All the Things We Never Knew

by Liara Tamani

  “Word?” I say, staring at Carli in amazement. “Why didn’t I know that?”

  “Well, it’s not exactly like they teach it in school. But wouldn’t it be cool if they did? Or at least if they gave some bonus points for knowing random things? It’s crazy, it’s like every school wants to teach everybody the same exact things, like those are the only important things in life to learn about. But there are sooooo many things in this world to know. Who decides what’s most important, anyway? And why do they get to decide?”

  CARLI

  Usually when I run my mouth this long around a boy, I start feeling stupid, like I need to superglue my lips shut. But the way Rex is looking at me—eyes wide and glazed over with gleam, like he’s staring at something sparkling—is making me feel like there’s some kind of hidden jewel inside me.

  “So, I’m taking it that you’re the question-authority type,” Rex says, reaching for my hand again.

  I interlace my fingers with his. “Never really thought about it like that, but I guess my mom does always say to question everything.”

  “Your mom sounds cool.”

  A wave of irritation rushes up inside of me at the thought of Mom. At the fact that her eyes haven’t been red and puffy for the last two days, and she seems to be getting back to normal (not that I wanted her to cry forever, but this fast?). At the fact that she still hasn’t told me what happened between her and Daddy. “Yeah, but having so many questions leaves me with a lot of stuff unanswered.”

  “You mean Google doesn’t have all the answers?”

  “I wish!” I say, and laugh. Then I ask, “What’s your sign?” I’m thinking he has to be an Aries. He has way too much honesty, even when he’s trying to be funny, to be anything else.

  “My sign?”

  “Yeah, like, when were you born?”

  “August second,” he says, briefly looking down.

  “Oh, a Leo. I can see that, too. Your passion. Not to mention how bold you are.”

  “Bold?”

  “Well, you did come down here putting your arm around me like you knew me and thangs,” I say with a playful attitude.

  “Well, you are sitting here holding my hand like you know me and thangs,” he mimics me in a high voice, then laughs low and deep.

  “That’s not how I talk,” I say, cheesing, and bang my knee against his.

  “I know,” he says, his voice turning serious. “I’m not gonna lie, though. I do already feel like I know you. Not know-you-know-you, obviously, because I just met you. But it’s like somehow, I’ve always known you. Like it took me seeing you to remember. Wait, that doesn’t even make sense. It’s hard to explain. It’s like . . . man, I don’t know.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  “You do?”

  “Yeah,” I say, “it’s just this feeling.”

  “Exactly . . . this feeling,” he says, sliding this thumb gently back and forth across my thumb. “And it didn’t waste no time. I swear it started the first moment I saw you on the court.”

  “Same here. It’s like I didn’t even know what was happening to me. I literally thought you, or what I was feeling for you, was why my body was freaking out.”

  “No you didn’t,” he says, and laughs.

  I laugh, too. “Yes I did! And then it was crazy because I had this . . . No, never mind.”

  “Had what?”

  “I’ve been thinking about you a lot, that’s all,” I say, not wanting to spoil the vision of him. How real it felt.

  “That’s not what you were about to say.”

  No denying that, I look down. But the soft whirling in my chest makes me look back up. “I had a vision of you.”

  “Word?” he says, still sliding his strong thumb gently across my thumb. “What did you see?”

  “Well, you were at the hospital that day I had surgery. It was crazy how real it felt.”

  His face lights up. With all seriousness, if the power in the gym were to go out right now, there would be a beam of light coming from right beside me. “It wasn’t a vision. I was there,” he says.

  “What? But how?”

  “Cole posted where the surgery was going to be that morning, and I had to go . . . had to see you. I don’t usually do things like that. But you got me . . . man, I don’t know. I’ve never felt like this before.”

  His words make me feel beyond good. It’s like every cell in my body is twerking and cartwheeling and high-kicking all over the place. I don’t usually do things like this, either. . . .

  REX

  Carli is kissing me. And it’s warm and soft and wet and sweet. Her lips sandwich my bottom lip and then my top . . . bottom, top, bottom, top, her tongue sliding over mine in between. A final press into both of my lips, and she pulls away far enough to look at me.

  But the way her eyes are moving around my face feels like she’s still kissing me. “One . . . two . . . three,” she counts.

  “Three what?” I ask, smiling, and reach up to touch her hair. A risk. Trust, even before Solange’s song “Don’t Touch My Hair,” I received the memo. But Carli just kissed me, so I figure I get a pass. Plus, I’ve never seen hair so big and long and red and brown and kinky and coily on one person’s head at the same time. It’s soft and smells like jasmine.

  “Four . . . five . . . six. Oh, that one’s nice,” she says, and turns to touch my face with her free hand. She grimaces and straightens out a little. “But I think I like this one best,” she says, and rubs her pointer finger in a tiny circle on the side bridge of my nose before bringing her arm back down.

  She must be talking about my moles. I hate my moles. Hardly ever have to see them since I avoid mirrors. But hearing her talk about them is almost making me want to break out my phone and look at myself. Almost. Instead, I bend down and press my lips to her hand. Then I lift her hand—slightly, gently—and hold it between my hands. “Thank you,” I say.

  “Sure thing,” she says, and nods.

  “No, not about the moles.”

  “So, what are you thanking me for then? Kissing you?” she asks, head cocked to the side, cute and confident as can be.

  “No,” I say, and laugh, trying to think of a good way to put it. But I can’t. Man, it’s like one day I’m getting through life alone, hanging on to any kind of happiness I can find. I mean, I’m doing pretty good, despite the circumstances.

  But then—bam! —here Carli comes, and it’s like a whole new world. A world where I don’t have to feel so damn lonely anymore. “A whole new wooorrld,” I’m singing before I can even stop myself. Man, this girl has me acting corny as hell!

  She laughs the cutest laugh, high-pitched and throaty, with her button nose pinching along the bridge and her straight white teeth showing.

  I’ll be a cornball all day every day if this is the reward.

  “Aladdin? You are not singing the Aladdin song right now!”

  And then a different voice, a much deeper voice, from behind, “Rex!”

  A whistle blows. Sneakers squeak against the gym floor. People around us chant “Defense!” as our JV team takes the ball up the court. Two girls, a bench up behind Carli, are snickering and looking at us. Trying to reorient myself to the world outside of Carli is making me dizzy. Everything’s rushing at me all at once.

  “Rex!” I hear again, closer.

  Carli looks up, over my right shoulder, and the residue of laughter wipes clean off her face.

  CARLI

  “Rex!” A short, muscly man walking up behind Rex shouts. He looks pissed, eyebrows pulled down over his small eyes. He needs to stop, lift those brows back up. His hairline-forehead combo is unfortunate enough. It’s like they can’t stand to be around each other—forehead jutting forward and hairline running back—far, far away.

  Rex lets go of my hand and stands up.

  The man walks past us and makes a strong wave motion for Rex to follow. The man is wearing khakis and a dark green vest over a white polo shirt, which is way too tight around hi
s biceps. Dark green and white, same colors as Rex’s warm-ups. That’s got to be his coach.

  Rex follows him to the side of the bleachers, near the entrance, where the man snatches Rex by the elbow. Rex doesn’t pull away. Then with his other hand, the man starts waving his pointer finger in Rex’s face.

  Look, I get chastising players for not being where they’re supposed to be . . . not sitting with the team. Coach Hill does it, too. Makes us run suicides the next day after school. But is all this finger-waving and elbow-grabbing business really necessary? This man is being extra.

  And Rex is standing there taking it. He’s more than a foot taller than the man, but by the way he’s standing with his head all down and his shoulders all hunched over, you can barely tell. It’s like he’s leaning into the verbal beating. I hate it.

  Doesn’t Rex know who he is? He’s Rex Carrington! He’s ESPN’s high school player of the year, for Christ’s sake! And I wish I could remember all the other things Cole told me, but it’s a lot. Way too much to be standing there taking that man’s shit.

  Rex wipes his face.

  And then I realize he’s crying.

  And this familiar feeling shoots through me. It’s the same deep-throated darkness I feel when I see Daddy sad. Everything in me wants to go to Rex. Wants to tell that man to fuck off. But I’d only get him into more trouble.

  Head hanging, Rex exits the gym without looking back. When his coach walks past me, I catch him giving me a once-over.

  Fifteen minutes later Rex comes back through the gym’s double doors in street clothes—gray T, black Nike joggers, and some Jordans 1s. Damn, I can’t believe his coach is benching him for the game. Because of me. Along the sidelines Rex walks toward me but won’t look at me. Won’t even look in my direction.

  My eyes are on his eyes, pleading with them to connect, but he looks straight ahead, gaze cold. Everything in me freezes with the fear that this thing between us that only just began is already over.

  He’s three strides away from me, and my eyes are practically on their knees begging him to look at me, but he won’t even give me a glance. Two strides and still nothing. One stride, and all the color inside me starts to drain. He’s passing me and it’s over.

  But when I hang my head, I see a small, folded note in my lap.

  The Sum Color

  REX

  I’m sitting at my desk trying to figure out how many four-digit numbers there are with at least one repeating digit, but I can’t even concentrate. It’s almost midnight, and Carli still hasn’t called.

  What if she didn’t get the paper with my number inside? My shot has been off lately. It could’ve missed her lap and landed on the floor. Or what if she got it and decided not to call? Man, I felt like such the asshole walking right past her and not saying anything. But I couldn’t get into any more trouble.

  I’m no closer to solving the problem when my phone rings. My heart leaps, but it’s only Nya. She’s been calling and texting with weak apologies since last Sunday—she didn’t know what she was saying . . . it was the devil . . . please take her back. Straight to voice mail, where I’ve been sending her. She calls again. Straight to voice mail. And again. You already know.

  Another five minutes and my phone rings with a number I don’t recognize. It could be Nya calling from a friend’s phone. Plenty of girls have gotten me with that trick. But what if it’s Carli? I can’t take the risk. “Hello,” I answer.

  “Hey, it’s Carli.”

  “Hey,” I say, relieved.

  “Hope I’m not calling too late. Just got off the phone with my dad.”

  “It’s all good. You gave me some more time to try to figure out this math problem for a little extra credit.”

  “Did you figure it out?”

  “Nah.”

  “You want me to let you go?”

  “Nah, never. I mean, nah. Just plain nah. Not never. Never would be weird.” Really, Rex? I stand up, trying to rid myself of these damn nerves. I thought they’d gotten used to Carli at the gym, but a few hours of separation and they don’t know how to act again.

  “I swear your nervousness is the cutest thing ever,” Carli says, and hits me with a little high-pitched laugh that calms me down a bit.

  I walk over to my bed, pick up the three T-shirts that lost in the what-to-wear battle this morning, and toss them onto my desk chair. “I have all week to figure it out, though. Mrs. Johnson only gave us the problem today.”

  “Dang, you must love you some math.”

  “Yeah, it’s cool,” I say, and lay back on my bed. I want to tell her that it’s mostly a means to an end. That one day, after basketball takes me however far it will take me, I want to be a landscape architect. I want to design dope spaces that will bring people closer to trees. And my math needs to be on point for that. But just thinking about saying so many words right now is making my nerves act up again.

  “What’s your favorite number?”

  “I don’t know. I guess if I could name the largest number at any given moment, that would be my favorite.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “I don’t know. There’s something reassuring about the fact that numbers never run out . . . that they keep getting higher and higher, forever and ever. It’s like numbers never really die.”

  “Oooo, I like that,” she says, in a voice that takes my mind back to kissing her. “But I thought you would’ve said twelve.”

  Her shadowy lips pull away from mine, and I’m back to staring at my white ceiling. “Yeah, I guess twelve is my lucky number. It was on the very first practice jersey I wore. Picked it out of a bag at my first basketball camp when I was seven, and I’ve kept it ever since.”

  “The number twelve is super connected to the cosmic bodies, you know.”

  “Oooo, I like that,” I say, mimicking her again. Partly because it made her laugh when I did it earlier at the game, but mostly because it feels good having the sound of her in my mouth.

  “Yeah? Well, I have more where that came from. Did you know that the moon moves twelve degrees around its orbit every day?”

  “Nope.”

  “Well, it does. And you know there’s twelve months in a year because they chopped up the number of days it takes the Earth to rotate around the sun by the number of days it takes the moon to rotate around the Earth, right?”

  “Yeah, I think I knew that,” I answer, although I’m pretty sure I didn’t.

  “And there are twelve zodiac signs.”

  “You’re really into that kind of stuff, huh?

  “Yeah, that kind of stuff is interesting to me,” she says defensively.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. It does sound interesting,” I try to assure her.

  But she doesn’t respond.

  I bring my hand up to my forehead, trying to think back to what I said and how I said it and how it might have hurt her, but I can’t find my crime. Doesn’t matter, I’m clearly guilty. I want to apologize and tell her I didn’t mean it, but I’ve already said that. Seconds of silence pass, and they feel like forever. “Sorry about earlier at the game. I would’ve stopped and said good-bye, but my coach.”

  “It’s okay. I hope I didn’t get you into too much trouble,” she says, sounding like she’s already forgiven me.

  I relax my arm back down by my side.

  “I can’t believe your coach made you sit out the game. He seems like a real asshole.”

  Her criticism of Coach stings, but I say, “Nah, he’s cool. Just trying to make sure I stay focused, that’s all.” I don’t tell her that Coach comes up to the school every morning at five thirty a.m. to open the gym for me. I don’t tell her that he’s always studying my game so he can help pinpoint areas that need improvement. I definitely don’t tell her that he believes in me. Or that his belief in me often makes me wish that I was his son.

  Meanwhile, I haven’t seen my real father since last week. I literally have not seen him or any evidence of him. The house hasn’t eve
n been cold. But telling her that my coaches have always been the closest thing I’ve had to a dad is out of the question.

  “But he was all up in your face. I mean, was it that serious? Your game wasn’t even close to starting.”

  I roll over on my side and stare out of my sliding-glass doors. The moon is bright in the sky and lights up the tops of the pine trees. “Nah, it’s only that the playoffs are so close. And he knows how many scouts will be there.”

  “So what’s your top school?”

  “Man, I don’t even know. I just wanna go somewhere I can shine for a year. I’m trying to be one-and-done.”

  “Dang, big baller!” she says, her voice smiling at me hard through the phone, making me feel like I’ve already made it. “When you get to the NBA, you better not start acting brand-new!”

  “First of all, brand-new? Nah, never that. And secondly, the statistical chances of me going to the league at all is about .03 percent, like three in every ten thousand dudes. So I’m not bettin’ on it or anything,” I tell Carli. But really, I’m all but bettin’ on it. I already know what team I want to play for. And no, it’s not Los Angeles. I’m thinking San Antonio. Gregg Popovich’s teams always seem like a family.

  “Boy, don’t play modest with me. You are not the average player. And you still have another year.”

  She’s making me feel so good it’s embarrassing. “But what about you? Don’t you have dreams of playing in the league one day?” I ask to get the attention off of me. “I bet the top schools are already sending you letters. And you know they’ll all be coming to the playoffs to see you in a few weeks, big baller!”

  Carli goes quiet.

  Damn, I forgot about the surgery. What if she won’t be back in time for the playoffs? Great, just great. Here I am the asshole again.

  CARLI

  The stupid playoffs. I don’t tell him I could care less about which scouts will be there because I don’t want to play basketball anymore. I don’t tell him that I’m more concerned with which color Le Pen to pull from my Pamela Barsky canvas pencil pouch than being able to run up and down a court. He sounds way too excited, and I’m not ready to burst his bubble. I’m not ready to tell him that I don’t love the game like he does.