Teammates, Page 4

serious.

  “You already know what we’re starting with; make sure to call out the zone immediately if you see it. Loudly,” Jason pointed his stubby fingers for emphasis. “And if the play works and Jerome dunks all over their big kid, what do we do?”

  “Keep your face straight,” Kevin said solemnly.

  “Keep your faces straight,” Jason tried not to yell. “Act like we’ve been here before, because we have. Let’s fuck with their heads today!”

  Mr. B, the staff advisor and not-quite-assistant-coach cringed at the f-bomb and the team got in tighter and raised their fists onto Jason’s head. “One-two-three,” Jerome screamed. “Together,” they all responded. “Let’s GOOO,” Kevin yelled.

  As they broke their huddle and the starters walked calmly on the court, Jerome saw one of baby gangsters crack open the door in the corner. In bounced Isaiah and his partner from earlier. Jerome looked toward the main gym doors where the principal and a few Phys. Ed. teachers were acting as gate-keepers; they hadn’t noticed. He looked back at Isaiah and they made eye contact. Isaiah broke into a grin and made a salute motion as he followed his serious-faced friend in front of the bleachers to the opposite corner where a smaller, older group of gangsters were loitering. Jerome grinned too. He was happy his friend would see this game.

  They won the tip and the play worked perfectly. Jerome got the ball on the right wing and called for a screen from their center, but before the screen got there, he swung it back to the guard up top, who swung it quickly to Kevin on the opposite wing. Jerome used the screen to cut back door and caught Kevin’s floating pass on the way up. By the time VP’s center turned around, all he saw were Jerome’s shorts as Jerome jerked the ball back and slammed it through the basket.

  Jerome’s teasing of the home crowd during the warm-ups earlier made its detonation now that much fiercer, like when an old-school hip-hop act waits until the very end of a concert to perform its biggest classic. The floor shook and the bleachers swayed. The hood dudes had their gun-fingers blowing imaginary holes in the ceiling and might have been kicking the back door, because it opened and closed at least twice.

  It was absolute bedlam. It felt like an earthquake, and the baby gangster corner was the epicenter. They bounced off each other in their excitement, looking like a baggy, thugged-out mosh pit. The principal and the two burliest gym teachers hurried up the baseline toward the corner like bouncers at a nightclub heading to break up a fight. A couple of especially grimy-looking hoods slipped out of the fray and walked along the sideline in front of the bleachers, surveying the crowd as if looking for empty spots to blend in with the civilians and avoid the principal’s threats.

  Despite all the excitement, Jerome and his teammates jogged back on defense with absolutely no reaction on their faces. Kevin looked especially blank-faced, like a man arriving late for a funeral. The Henry bench was unmoved, and Coach Jason put a look of deep concentration on his face. They actually managed to look nearly identical to the dejected Victoria Park bench.

  VP’s point guard was visibly affected by the escalating hysteria and rushed up the court looking to pass it to a teammate on the right wing near the foot of the bleachers. At the last second he thought he saw his team’s best scorer open on the opposite wing and began to aim a two-hand chest pass in that direction, but Jerome jumped forward quickly, stretching his long left arm in denial of the pass. The guard nearly took an illegal third step, jumped awkwardly and whipped it back toward the opposite wing where he’d originally planned to throw it. Kevin stole the dreadful pass on the run and the VP guard fled back on D, seeing his mistake the second the pass had left his hands. But Kevin flicked it cross-court to Jerome who was a couple steps ahead of him. The frazzled VP guard nearly tripped over himself scrambling to switch sides and cut off Jerome’s path to the basket, while the other seven players on the court trailed well behind the two-on-one break. The poor guard lost the race, but instead of dunking again or even laying the ball in, Jerome flipped it softly off the backboard. The crowd, the players and the benches let out a collective breath. Then Kevin, all five-feet-nine-and-a-half-inches of him, sprang up into the air, stretched out his right arm as long as it would go, grabbed the floating basketball and crushed it through the rim with all his might.

  There were no straight faces this time. Kevin’s was twisted with excruciating joy and Jerome opened his mouth so wide to yell it looked like he could’ve swallowed the basketball. The Henry bench jumped all over itself and Coach Jason and Mr. B jumped to push them back from the sideline, screaming and smiling themselves. The noise was deafening and the sound reverberated to the walls and back. Kids in black and red rugby shirts ran up and down the sideline, teetering into each other and nearly falling onto the court. The floor shook harder, the bleachers swayed further and the thugs in both corners blew more imaginary holes in the ceiling. They sounded like real gunshots.

  Sparks and shattered glass fell from the ceiling. One of the grimy dudes that had appeared to be looking for a spot in the bleachers was now firing at Ice in the far corner. Silence shot through the gym; or what felt like silence because the cheering brought on by the game’s first two plays were so much more thunderous than the scattering and screaming that prevailed now.

  People in both crowded corners fought to get out of the back doors and guys were jumping off the side of the bleachers, girls in high-heeled boots following without hesitation. Ice took off down the baseline away from the crowd, under the basket toward the unmanned door the players from the VP bench were scuttling through.

  Jerome felt a sharp pain in the left side of his chest and was slammed back toward the baseline. He had been running to tackle Kevin in celebration when he recognized the sound of gunfire. He tried to drop to the ground because the shooting hadn’t stopped, but somehow didn’t have the strength to get down, so he fell slowly into blackness.

  Isaiah froze when he saw Jerome go down. “Where the fuck is your cousin?” The shooter paused to scream at him from where he was standing and pointing the gun on the court near the sideline not far from half-court. He lifted the weapon to fire again, but Isaiah’s cousin jumped out from his hiding place at the side of the bleachers and popped two perfectly-placed shots into the shooter’s chest. He dropped heavily and the dull grey pistol cludded to the floor.

  His partner, who was a few steps behind in the center-circle, took off running toward the main gym doors. As Isaiah’s cousin aimed carefully, a voice boomed out from the opposite sideline near the scorer’s table, which was overturned and had three people huddled behind it.

  “Police! Put it down!” The part-time referee, full-time cop had run for his bag, unlocked it and pulled his gun out of its holster. He was now crouched athletically on one knee, pointing it squarely at the wild-eyed ex-con. “Put it down Isaac,” the cop said, recognizing the long-faced gunman that Jerome had not.

  Isaac started to turn toward the cop. Isaiah screamed, “Zack! Put it d—” The cop put two .40 calibre bullets into Isaac’s midsection before he even turned all the way around to aim or shoot. He collapsed. Isaiah collapsed. Kim and several boys in black-and-red rugby jerseys poked their heads out from hiding spots under the bleachers. She collapsed.

  Isaiah sat in a cold interview room at the police station. He knew he was going to be here a while. His best friend might be dead. His cousin, who he’d looked up to his whole life, for better or worse, was definitely dead. But though Isaiah’s heart was heavy, his mind was clear. He wasn’t doing any of the soul-searching and mind-racking that people usually do in these rooms.

  On the short ride from the school to 33 Division, Isaiah had decided three things. First of all, he was done with drugs; smoking them, selling them, going to jail for them, all of it. Done. Second, he didn’t want anyone to call him Ice ever again. Who the hell was he trying to be anyway? “My name is Isaiah,” he said out loud to the plexiglass dividing the front and back seats. Third, no matter what it took and how much work he’d have to put in…


  The door opened with a bass squeak. In walked the cop with the dead-eye marksmanship, now out of his referee stripes. He sat opposite Isaiah and pulled his chair up to the table. The look in his eyes was sad, but stern. “You almost died today Isaiah,” he said. “What are you going to do about that?”

  He knew what he wanted to do, but he didn’t think the cop would believe he could make it happen. He didn’t even know if he believed he could, and he was exhausted, so he just rested his forehead on the metal table top and went to sleep.

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  Epilogue

  News cameras from every local station are there to document the Lions every step as they sprint out of “the tunnel” into their packed, noisy gym for the first game of the season against Victoria Park. The black-and-red rugby shirts and hockey jerseys are in the front row, the pretty girls in the second, the pretty boys at the top and the baggy, wannabe thugs in the corner. Kim is there, teary-eyed and smiling, beautiful as ever.

  There is no pre-game speech, no moment of silence, only Jay Z, Rihanna, Drake and hundreds of teenagers singing and rapping along. Just tall, skinny boys jumping higher and higher on every lay up and their