The second thing that comes into my brain is this: don’t tell Khalil, because you don’t want Mr. Doig to find out about you and the cops.
Shit, bro, I write. I don’t wanna play without you out there. This is only part true, because I would rather play with him, but also, I want to play no matter what. I can’t lose basketball.
Khalil types his message back.
I’m scared schools pull my scholarship offers cuz I’m not like Devin nobody cares that much about a five-foot-eleven dude. I will commit to North Dakota State tomorrow if they promise not to pull my scholarship. If no basketball I don’t know if there is a future, bro.
Yes. Yes. This I know.
Even though I don’t believe what I am writing, I text Khalil:
You will be out on the court with us soon, bro. Don’t worry. It will be dope out there and we will kill Owens boys and this will be a bad dream.
There is about a minute where it looks like Khalil is writing back, but all he replies is this:
Don’t think I’ll be on court so good luck. Better go sleep.
FIFTY-ONE
THE LAST WEDNESDAY
Again on Wednesday, there is no Kase Kinshaw in school. Maybe Barry has done a great favor for everyone? Maybe Kase will stay out of school for the rest of the year? Not that I am happy. How can I be happy with Khalil on my mind?
Barry is not happy, either. Renata had to talk him into going to his second-to-last tae kwon do practice before he tests for his next black belt on Sunday.
“I’m not honorable enough to be a tae kwon do master?” he said during breakfast.
Renata stood up so fast her chair tipped over backward. “That is not true, Barry,” she said. “You are a wonderful kid. Wonderful, do you understand? I have never seen you be anything but honorable. And I will be so upset with you if you don’t follow through on your test. You will go to your class tonight!”
Barry then stood up. He placed his right fist in his left palm and bowed to Renata. She bowed back.
I think I have many weird people in my life.
The school day feels normal, and I begin to think more about Saturday. There will be no Khalil on the floor with us. I have to get over this. There will still be Devin and Rashid and Marques and Trey. There will be Charlie, too. Together we will take on Kyle Owens and his cousins, and we will find our flow. They will chase the ocean. We will destroy them. I try to gather my focus. During study hall in the library I pull out my phone and tweet @KyOw23 that the Fury will crush him to the ground.
@KyOw23 responds: @PolishHooper not a real baller. #keepyourdayjob
A few minutes later I receive a text from Devin. It is the first time I have heard from him since we played the TC Tigers. He doesn’t know about my drama. He doesn’t know about Carli and Kase Kinshaw and Barry.
He writes:
Stop the trash talk, Farmer. The game is not what matters right now.
It matters to me, though. Kyle Owens has disrespected me as a human being. He has called me a head case and says I don’t understand basketball because I am a foreigner and that all I do is run and jump. He is Kase Kinshaw, but on the basketball court where I can fight back legally. I will not keep my day job!
I don’t know what that last thing means, though.
FIFTY-TWO
7:21 P.M.
Professor Mike, Regan, and Margery show up at the house with two pizzas from Pagliai’s in Mankato. It is the best pizza ever. Professor Mike kisses Renata on the cheek as if he never visited her at 3:17 a.m. Regan and Margery jump on me like I am Hooper the Dragon.
Professor Mike even high-fives Barry when Barry comes back from his tae kwon do practice saying he has mastered his form and has mastered his board breaks and he will use his final practice just to settle his mind. He is ready for his second-degree black belt testing.
I am surprised by all of this. Professor Mike and Renata fought at 3:17 a.m. I heard them. Why is he here?
FIFTY-THREE
THE LAST THURSDAY
As soon as Barry and I walk in through the front doors and into the commons we are greeted by Mr. Sanders, the vice principal. He jumps a little when he sees me. “Well, hi, Adam,” he says.
“Hi?” I say.
Then he looks at Barry. “Uh, Barry, I’m going to have to ask you to come with me right now, because, well, I suppose we all have to talk.”
“We?” Barry asks.
“Who?” I ask.
“Me, Principal McCartney, you Barry . . . your mom, although we haven’t been able to reach her.”
“Tiffany isn’t really my mom,” Barry says.
“No?” Mr. Sanders says.
“She’s not too good,” I say.
“Mrs. Renata’s sort of my mom?” Barry says.
“Mrs. who?”
“My mom has been watching him,” I say.
“Does she need to come talk?” Barry asks.
“Yes,” Mr. Sanders says. “If she’s taking care of you.”
Barry pauses. He blinks. He looks at me for a moment, then looks back to Mr. Sanders. “Why do we have to talk?”
“I think you know,” Mr. Sanders says.
“Yeah. I think so?” Barry says. “Because I kicked Kase?”
Mr. Sanders nods. “Come with me.”
I start to follow, too, but Mr. Sanders says I should go to class.
How can I go to class? What is the point? Do they think I will concentrate?
I don’t. Not in English, not in social studies, not even in gym. All I can think about is Barry. I get no news, even though I text Renata, who just texts back, Not now. In the office. I’ll fill you in later.
It isn’t until before lunch when I find Carli standing at my locker that anything becomes clear. “I heard what’s happening,” she says. “I’m sorry, dude.”
“What? With Barry? How did you hear?”
“Darci. I guess Kase doesn’t feel safe with Barry here, because of his dog and Barry beating him up. Kase’s dad is petitioning the school board to expel Barry.”
“Expel?”
“Like, when a dude gets two technicals or a flagrant. You know, kicked out of the game.”
I just drop my head into my hands.
“I’m sorry,” Carli whispers.
FIFTY-FOUR
5:47 P.M.
“How could they ever believe you’d kill a dog?” Renata asks.
We all sit around the big table in Professor Mike’s dining room. Barry Roland looks like he will die. His face is pale and his glasses are more bent-looking than normal and they have slid down his nose.
“I wouldn’t hurt anything,” Barry says so quietly.
“Except you kicked those boys,” Margery says.
“Well, sounds like that was self-defense. Or at least defending your good friend here, right?” Professor Mike says.
Barry stares at the floor.
Renata smiles at Professor Mike, reaches and holds on to his arm. I am very glad to see this. Then something occurs to me.
“Why shouldn’t Kase get expel?” I ask.
“Expelled,” Renata says.
“Okay? Expelled. Because he called me and Barry ‘fag’ and ‘retard’ and ‘refugee’ and he tripped me in the halls and he ripped my shirt,” I say.
“When did he trip you? Did he really call you those names?” Renata asks.
“Uh . . .” I say. The red sea floods into her face.
She stands up. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I don’t know,” I say.
“Okay. Okay. Maybe I should petition the school board to expel him, huh? Would you like that, Barry?”
Barry shrugs. “Maybe I can go back to the other house and lie down?” he asks.
“This isn’t a done deal, Barry. We’re going to figure out something. We’ve got until Tuesday to figure this out,” Renata says.
Barry is suspended from attending his classes until the school board hearing.
“Meanwhile, you’ve got to keep your h
ead straight. You’ve got that big tae kwon do test on Sunday. You stay focused on that,” Renata says.
Regan jumps out of her chair and shouts, “Barry the Shinja will break wood with his bare feet!”
Barry stands up. “Thank you. I’m going to go back to the house?”
“Of course,” Renata says.
Two hours later, Barry and I jog through the almost total dark of the nighttime Red Jacket Trail. His bare feet slap on the cold pavement. The sliver of moon lights his fluffy face.
“If I get kicked out of school, do I work at the stables forever?” Barry asks.
I don’t know how to answer this question.
“I deserve it. I kicked Kase out of hatred,” Barry says.
There are no question marks by these sentences. But I say, “No, bro. You do not deserve this.”
FIFTY-FIVE
THE LAST FRIDAY
I walk to school, because Barry is still asleep in my bed. Renata has early morning conferences with students, and Professor Mike has to take Margery and Regan to the elementary school. I don’t want to walk.
In fact, I don’t want to go to school at all.
I step down the steep hill past Trinity, where students are hustling to get to their early morning classes. I turn left and get onto Center Street, which runs between Trinity and Northrup High School. I think of Kase, because he might be at school without Barry there. I don’t want to think of Kase. My phone buzzes in my pocket. I pull it out and am very happy to be getting a call, even a call from Devin Mitchell, who is not easy to talk to.
“Hello. Hi?” I say.
“Dude. Farmer. Listen, I have to . . . I want to tell you something I’m planning,” Devin says.
Devin doesn’t sound like himself. He is speaking fast. His voice is higher than normal. I feel nervous hearing him. “Okay?” I say.
“You know that Khalil is a damn good human being, right?”
“Yeah?” I say. It’s true.
“What Mr. Doig is doing to him can’t stand, man. It just can’t. Doig has no idea what it means to grow up without everything getting handed to you. His family is like mine. Rich for generations before him. Plus he’s white.”
“Okay?”
“He doesn’t know what it means for Khalil to have this on his résumé. ‘Got kicked off a top AAU squad because of a scrape with the law.’ That sound familiar?”
“No.”
“It’s the kind of line you hear all the time on ESPN when some poor black boy doesn’t get drafted or loses his scholarship offer.”
“Oh. Uh-huh.”
“It’s the curse, dude. The curse.”
“Is the curse because racism?” I ask.
“So deep in their racism they don’t even know it.”
“Trouble is looking for black kids.”
Devin doesn’t talk for a moment. Then he says. “Yeah, which is shit. So, I’m going to do something.”
“What?”
“And I hope you join me.”
“What?” I ask.
“Me and you can’t get hurt like Khalil can. So we have a responsibility.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Don’t show up tomorrow.”
I stop walking where I am, which is in the middle of the intersection of Third Avenue and Center Street. A car honks at me. I jump. I run to the other side of the street. “Don’t show up for the bus?” I ask. “Don’t show up to play our game?”
“That’s right. That’s what I’m doing. Won’t tell my dad until the last possible minute, because he’s going to bug so bad. But I’m not going to play for Mr. Doig if he treats my brother Khalil like this.”
“Oh shit,” I say. “Oh no.” Devin Mitchell doesn’t know about me. Devin doesn’t know what is happening in my life. He doesn’t know how my brother, Barry, is getting his ass kicked out of the building. He doesn’t know how I couldn’t even read English until basketball started to organize my brain, how I couldn’t say full sentences in English until only two years ago. He doesn’t know that I am nothing except another boy like Barry if I don’t play. “I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I gotta go to school now.”
I hang up on Devin Mitchell.
I run toward school.
Me and Renata watched so many biographies about her favorite jazz musicians, okay? I saw a lot of stories about bad racism in the old days. Is this the same thing? I can’t believe it.
I sprint.
How can I battle all of history? I have so many troubles of my own!
There is no Kase at school. I take my test. I tell Carli I can’t study chemistry, like she was planning for me in the evening. I need to go to the basement and do my dribbles and practice my footwork. Tomorrow I will face Kyle Owens and the rest of the Minne-Kota Stars. Tomorrow I play basketball.
I walk home from school alone.
FIFTY-SIX
I AM NOT ALONE, PART I
Carli follows me in her SUV. I walk on Center Street. She drives maybe five miles per hour behind me. Cars are honking. She doesn’t care. They must pass her.
“Come on!” she shouts out the open window. “Get in my car! You want me to get arrested for slow driving?”
A man in a very big SUV, much bigger than Carli’s, pulls up behind her and lays on the horn without stop. The honk pierces the air and continues. It vibrates in my brain.
“Okay. Fine,” I say. I run out on the street. She stops. The man honks and shouts the f-word. I leap into the SUV, and then she pulls over and parks. “What are you doing?” I shout at her.
“Hi there, buddy!” she says. She smiles her Carli smile.
“No,” I say, because I won’t accept her Carli smile. “Why are you causing trouble in the street? I have enough trouble!”
Carli nods. “Yeah. Okay. I just wanted you to get in my car,” Carli says.
“It worked. Can I go home now?”
“Well, I guess. I mean I know you have to practice your quote unquote dribbles and everything, but I’m guessing you also haven’t practiced your jump shot all week, and you’re going need that tomorrow, right? To beat the Owens boys? So I thought maybe you’d want to go up to the gym and shoot?”
She looks at me with her eyes wide, like she is an innocent girl, but she is pulling all my levers. She knows how to. “Okay,” I say slowly. “But don’t make me talk about nothing.”
“Anything. I promise. I won’t make you talk about anything,” she says.
“When I get upset, I start to forget my English skills.”
“Dude,” she says quietly. “You’re fine. You talk great.”
Then she drives. We stop by her house, and she gets basketball clothes on. We go to mine and I change. There is no Barry or Renata or nobody . . . anybody for me to talk to, so I text Renata and let her know where I am.
She texts me back that she and Barry are with a lawyer.
This is more heavy news.
At least Carli and I are able to find court space in the Trinity athletic facility. Happy college kids play volleyball and basketball and badminton on other courts. But they are not me. Here, in the gym that should be my home, I have no energy.
Carli warms up. “The swelling is gone in my knee. That was a bad couple of weeks.”
“Yeah,” I say.
She begins to hit three-pointers as always.
My shots are short. My legs are jellyfishes.
Five minutes in, Carli gives up on me. She picks up the ball and says, “Hey, man, I’m sorry about Barry. I’m sorry you’re in the middle of all the bad blood in my crappy town. I totally caused you to be here. It’s my fault.”
I shake my head. “Kase messed with me before you.”
“No. He started messing with you because I told him you were a baller back in October. I told all my friends I thought you were cute, which pissed him off, too. I guess he has a crush on me, but he’s not my type . . . whatever. I guess I put him on you, man.”
“Really?”
“And he hates Barr
y, of course. And you’re tight with him.”
This is surprising news about Kase, yes. But I don’t really care. The heaviness I feel is not only about Barry. I don’t know if she knows what’s happening to Khalil. She doesn’t know about Devin, I’m sure, how he wants me to disobey my coaches, to not show up for the game at all. “Uh,” I say.
“Is something else going on?” she says more quietly. “Tell me.”
“Do you know about Khalil?”
She nods. “It’s not fair. My dad talked to Mr. Doig last night, but he won’t budge. Dad seriously might resign from the Fury. He’s been on their board for ten years, but this is too much.”
“Your dad is not the only one who is mad.”
She begins to dribble the ball. She pops it back and forth between her legs but never takes her eyes off me. “You’re mad?” she asks.
“I don’t know,” I say. “So much bad happens, how can I be mad? If I get mad at everything, all I’ll do is be mad.”
“Yeah, but this?” she says. She dribbles in a circle around me, so I have to keep turning to see her. “You know, Khalil doesn’t mess around. Like, he actively tries to not mess around, tries to steer clear of any trouble. Plus, he’s a great teammate. He’s nice to everybody, right?”
“He was not so nice when I first met him,” I say, but I don’t even know why I’m saying it. He was much nicer than Devin or Rashid.
Carli stops and dribbles the ball hard into the floor. “Dude. Come on. Now he’s kicked out, and that hurts your team, it hurts him, and he’s your friend. It might even hurt his chances for a scholarship, which he’s been working for since he was a little kid.”
I hate to think of Khalil as a little kid who is dreaming of basketball. So I think of Devin instead. “Devin isn’t going to play tomorrow. He wants me not to play.”
Carli catches the ball. Holds it. “Whoa. Mr. Doig could kick you off the Fury.”
“I can’t lose basketball.”
“Well . . . you wouldn’t be losing basketball. Just the Fury.”
“I have to play against Kyle Owens.”
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