“He don’t wanna hang out with your country bumpkin ass, Quan,” my other neighbor Bryson chimes in.
“Why you all in our conversation, bro? This between me and Hollywood. Not your ‘freshman—can’t even get a bitch to sneeze his way—don’t know if you wanna be Mexican or black—forever in the friend zone head ass.’ So stay out grown folks’ business.”
“Got ‘emmm!” the rest of the team wakes up from their afternoon slumps to chime in.
It’s not justified, but then again, it kinda is, because every nigga had to know his place in the locker room—especially the young ones. It’s the pecking order, and one thing about pecking orders is that they don’t happen overnight. Bryson Sanchez is at the very bottom because he’s a lame freshman with a big mouth. What’s even worse than him being a lame freshman is that he has my spot on the team because Pops doesn’t believe in nepotism. He says it was created for untalented white kids—not me.
“Man, fuck you!” Bryson waves his hand.
LaQuan pulls at the spiry twists on his head and looks at me with his lips cocked to the side as if to say, “anyway” but I’m already fishing my headphones out of my backpack and fumbling with the power button.
“Guys, guys, settle down,” Marquise Brown, a small forward, mocks in his most proper voice. “If we don’t stop, Bryson’s gonna tell his girlfriend on us.”
“Girlfriend?” LaQuan howls. “That boy don’t even know what pussy smell like.”
That one makes me chuckle while I press the side of my headphones.
“Nah… he knows what it smell like ‘cause he got one. That’s why his girl don’t want to give it up. She know she might as well be scissoring another bitch.”
I toss the headphones on top of my head and kick my slides off while glancing at Bryson and his tomato red cheeks.
I can hear that shiny court begging for my sneakers through the locker room’s double doors because I’m still trying to make up for the time they spent apart. In the HPE at Lockwood there’s no avalanche of blue with people yelling my name at the top of their lungs, cardboard cutouts with my face, or space. It’s quiet and little with broken equipment, but I can’t trip about it. It’s the last court Marshall hooped on and another place Pops thinks is his, so he’s obsessed with it and all the people it comes with.
“Aye!” I cut in, shoving my feet in my sneakers.
Their rumbling laughter creeps to a stop, and I feel their eyes piercing into my body as I pull my phone out of my pocket. “Ya’ll shut the fuck up. Let homie breathe.”
LaQuan smacks his lips, and Marquise stifles a laugh after glimpsing at Bryson.
“A’ight,Cali,” Marquise mutters. “We coolin’. We coolin’.”
They can finish getting on Bryson’s head when I finish making love to Marshall’s old court with Dough blasting through my headphones, because lately he was the only one that got me.
CHAPTERTWO
Lourdes
“Come on, Phat. Ask Marcus again,” Chelsea begs, leaning in so close, her hot breath touches my ear.
Sneakers squeak against the freshly polished gym floor as the boys’ basketball team trots out.
I scoot forward and search for Bryson’s wild hair on the court. “I asked him this morning, and the answer was the same as it was yesterday. I ain’t asking again.”
She smacks her lips. “What if this is the last line they have until we graduate? I can’t cross without you.”
“A—you don’t even know if you’re going to make it past the interest meeting, let alone cross. B—you don’t even know where that shit is. You heard a rumor about where it might be.”
“I heard from a reliable source!”
Bryson’s curly mop comes into my line of vision and I scoot forward again, digging my elbows into my thighs. “Some random girl’s tweet ain’t a reliable source.”
“She’s not random. We’re lab partners in chemistry. How you even think I started following her?”
I roll my eyes.
The random girlwasrandom and I know Chelsea didn’t strike up a conversation with her outside of the internet. She’s too shy to do anything as brave as that.
I whip my head from Bryson as he jogs past our spot in the bleachers. “Are y’all really lab partners or do you just stare at her from across the room during lab because she’s Greek?”
