a typical Sunday afternoon in the life of a kid would go something like this: homework. More homework. One-eighth of one-quarter of one game of NFL football on TV. Back to homework. Dinner but not much appetite because of a swirly feeling in the stomach from dread of more homework. More homework. Bath. Brush teeth. Bed. Anxiety dream that you forgot to do your homework.
After Warren v. Board of Education, a typical Sunday afternoon goes like this: swirly feeling in your stomach, only now it’s from soaring high on a swing set at the park.
There’s probably a soccer practice going on at the same park. The whole team shows up, including Sean. He’s a little out of shape, but not for long.
Nearby, under a tree, Catalina is jumping rope and practicing for the pi contest: “3.1415926535 8979323846 2643383279 5028841971 6939937510 5820974944 5923078164 0628620899 8628034825 3421170679 8214808651 3282306647 0938446095 5058223172 5359408128 4811174502 8410270193 8521105559 6446229489 5493038196 4428810975 6659334461 2847564823 3786783165 2712019091 4564856692 3460348610 4543266482 1339360726 0249141273 7245870066 0631558817 4881520920 9628292540 9171536436 7892590360 0113305305 4882046652 1384146951 9415116094 3305727036 5759591953 0921861173 8193261179 3105118548 0744623799 6274956735 1885752724 8912279381 8301194912 9833673362 4406566430 8602139494 6395224737 1907021798 6094370277.”
Those eighth-grade boys don’t have a prayer.
Across town, in a gym, Alistair is sweating so much that all his old reminders are being washed away. After our trip to Washington, he decided that, like the Chief, he wants to be a wrestling champ. He’s not giving up on MasterChef, though. “If all else fails,” he told me, “I can fall back on my red velvets.”
At Staples Center, Jaesang and his grandfather are cheering for the Lakers—in Korean.
In the teen zone, Sadie and Sean are enjoying their constitutional right to privacy. They’re talking. Or kissing. Or maybe both.
And in the big oak tree in our backyard, I’m building a treehouse with my dad.
On the weekends, I go over to Mr. Kalman’s house, where we answer the flood of mail we’ve been getting since the Supreme Court ruled.
One kid from North Dakota writes,
DEAR MR. KALMAN,
TODAY DAD AND I WENT HUNTING, AND I GOT MY VERY FIRST DEER. LAST SEASON I WASN’T ALLOWED TO GO. TOO MUCH HOMEWORK. THANKS TO YOU, NOW I’M FREE.
YOURS TRULY,
DOUGLAS FRASIER.
“Hope you got him in one shot, Doug,” Mr. Kalman says as he starts to write back.
One of those letters was addressed to me.
Dear Sam,
You and your headstrong sister brought an old man back to life. Thank you for changing me to a better channel.
Your neighbor and friend,
Avi Kalman
That night, as I’m getting ready for bed, I tap the meditation app on my phone. Tap and hold, that is. Then I drag it up to the trashcan.
“Are you sure you want to delete?” the Guided Meditation Lady asks.
I tap “yes.”
On March 14, Catalina stuns the school by reciting 947 digits of pi. Her nearest challenger is an eighth-grade boy who makes it all the way to 207.
A week later, Sean travels to Sacramento for the state Academic Decathlon championship. We watch online as the final question in the varsity, or C-student category, is read aloud: “This Latin legal term meaning ‘a formal order asking to be more informed or be made certain’ is what the Supreme Court grants when it agrees to take a lower court’s case on appeal.
“(a) habeas corpus
“(b) de minimis non curat lex
“(c) caveat emptor
“(d) writ of certiorari
“(e) none of the above.
“Ten seconds.”
Mr. Kalman grins. Sadie laughs. Alistair and Jaesang elbow me from either side. Catalina swings her braid.
When the ten seconds are up, the announcer asks for the answer cards.
Sean is the only one holding up (d) writ of certiorari.
Our cheer is holding up the sky.
One day at the end of the month, while sitting with Dad on the couch and checking her email, Sadie screams really loud: “I got into Harvard? Princeton? Yale? I didn’t even apply to those schools!”
Turns out she had some letters of recommendation she didn’t know about.
From nine men and women in a very high place.
In June we have our stepping-up ceremony at school. Mr. Trotter brings the orchestra onstage, and we play a jazz combo with the wooden xylophones and some African drums. He asked me if I wanted to do a piano solo, but I said no, thanks. I just wanted to play with everyone else.
Afterward we all go back to Mr. Kalman’s house for lunch. The path to his front door is sunny now. The doorbell doesn’t stick.
“Hey, Alistair,” I say when he gets there with his mom and dad, “I got you an end-of-the-year present.”
“For me? For real?”
“Go ahead. Open it.”
He’s expecting a pack of Post-its or a planner, but what he unwraps is—
“The panda! Seriously?”
“I even signed the tag for you.”
“But I went back for it. It wasn’t there.”
“It was there. You forgot where you hid it.”
“Behind the cooking magazine, I thought.”
“Fishing.”
“Man, I should’ve written that down. Thanks, Sam. I hope we can spend lots of time together this summer.”
“Me too,” I tell him.
“That is, if you’re not sick of seeing me on TV.”
“TV? You’re going to be on TV?”
“Yup. I tried out for the next season of MasterChef Junior. Made it onto the show.”
“You’re kidding! Wow, Alistair. That’s amazing! I’m so happy for you.”
“Know what convinced the judges? I whipped up some of Mr. Kalman’s tuna salad. I’m forever indebted to that man.”
Aren’t we all?
Mr. Kalman tells Jaesang it’s time for them to conduct business. He calls him over to the dining room table, where we all worked so hard to plan our case. The legal papers are gone now; it’s just a big buffet of food. But there’s enough room on one corner for Jaesang to set his three-ring binder full of basketball cards.
Mr. Kalman offers the terms.
“Oldest for youngest.”
“What do you mean?”
“You give me the current Lakers starting lineup.”
“For?”
“The 1972 NBA champs—if I can find them all in this drawer.”
Mr. Kalman slides open the bottom drawer of his antique wooden hutch. He doesn’t just slide it open; he pulls it all the way out and carries it over to the dining room table, sets it down, and starts poking through it with his finger. Pretty soon he’s pulling out basketball cards that are more than forty years old. They’d be worth thousands on Ebay.
Jaesang can’t help leaning closer and closer to each card.
Gail Goodrich, number 25.
Happy Hairston, number 52.
Elgin Baylor, 22.
Jerry West, 44.
Jaesang’s eyes are getting as big as basketballs. To him, collecting all five of the starting Lakers from 1972 would be like winning the lottery.
He’s got four out of five. He needs one more card.
“Say, Mr. Kalman,” he says, trying to sound all casual, “you don’t happen to have a Wilt Chamberlain in the bunch, do you?”
Wilt the Stilt Chamberlain, lucky number 13, one of the all-time greats in the NBA. He led the Lakers to a thirty-three-game winning streak in the 1971–72 season. And he once scored over 100 points in a single game!
Jaesang has been searching all his life for a 1972 Wilt Chamberlain. That’s the year the Lakers beat Boston four games to one in the NBA finals.
Mr. Kalman’s finger fishes around some more. He turns over the faces of NBA greats from the last century. John Havlicek . . . Walt Frazier . . . Julius Erving.
“Chamberlain, you say?”
“It would sort of complete the squad.”
His bony finger flicks aside more cards. Then he picks one up and holds it close to his cloudy eyes.
“Here’s one, but you can’t see his jersey too well.”
“Why not?”
Mr. Kalman drops the card face-up onto the table.
It’s signed!
Jaesang drops face-up onto the floor. It takes Alistair’s homemade cheesecake to revive him.
We’re halfway through dessert when the doorbell rings. Mr. Kalman is busy brewing more coffee, so Dad answers for him.
Guess who walks in a second later?
Our teacher, Mr. Powell. He doesn’t say hello. Just stands in the entryway, a little awkward, until he can catch Mr. Kalman’s eye.
“I want to sue the school board,” he says.
“On what grounds?”
“On the grounds that standardized testing is unconstitutional.”
“Where’s the violation?”
“Teaching to the test deprives students of their right to a real education. And publishing the results violates teachers’ privacy.”
Mr. Kalman puts down the coffeepot and brings his hand to his forehead. It’s not a headache or anything. He’s just thinking.
He turns to Sean. “You in?”
“I can manage the website from Berkeley.”
“Sam?”
“Sure. I hate those tests.”
Catalina offers to figure out how much money the district wastes on testing. Alistair says he’ll cater our meals while we work on the case. Jaesang’s willing to sell some cards from his collection to help raise money. “But not the Chamberlain. I’m keeping that for college.”
“What about you, Sadie? You in?”
“I’ll FaceTime from my dorm,” she says. “Yeah, I’m in.”
Mr. Kalman turns to Mr. Powell. “We’re all in. We’ll take your case.”
And that’s just about the end of my story. Except for the hardest part of all. In August, when the treehouse is built and the summer is almost over, we drive Sadie and my dad to the airport. He’s going to fly out with her to college and help her move into the dorm. I have to stay home to start seventh grade.
Which means Sadie and I are about to say goodbye.
The closer we get to the airport, the less we talk. My vocabulary has always been abridged, while Sadie’s is usually the whole dictionary in one mouth. Not now, though. Now she’s real quiet. We both are. And when the moment comes, we say things like “See ya,” and “Yeah,” and “Okay,” and “Time to go, I guess.” All other words get stuck in our throats.
But there are more of them that I wanted to say. So when I get home, I take a pen and a sheet of paper, and I write her a letter.
August 26
Dear Sadie,
After we watched you getting higher and higher on the escalator, and then higher and higher in the sky, Mom and I drove home. It was the quietest car ride ever.
I decided to make this letter the first thing I do as the only kid in the house. And I decided to write it in your room.
Which I barely recognize. You left all those pictures taped to the wall, of you and your debate team, and of Lucy and Mollie, and me and Dad, and our mom and your mom, and that selfie you took with Mr. Kalman and all of us on the steps of the Supreme Court.
But the floor of your room is totally transformed. Did your dirty dishes and laundry go away to college too?
Maybe when you’re home for winter break, before you mess it up again, we can bring down the Playmobil.
Remember how you used to let me come into your room, and we’d make up stories and then turn them into stop-motion movies?
What I wanted to tell you at the airport but couldn’t because I was feeling too sad to talk, is that in those stories we made up, the big sister always saved the little brother.
In real life, she did too.
Love,
Sam
P.S. I just thought of another oxymoron. It’s one that used to keep me up at night, but now it’s just a memory.
Homework.