He reaches over and raps his knuckles against the wall. “Built ’em to last.”
The tattooed letters splashed across his knuckles read: #1-F-A-T-B-O-Y-!
I pull Dad’s basketball against my chest like it’s some kind of shield. Secretly, I wish Grizzly had been with me that day with Prickman. Though he’s obviously overweight, he still looks strong and scary, too.
Grizzly points from tank to tank.
“Here ya got your basic Treasure Island, thirty-six-g., with a classic sunken chest. Then, here’s the Hawaiian Luau, only twenty-four-g., but the grass skirts are a neat effect, hey?”
Before I can reply, he continues, “In honor of your Grandma Clara, I found these guys with the Scottish kilts. And this one, she was my first—the Harley Haven.”
“Cool fish-sized motorcycles,” I say, hugging the basketball harder.
“Yeah,” he smiles. “You ain’t seen nothin’.” He directs my attention to a gigantic tank neatly labeled with indelible marker: TANK OF TERROR. WARNING. CONTAINS MEAT-EATING FISH. Inside it, saucer-sized fish swarm in and out of a floating haunted house and a half-eaten mummy.
“For real?” I back away. Glad I’m not wearing flip-flops, in case I need to make a dash for it.
He nods and dumps a handful of meat scraps into the tank. The bronze-colored fish go wild. Leaping. Churning. Making a sick raspy, gasping sound. They devour the bloody mess in less than a minute.
“They love this stuff.”
“What is it?” I stare. My stomach’s churning.
“Pig brains, cow eyeballs. Stuff they can’t use at the packing house.”
“Cow eyeballs?”
No wonder Mom’s a vegetarian. A sour lump rises in my throat.
“Here.” Gently, he peels one of my hands from the basketball, and I slide the ball to my left hip as he slips me a slimy chunk. “Keep it at least six inches from the water,” he warns. “These suckers can jump.”
Who keeps a tank full of piranhas for pets?
It’s like he hears what I’m thinking. “You ever had a pet?”
“A guinea pig. She died when I was seven.”
He takes that in. It’s been less than a year since Dad died, so he tries to steer the conversation elsewhere. “These fish’ll teach you how predators think. Watch ’em a while. You’ll see neither side’s too far away from the other. Know what I mean?”
Not really, but I don’t ask for clarity, just stand there mute.
“See, if you’re being hunted, it helps to know how the hunter thinks.” He guides my hand over the tank. “They use their instincts. They know what’s coming. See?”
The fish begin to collide and churn, splashing water everywhere. I try to pull away, but holding tight Grizzly barks, “Let go,” and I do.
The meat disappears in a whirlwind of water and bubbles.
“There ya go, darlin’. Nothin’ to it.”
He squeezes my hand and releases it. His hand is calloused, rough, damp, like a cat’s tongue.
Suddenly, I feel sick. I can’t tell if it’s the dank air or the meat-eating fish or being called darlin’. But something deep inside of me rumbles like thunder, a terrible doubt. Like maybe I’ve gotten myself in over my head. Way over.
“You okay?” Grizzly snaps his finger against the basketball. “Hey, go out and play before you squeeze the air outta that thing!”
I turn and bound up the steps, two at a time.
CHAPTER 5
Daymares
I slam through the screen door and the mind-movie starts up again. I smell Prickman’s ashtray stink and hear their voices, along with my own, sounding less than human, screaming: “LEAVE ME ALONE!”
What do you call it when nightmares come in the middle of the day? Daymares?
Part of me stands on the porch shaking; the other part is back there—again. Choking on blood, the sharp edges of my braces tearing the flesh inside my cheeks, my body folding in on itself. The convenience store door flying open and it’s Rafi, the owner, with fear in his voice.
“You boys! I call police,” he hollers in a thick East-Indian accent. “You boys. I tell you before—”
“What the hell is that?” Nike T-shirt stands over me, staring. “Shit! Run—towel-head!”
The pack scatters, their words lost in a trample of feet. “Jesus! See that? Did someone chop it off or what? He really is a girl.”
I wipe my eyes in shame, and Rafi leans over me, holding a phone in one hand and a baseball bat in the other.
“Rafi, no police, please . . . call . . . Mom.” I beg, trying not to swallow blood.
Rafi knows it’s useless. He nods.
Five minutes later, Mom practically crash-lands in the parking lot. Mom—minus her sunshine smile. Her dented yellow Sunbug humming madly, her nurse’s whites smelling of disinfectant and green apple shampoo, she leaps out and drops down beside me, her mother-bear eyes flashing.
“Did you call the police?” she demands of Rafi, not taking her eyes off me.
Rafi stands twitching under his silk kurta. His sandal-toed brown feet shuffle closer, and he points at me. “He say call you.”
I’d managed to pull my shorts back up, but my hip hurt like hell. The new phone in my back pocket, now in pieces, pokes at my butt-cheek. Perfect! Mom warned a million times that if I toasted this one—that would be it. It—meaning no phone, period.
Given the circumstances, she’ll spare me the lecture, her fingers expertly pressing the soft curve of my neck, her eyes searching mine for signs of dilation.
Satisfied—no concussion—she turns to Rafi. “Call now.”
I shake my head, a wordless plea: no, please, no! She bites down on her lip. Our eyes lock—an invisible arch of lightning moves between us. Nothing new. This made the third time in less than a year we’d call the police. We needed another plan.
“It only makes it worse!” I argue.
“Alyx, what do you want me to do?” Desperation sounds in her voice.
“Please . . . don’t make me hate you,” I whisper, thinking about the last time Prickman and his pals took me down, peed on me. She didn’t know, and I planned to keep it that way.
She gently pulls my head against her breast. Blood dripping from my nose spatters crimson specks onto her white uniform. She rocks me tenderly, fighting her own tears, not ready to let it go. “Alyx, who’s responsible for this?”
“I call police, now?” Rafi points the bat in the direction where Prickman and his motley crew disappeared.
“NO!” I say forcefully, adding, “Mom, listen . . . we don’t have to stay here anymore. Dad’s gone. Let’s get out of this place.”
Her eyes well up, and she waves Rafi away. He shrugs his shoulders, turns, and pads back into the store.
Relieved, I close my eyes, letting the full weight of my head rest in her lap.
“Who, Alyx?” she demands, but she doesn’t really want to know who; she doesn’t. Over the years, I’d stopped talking about it. Silence. Mute. Moot point. Instinctively, I’ve always tried to protect her from the truth, the way she tries to protect me from the Prickmans of the world. We’re both terrible liars.
I slap the ball between my hands, breaking the spell and looking across the street toward the park.
The redheaded girl’s still out there shooting. That was then; this is now. I take off, leaping down the steps, the screen door banging shut behind me like a shotgun. The sound reverberates down the street. The girl stops, looks in my direction.
I push Prickman’s ugly mug to the back of my brain, suck in the yeasty air, which feels like pure oxygen compared to the musty basement, force myself to smile, and run straight at her.
CHAPTER 6
The Pitmanis
As I cross the street to the basketball court, a hot gust brushes my face, rattling tree branches, scattering garbage. Already I’m sweating. Who knew Milwaukee in September could out-torch California’s San Joaquin Valley?
Wiping my forehead with the sleeve
of Dad’s old T-shirt, I exhale and make myself keep going. Some guy with a camera has just joined the girl.
She stares, spits, and paws at the ground with her foot. She stops dribbling and watches me cross the street. The camera-guy turns his lens on me, clicking away, aiming first at my face and then at my feet.
I head straight for them, holding the ball in front of my face, until the camera gets too close for comfort and I duck behind a tree, not sure what to do next.
I hate having my picture taken!
“Peter—knock it off!” the girl hollers. She clamps her hand over the lens and shoves him roughly off the court.
“Aw, Pepper! Chill.” He tugs the camera away.
“Sorry,” she says as she walks toward me, rolling her eyes. Her face is speckled with freckles. “Stop acting like a weirdo!” she turns to the boy and punches his arm. She’s pushing six-feet, almost as tall as me.
“Ow! Not everyone is anti-art,” he explains. Dodging another blow, he smiles at me. “Are you?”
I stand cautiously behind the tree, staring at them.
The girl sighs. “My brother thinks everything he touches turns to art. Toilet paper rolls, french fries, a million still shots of people’s shoes—”
He points at Dad’s basketball. “You play?”
I nod.
“Praise Jesus!” He busts out laughing and does a little dance.
I smile. For the first time in weeks, my mouth isn’t hurting.
He waves me toward him. He’s shorter than her by a couple of inches, and unlike her fiery-green eyes, his are blue, like mine. A strange sensation shoots through me. Like I’ve met him someplace before. Though I know I haven’t.
As if in a trance, I find myself walking again, straight toward him. He has jet-black hair. Cut short. The shadow of a day’s beard covers his face. He’s wearing faded jeans and a tennis jersey. Part of his collar is turned up in the back. Like he did it on purpose. Like it’s a style thing.
He points at my T-shirt. “Where’d you get that?”
I stop. “My dad got his doctorate at Stanford. He was a huge fan.”
“What changed?” Pushing his sister away, he flips the camera up to record my answer.
“He died.”
“Oh.” He lowers the camera. “Sorry.”
The fact that Dad’s dead is still sinking in.
“Peter, sometimes you’re so dense.” The girl shakes her head like we’re on the same side against him. But I can tell he feels bad.
He puts out a hand. “I’m Peter.”
I reach out and shake it, hoping mine’s dry. His is warm, damp, and even though the gesture feels strange, it’s comforting in an odd way.
The girl dribbles away from us. “Let her come shoot, Peter. Leave her alone.”
“That’s my sister, Patti,” he steps toward me, lowers his voice. “It’s spelled P-a-t-t-i. With an ‘I’ because it’s all about her.” He winks, releases my hand, then says in a normal tone, “Everyone calls her Pepper, because she’s a total hothead.” He ducks as a ball whizzes by his head.
“See,” he whispers. “She takes medicine to help her moods.”
“Give it a rest, okay?” Patti races by, picking the ball off the ground and calling over her shoulder, “Come shoot with me.”
Peter steps out of my way. “Ladies first,” he says, then whispers again. “Dad’s pressuring her to get a basketball scholarship to Tennessee, his alma mater, so I’m trying to get her to lighten up in case she doesn’t.”
He grins. Without effort, I grin back. It feels like he’s pulling me into some invisible force field and I have no power to resist. I look down and focus on my feet, which he now had about a hundred shots of. He zeroes his camera in on something under an oak tree and walks away, still talking. “Gotta go, can’t quit my day job, but please, stay and play. Patti’s relentless.”
He spins around and looks back at me, “Hey, what’s your name?”
“Alyx.” I point at the Polish Palace. “Me and my mom just moved in.” I don’t point out that Alyx is spelled with a “yx” because my parents were trying to find a name that would fit. And I don’t say my new last name, because taking on the whole Kowalski identity still feels totally foreign.
“You’ll be going to Cudahy High?”
I nod.
“Cool!” He tips his head, smiles, and then begins walking in the direction of the white mansion on the other side of the park. When he reaches the street, he swings around looking through the camera lens, snaps a shot, and yells, “Make her work on fast breaks!”
“Shut up, Peter, let her play!” Pepper jogs over, and I catch the ball she tosses me with one hand, rolling Dad’s onto the grass.
“Chillax, Sis.” He laughs, turns, and takes off.
“You know the popcorn drill?” she asks, ignoring him, as I dribble over to join her.
Shaking my head, I pass the ball back, resisting the urge to glance back at him.
She takes off down the court, yelling, “Follow me!”
And I do.
CHAPTER 7
Deuce
The popcorn drill turns out to be the same one we used to warm up back in California. Only the guys I played with, almost all migrant workers, called it “jaguar bay,” which translated into play B, meaning boards.
They’d all line up and tip the ball against the backboard, letting everyone circle through once or twice until someone usually shouted, “Shoot de ball, Alto Gringo!” They’d buzz around me, laughing, dribbling, speaking in broken Spanish, calling me their token Caucasian. I couldn’t have cared less what they called me. I was glad to be playing.
All my life, teachers and coaches would tell Mom I was too fragile for competitive sports, and last year, after Johnny Turbo’s elbow took me out of the Valley Leagues, I was desperate for a team, any team. They jokingly called themselves the Wetback Boys, and they were the only ones who would have me.
For close to two hours, I followed Pepper up and down the court. We played Horse, then Pig, and a half-dozen games of one-on-one, and then, without a break, we went back to drills, finally inventing our own, which we called Deuce. It was the popcorn drill with only two people using the full court. Whoever had the ball flashed two fingers and took off down the court, then the other had to follow. The player with the ball laid it up gently against the backboard, and the player who followed tipped it off the board into the basket. It wasn’t easy. You had to pace yourself and time it perfectly.
I miss three. Pepper misses four.
“Shit!” she hisses as the fourth one bounces off the rim.
I chase after it.
“Let’s take a break.” She spits on the blacktop, pawing it with her foot. Neither one of us wants to admit we’re tired. She offers me her water bottle, reaches down, and pulls the phone out of her sock to check her messages. Grateful for the water, I take a swig and collapse onto the picnic bench.
“You Facebook?” she asks, thumbs flying, not looking up.
“Nah,” I say. I’d changed my last name and erased all online evidence of my former self. Changed my email, too, and now, with no phone, what did it matter?
“You text?” She continues messaging.
I shake my head. “Busted my phone.”
She looks up, nods sympathetically, then laughs a little. “Talk about cramping your style, hey?”
The ball Dad gave me is within reach, so I lean over, pick it up, and hug it to my chest. Just to give myself something to do. The leathery smell reminds me of him. Finally, Pepper sets the phone down and lies on top of the picnic table.
We’re both slick with sweat.
The wind has shifted—it’s blowing off the lake now, and I smell water. Lake Michigan. An ocean smell. Reminds me of surfing, and Dylan, my one and only friend from California. He sold his surfboard before he left for Ecuador. Now he’s a foreign exchange student learning Spanish, living in some remote mountain village twenty miles from the nearest Internet café.
; “You’re good.” She closes her eyes. She’s breathing heavy.
Still holding the ball, I lie back on the bench and listen to her breathe. I want to say something, but my tongue’s in a knot.
“Your Dad’s dead, hey?”
Her question feels random, and I sit up again. She keeps talking. “My mom’s the one who’s gone. Not dead, though she might as well be.” She sighs and rolls onto her side, opens her eyes, and then props herself up on one elbow.
Our eyes meet.
“Do you miss him?” she asks me, some expression I can’t decipher flashing across her face.
I nod then look away. “Yeah . . . it’s kind of complicated.”
“I don’t miss her,” Pepper says coldly. Taking the hint that I don’t want to talk about it, she lies back down looking up at the sky. “My mom’s a liar. I hate liars, don’t you?” She turns and stares at me, waiting for an answer.
My throat starts to tighten. “Guess so.”
I can’t seem to look at her. I’m used to being around guys who brag about their sexual exploits, their bodily functions, or about which girls put out—not personal things. Why does she hate her mom so much, anyway?
She sits up again, wipes at her eyes, and offers me the last swig of water in her bottle. Just as I suck it down, I hear Sunshine call.
“Alyx?”
I hand her the bottle, jump to my feet, and shift the ball under my arm. “Coming!” I holler.
Pepper sits up. “Your mom?” She shades her eyes, studying Mom, who waves from behind the broken porch rail before she goes back inside.
I nod. “Gotta go.”
“Radical hair.” She squints into the setting sun.
I turn to jog home, but only get a few feet before Pepper leaps off the table behind me and punches the ball out from under my arm.
Startled, I watch her race by, smiling. She snorts out a laugh, scoops up the ball, flashes two fingers, and heads for the far basket. “Deuce!” she shouts, and my body kicks into overdrive as I fly down the court, chasing her.
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