie’s son, sit with them and play. Yes, we can play. Me and King learned how to play spades and tonk when we were real young. It’s a thing in our family. A serious thing. And yes, his real name is King. I think the sisters just wanted to give us royal names. So, yeah. All I had to do was get through Friday without any problems, and I was good to go for the weekend.
The other thing about Friday, which I didn’t know until Thursday, is that Coach gives everybody the day off. No practice. And then, of course, since this was the first Friday of the season, Coach was taking the newbies out for dinner.
After two half days of school (which technically equals one full day), I’m happy to say that school went pretty smooth on Friday. Brandon Simmons was back, and even though I had on my regular dusty-butt shoes—the fancy ones were for track only—Brandon didn’t have too much to say to me. I saw him just before first period, and he walked right past me and Dre. I saw some of the other kids snickering at him as he passed. But I told them all to chill. I don’t know why because he totally deserved to be roasted, but I guess I felt kinda bad for the dude. I been there.
“I can’t believe you’re giving this clown a pass,” Dre said. It was almost like he had a year’s worth of laughs stored up, waiting to unload them on Brandon. Everybody did. But I just couldn’t let it happen. Funny thing was when I saw Shamika in Mr. Hollow’s class, she apologized to me about everything that went on in class the day before. And that, my friends, is what they call karma. Plus, like I said, she was a cool girl anyway.
At lunch, she even sat with me, Red, and Dre, and told us every story about times she cut things, just because she was feeling a little guilty.
“There was one time I cut my hair. Man, that was crazy. Just straight-up started hacking it off like a maniac, just because it was hot and my hair was on my neck,” she said first, just before taking a bite of her burger. Then, in the midst of chewing, she continued, “And another time, I cut a pair of jeans into shorts while I still had them on! That was not smart! Still got the scars on my legs!” And then she erupted into laughter just like she did in class. But this time she was the butt of her own joke. And even though me, Dre, and Red didn’t really find it that funny, we couldn’t help but laugh too because, well, that’s what her laugh makes you do.
Before I knew it, school was over and I went on my usual walk home. I mean, Coach wasn’t coming until later, so I figured there was no rush. So I went to Mr. Charles’s store.
“Let me guess, sunflower seeds?” Mr. Charles said. He turned the little TV down as usual.
“Let me guess, a dollar?” I said, slapping my money on the counter. I grabbed the bag.
“You okay, son?” Mr. Charles asked.
“Yeah, why?”
“Oh, you know . . . all that stuff that happened yesterday with you being teased, and then you came here and got . . .” He stopped short.
I was starting to feel a little annoyed that he even brought it up, because I was definitely trying to forget about it all. Especially that last part. The stockroom part. Talk about weird. Not that I hadn’t thought about it. I mean, how could I not? But every time my father’s face, or the sound of his angry voice, or the sound of the gun cocking popped into my mind, I would just shake it out of my head by thinking about my bullets. The silver bullets. But you just can’t be mad at an old James Brown–faced man like Mr. Charles. You just can’t.
“Yeah, man,” I assured him. “I’m cool. I’m actually in a good mood.”
“Oh yeah?” he asked.
I used my teeth to rip open the corner of the bag. “Yep. Got a dinner thing I’m going to tonight. For my track team,” I said, all proud.
“Track team?” Mr. Charles asked, now turning the TV down even more. “You’re on a track team, Castle?”
“Yes, sir,” I started to say, but it’s hard to try to talk and get a seed out the shell at the same time. So I waited until I got it done, then continued, “Remember, I told you yesterday?”
“You did?” Mr. Charles looked puzzled. “The old brain’s getting wonky these days. Sorry, son.”
“It’s cool.” I tapped the bag in my palm to get a few more seeds out. “So yeah, I’m on a team called the Defenders. One of the best teams in the city.”
“I didn’t know you were an athlete.” Mr. Charles seemed impressed.
“Well, I am. A pretty good one too,” I bragged, tossing the seeds in my mouth, then casually slapping my hand against my thigh to brush the salt off. A shock of soreness shot down to my knee, a painful reminder that I was definitely an athlete. Argh!
Mr. Charles twisted the top off a cranberry juice and took a sip. “I believe you. I told you, kid. You’re one of the world’s greatest.”
“Got that right,” I said, now spitting shells in my hand. “One of the world’s greatest.”
After I left the store, I headed to stop two—the bus stop. I took a seat next to an older woman. She was doing a crossword puzzle and humming a song I didn’t recognize. She might’ve been making it up. It didn’t sound bad, though. Across the street at the gym were all the people working out—the Walking Dead. Ha! That’s what they look like! Anyway, I hung out there for a little while before moving on. When I got to Martin Luther King Park, I looked down at the track and there wasn’t nobody there except for a man jogging with his dog. But nobody else. No real runners. After that, there was really no place else to go but home, and I wasn’t ready to go there yet. So I went to the basketball court.
At the court, as usual, all the older guys were there running fives for cash. I knew some of them just because they were always there playing. Like Pop, who was probably in his twenties or something like that. I don’t even think he was anybody’s dad, but everybody called him Pop anyway. He was a short dude, with crazy handles, and a mean jumper. He was one of those guys who could do all the tricks and stuff. Shake you right out your socks like it was nothing. And Sicko was there too, but luckily for me, he didn’t have his crazy dog with him. Sicko wasn’t really that good at basketball, but he was super rough. He probably should’ve been a football player. Or a wrestler. Big James was there too. He was like the best player ever to me. He looked like he really played pro ball. Six feet something, all muscle. People always said Big James played college ball but never went pro. I never knew what he did for a living. All I knew was that he was always at the court, dominating the game, taking everybody’s money. So I guess basketball was what he did for a living after all.
Besides the hoopers, there were a whole bunch of other people at the court, just hanging out. Girls. Some were the girlfriends of the guys playing, and others wanted to be the girlfriends of the guys playing. And junkies. They’d just be zombied out, roaming around the outside of the court. They knew better than to mess up the game. They’d just walk along the out-of-bounds line like it was a tightrope, waiting for Goose. Goose was t
he dope man, who also happened to be a pretty good ballplayer. Super flashy, but an all-around nice guy. Well, except for selling drugs. The court was where he served, in more ways than one.
I chilled there for a while, watching Sicko push everybody around until what always happens happened. A fight. As usual. Stupid Sicko pushed the wrong guy. A guy I didn’t know. And that guy pushed Sicko back. And then Pop got into it. And then Big James. Then Big James’s girl. And then some other girl. And then a junkie started howling like a wolf. And then I was out.
By the time I made it home, I only had a little bit of time to kill before Coach picked me up. Just enough time to wash up, or as my mom says, splash some water on my hot spots, throw on some clean clothes, and give myself two spritzes of perfume. It was Ma’s, and it smelled like flowers, but hey, so what.
When Coach showed up, he hit the horn a few times. And when I didn’t come right out, he hit it a few more times.
“I’m coming, I’m coming,” I said, locking the door. Coach had his window down and was talking to Mr. Jefferson, the neighborhood sweeper. At least that’s what we called him. He basically swept up the street every single day, but it didn’t seem to ever really get clean. There was always glass, or paper, or, I don’t know . . . a dirty couch.
“Wassup, y’all,” I said to Patty, who sat up front, and Lu who was in the back with me. I wondered where Coach put all the junk that was usually in his cab. Probably in the trunk, which was a place I never, ever, ever wanted to see.
“Wassup, man,” Lu said.
“I been around here before,” Patty said, skipping the hello. “I can’t remember when. But I know I been around here.”
“Me too,” Lu said. “Not really these parts, but my pops plays ball sometimes at the court down the street.”
“Oh yeah? I play at that court,” I lied. Man. I was getting smooth with the lies. “Just came from over there.”
Coach shook Mr. Jefferson’s hand, then turned around to me. “Took you long enough,” he tossed over his shoulder. Then he sniffed, and sniffed, and sniffed. “That’s you smelling like flowers?” Coach asked Patty.
“Nope, that’s pretty boy back there,” she said.
“Who, Lu?” Coach adjusted his mirror.
“No, the other one,” Patty said, talking about me. I couldn’t even believe she called me pretty boy. I squeezed my cheeks to crush my smile. And before Coach or Lu could say something slick, Patty added, “I like it. Smells good.”
One more stop before the Chinese food. We left Glass Manor and went to the other side of town. Like, the other, other side. Where the houses have yards in the front and the back. Where there are two or three floors and each kid has their own room. Even if there are like five kids, each one gets their own four walls. And everybody has a car. Or two. And there are driveways to park those cars in. And there are also basketball courts in those driveways, the kind you can move around and adjust to make it low enough to dunk on. No wig shops, no fish markets, no Mr. Charles, which had to suck. And as we pulled up in front of Sunny’s house, a big brick castle with an old rusty car in the driveway, I wondered why Sunny didn’t act like the other people I’d met who lived in this neighborhood. He was . . . cool. A little weird, but cool.
Coach hit the horn. Sunny came right out, tall and awkward. He waved to us, that funny wave he always did.
“Yo, Patty, you should get back here so Sunny can actually get his legs in the car,” Lu suggested. I agreed. It didn’t make sense for Sunny to be cramped up in the back with us. Plus, Sunny had already opened the back door on my side, and I just wasn’t into sitting in the middle.
“Yeah, Patty,” I said. “That makes the most sense.”
“I don’t care what y’all do, just do it quick so we can go,” Coach barked.
Patty turned around and looked us up and down. “Ain’t nobody sitting back there with y’all goons. I might get goon juice on me, and don’t nobody want goon juice on them. What if I can’t get it off me? Then what?”
“Patty!” Lu yelped. Patty turned back around, ignoring him.
“Patty, come on,” I begged.
“Seriously?” Lu whined.
At this point, Sunny had already started stepping in, forcing me to scoot over to the middle. The middle sucks. It’s where babies sit, and I ain’t no baby. Sunny crunched and scrunched his body until he got it all in there. It reminded me of this dude Yogi Laser I read about who holds the record for having the fastest time to cram into a box. Crazy. Sunny’s knees were smashed against Patty’s seat, and he had no place to put his arm, so he had to put it around me. It was all just ridiculous. Once Sunny closed the door, which took three tries, Patty and Coach turned around to look at us.
“Awww, look at y’all. Bonding like brothers,” Coach jabbed.
“Or like clowns!” Patty followed with a hook.
“Just drive, please,” I groaned, seeing Sunny smiling away, like nothing was wrong, out of the corner of my eye.
8
WORLD RECORD FOR HAVING THE BEST SECRET
THANKFULLY, IT DIDN’T take too long to get to the Chinese restaurant. After we finished staring at the big orange-and-white fish swimming around in a giant tank in the waiting area, we found out Coach had our seats prearranged. He and Sunny sat on one side of the booth, and me, Lu and Patty sat on the other side. The weird red vinyl seats oinked as we all shuffled in.
“Okay, so you guys, pick anything you want on the menu,” Coach unbuttoned the top button of his shirt. “Anything at all. We’re here to celebrate the newbies.”
I didn’t know how anybody else felt about picking anything on the menu, but I almost flipped out, I was so excited. I mean, I had been eating hospital food almost every day during the week for, I don’t even know how long. I guess, since my dad had been gone. So this was going to be heaven.
We all checked out our menus. Way more than what I usually see when me, Mom, King, and Aunt Sophie order in on the weekends. Me and Mom always get shrimp fried rice, Aunt Sophie gets crab sticks, which I always thought was a weird choice, and King nine times out of ten orders a cheeseburger with two egg rolls. And when the food comes, me and King always throw the fortune cookies at each other and try to whack them to pieces with the chopsticks.
“Is everyone ready to order?” A waitress had come over, pad in hand, to scribble whatever we said.
“I am,” Coach said.
“Me too,” Patty said, closing her menu.
I was ready too. Lu looked like he was still thinking about it, but we figured he’d be ready by the time the waitress got to him.
“I’ll have the shrimp lo mein,” Coach said. “With a Sprite.”
“Sesame chicken,” from Patty. “And to drink, do you have Cherry Coke?”
“Cherry Coke?” Lu bawked. “Who drinks Cherry Coke?”
“I do,” Patty said, holding her hand in front of his face to shut him up.
“Ummm.” The waitress thought about it. “I can put some cherry juice in a regular Coke. How about that?”
“Perfect,” Patty said, smiling.
Lu moved her hand away. “And for you?” The waitress was talking to him now.
“Oh, I’m not ready,” he said, picking up his menu again. “Go ’head, Ghost.”
“I’m gonna have the Peking duck, please. And a lemonade.”
“Peekin’ duck?” Lu, again.
“Not peeking,” Sunny said. “Pe-king. I’ll have that too, please.”
“And to drink?”
“Sparkling water, please.”
“Y’all are the fanciest newbies I ever met,” Coach said. He moved his silverware and chopsticks off his napkin, then put the napkin in his lap.
“Are you ready now?” the waitress asked Lu. Again.
“Yeah, you ready?” Patty repeated, way harder than the super soft-spoken waitress.
“There’s just so many options, but I think I’m just going to have shrimp fried rice,” Lu said.
“Shrimp fried ri
ce?” from Coach.
“After all that, you order shrimp fried rice?” from Patty.
“Good choice,” from Sunny, nice-ing it up as usual.
The waitress disappeared with our menus. That’s when Coach started his boring speech about how proud he was to have us on the team, and how great the season was going to be. He said we all showed promise. Well, that was something I had never heard before. That I was showing promise. Then he started dishing dirt about some of other teammates. Not really dirt. Just funny stuff they’d never tell us. Like how Krystal Speed used to be Krystal “No Speed.” He said she used to run like her feet were made of cement. Now she’s better. He also said Mikey has always been kinda tough. Comes from a military family. Coach said his father makes him salute and everything. Aaron is the oldest of a whole bunch of brothers and sisters. So he’s always annoyed at everybody on the track team but can’t help but take care of everyone, which is why he’s the captain. Right when he was telling us about how Curron Outlaw was the king of the false start last year, our waitress returned to the table with our food. Yes! It was go time. And I was so ready. I had even made up in my mind that no matter how good the food was, I would save some for Ma. I mean, it wasn’t every day we ate duck. Matter fact, we never ate duck. So, yeah. I was definitely going to save her some.
We all put our napkins in our laps like Coach did. And as the lady set the plates in front of us, piled up with Chinese goodness, Coach quickly gathered all our forks and knives. He even snatched our chopsticks.
“Okay, newbies. Here’s the deal,” he said, clenching the utensils. “In order for you to get your silverware back so that you can enjoy this amazing food, you have to tell everybody one thing about yourself that most people don’t know. Something good.”
“Wait. What?” Patty said, looking longingly at her sesame chicken.
I stared at my duck, the smell of it doing all kinds of cartwheels and backflips in my nostrils. Oh, man.
“It’s tradition,” Coach explained. “So, who’s first?”
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