All sweaty, I pumped the front of my T-shirt to let in some air.
“Wanna go now, Cass?” Girls had won three games out of four and my stomach was talking to me, big-time.
Cass finished tying her sneaker and straightened up. “Sure.”
“Hey, Jemmie.” Leroy’s voice came from behind us.
I turned. “Hey, what?”
His arms hung at his sides, the ball tucked against his waist like it was part of him. “How about some fun with a little one-on-one?”
The girls at school called him “Lookin’ Good Leroy,” and he did, but I got to look at him more than they did. Listen to him too.
He glanced at the ball, then back at me. “Unless you’re ‘fraid you can’t make the grade.”
“You know I’m not afraid, but I am hot and hungry. I’ll whup you some other day. Ask Big to play.”
Slumped on the curb, Big looked like something put out for trash pick-up.
“Nah,” said Leroy. “The man can’t hoop.”
“Me!” His kid brother Jahmal slapped at the ball. “I can hoop ‘cause I got the poop!”
“Stupid must be contagious,” Big mumbled.
“Let’s go.” I grabbed Cass by her pocket, then turned back. “Piano lesson tomorrow, Big?” He practices at my house. We have a piano and he doesn’t.
“Yup. Monday, same as always.” He sighed just like I would if I was thinking about my piano lesson—only I would mean it. Guess he was trying to sound cool about the lesson so Leroy wouldn’t make some stupid rhyme about a kid who’d rather play piano than shoot hoops.
“See ya later, Big!” I yelled. I knew my “See ya later” would give Lookin’ Good Leroy something to think about.
“Jemmie, that you?” my grandmother called as we ran up the steps of my house.
I opened the front door. “Me and Cass, Nana.” We fell into the cool.
In the kitchen, Nana Grace was mixing up a big bowl of potato salad, hugging it against the front of her flowered apron. “You two are right on time.” Bread and sliced baloney were already on the table where my little brother Artie sat coloring. “Somebody put out dishes.”
Cass swung open the cupboard door. “Can you believe Cody hit two shots with that hat over his eyes?”
I stood at the sink and filled the water glasses, then let the water run cold over my wrists. “He got lucky, I guess.”
“Lucky? Twice?” Cass set the dishes on the table and did a hocus-pocus thing with her hands. “Maybe it was the magic of the hat!”
My grandmother handed Artie a cracker as she passed his chair. “What’re you talking about, Cass?”
“Cody has this hat he says gives him powers.”
“Oh, the hat.” My grandmother smiled and shook her head. “I just hope he don’t get himself run over with that magic hat down over his eyes.”
Cass walked to the table with a fistful of silverware. “Too bad there’s no such thing as a magic hat. I’d use it to make this summer last forever.”
“Good thing you don’t have a magic hat!” I said, carrying the water glasses over from the sink. “I’m ready for something new. Besides, there’s no such thing as magic, and definitely no such thing as a magic hat—unless your name is Harry Potter.”
Nana set the potato salad bowl down with a thump. “Why not a magic hat? Magic can come from all kinds of strange places.”
I turned toward my grandmother. “You don’t believe in magic, do you, Nana?”
“Doesn’t matter what I believe. Question is, what does Cody Floyd believe?”
Cass sat down at the table. “He definitely believes in the power of the hat.” She pulled her legs up and hugged her knees, her heels hooked over the edge of the chair seat. “But you know, Cody never hits the hoop, even when he’s looking right at it. Maybe it was the hat.”
I took the blue crayon out of Artie’s hand and gave him a red. “No such thing as blue apples, Smarty Artie.” I turned to Cass. “And there’s no such thing as magic hats or magic anything. And why would you want summer to last forever anyway?”
Nana’s cool fingers brushed against my hot neck. “Don’t go hard on Cass. Nothing wrong with liking things as is, and don’t go hard on Cody, either. Everybody needs some kind of magic to get ’em through.”
As we grabbed hands and asked the blessing, I thought about Leroy and his rapping. Maybe talking big was Leroy’s magic hat—talking big and jamming the ball through the hoop. With no dad at home, his mom called him “the man of the house.” He had a lot on his shoulders. He never would’ve been able to go to basketball camp this summer if it cost money. And even the fact that it was free wouldn’t have helped if his aunt hadn’t lost her job. Now she’d be watching Jahmal so Leroy didn’t have to.
Nana put her hands on her tired back and straightened up. “Big’s got a lesson tomorrow. If that boy’s coming over to practice later, I’d best put together a sandwich for him. He’s always hungry.”
“Sure.” I squirted mustard on my bread. “He said he’d be over.” Big’s magic hat was his music, definitely.
I don’t know what it would be for Cass. Maybe running, maybe hanging on to the same old, same old.
Running’s my magic hat, for sure. Something bothers me? I run.
My father died of cancer a couple of years ago. Most of the time I can outrun thinking about it.
But sometimes, when Big is playing my father’s old piano I sit at the bend in the stairs where he can’t see me and I pretend I’m listening to my father play.
I wish Dad could’ve heard him. He would’ve said, “Mmmm, mmmm. That boy’s got blue-eyed soul.”