Heft - By Liz Moore Page 0,107

who is in jail and who dropped out of school. All of the girls he tells me about are girls I hooked up with when I was younger, or smoked with, or drank with, or kissed on a cold park bench in a bad bad park. Remember Denise? he asks me, and I say I do. Dead, he says.

—How?

Overdose, he says.

He looks straight ahead of him and never at me. I do the same.

All the girls he tells me about were four years younger and full of ideas when I knew them. Denise Torres wore a bright green jacket every day in the winter and her laugh started with a K.

I have been trying to imagine what my mother was like when she was young. She would have been small. She would have been quiet unless she was nervous. If she was nervous she would have talked too much. I know she had one or two friends because Rhonda was one of them but I don’t imagine she had many more. I know she did not get along with her parents. They were not much in our lives and then they died. They did not like her husband, the man who used to be my father. She would have shuffled head-down through the hallways of her school. She would have found heroes to worship because she always did. She would have had crushes on teachers and senior boys who did not know her. All the girls I know from Yonkers, all the girls who will never leave, she was like them.

I wanted her to wait until I could take better care of her. I wanted her to wait until I was old enough to fix her, make her well again, put her someplace warm and tight.

I can see the practice facility over some trees while we are still on the parkway. A white bubble like the top of a circus tent. I feel a tug in my gut. I’ve been working out all week with Coach Ramirez, who told me how stupid I was not to call him sooner. But still. I’ve been eating eggs and steak and vegetables. I’ve been lifting but not enough to make me sore. I’ve been drinking protein shakes. One of my teammates told me he could get me juice from a guy he knows but the good scared and superstitious boy inside me told him no.

The facility looks huge when we pull up outside it. It’s as big as a warehouse. Both of us look at it.

What’s it like inside? I ask Dee.

There’s a field inside, says Dee. With bleachers and a wall and everything. Nice turf.

Did you play here? I ask him.

Nah, he says, and he looks embarrassed. My mom brought me here to see some preacher last year. They used it for a church. People falling down in the aisle like—

And he mimes a seizure, his eyes rolling back in his head, hands going up. He laughs.

You need me to stick around? asks Dee.

I say no. Lindsay has offered to pick me up. I pat the roof of the car when he drives off and then I am alone.

I wasn’t sure what to bring with me so last night I emptied out a small athletic bag of mine and cleaned it because it smelled bad. Then I carefully put everything I could think of into it. My cleats are inside the bag. My glove. Four bottles of water. A bag of trail mix. I don’t know how long I’ll be here. A cell-phone charger. I don’t know why. A copy of this highlights video that Coach and I put together at the end of last season. My wallet. Inside of it is my mother’s note to me. I carry it around everyplace I go.

I’m wearing my summer-league uniform, the Cardinals’ uniform, which I now think might have been stupid. Over this I am wearing a sweatshirt and sweatpants. I take a long slow breath in and out. The air is freezing. The glass doors to the inside are covered in frost from the cold. I open the one on the right.

• • •

When Yolanda went to bed last night I sat up for longer than I usually do. I did not move from my chair. I leaned my head back and looked up at the ceiling, & then I looked all around me at my world. The dark wooden shelves loaded with books. The television, O my joy & comfort. The musty