Triple Threat (3 page)

“Shame you're using your special ball to lose.”

“Big talk. Take it out.”

Kia smiled. “I'll take it out and then put it in … in the hoop.” She tossed me the ball. “Check.”

I tossed it back to her. “Ball in.”

She started dribbling. I knew her moves. I knew what she would try to do to beat me, and I'd be ready. She knew me as well, the best ways to beat me. Playing against somebody you knew this well was as much a mind game as a physical game.

“So you coming out to get me?” Kia asked as she continued to dribble outside the three-point line.

“Nope. I'm happy here,” I said, one foot in the paint, one outside, on an angle that would force her to her left—her weak side.

“Hey!” yelled out a loud, deep voice.

I turned toward the voice and Kia used that split second to slip by me and put up an easy lay-up for a basket.

“That's not fair!” I exclaimed.

“Can't let the crowd interfere with your—”

“What do you think you're doing?” called out the same voice.

This time we both looked. There were three guys—big teenager, high school guys—walking toward us.
They were all dressed in basketball gear, right down to headbands on their shaved heads. One of them was white and the other two were black. All three were big, but the white guy was really big. Behind them, sitting in the shade of a large tree, were another dozen or so guys. We hadn't noticed them.

The three guys strolled up and in through the gate.

“What you kids doing?” the largest of the three asked.

“Just playing ball,” I said nervously.

“You can't play ball here,” he snarled. “Go away.”

“Sure, no prob–”

“Why can't we play here?” Kia demanded.

“Because it's our court,” said the second guy.

I started to walk over to get my bag when Kia grabbed me by the arm.

“Hang on. What do you mean, your court?” she asked. “It belongs to the city.”

“It may belong to the city, but we own it. The three of us. We earned this court by being the best there is. We're the three-on-three champions of River Grove Recreation Center.”

“Congratulations,” I said, trying to figure out what else I could say.

“Yeah, gee, congratulations,” Kia said. “The champions of a whole rec center…real impressive. We were the champions of the whole city last summer. We won Hoop It Up at the exhibition last year.”

“I didn't know they had a division for babies,” one of them said, and the other two laughed.

I looked over anxiously toward the gate. What I saw didn't make me feel any better. All of the other guys had gotten up off the grass and were hanging on the fence, looking and listening in and laughing.

“We were just playing here because we didn't know,” I apologized.

“You weren't even on the court,” Kia added.

“So what? You got a house, little girl?” the guy demanded.

What sort of a question was that?

“Yeah, of course I have a house.”

“And are you there right now?”

“Of course not,” Kia said. “I'm here.”

“Even if you're here, it's still your house. Wouldn't you be mad if I just showed up in your house when you weren't home, without an invitation or your permission? You'd call the cops, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, this is our house. Even when we're not on it, you don't come in without our permission.”

“We didn't know,” I said. “Do you think that maybe we could play a little?”

“Too late. Can't break in and then ask for permission. Beat it!”

“Kia, we've got to get going and—”

“Yeah, Kia, you better listen to your boyfriend,” the third guy taunted.

“He's not my boyfriend! Just because you can play some ball doesn't mean you can chase people off the court who want to play, you know.”

“You tell 'em, girl!” one of the guys at the fence yelled out, and the others started laughing.

The three guys didn't look like they thought it was that funny. Actually, it wasn't. This was no laughing matter, and getting people who were big and angry even angrier was not a good strategy.

“Maybe she has a point,” the biggest guy said.

“She does?” asked one of his friends. He sounded as surprised at his words as I was.

He shrugged. “Maybe we shouldn't just chase them off. Fair is fair.”

Those weren't words that I expected to be coming out of his mouth.

“If they want to stay, all they have to do is play … play us.”

“What?” I asked in shock.

“You think you can play ball. You beat us and you can rule the court.”

“We can't play you,” I said in disbelief.

“Why not, no guts?” he laughed.

“Like it takes a lot of guts to bully a couple of kids who are half your age,” Kia said.

“Don't matter how big or how old you are. You play, you win, you rule. You want to play us or what?”

“You're like twice our size. How fair is that?” Kia asked.

“Yeah, but we're only the champions here at River Grove and you're the champions of the whole city, so doesn't that make it even?” he chided.

“Come on, get real,” Kia said. “We won against kids our age.”

“Then maybe you should go and find some kids your age and go someplace else to play. This court is for the big boys.”

“Big jerks,” Kia snarled.

“Kia, cool it,” I said under my breath.

“You may not have noticed, or can't count, but there are only two of us,” Kia said.

“More like two halves. Either way, though, you want to be here, you have to earn it. Come back when you have a third player. You can get anybody you want. Anybody! But until then … scram!”

Suddenly he reached out and grabbed my ball away from Kia. Without any warning, and before we could even think to react, he dropped the ball to the ground and gave it a tremendous kick. It soared up and up and up and over the fence. It landed in the parking lot and bounced out into the street, just clearing the roof of an oncoming car and narrowly missing a truck. Then it rolled down the street, straight toward a city bus. In seconds the ball disappeared beneath the bus and there was a huge
bang
! The bus just kept going. There on the road—all squashed flat—was my ball! It had been run over by the back wheels.

“My ball!” I screamed.

“Ain't much of a ball now!” somebody joked. “More like a pancake!”

The three guys, and those standing by the fence, all broke into laughter.

“Nice shot!” somebody yelled out.

“Way to go!” another voice screamed.

“Now, the two of you better leave through the gate
or that basketball isn't the only thing I'm going to boot over the fence!” the big guy threatened.

I stood there, open-mouthed, shocked, unable to think or talk or react. Kia grabbed me by the hand. “Come on, Nick, let's go.”

I trailed after her. She reached down to grab the two backpacks and led me out through the gate. I felt stunned and just stumbled forward. I heard lots more laughter as we left. I didn't look back. I wanted to get away as fast as possible. I couldn't understand. Why had he done that? How could anybody be that mean? I just didn't understand.

I stared at the remains of the ball in my hands. Kia had run onto the street to rescue it. There wasn't much to rescue. Purple rubber roadkill.

“I can't believe he did that,” I said. We stood there, by the rec center but out of sight of the basketball court.

“The guy is a big, mean jerk. I hate bullies, just hate them,” Kia said. “I'm sorry.”

“So am I.”

“No, I mean I'm sorry because this was my fault.”

“How do you figure that?” I asked.

“This wouldn't have happened if I'd just kept my mouth shut and we'd left.”

“Kia, you're my best friend, but you can
never
keep your mouth shut. You know that.”

“I know, but this time I should have. You can't reason with a bunch of stupid gorillas like that.”

“Reasoning is one thing. Insulting them is another. But still, it wasn't your fault. You weren't the one who did that to my ball.”

“But if I'd just shut up, maybe he wouldn't have kicked it over the fence. I'm sorry … that's all.”

I shook my head slowly. “I don't get it. What makes people like that tick? What's the big thrill of picking on somebody half your size and age?”

“I don't know, but if I was twice his size I'd find out pretty quick,” Kia said with a laugh. “I'd kick his ball, then his butt, over that fence.”

“No you wouldn't.”

“Why wouldn't I?” Kia said.

“Because you're not a bully. I've never seen you pick on anybody and I don't think you're going to start now. It's not you.”

“If I was twice as big as him, maybe I'd start.”

I opened up my backpack and carefully put the flattened ball inside.

“What do you think your parents are going to do when you tell them what happened?” Kia asked.

“I'm hoping not to find out because I'm not going to tell them.”

“Why not? Maybe they can call the police or your dad can come down here or—”

“None of that is going to happen. I don't want them to know anything about it. If we tell them about those guys, they'll probably decide that we shouldn't be coming here by ourselves.”

“I hadn't thought about that. Knowing how over-protective your mother is, she may not let you go anywhere by yourself again.”

“Don't laugh. If my parents won't let me go, do you think your parents will?” I asked.

“Even if you don't tell them, what are your parents going to say when they see the ball?” Kia asked.

“I'm going to put it in my closet where they're not going to see it.”

“If you really don't want them to see it, wouldn't it be better if you just tossed it out?” she suggested.

“I guess it would, but I can't do that.” I closed the zipper. “It was a present from my dad, and it was signed and everything.”

“I guess it still is signed,” Kia commented.

“Autographed roadkill.”

“That's too bad. If your parents do see it, or they ask you where it is when they don't see it in the display case, what are you going to tell them?” Kia asked.

“I'm going to tell them that it was run over by a bus. I'm going to tell them the truth … or at least half of the truth. I'm just not going to tell them what caused the ball to get under the bus to begin with.”

“I guess it's just our secret.” Kia paused. “Do you still want to go swimming?”

“I don't think so. You?”

“Nope. You know what I'd really like to do?”

“What?” I asked.

“I'd like to go back on that court and beat those guys.”

“Yeah, like that's going to happen. They're like seventeen years old.”

“Maybe older.”

“It doesn't matter if they're seventeen or twenty-seven or seventy-seven because—”

“Actually, if they were seventy-seven we could probably take them,” Kia said, cutting me off. “Senior citizens we could take.”

“But they're not and we can't take them.”

“We could if we were seventeen.”

“Great, let me mark that on my calendar. In seven years we'll go back and show them. How about if we just forget it until then, okay?”

“I don't think I can forget it. I just want to get even for what they did.”

“Like I said, that's not going to happen. They won and we lost. Forget it.”

“I don't want to lose and I don't want them to win. Bullies shouldn't be winners,” Kia said. “Wouldn't it be something if we could go back and play them and beat them?”

“That would be amazing,” I had to admit. “Not possible but amazing.”