The back of the team bus, where Mercedes normally sat firing off jokes, seemed louder than normal, and the trip to play rival South High for an away game seemed longer than usual.
Mercedes sat by herself, music booming in her earbuds, then coursing through her veins like blood, as she scrolled through pictures of her family. Mom. Dad. Callie. Her. Lincoln. Family.
Callie and Mercedes were three years apart. Mercedes marveled at how much she looked, dressed, and acted like her sister for so many years, and how quickly things had started to change. In junior high, Mercedes mastered the court, at the same time Callie made her first appearance in juvenile court. Not her last. Photo by photo, sisters became strangers: Mercedes, who once did everything she could to follow in her sister’s footsteps, sprinted in the other direction. Her sister’s tight white beaters, expensive shoes, and letters on her skin were a polar opposite to Mercedes’s colorful polos, court-ready kicks, and proud letters on her report cards. Around tenth grade, Callie’s smile died.
Mercedes wondered about her sister’s mug shot. The arrest Mercedes witnessed wouldn’t result in juvenile time. Callie was twenty, yet she clung to her old friends, habits, and haunts.
Cheryl tapped Mercedes on the shoulder. Mercedes popped the bud out of her left ear.
“Everything okay?”
Mercedes hesitated. She didn’t open up to just anyone. Cheryl was just a teammate, not a soul mate like Jade.
“Is it about your sister?” Cheryl asked. Did everyone on the team bus know? Mercedes wondered. Maybe she wasn’t avoiding them; maybe they were avoiding her. “I’m sorry to hear.”
“Don’t worry about me,” Mercedes said, trying to sound confident. “I got game.”
“If I was you, I’d be more worried about your sister than a game, but that’s me.” Cheryl frowned. “Maybe because I pass and don’t shoot, I always worry about the other person first. But you do what you gotta do. You’ve got enough pressure anyway with all those scouts buzzing.”
Mercedes wanted to put the bud in, turn up the music, and collapse into the beat. What if there was a story in the paper about her sister getting arrested? What if the scouts connected the two of them? The bass boomed along with Mercedes’s pounding heart. What if?
“I’ll take care of you.” Cheryl slapped Mercedes softly on the shoulder and then left her alone. Mercedes faked a smile, whispered a “thank you,” and started scrolling through photos again.
Mercedes glanced at her phone to see another missed call from her mom. In just over an hour, Mercedes would put on the maroon North jersey she wore with pride. But in the morning, she’d wait in a line for over an hour at County to see her sister wearing an orange uniform of shame. She called Jade instead of her mom.
“Jade, this is Robert’s fault,” Mercedes said as soon as Jade picked up. Jade listened as Mercedes retold the story of Callie getting mixed up with Robert. “He’s a dead weight around her ankle.”
“Mercy, staying in the life was her choice,” Jade whispered. “Like leaving it was mine.”
Mercedes said nothing as the bus pulled up to a light. Green. Yellow. Red. So easy, but life didn’t give such easy directions. The only one that made sense was yellow: use caution.
“You okay?” Jade interrupted Mercedes’s thoughts. Mercedes didn’t answer; she scrolled photos, past her sister whom she couldn’t help. She stopped on one of Lincoln from last year. He was smiling, not smirking. Mercedes frowned. Was he following Callie’s path?
“I’ll be okay.” Mercedes took a deep breath. In just over an hour, she’d be on the court for all thirty-two minutes if she got her way. In those thirty-two minutes, nothing mattered except an orange sphere like the sun. Her life revolved around basketball, especially when the rest of life spun like a loose ball out of her control. “Don’t worry about me, Jade, I’m okay.”
“But you’re not okay.” Jade’s soft voice dropped softer than even a whisper. “I love you so much, Mercy. That’s why I hate it when you lie to me.”