It had been a long time since I
agreed with Jesus. It was Big Joe's throw up we had to clean after tryouts. We
were all pissed at Joe because he was the reason why we were all sore and had
dark purple toes. Coach had been making us guard him all week, which meant
trying to stay standing when he ran at us yelling “JUGGERNAUT!” as we watched
his lame layups from the sticky dark yellow hardwood floor.
“What’d you say?” Sanchez looked
down at Jesus. “Get up.”
Jesus tightened his jaw, jumped up
and looked right at Coach. “Why’d you call him first?”
We all looked at each other
waiting to see how Coach would react. “No one’s ever done that,” Mark
whispered.
Coach kept a straight face “Two
monster laps. Go.” Jesus made his way to the gymnasium’s red doors. The gym was
quieter than the old haunted Saint Mary’s church when he punched the door open.
“Old
guys, come on up. Eduardo, Miguel and Ryan, you all made it. Join your
teammate.”
Ryan was
smiling, Joe looked angry, and Eduardo kept looking at the floor. My hands were
sweating.
“Five
new guys. Hope you guys are ready to battle.” They took off sprinting, behind
Jesus.
Two weeks later.
It was seven in the morning and
Yolanda was already mopping spilled chocolate milk on the cafeteria floor.
“Are you gonna eat that?”
Ryan glanced at Joe and slid his
aluminum-foiled taco to him and got up.
“Hell yeah, third taco!”
Eduardo and I followed Ryan and
took our white foam trays over to the trashcan.
“WAIT FOR ME!” Joe said.
We exited the cafeteria and straight
to the locker rooms. The rest of team was there. Jesus was there too.
“Guys, come over here,” Mark said.
He was already wearing his knee pads. None of us wore them for eight a.m. shoot-around
because Sanchez didn’t want them to go missing.
We walked into the coach’s lobby,
the room with all of Sanchez’s “Coach of the Year” trophies. The brown cloth
sofas were cut open and misplaced. The walls were tagged; the brown African cat
the art teacher painted during the summer was now roaring at black
spray-painted dicks.
“You know who did that?” Mark said.
“Just in case you don’t know, Ryan, it was the Lions. Lucky for you, it is the
freshmen’s job to get even. The rest of us have to wait for game day to have
our fun.”
“Only the freshmen?” I said.
“Do you not understand, Miguelito? Nomas
freshmen. That means you. You know what, only you four. Jesus probably does
this on his spare time anyway.”
“Way to go, bro,” Ryan said.
“How
did… What?”
“I
hope you know how to pick locks and pick them fast, dude, cause when my dad
coached there a while back and he took a long ass time locking up,” Eduardo
said.
“Chingao.
My brother was a master at that shit. Too bad he’s locked up in Reynosa.” I said.
While
the four of us talked about breaking in and planned what we were going to do to
the Lions, Sanchez walked in with his Whataburger coffee in his hands.
“I see y’all have seen my lobby.”
He took a sip from his coffee, and glared at us. “Either that or ya’ll have
been too busy playing with each other to change into your shorts.”
Joe, Eduardo and I hesitantly
walked away to our lockers.
“Are you just going to stand
there, G.T.?”
“Uh, no, no, no, Sir,” Ryan said.
Coach started to make his way to
the gym. “One minute or monster laps.”
When
we went into the gym Coach and his assistants had the team seated on the floor
along with the Junior Varsity team.
“This
is Rivalry week. The thug tagging that happened over the weekend is a part of
it when you’re dealing with a classless school like the Lions. Let me warn
every one of you who is thinking about retaliating. You don’t know what you’re
in for. Not only with them but that is not Caracal basketball. We are going to
wait and get even on our home floor this Friday night.”
I
was pumped when Coach said that. I was ready for a physical game on Friday but
when we were exiting the locker-room to go to second period, Mark held us back
and said, “Get even.”
In eighth period Big Joe, Ryan and
I were in Widow Eloise’s photography class trying to exchange ideas about
destroying their locker-room.
“Back in Michigan, we had some
sort of rivalry with a school and they put a dead cat in the vents! That’ll
take care of breaking in and it might even look like an accident,” Ryan said.
“I don’t think it’s supposed to
look like an accident.” I said.
“Right, but I do like the idea of
shoving several tacuaches in their vents and I know how to whip up a damn good
stink bomb. They fucked with Coach’s shit and disrespected us at our house. Do
you know anyone who knows how to break locks?”
“Nope,” said Ryan.
“Jesus has been breaking into
places since elementary. Him and my brother did that shit all the time.”
“Can
you ask him?”
“No,
dude, how about you ask him?” I said
“Because
he says “fucking lard” every time we’re at practice,” Joe said. We both looked
at Ryan.
“No
way that asshole calls me gringo all the time.”
“Ryan,
what is aperture?” the teacher asked.
“The
aperture on the camera? It’s the meter that marks how worn out the camera is.”
Afterschool
we met up with Eduardo. “Are we going?” he said.
“Man,
I don’t know. What time should we go?” I said.
“Probably
after ten,” Ryan said.
“Dude,
janitors are there till three a.m.”
“Let’s
go at five a.m. I’ll ask my sister for her car,” Ryan said.
“Five
sounds good,” Joe said.
I
was walking towards the dumpster lots at school when I saw Yolanda walking with
the rolling trashcans. Jesus was throwing bags into the garbage.
“Punishment
isn’t over?” I said.
“Nombre
wey, I’m just helping Yoli before ma’ picks me up.”
“That’s
cool,” I said.
“Hey,
mijo, you forgot about me already, huh?”
“Sorry Yolanda. I’ve had a lot of
homework,” I said. I had volunteered the first couple of weeks of school but,
man, the soreness from basketball doesn’t even compare to the soreness from
those weeks.
“I’m only kidding. I just miss
seeing your smile at the end of the days,” she said.
“Yoli, don’t worry I’ll be here,”
Jesus said.
“I’m sorry, Yolanda,” I said.
“It’s ok, mijo. You take care.”
“Take it easy Yolanda.”
“Homework? No way Sanchez will
allow anyone to fail us.”
“Well, about Sanchez,” I said. “I
know he forbid us to go to the Lions before game day but Mark said we have to
get even.”
“Mark? Vato, that wey has been here
for like six years. He’s on his way out, why listen to him?”
“I have to. I’m a freshman. That’s
our job.”
“I’m a freshman, I’m not going.”
He said as he turned on the manguera to wash out the milk on the lot.
“Forget it man. I’ll catch you
later.”
“What
were you thinking of doing?”
“We
need help breaking in. When we break in, we’re planning on throwing in some
stink bombs Joe’s been making.”
“Orale.
Good luck.”
“We’ll
be there at five a.m. just in case you want to join us.”
It
was four thirty when Ryan and Eduardo drove in to my house in a white Taurus. I
got on and drove to H-E-B to pick Joe up.
“Que
uvo,” I said.
“What?”
Joe said when we stopped.
“Fuck
that smells like shit,” Ryan said.
Joe
got on and carried the mud bombs on top of the car.
“Where
are we putting my babies?” Joe said.
“I
brought my mom’s gardening knives,” Eduardo said. “They’ll cut through anything.”
“The gate isn’t locked!” Eduardo said.
He jumped onto the car and Ryan sped
to the gymnasium.
“Give me my backpack, I made us some
masks,” Ryan said.
“Shut up, wey,” I said.
We were running towards the back of
the gym, when someone comes out through the side doors, running with a plastic bag
full of rattling bottles.
“Get the fuck out of here.”
It was Jesus.
I need
help with flow.
Too
many characters? How do I cut them out?
