When I check into the game, I know today is another day that will be full of black holes I jump into, chasing after Phat, Mom, and all the life shit that she left behind for me to figure out on my own.
Tomorrow when I wake up curled around the edge of the toilet, I won’t remember Pops throwing his phone at me with theLA Timesarticle loaded on the screen, the tinge of red on Bryson’s cheeks when he glided toward the bench, and all my calls Mom ignored from up in the sky.
* * *
Lourdes
“Talkabout an explosive first game for Lockwood State. After a shaky first quarter against Southern, the Lions found their footing with former Bruin, Ace Williams. I mean, thiskiddominated during this matchup. Thirty-five points, ten rebounds, and fifteen assists,” Scott Van Pelt’s voice booms from the living room. “Lest we forget, former Laker Ason Williams Sr. is the Lion’s new head coach. He’s dominated plenty games in his heyday on and off the court, and most importantly, he’s Ace’s dad. Way to make Pops proud, kid! Now, let’s work on staying outta trouble.”
In a perfect world, playing good basketball would cure cancer and stop gossip, but every time I unlock my phone, I’m reminded in the most obnoxious way that I don’t live in a perfect world anymore. All good basketball does is put a sloppy bandaid on gossip-fueled scandals and it’s another thing involving Ace that I’m bombarded with.
I curl closer to my pillow in bed, scrolling past all the new intrusive tweets that litter my timeline ever since Armageddon happened on Planet Ace.
@RitaVonTease
Our man did his thing last night @babyphat04
@Jason_Jones2
You seen this @babyphat04? Not this dude randomly knocking out sports agents and raping girls. How much you gon' take?
@GimmeMoore23
I feel sorry for @babyphat04. Anybody check on her?
Chelsea did—nonstop. Instead of making up stories about people on campus, she makes them up about Ace. They’re wildly inaccurate and over the top. She was convinced that the showdown between him and Blake was about me being “a black girl” after TMZ plastered the grainy pictures of their scuffle in the Toyota Center parking garage to the world. She was already trying to “mentally prepare me” for when Ace decides to “go back to his Becky loving ways.” This morning, she almost convinced Marcus that he needed to commit me because I stopped answering her calls. It’s the only reason he didn’t leave me alone with Mama.
Then there was Cree. She wouldn’t go back to Los Angeles and she wouldn’t stay out of my phone like she wasn’t in on keeping secrets from me, too. I was “hermana,” “Phat,” and then “Lourdes” the more desperate she was to convince me I should go back home to a man who supposedly did something so foul to herothersister.
Cree: Can you please answer my calls Lourdes? I’m still in Houston. I can’t leave with you and him like this. My spirit won’t let me.
Technically, she could and I didn’t know why a person playing on both sides of a scandalous coin cared so much. If Mama wasn’t stuck today, she’d tell me my gut was trying to say there was more to Ace’s story with its unstable jagged pieces, but how much more could I stomach without throwing it up? My heart is confused on which way to beat again, especially when its owner keeps tugging at it and stroking it from our balcony back at home.
“Look, baby. You see Planet Ace right there?” Ace asks, zooming into the night sky from the chaise on his balcony.
I told myself I wouldn’t open the video messages last night, but my mind is fried from trying to adjust to life back on Earth. So, I keep opening them after closing Twitter. Over and over again.
Stars dot the sky like tiny specks of glitter while I stare at the late night video from my cocoon in bed.
“If I buy a real spaceship for us, will you come home?” He wiggles his pinky finger in front of the camera while I spread my own fingers across the screen to get a better look at it. “I pinky promise I’ll let you be the pilot sometimes and I’ll even get The Dream to hit your line.”
There’s a tequila bottle next to his leg in the second video he sends.
“Did you delete Twitter like I asked?”
I shake my head into my pillow like he can see me.
“You know, one of the only good things about being on Earth is that people’s attention spans arehellashort there. Next week people will forget about us, about me, and about any fucked up man-things I did to hurt your feelings when something more interesting happens, but you gotta follow the leader on this one, kid. Let me make it better. I told you I’d always do that.”
I swallow the chalky taste in my mouth.
“But what about the rest?” I rasp out.
Like the fact that Cheyenne wasn’t just “that white girl from Los Angeles.” She was his friend’s. Or the fact that he drinks so much that there are days he’s lived with black holes in them, so he couldn’t even remember a day that changed his life—a day where he strayed so far from home that he almost didn’t make it back.
All the stuff Coach Williams accused him of torturing himself with had overtaken his life and I couldn’t ignore it anymore—not the drinking or secrets, but I still didn’t hate him for any of it. I was just sorry he had to live that way. I finally put some of those jagged pieces of his story together and so far, the picture it’s forming is uglier than I thought and Istilldidn’t have all the pieces.
A soft tap on my door makes me sink underneath my blanket and swipe out of the video.
