Saint Christopher stomped us bad and I got benched while still had five minutes left, on the end of the bench I dropped a towel over my head and let everything be dark and stink and muffled. Just before the towel covered my eyes I saw two scouts up near the rafters, packing up their cameras and laptops and heading for the door.
Maybe they weren’t there for see me.
* * *
HAD A REST DAY after Saint Christopher, and I was home from study hall watching SportsCenter. There was the Top Ten with windmill dunks and over-the-wall catches, holes in one and right hooks for the knockout, all of it giving crowds that roar, same as I used to give us.
Someone entered the room from behind and a sandwich bag of my buds came plopping into my lap. Noa’s voice said, “Saw this in one of your shoeboxes.”
I rolled my head back since he was behind the couch, so I was looking at him upside down, and I was all, “What, you’re going through my stuff now?”
“You need to be more original than a shoebox. Plus,” Noa said, “I thought you were done with this.”
I rolled my head forward and looked at the lumps of sweet pakalolo inside the Zig Zag papers.
“Don’t you got some cancer to cure?” I said. “‘Ukulele masterpieces to write?”
“I thought you said you’d quit,” he said again.
“I did,” I said, which was true.
“If that’s quitting then my farts don’t stink.”
“Might as well they don’t, the way you act,” I said. “Nose up in the air when you’re the one that’s all bust-up. Anyway, I bet this bag is short from you lifting buds from it.”
“I didn’t touch it,” he said. “Nothing’s wrong with me.”
I go back to watching SportsCenter. “Yeah, right. Almost no one coming around our house anymore, yeah? And the ones that does get sent away by Mom and Dad. Goes like this,” I said, then in my best Mom and Dad voice, “We’ve decided it’s for the best that he takes a break from helping people for a little while. Please don’t come back until you hear from us.”
For just a second he was fully surprised, but he fixed it fast. “Yeah, I bet you’re happy,” he said. “I bet you smile every time you close the door on someone.”
“I ain’t happy we’re broke.”
That shut him up. On SportsCenter there was Tiger Woods, sticking it to everyone else, Vijay Singh just behind him, and I’m all, I bet there’s some pissed-off haoles at the country clubs tonight.
After a minute Noa said, “We’re still better than we were on the Big Island.” The way he said it was almost like he was sorry, like he didn’t want a fight anymore. Might as well he just admitted something’s wrong. But I couldn’t stop myself.
“I mean I guess,” I said. “But no thanks to you anymore. Mom and Dad been counting on you.”
Then he was all tight and cold. “That’s the problem,” he said. “That’s all you guys think about. Us, us, us. This is bigger than Mom or Dad. Bigger than all of us, bigger than me just making chump change for our family—”
“Ain’t nothing bigger than our family,” I said. But I maybe said it, too, because I could tell he was right, that the things he was gonna be was bigger than all of us. “That’s what’s wrong with you.”
“The drugs, though, Dean,” Noa said. Him all rubbing his face like he was talking to a bad dog. “Don’t be stupid.”
Mom was right, I wasn’t sorry. I figured if I hit his teeth hard enough he’d swallow them. “Just shut up,” I said. “I oughta knock you out.” My muscles was all heat, and the only thing that kept me from hitting him again was how it felt the time before when I did it. So I turned the volume up.
“Dean,” he said. “Shit. I’m sorry.”
“Whatever,” I said.
“It doesn’t have to be like this,” he said.
“Then what does it gotta be like,” I said.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and I knew what was in his voice, it was true. I should’ve said sorry, too, I should’ve clapped his hand and maybe clowned around or something, tried to go back to before, when we was just brothers. Only I couldn’t. There was too much in between. Too much of him.
Watch me rise, I wanted for say, you watch what I do the next five, ten years, you watch me on SportsCenter. Won’t be nothing bigger, only I’ll be it just for our family. But he was gone, and we hadn’t finished what we’d started. So I said to the empty room, “And I don’t need for sell nothing anymore. I don’t.”
* * *
THE WHOLE WEEK AFTER, Coach went at us hard. We kept losing games. Last one that time was to Kuakini by seventeen. Us at practice, maybe a few days before the game against Kahena Academy, and Coach was all, Kahena is going to be on you like it’s prison and they’re selling your buttholes for cigarettes, and you deserve it, too, if we lose I’m the first one putting up the highlights on YouTube. He dragged two trash cans out from the bathroom and put one at each end of the court and said, We’re doing suicides until someone pukes, and then we did, we sprinted back and forth to the touch lines until our legs was all beat to wobble and the blood in my chest was like a whole cave on fire. Every time Coach hollering and keeping his stopwatch, and if we couldn’t match the last one he made us run another.
Alika stopped after the fifty-something suicide and palu’d into the trash can. We watched his stomach squeeze and the way his legs wiggled just before it came up and then the spatter as it hit the bottom of the can.
“Now you know how I felt after our game last night,” Coach said, standing next to Alika but staring at all of us. “Every time I watch the film of our sorry-ass loss I’m going to be like Alika is now. What’s your problem?” Coach asked me. Must’ve been I was staring at him.
And I wanted for be like: I don’t know what happens next.
“I said what’s your problem,” Coach said.
I could talk big in front of Noa, but maybe won’t none of it get better.
“Nothing,” I said, hands on my knees, sucking wind. “I don’t got a problem, Coach.”
I stopped by J. Yamamoto on the way back from practice, even though I had the drunk head of too much workout and not enough water. I was off the bus and walking through the mist from the hot rain that just finished sizzling on the blacktop, and the shopping carts was all hissing and crashing across the lot while the workers lined ’um up and I stood at the huge J. Yamamoto front windows and watched my mom. She was in full-on work mode: green apron, fingers pecking at the keys, and easy wrist flicks to close the register drawer every time after she gave change.
Her eyes would go down and up when she looked from the groceries to the customer. I remember ’um clear, because it made me think of my application days. That first letter, how when it came Mom started with a bright voice, all, Here’s one from Kahena Academy! And if the letter was lighter than we thought no one said nothing and then we were all ripping it open and Dad’s hand gripped my shoulder and Mom’s eyes swooped low with reading and then her eyes came back up wet heavy and she said, Okay. Okay.