Ghost by Jason Reynolds Page B

in my palm to get a few more seeds out. “So yeah, I’m on a team called the Defenders. One of the best teams in the city.”
    â€œI didn’t know you were an athlete.” Mr. Charles seemed impressed.
    â€œWell, I am. A pretty good one too,” I bragged,tossing the seeds in my mouth, then casually slapping my hand against my thigh to brush the salt off. A shock of soreness shot down to my knee, a painful reminder that I was definitely an athlete. Argh!
    Mr. Charles twisted the top off a cranberry juice and took a sip. “I believe you. I told you, kid. You’re one of the world’s greatest.”
    â€œGot that right,” I said, now spitting shells in my hand. “One of the world’s greatest.”
    After I left the store, I headed to stop two—the bus stop. I took a seat next to an older woman. She was doing a crossword puzzle and humming a song I didn’t recognize. She might’ve been making it up. It didn’t sound bad, though. Across the street at the gym were all the people working out—the Walking Dead. Ha! That’s what they look like! Anyway, I hung out there for a little while before moving on. When I got to Martin Luther King Park, I looked down at the track and there wasn’t nobody there except for a man jogging with his dog. But nobody else. No real runners. After that, there was really no place else to go but home, and I wasn’t ready to go there yet. So I went to the basketball court.
    At the court, as usual, all the older guys were there running fives for cash. I knew some of them just because they were always there playing. Like Pop, whowas probably in his twenties or something like that. I don’t even think he was anybody’s dad, but everybody called him Pop anyway. He was a short dude, with crazy handles, and a mean jumper. He was one of those guys who could do all the tricks and stuff. Shake you right out your socks like it was nothing. And Sicko was there too, but luckily for me, he didn’t have his crazy dog with him. Sicko wasn’t really that good at basketball, but he was super rough. He probably should’ve been a football player. Or a wrestler. Big James was there too. He was like the best player ever to me. He looked like he really played pro ball. Six feet something, all muscle. People always said Big James played college ball but never went pro. I never knew what he did for a living. All I knew was that he was always at the court, dominating the game, taking everybody’s money. So I guess basketball was what he did for a living after all.
    Besides the hoopers, there were a whole bunch of other people at the court, just hanging out. Girls. Some were the girlfriends of the guys playing, and others wanted to be the girlfriends of the guys playing. And junkies. They’d just be zombied out, roaming around the outside of the court. They knew better than to mess up the game. They’d just walk along the out-of-bounds line like it was a tightrope, waiting for Goose. Goosewas the dope man, who also happened to be a pretty good ballplayer. Super flashy, but an all-around nice guy. Well, except for selling drugs. The court was where he served, in more ways than one.
    I chilled there for a while, watching Sicko push everybody around until what always happens happened. A fight. As usual. Stupid Sicko pushed the wrong guy. A guy I didn’t know. And that guy pushed Sicko back. And then Pop got into it. And then Big James. Then Big James’s girl. And then some other girl. And then a junkie started howling like a wolf. And then I was out.
    By the time I made it home, I only had a little bit of time to kill before Coach picked me up. Just enough time to wash up, or as my mom says, splash some water on my hot spots, throw on some clean clothes, and give myself two spritzes of perfume. It was Ma’s, and it smelled like flowers, but hey, so what.
    When Coach showed up, he hit the horn a few times. And when