The Final Four (3 page)

Malcolm threw a hand up to wave.

“My mama’s birthday dinner’s tonight,” he hollered back, without breaking his stride. “I gotta go.”

“Don’t party
too
hard with the old folks!”

Malcolm wasn’t an angel. He’d been involved in his share of drama during his first two years of high school. He wanted junior year to be different, though.

He’d been suspended for fighting the semester before, after a beef he had on the basketball court carried over into a classroom. And his father had to pick him up once at the station house when cops nabbed him on the street for underage drinking.

But Malcolm didn’t have any real interest in watching other kids screw around, drink, or get high. He’d seen too many sweeps by the Detroit PD, who’d bust anyone within fifty feet of dudes
dealing drugs. So Malcolm didn’t even cross over to the other side of the street.

A half-block later, Malcolm passed another group of guys camped out around a bench. They were a little older and more serious about
business
. Malcolm recognized them, too. Only this time there weren’t any greetings, just an exchange of hard looks.

At the edge of the four identical fourteen-story project buildings, younger kids were splashing in the spray from an open hydrant. Nearby, middle school girls were spinning ropes, making their own cool breeze. They were jumping double Dutch, popping out rhymes.

Without noticing, Malcolm had changed the rhythm of his dribble to match their cadence.

Over it all was the sound of rap, hip-hop, and R & B mixed together, filtering through the air. Smokey Robinson and Diana Ross, two of his mama’s favorite singers, grew up in these projects. Malcolm knew that was the music she’d want to hear at her birthday dinner. And he was already thinking about putting on
the CD of Smokey’s “My Girl,” just to hear his father sing to her—
Talkin ’bout my girl. My girl.

As Malcolm started for Building 302, his sister, Trisha, came bounding through the front doors and headed down the concrete path towards him.

She was dressed in a gray T-shirt that read
M.L.K. CRUSADERS MARCHING BAND
, with five interlocking rings beneath.

“Think fast, sis,” said Malcolm, sending her a chest-high pass.

Trisha was going to be a senior in September at Martin Luther King High School, where Malcolm was about to become a junior.

“What, you think ballers are the only ones with quick hands?” Trisha shot back, after cushioning the ball to a stop between her fingertips and palms. “Just remember who was the first McBride to play in front of a packed stadium—me.”

The summer before, she’d taken her snare drum and gone with the band to perform at the Olympics in Beijing. They were one of a hundred high school bands invited from around the world. Trisha even played on the Great Wall of China and toured the Forbidden City, where Chinese emperors once lived.

The school raised three hundred thousand dollars in donations to make it happen. Plenty of people from the projects who couldn’t afford it donated five or ten dollars out of pride, to see teens from their neighborhood do something like that.

When she got back home, the first question Malcolm had asked her was about how good the Chinese food was over there. He was disappointed as anything to find out that Trisha hadn’t seen any fried rice, egg rolls, or spareribs on the whole two-week
trip. Instead, she ate dumplings, roast duck, and baby octopus.

“Dinner is all ready. I made meatloaf. It’s in the oven and just needs to be heated up,” said Trisha. “Here’s your job: set the table
after
you shower, and sign Mama’s birthday card. And I don’t mean just print your name. Write something nice in it and make sure you use the word
love
.”

“Here’s your job,”
Malcolm parroted her. “Where are
you
going?”

“I’m doing a favor for Ramona—watching little Sha-Sha in the water while she goes to the store.”

Ramona had been Trisha’s best friend since grade school. When Ramona got pregnant at fifteen, Malcolm’s parents put Trisha under lock and key for a while. But so far, Trisha still seemed to have more interest in school and band practice than running around with boys.

“I’ll be back in about a half hour. Now, take a gut check,” Trisha said, shoving the ball hard into Malcolm’s stomach.

A breath of air popped out of his lungs on impact. “Lucky you’re a female, or I’d knock you flat with the next pass.”

“You just make sure Mama keeps out of the kitchen while I’m gone,” Trisha said from over her shoulder, walking away. “I don’t want her waiting on you or Daddy, not on her b-day.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not your slave either,” said Malcolm. “I see that you doing favors for other people puts more work on me.”

“Deal with it, baby bro!” she called out, without ever looking back. “It’s not always about you!”

In a single leap, Malcolm took the three steps leading up to the
building’s entrance. Going through those double glass doors was like walking into a furnace, with the air inside almost too thick and heavy to breathe. He draped his T-shirt across the back of his neck and hit the buzzer to apartment 1204.

“Who’s there?” asked his mama over the intercom.

It was the last time Malcolm would hear her voice that carefree.

“Me, Mama,” he answered.

Malcolm felt the returning buzz in his hand and heard the lock click as he grabbed the burning-hot door handle.

Inside, his eyes scanned the rows of mailboxes built into the wall, and the new bulletin board postings—

EARN 50K A YEAR WORKING FROM HOME!

LOSE 40 LBS. FIRST MONTH, NO EXERCISE.

SATURDAY NIGHT HOUSE PARTY WITH DJ SCRIBE.

REDUCE HYPERTENSION NOW!

Then Malcolm rode an elevator alone to the twelfth floor. On the way up, he dribbled the ball one time, and the harsh echo off the metal walls pounded back at his eardrums.

When the elevator doors opened, Malcolm heard a growing commotion in the hall. From around the bend, there was loud banging on a door, and snippets of panicked voices.

“Those were gunshots . . .”

“A drive-by, I think . . .”

“Hurt . . .”

“Shot . . .”

“Oh, God no! God, let me be wrong!”

“I have a first and a last name. I’m not just some passerby. I know that some people don’t like this, but they have to understand, no matter how miserable it makes them. There’s room for Europeans (in U.S. basketball).”

—Dražen Petrovic, one of the first European players
to succeed in the NBA, elected to the Hall of Fame
posthumously after his death in a 1993 car accident

7:20 P.M. [CT]

“O
ne, two, three—teamwork!” echoes inside the circle of Trojans as coach Alvin Kennedy, a tall slender black man in his late thirties, breaks the huddle at their bench.

Then, junior Roko Bacic feels a hand on his shoulder.

Kennedy pulls him aside, looks him square in the eye, and says, “This is
your
time. We thrive on your energy. An extra five minutes is nothing for you. Be that Red Bull.”

“If I’d stopped McBride on that shot, we’d be celebrating right now, cutting down the nets,” says Roko, shaking his head in disgust. “That’s on me.”

“You couldn’t have played any better defense. Just let it go,”
says Kennedy, gently shoving Roko onto the court. “You’re the only one that’s got an answer for Malcolm McBride so far. Don’t let him think he’s got something over you. And don’t you believe it, either.”

Walking onto the court with Roko is senior center Crispin Rice and senior forward Aaron Boyce.

“I forget under all this pressure—isn’t basketball supposed to be fun?” Crispin asks in a serious tone, glimpsing his fiancée, Hope Daniels, in the middle of a dance routine. She’s a Troy cheerleader, a stunning blonde with jade eyes and a sleek athletic body.

Before Roko can respond, Aaron, a native of New Orleans, who has more than thirty relatives and friends attending the game, points into the stands and says, “Nah, it’s
their
job to have all the fun. We get to sweat it out under the microscope.”

“I’m with Aaron. His family practically owns this Superdome tonight,” Roko tells Crispin. “Just play loose. Your stroke will come back, C-Rice.”

Then Roko swallows hard, before letting go of a long
belchhhh
.

The night before, Aaron’s mother had the entire Troy team and coaching staff—nearly twenty people—over to her house for dinner. She served crawfish, gumbo, and red beans and rice. For some of the players, including Roko, it was their first taste of Cajun cooking.

“Son, what’s your teammate writing down in that little notebook of his, my dinner menu?” Roko had heard Aaron’s mother asking about him.

“He’s a journalism major, Ma,” answered Aaron, sitting a
few seats away from Roko at the kitchen table. “The Red Bull’s always writing something in that book. He’s practicing to be a reporter one day.”

“So Mr. Red Bull Reporter, let me ask
you
a question,” said Aaron’s mother, setting down another platter of crawfish. “I know you’re from Europe. How do you like that southern-style food they serve in Troy, Alabama?”

“I won’t lie. It took my stomach some getting used to. But I’ve got a taste for grits now,” answered Roko. “And I like the way they deep-fry everything, even the Snickers bars.”

“Deep-fried candy? Well, N’awlins cooking is a different animal,” she said. “It’ll get your motor running hot for sure, so be careful. It’s spicy enough to have you sweating before the big game.”

“I’m feeling the heat already,” said Roko, using a hand to fan his open mouth. “I didn’t know there was hot pepper baked inside the biscuits, not until I ate three.”

“That’s jalapeño bread. We’re full of warm little surprises down here,” she said. “See, we don’t have
guests
to our homes, just extended family. So if there’s anything you need, you come straight to me—your brother’s mother. You hear?”

Roko nodded his head, copying down a few of her words before he shut his notebook.

There wasn’t enough space or chairs in the kitchen for everyone. So people were eating in almost every room of the small house and out on the front porch, too. But when Coach Kennedy made a speech in the living room, everyone did their best to cram inside or into the doorways at either end.

“When I banned cell phones and iPods from our trip to the Final Four, the idea was that it would bring us closer together. That we’d be talking and listening to each other a lot more, like a family,” said Kennedy. “Mrs. Boyce’s hospitality tonight has really reinforced that. Now we have a home and not just a hotel. I think she deserves a round of applause.”

Near the end of the clapping and cheers, Aaron announced, “There’s one more family thing. It was Ma’s idea. Since Roko’s parents couldn’t make it from Croatia, my aunt and uncle agreed to take their place. Come on in!”

The pair made their way into the living room wearing curly red wigs.

“They’ll be the only black people at the game with bright red hair!” Aaron told Roko, over a wave of laughter. “They’re your new peeps!”

“It’s like looking into a mirror,” Roko said with a huge smile across his face, before he hugged them both.

And right now, as Roko gets into position on the court beside Malcolm McBride, he finds his surrogate family in the stands behind the Troy bench and gives them a big thumbs-up. But somehow, instead of making Roko feel better, it only makes him miss his real family even more.