“You okay?” Theo said, a little breathless after running up the slope.
There were no tears in her eyes. She didn’t shout angrily after him. She just stood without any expression at all. “Of course,” she said, as if that was a silly question. “You just have to roll with the punch. Didn’t anyone ever teach you how to fight?”
“I’ve never been in a fight.”
She frowned at that, as if unsure whether he was lying or crazy. Then she shrugged and said, “Probably just as well, because you’re not in very good shape. I thought you’d pass out running up this slope.”
“You’re welcome,” Theo said. He picked up her basketball and handed it to her. “Who was that guy? What language was that? Why did he hit you?”
She smiled at him, the side of her face bright red from the slap. Then suddenly she ran off, calling over her shoulder, “See you around, Sasquatch.”
“HEY, Stretch! You wanna play? We need a sixth man.”
Theo looked down at the five boys standing on the basketball court. They’d been shooting around since he’d arrived, waiting for another player to show up. Theo wondered if they’d seen Motorcycle Guy slap the girl. If they had, why hadn’t they joined him in running over to help her?
Help her? Is that what he’d done?
Now that Theo thought about it, what actual help had he been? He was tall, sure, but he couldn’t fight. One slap from Motorcycle Guy and he’d have floated away like a kite. Theo saw himself more as a scarecrow. Trying to look fierce and scary, but powerless to stop the crows from eating the crops if they really wanted to. That seemed to be his role on the basketball court, too.
Maybe that should be his nickname: “Scarecrow.”
Theo glanced over his shoulder to where Crazy Girl had gone. Crazy Girl. Yeah, that should be her nickname. She didn’t make any sense.
No sign of her. What had Motorcycle Guy wanted from her? What would he do the next time he caught up with her? Or Theo?
Theo shook off the questions. Not his problem. After all, she’d been the one to run off. And she’d called him Sasquatch during the game. She’d led the chanting. He didn’t owe her anything.
Theo joined the other boys on the court. They were all older than him by a year or two. He recognized two ninth graders from Valley Crest High School. They didn’t seem to recognize him. Why would they? He’d been pretty invisible last year.
He was one of fourteen black kids at a school of six hundred. You’d think that would have made him stand out more, but it had just the opposite effect. To many of the students, he was just “one of the black kids.” He didn’t blame them. The school had about three hundred Asian kids and a hundred Hispanic kids and sometimes he thought of them as “one of the Asians” or “one of the Hispanics.” Brian said there were about thirty Jewish kids, but Theo only knew of Brian and Isaac (who wore one of those little Jewish beanies). When Theo asked who the others were, Brian said he wouldn’t out the others, because they were trying to go through school undercover, like spies. If no one knew who they were, no one could pick on them.
“I’m not that good,” Theo warned the kids on the court. Better to lower their expectations right away, he figured. No slam dunks or alley-oops today, boys.
“Don’t worry about it,” the Asian kid said. He grinned a little, as if he thought Theo was just pretending not to be good. Sandbagging. He tossed the basketball to Theo. “You wanna take a few shots to warm up?”
Theo nodded. One of the boys pulled off his shirt and jogged over to the water fountain for a drink. The other four waited for Theo to take his warm-up shots. Theo stared at the basket as if it were a giant dragon waiting to swallow him whole. Throwing a ball at it would only make it mad. His stomach tightened again and his skin felt cold. He was glad Crazy Girl wasn’t around to see this.
“You guys see that kid on the motorcycle?” Theo asked, stalling.
They shrugged, which Theo took to mean yes.
“Did you see him hit that girl?”
“No,” one of them said. He didn’t sound convincing.
“You know who that guy was?” Theo pressed.
The boys looked at one another, then at Theo. Asian Kid said, “You gonna shoot or what?”
They didn’t seem to care about what happened, as if it had taken place in another country or in a movie instead of fifty yards up a grassy slope. Or maybe they were scared of Motorcycle Guy, too.
Theo took some practice shots from the free throw line. Half of them went in, which was better than he’d expected, especially with five boys watching him. He wasn’t a bad shot as long as he wasn’t moving. And no one was guarding him. And his legs weren’t shaking.
“Let’s play,” said the kid with the reddest hair Theo had ever seen. Red grabbed the ball from Theo and walked out to the three-point line. “You’re with us. What’s your name?”
Theo told him. Then everyone gave their names, but Theo was so nervous that he immediately forgot all of them.
“Clear all possessions back to the three,” Red explained quickly, anxious to get the game going. “Points are ones and twos.”
“Ones and twos?” Theo asked.
Theo heard one of the kids sigh, the way you sigh when you’re trying to explain something to a younger child and he’s not getting it. This is the way you tie a shoelace: the rabbit ears go…
“Anything past the three-point line is worth two points. Everything else is worth one.”
“Right,” Theo said. “Of course. Ones and twos.”
Red stared at him, obviously waiting for Theo to do something. Theo didn’t know what, so he just stood still.
“We’re on offense,” Red said.
Theo thought: Offense means we have the ball; defense means they have the ball. He nodded and moved to the three-point line. Asian Kid guarded him. Shirtless was also on Theo’s team. Shirtless started cutting toward the basket.
Red threw Theo the ball. Theo dribbled a couple times, then threw it to Red, relieved to be rid of it. It was like holding a ticking bomb covered in dog poop.
“Go under!” Red shouted. He waved for Theo to force Asian Kid into the key so they could lob the ball to him for an easy turnaround layup. With his height advantage, there was no way Asian Kid could block him. That was pretty much the same play Coach Mandrake had worked on with Theo. “Use your reach, Theo,” the coach had said.
Theo pushed his butt out and backed toward the basket. Asian Kid pushed back, but he was too thin to stop Theo. Red raised the ball over his head and motioned as if to toss it to Theo. As soon as he did, the kid guarding Red reversed a few steps to help double-team Theo. That left Red wide open, so he took the jumper from the free throw line.
He missed.
The ball bounced off the rim and dropped to the ground near Theo. He reached for it, but Asian Kid zipped around him, grabbed the ball, dribbled out to the three-point line, and then came back straight in for a layup. Theo managed to slide close enough to reach one hand out and block the shot. He couldn’t believe he’d actually done that. When Asian Kid landed on the ground, he was off balance enough that Theo could grab the ball right out of his hands. He turned and immediately shot it from one foot away. The ball banked off the backboard and dropped through the net.
Inside, Theo was throwing a Super Bowl party. Streamers. Balloons. Cheerleaders. Nine-layer dip with those scoop chips he loved. His dad was high-fiving him—
“Dude, you have to clear the ball,” Shirtless said, annoyed.
“What?” Theo said.
“Clear all changes of possession. That means that if the ball goes from one team to the other, you have to dribble the ball back to the three-point line before you can shoot again.”
“Didn’t you see me do that?” Asian Kid asked.
“Where you from?” Red asked, with a pinched expression that indicated he expected the answer to be somewhere beyond Mars.
“No basket,” Asian Kid said a little too smugly. He tossed the ball to Red.<
br />
“Zero to zero,” Red said. He chest-passed the ball to Shirtless, who did some fancy dribbling before tossing in a smooth eight-footer.
“One to nothing,” Red said from the top of the key.
The game was only to eleven points, but it seemed to take forever. Theo did manage to score a basket, but Red and Shirtless made the rest of their points. Anytime they lobbed the ball to Theo, Asian Kid would hack at his arms until Theo panicked and passed the ball back out to Red or Shirtless. Theo’s arms were sore from being smacked, and the backs of his hands were bleeding from Asian Kid’s fingernails. During one play, Asian Kid smacked him so hard that it sounded like the loud slap Motorcycle Guy had given the girl. Everyone had stopped playing at the sound.
“C’mon, Jeremy,” Red scolded Asian Kid, who shrugged. Then Red turned to Theo with even more disgust on his face. “Dude, you gotta call those fouls.”
“Okay,” Theo said, his voice so low he could barely hear it himself. He didn’t want to tell them that he wasn’t exactly sure what a foul was. He knew you couldn’t hit or push the other player, but the line between aggressive play and fouling was blurry.
“Game point,” Shirtless said, tossing the ball to Red.
They needed one point to win. One lousy basket. Theo really wanted that last basket to come from him, to prove himself to these guys. He didn’t know why that was so important. They weren’t especially nice to him. Once they realized he’d been telling the truth when he’d said he wasn’t very good at basketball, they barely tolerated him. He noticed them constantly looking off the court, as if hoping for new players to show up to take his place. Even if he made the basket, their opinion of him probably wouldn’t change. He’d already made too many dumb mistakes.
Still, he had to try.
He had to at least prove to himself that whatever Coach’s plan was for him on Monday, he wouldn’t make a complete idiot out of himself.
Theo raised his arm like a periscope above the others’ heads. “Here,” he said, calling for the ball. Red glanced up from his between-the-legs dribbling exhibition long enough to see Theo’s hand waving for the ball. Red looked skeptical and tried to drive toward the basket himself. But his defender slid right along with him, swatting at the ball like an octopus on Red Bull. After a couple more failed attempts to dribble around his defender, Red looked over at Shirtless. The boy defending Shirtless was in position to intercept any pass. Finally, looking like someone about to flush his allowance down a toilet, Red lobbed the ball to Theo.
Theo caught it. (Okay, that was the easy part, he reminded himself.) Next he brought the ball down to his chest like Coach had shown him. He felt Asian Kid’s forearm pushing hard against his lower back, trying to keep him off balance. The kid’s bony forearm felt like a baseball bat grinding against his spine. Theo clenched his entire body and took a step backward, moving Asian Kid backward, too. He was surprised that he was able to do it. Then, suddenly, Theo spun hard to his left, jumped up, and laid the ball against the backboard. It dropped through the hoop with barely a sound against the net. Like a sigh of relief.
Yes! Theo screamed in his head.
Yesyesyesyesyes!
He won the game!
He turned to look at his teammates for some celebration, some whoops of appreciation. A “Nice shot” or “Good job.” But they were all glaring angrily at him. Except for Asian Kid, who was lying on the ground with globs of blood dripping from his nose.
Asian Kid shouted some nasty R-rated curses at Theo.
Red shook his head in disgust at Theo. “Not cool, dude.”
“Watch those elbows, man,” Shirtless warned.
Elbows? Theo hadn’t felt anything when he’d spun around.
Horrified, he ran to Asian Kid. “I’m sorry, man. I didn’t realize…” He didn’t know what else to say, so he offered his hand to help him up.
Asian Kid didn’t take it. Instead, he wiped the back of his hand across his nose. Seeing the smear of bright red blood seemed to make him even angrier. Suddenly he jumped up and swung a fist into Theo’s face.
Theo saw the fist coming in time to tilt his head back slightly. The punch glanced off his cheek. “Glance” in the same way that a hammer might “glance” off a nail. Meaning: it still hurt! A lot.
Theo rocked backward, stumbling a few steps. His cheek burned and ached at the same time. This was the first time he’d ever been hit in the face. In fourth grade he’d gotten into a fight at recess with Kevin Dubinsky over whose turn it was with the tetherball. But that had been more of a shoving match than a fight. Two shoves from each and the bell rang and that was the end of the fight. The next day they were back playing handball together.
But this was a real fight.
Real blood.
Real pain.
Real fear.
Theo wanted to run away. When he was shorter (was that really only three months ago?), he might have gotten away with running. These kids were older, so they probably would have expected it. But he was big now, bigger than they were. He hadn’t thought about that before, about how being taller made people think of you as older, and they’d expect you to act older, too. He hadn’t just grown; in everyone’s eyes, he’d also aged a few years.
So running was out. He balled his fingers into fists, brought them up to his chest, and waited to see what Asian Kid would do next. His legs shook and he fought the panic rising in his gut.
Asian Kid cocked his fist back as if to take another swing. Theo lifted his skinny arms up to protect his face.
Then Shirtless stepped behind Asian Kid and pinned his arms to his sides. “Okay, Jeremy, that’s enough. He didn’t mean it.”
Asian Kid—Jeremy—struggled against his friend’s grip, but not that hard. He seemed content to let it go.
Theo dropped his fists. “I’m really sorry, Jeremy. It was an accident.”
Jeremy responded with another string of curses.
Theo walked away, his cheek throbbing. Gingerly, he touched the sore spot and felt a golf-ball-size bump growing beneath his fingers.
He sighed. At least his day couldn’t get any worse, he thought.
As usual, he was wrong.
THEO’S dad’s gun was sitting on the kitchen table when Theo got home.
It lay on some paper towels between the butter dish and the pepper grinder like a coiled rattlesnake. It glistened from freshly applied oil. Theo rarely saw the gun, but whenever he did it gave him both a chill of excitement on the back of his neck and a burning dread in his stomach. The excitement was because it was the thing that protected his dad, though his dad had never drawn his gun in the line of duty in his fourteen years as a cop. The bad thing was that the gun reminded Theo that his dad’s job was dangerous. When you had only one parent, you didn’t want to be reminded of that. You really didn’t.
Theo’s dad came into the kitchen then. “Sorry, T,” his dad said, grabbing the gun from the table. “I just finished cleaning it.” He hurried off to his bedroom to lock it in the gun safe. He was in such a hurry he hadn’t yet gotten a look at the damage to Theo’s face.
Other kids thought it was so cool to have a cop for a dad, because they figured his dad could pretty much do anything he wanted. True, his dad was big and muscular and carried a badge and a gun. But he was also gentle and soft-spoken. And he never used the fact that he was a cop to get anything. Sometimes people tried to give him free stuff, but he wouldn’t take it. Not even an ice-cream cone! He insisted on paying for everything—even the speeding ticket he’d gotten during a family vacation in Santa Barbara. Theo thought he’d get out of the ticket by showing the motorcycle cop his badge. But he didn’t. He just took the ticket, said, “Thank you, Officer,” and drove off.
“Why didn’t you show him your badge, Dad?” Theo had asked him.
“Because I was speeding,” his dad had said.
“But you could have gotten out of it,” Theo persisted. “Saved some money.”
Then Theo’s mom turned around w
ith a smile and said, “Your dad would rather do the right thing than the easy thing.”
Theo had snorted, thinking, Another parental pearl of wisdom about Doing the Right Thing.
That year, it seemed like no matter what happened (a dirty cereal bowl, a misplaced iPod, an empty toilet roll), his mom would turn it into a Do the Right Thing lesson. But that day, when Theo saw the way his mom slid her arm around his dad’s shoulder and the way his dad looked over at her, he kind of got it. Getting that bright beaming smile from Mom was worth doing extra chores, working harder on schoolwork, and, he guessed, paying speeding tickets.
Theo sat heavily at the table as he once again realized there was nothing he could ever do for the rest of his life to see that smile again. To have her hold his face in her hands, her eyes filling with tears, and say, “You make me so proud, sweetheart.”
“Mom,” he said aloud, surprising himself. He did that sometimes when he really, really missed her.
What would she think of him now, sitting here with a bruised cheek from fighting? After giving another kid a bloody nose? Sure, it was an accident, but if he hadn’t been so anxious to show those kids what he could do, he might have been more careful. What would she have thought if she’d watched him play at school today, missing shots, letting his guy score, throwing passes that got intercepted? He’d even dribbled on his own foot, sending the ball skidding out of bounds. Someone from the stands had yelled that his nickname should be “Turnovers.”
“What the heck happened to your face?” his dad said. He stood in front of Theo with a frilly red kitchen apron over his blue police uniform. Any other time, Theo might have laughed and made a joke about it.
“Basketball,” Theo said, hoping that would end it. He didn’t want to have to explain that he got into a fight.
His dad stared at him a few seconds, then turned, opened the freezer door, and pulled out a bag of corn. “Put this on it. It’ll bring the swelling down.”
Theo eased it onto the bruise. The cold instantly numbed the pain.
His dad yanked some paper towels from the dispenser and handed them to Theo. “Wrap it in this first so the cold doesn’t damage your skin.”
Sasquatch in the Paint Page 3