The Final Four Read Free Page B

Michigan State band. He hears the pounding rhythm of her snare and watches the drumsticks in her hands moving faster and faster, until they become a blur.
    AUGUST, TWO YEARS AND SEVEN MONTHS AGO
    The mercury had hit ninety-six degrees that sweltering summer day, and the sun baked the red brick of the Brewster-Douglass Houses.
    It was nearly five thirty in the afternoon as Malcolm headed home from the asphalt courts, bare-chested, with a sweat-soaked T-shirt dangling from a belt loop on his cutoffs.
    He pounded a basketball against the concrete, in rhythm to his steps.
    Right-handed.
    Left-handed.
    Right-handed.
    Left-handed.
    The heat from the sidewalk came up through the bottoms of his kicks, until the soles of Malcolm’s feet felt like they were on fire.
    “Hey, Malc,” called a voice from a circle of teens on the oppositecorner, in the shadow of a liquor store on St. Antoine Street, one where a sheet of bulletproof glass separated the customers from the guy at the register. “It’s too hot to be balling. Come chill with us.”
    They were dudes who Malcolm was tight with from his hood and school, mostly dressed in tank tops, shorts, and sneakers with no socks. And there were two open forty-ounce beers on the ground beside them, on either side of a metal pole from a parking meter.
    They were hanging out, looking for a good time.
    But there was a pair of guys with them, wearing heavy cargo pants with more pockets than you could count. Those dudes were doing business.
    Malcolm threw a hand up to wave.
    “My mama’s birthday dinner’s tonight,” he hollered back, without breaking his stride. “I gotta go.”
    “Don’t party
too
hard with the old folks!”
    Malcolm wasn’t an angel. He’d been involved in his share of drama during his first two years of high school. He wanted junior year to be different, though.
    He’d been suspended for fighting the semester before, after a beef he had on the basketball court carried over into a classroom. And his father had to pick him up once at the station house when cops nabbed him on the street for underage drinking.
    But Malcolm didn’t have any real interest in watching other kids screw around, drink, or get high. He’d seen too many sweeps by the Detroit PD, who’d bust anyone within fifty feet of dudesdealing drugs. So Malcolm didn’t even cross over to the other side of the street.
    A half-block later, Malcolm passed another group of guys camped out around a bench. They were a little older and more serious about
business
. Malcolm recognized them, too. Only this time there weren’t any greetings, just an exchange of hard looks.
    At the edge of the four identical fourteen-story project buildings, younger kids were splashing in the spray from an open hydrant. Nearby, middle school girls were spinning ropes, making their own cool breeze. They were jumping double Dutch, popping out rhymes.
    Call the army, call the navy,
Maya’s gonna have a baby.
Wrap it up in tissue paper,
Send it down the elevator.
Boy, girl, twins, triplets,
Boy, girl, twins, triplets.
    Without noticing, Malcolm had changed the rhythm of his dribble to match their cadence.
    Over it all was the sound of rap, hip-hop, and R & B mixed together, filtering through the air. Smokey Robinson and Diana Ross, two of his mama’s favorite singers, grew up in these projects. Malcolm knew that was the music she’d want to hear at her birthday dinner. And he was already thinking about putting onthe CD of Smokey’s “My Girl,” just to hear his father sing to her—
Talkin ’bout my girl. My girl.
    As Malcolm started for Building 302, his sister, Trisha, came bounding through the front doors and headed down the concrete path towards him.
    She was dressed in a gray T-shirt that read M.L.K. CRUSADERS MARCHING BAND , with five interlocking rings beneath.
    “Think fast, sis,” said Malcolm, sending her a chest-high pass.
    Trisha was going to be a senior in September at Martin Luther King High School, where