Page 24 of The Tiger in the Sack

Zahra’s voice ran the room. She called corrections without raising it. She used the kids’ names the way an engineer uses tolerances, with precision and without sentiment. When the Hello Kitty kid landed a wobble-free retiré, Zahra said, “Yes, Aaliyah, that’s the one.” Aaliyah grinned at her reflection like she’d been handed the Heisman.

And somewhere around minute twelve, my brain kicked in.

The Tigers Dance Squad’s lead captain runs a Black-girl dance studio.

She was my way into the community I wanted so much to be represented on our team. And if I was quietly honest with myself, the community I wanted very much to be a part of.

And she’d invited me here.

After a lot of years of taking tests, I knew one when I saw it.

COOKIES FOR HONESTY

ISAK

Tuesday morning Coach had me running through the new run-pass option package for the third time and I was running it wrong, and I could feel Fox staring at me from the chair next to mine.

“Bro.”

“Don’t bro me.” I had enough brothers.

“You ran the same play. Wrong. Three times in a row.”

“I am aware of that, thank you, Not-The-Coach Daws.”

“It’s the same play, oh, great and powerful Kingman.”

Fucking smart ass. “I. Am. Aware.”

Coach paused the film and looked at me with the particular long-suffering patience he kept on file for the days he was deciding whether to be a head coach about it or a human being about it. The room had gone extremely quiet. There were six other guys in this room. Touchdown Jesus. I lived in this room.

“Where are you today, Kingman?” Coach Roper said.

“Right here, Coach.”

He smiled real nice and midwestern friendly-like. Which I was beginning to learn meant the opposite. “Where else are you today, Kingman?”

I was on a sidewalk in OTR on Saturday afternoon and a woman with no idea who I was had looked at me like I might be a person, and now it was Tuesday and I had been on that sidewalk for ninety-six hours. But I could not say that to our brand new head Coach.

“Nowhere, Coach. Right here.”

“Mm,” Coach said. “Good. Because this is in fact the place to be. I believe you youngins would say this place is bussin.”

A chuckle went through the room that clearly meant we would not say that, but thanks for trying to be the cool coach. He started the film again.

Fox leaned in. “You absolute disaster.”

“Shut up.”

I silently and sneakily snuck a look at my phone to see if Cheerleader had texted me back yet.

Fox grinned at me like he knew a secret and wanted me to know he did. “You haven’t watched a single second of film since you came into this room.”

He wasn’t wrong. “You don’t know what I have or haven’t watched.”

“We just went over a fade route and you called it a screen pass, my dude.”

I had in fact called it a screen pass. There was no recovery available to me. I went back to mostly staring at the laptop while Coach drew on the board and Fox vibrated next to me like a piece of equipment that had been left on.