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against his attacker, who was now feeding him punches with both fists, with penitentiary-bred strength and hate behind each shot. Ice tackled him as he was reaching back to start a deadly-looking right.

  "Chill!"

  The angry ex-con unfolded his body like a spring, threw Ice off and stabbed him with those eyes again. Without breaking his stare he gave the downtown kid one more hard kick with his old Timberland boots and bounded over the short fence, down the path and out of the complex.

  Ice ran after him, away from the eyes that had started to appear at the surrounding windows. He struggled to catch up, and cursed himself years of weed smoking.

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  The Middle

  Jerome and Kevin liked to be early to practice, because they could take their time getting ready, get up extra jumpshots before the rest of the team arrived, and most importantly, they could talk trash.

  But that day Kevin wanted to know about Ice, who he sort of liked, but didn’t know well or trust very much. “Your boy looks like a wild kid. Was he really good at ball?”

  “He was sick,” Jerome assured him, as they practiced free throws in the empty gym.

  “Better than me?”

  Jerome considered the question, shooting and making a free throw before answering. “If he kept playing he probably could’ve been better than you.”

  Kevin wasn’t convinced.

  “In our first year at Donview, we were the only two grade 6's on the ball team, and the rest of the squad was grade 8's. And we both got playing time off the bench too; I’d lick a few jumpshots and Isaiah was a one-man press.”

  “So what happened? Why’s he going on like a G now?”

  “Just before tryouts in grade 7, we were at the ball court and one of the older guys from the area asked him to go to the store to buy Gatorade and he didn’t come back. Turned out he tried to steal the drink so he could keep the cash for himself and the guy caught him and locked him inside the store. Word on road is he flipped out and tried to beat the dude down with an Arizona bottle or something. He ended up in juvie for months.”

  “Oh man.”

  “He never even told me what really happened, I heard the story from other people. But yeah, he was different when he came back,” Jerome remembered with a frown as his shot rolled around the rim and dropped through. “People were calling him Ice and shit.”

  “Damn, I can’t imagine the licks I’d get if I got arrested in grade seven,” Kevin said. “My dad would kick my ass!”

  “I’ve never seen his dad,” Jerome replied. “And we’ve been homeboys since we were nine.”

  Kevin didn’t answer. Jerome kept shooting free throws and thinking about how good they would be if Isaiah was on the team, locking up the other team’s point guard and terrorizing opponents on the press. He was still thinking about his friend when practice started.

  Lunchtime on dress down day was always crazy. Jerome, Kevin and their teammates would pop into the cafeteria, which was even bigger than the gym, and make the rounds, dapping their older classmates and showing off their gear. No black pants and white shirts today; students dressed as colourfully and expensively as they could. The basketball team would then post up in the hallway outside the caf, where the real show was. All the girls had to pass that way at some point to buy their lunch, or just to parade their outfits and swim in all the attention from the basketball team on one side of the hall and the guys trying to be gangsters on the other.

  “Today was a good day,” Jerome mumbled the old rap line to himself as a group of well-developed grade 12 girls walked by pretending not to notice the stares they were attracting.

  As Jerome let his eyes follow the upperclasswomen all the way down the hall toward the front of the school, Kevin elbowed him. He turned back up the hall and froze.

  It was Kim. She was walking down the hall by herself, already aiming her beautiful smile at him. He smiled brightly back and took in the skinny jeans and fuzzy sweater that her flawless sixteen year old body was sprouting through. She’d curled her hair and, well…wow.

  They’d been friends since she arrived at Henry the year before and sat next to him in English class. She’d made him stutter on his own name with that smile. She lived at Don Mills and Sheppard, in the opposite direction from school that Jerome lived, but in the last month he’d gotten in the habit of walking her home and they’d become close. On Friday, while walking across the bridge over the 401, he’d put his arm around her and she’d pulled herself into his warmth. He smiled. She smiled. “I really like you,” he wished he’d said, over the blustery wind and sixteen lanes of traffic below, but his voice wouldn’t work. It didn’t matter if he’d said it, they knew they were a couple now and they’d consummated it with their first kiss in the lobby of her building when they said goodbye. They had talked on the phone over the weekend, but this was Jerome’s first time seeing her since then.

  The gangster side of the hallway was buzzing; the thugs-to-be were posturing as if ready to go in for the kill. One guy that should have graduated a year ago looked as if he was stepping forward, but Kim didn’t even notice him and walked straight toward Jerome for a big, warm, tight hug. Silence enveloped the hallway for a moment while they embraced and ended in what felt like an explosion.

  It couldn’t be more official than that. Kim gave Kevin a soft high-five and smiled at the rest of their teammates and asked, “Observing the wildlife, eh?” The guys died laughing.

  “Come with me to the microwave and help me warm up my lunch,” she asked Jerome, grabbing his jacket playfully in her small fist.

  “Oooh, what did mom-dukes cook?”

  “Mom? You mean, what did I cook? Curry chicken,” she shot back with a smug smile. Jerome raised his eyebrows and looked over at Kevin, who nodded slowly with approval and offered a respectful pound as Jerome followed her through the door into the caf.

  “I shouldn’ta quit playing basketball bro,” one of the baby gangsters joked. The whole hallway laughed.

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  The End

  As Jerome and the rest of the team opened the door from the short, narrow hallway that led from the boys’ locker room to the gym, they couldn’t believe what they saw. What seemed like the entire student body, dressed to impress, had stuffed themselves into the bleachers and all spaces in between. The hardcore fans—the crazy white kids—were in the front row in black and red hockey and rugby jerseys, the pretty and nearly-pretty girls were in the second row trying to keep their hair in place and the cool guys were at the top, competing for the girls around them. The rest of the kids and a small pack of brave Victoria Park students filled out the rest of the bleachers, while the baby gangsters milled about at the side by the door in the corner.

  Their manager had the iPod playlist the team had agreed on—all edited versions of course—banging out of a boombox on the scorer’s table. The crowd was adding all the swear words to the songs, drowning out the speakers and somehow making them sound louder at the same time. “Let’s gooooo,” Kevin yelled, leading them out of the “tunnel.”

  As they began their first lap around the court Jerome spotted Kim and her homegirl in the front row in between the rugby jerseys. As he held out his hand to slap hands with the front row, he felt one hand hold on longer than the rest. “Focus,” he said to himself.

  They made two laps around the court before splitting seamlessly into two lines for the lay-up drill. He was getting up higher and higher on every lay-up and rebound, and he could see his teammates were too. The crowd got louder and louder with every shot. The game hasn’t even started, he thought. He rapped the lyrics of every song to himself to keep his mind blank. To keep his mind on the game. To keep his mind off of Kim.

  Jerome glanced toward the referees standing by the scorer’s table when it was his turn to make a lay-up. He winked at Kevin, who’d passed him the ball, as he dribbled in nonchalantly. At the last second he took two bounding steps and took off on his left foot and cocked the ball all the way
back behind his head with two hands as if he were about to throw down a vicious tomahawk dunk, and threw it lightly down through the basket without touching the rim.

  The bleachers ignited with sound and motion. Pretty girls were yelling, the baby gangsters were blamming their gun-fingers in the air and on the court Kevin was yelling, “LET’S GOOOO!” Jerome looked toward the refs. One of them held his thumb and index finger an inch apart and squinted through them with a smile, as if to say, “you were this close.” Jerome smiled back because he knew if he had actually dunked the ball or touched the rim it might have been a technical foul; you can’t do that until the game starts. Besides, he recognized that referee as a cop that volunteered at community sports programs in the neighbourhood.

  As the team huddled up for final instructions before tip-off, Jerome saw Kim. She was smiling so bright and her hair was so curly. He had to look away. Coach Jason was already talking. He asked firmly, “How are we going to do this?”

  “Together,” Jerome responded mindlessly along with his teammates. His focus was coming back.

  “Right,” Jason continued. “That means sharing the ball on offense and helping your teammates on defense. That’s how we’ve done it since we’ve been having success, and that’s how we’re gonna keep having success!”

  Jerome nodded along with the rest of the players, all of their faces