Tall Story Page 5

  The net hanging from the hoop was red, white and blue, and so new the white bits glowed like Old Tibo’s false teeth.

  Beneath my feet, the floor was made of a yellow wood, shiny and smooth.

  Tiers of red seats wound round and round and up and up to the high domed roof.

  All this time I had assumed that the sports centre was nowhere near finished. I was wrong.

  ‘Wow.’ I turned. Jabby was slowly descending from wherever it was he’d switched on the lights, cradling his basketball like a baby, a big grin on his face. ‘I had no idea.’

  He flexed his shoulder muscles and pushed the ball into the sky. It arced high but I reached up at just the right moment and tipped it gently into the basket. It bounced on the yellow floor with a satisfying thunk.

  Jabby caught it after the first bounce.

  ‘Ace!’

  It was the one move I could do on the basketball court. Jabby and I spent a lot of time practising variations of it. Under the basket. To the right. To the left. It wasn’t proper basketball, but at least it was something we could do together, since with my big feet and my brittle knees, I couldn’t run to save myself.

  Jabby thunked the ball once or twice and released it from the free-throw line. Swish. It dropped neatly through the net. ‘Not only is it finished, the Arena is all set to open. In two weeks!’

  ‘Two weeks? But I haven’t seen any posters. Shouldn’t they be advertising?’

  ‘They will – they’re just sorting out some local teams for the exhibition game.’ He stood on the three-point line and attempted another shot. He missed. The ball ricocheted off the hoop with a powerful crack.

  Two weeks! I would be in London by then. I bit my lip.

  Jabby grabbed the ball and turned to the backpack he had flung down on the end line.

  ‘I brought you here for a reason.’ His eyes sparkled as he unzipped his backpack.

  ‘What?’

  Jabbar cleared his throat, as if he was going to make an announcement over the public address system. ‘My friend, I have gathered you here today to celebrate a momentous occasion.’ He extracted a Mountain Men shirt just like his, holding it out to me delicately, like some kind of sacred offering.

  ‘What?’ I stared at it.

  ‘A gift, Nardo. It’s a gift.’ Jabbar pushed the shirt into my hands. ‘A Mountain Men shirt. An official invitation to join the most amazing basketball team on this side of the South China Sea, with the most amazing team captain on this earth. Me.’

  I couldn’t speak. My Adam’s apple suddenly felt like the size of a basketball. ‘I … thanks, Jabby.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’ He looked around the stadium, pleased with himself. ‘Isn’t this great?’

  ‘Jabs …’ I stared at the shirt. Jabby must have had it made specially. Maybe by Timbuktu, who had to make all my clothes because nothing in the shops fitted me.

  ‘Come on, Nards, try it on!’

  I frowned. ‘Jabby, I can’t join the Mountain Men. It would be a disaster. Look at me. I’m so clumsy. I can’t even run …’

  ‘And that’s not all.’ Jabby was not listening. ‘You know the Arena’s supposed to recruit local teams for the big opening?’

  I nodded.

  ‘We’re it!’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The Mountain Men. They picked us!’

  ‘Wow, congratulations!’ I should have been jumping up and down at our good fortune but I was still trying to process his invitation. I loved basketball. But I would be a complete embarrassment to the Mountain Men. I would be a joke. How could Jabby even consider …?

  ‘And guess what the other team is called.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The Giant Killers.’

  ‘The Giant Killers?’

  I stiffened.

  ‘They requested to play us specially. Nardo, people will be coming from miles around to watch us play.’ Jabby grinned. ‘And the Arena said they would give us a share of ticket receipts. We’re going to be rich!’

  I understood now. ‘You mean, they will be coming for miles to see the Giant Killers try to slay a real giant.’

  ‘No, that’s not it.’ Jabby’s brown skin paled. ‘Wait, you don’t understand.’

  I whirled around and headed blindly for the tunnel.

  ‘Nardo!’

  I stopped and threw the shirt back at him. It lay like a puddle at his feet.

  ‘You just needed me for ticket sales. You don’t need a player, you need a sideshow. You only want me as the team freak.’

  And Jabby said nothing.

  So I knew it was true.

  14

  Andi

  I hope Mum realizes how awesome I’ve been about the whole brother business. I couldn’t imagine any of the kids at my school being so relaxed about suddenly acquiring a sibling. Go ahead, World, bring on the long-lost relatives.

  For the first time since the day Mum told me we were moving house, I was feeling buoyant. Saint Sim’s had a basketball team and the basketball team was recruiting. I had my own room and lived in a proper-sized house instead of a rabbit hutch. My brother was finally coming home. Everything was good.

  I practically skipped up the steps to our front door.

  Mum should be relieved to hear she didn’t need to feel guilty about the basketball any more. I glanced at the time on my mobile. It was four o’clock. Mum would be home. She shouldn’t have to leave for work for a couple of hours yet. She wouldn’t be leaving until six and Dad should be back soon from the day shift. Which was a reversal. Two weeks before, Mum was doing the day shift and Dad the night shift. They barely overlapped some weeks. It amazed me that they could still remember each other’s names.

  ‘I’m home, Mum!’ I yelled as I pushed through into the hall. Mum had hung a butterfly mobile that Auntie Sofia had sent years ago near the stairs. Nice. I hummed as I made my way up to my room.

  ‘Mum!’ Maybe she’d decided to wash the ceilings as well, or polish the grass in the garden – she was in that kind of mood.

  I opened the door to my room.

  ‘Oh, Andi, I didn’t hear you.’

  Mum was on the stepladder, hanging curtains.

  It was a heartbeat before I realized what had jarred as I walked into the room.

  On the floor next to my bed, two mattresses had been laid side by side.

  The wardrobe door sagged open, and all the clothes I had carefully put away were now piled high on my bed.

  Oh Holy Mother of God.

  Mum looked at me and I could see guilt etched on her face.

  ‘It’s not what you think.’

  I shook my head. ‘I don’t know what to think.’

  ‘You know, Bernardo is quite big, so I’ve put two single mattresses together to make up his bed. It’s temporary.’

  ‘Temporary?’ And then suddenly it dawned on me.

  After the ceiling fell down, Bernardo’s room was a ruin. The ceiling had to be rebuilt, the walls repainted, the carpet relaid.

  You could see right up into the attic rafters through the gaping hole in the ceiling. There was a smell like wet towels that had not dried properly and I thought I heard squeaking up in the hole. Gross.

  ‘It was damp to begin with,’ Dad had said after the crash. ‘We knew that from the survey.’

  And now there was a bed on my floor.

  ‘Look, Bernardo will share your room until his ceiling is mended.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘When what?’

  ‘When is the ceiling going to be mended?’

  Mum smiled a bright, fake smile. ‘Soon. I’m working on it. We have to sort out the insurance. And it takes time to find a good builder.’

  ‘He can’t share my room,’ I said. ‘He’s a boy.’

  ‘He’s your brother.’

  ‘But I don’t know him.’

  ‘Oh, try to be hospitable,’ Mum said. ‘Filipinos are the most hospitable people in the world.’

  ‘But I’m Engl
ish.’

  ‘You’re half Filipino.’

  ‘I’ve only been to the Philippines once in my life.’

  ‘And you loved it!’

  ‘I can’t speak Tagalog.’

  ‘His English is very good!’

  ‘Why can’t he sleep in the living room? Or how about your room?’

  Mum frowned at me. ‘Well, I was going to put him in the living room at first but then I thought, Bernardo is sixteen, he needs privacy.’

  ‘What about my privacy?’

  ‘You’re both teenagers!’ Mum said. ‘You have so much in common!’

  Brilliant.

  15

  Bernardo

  There was a humming and the bed shivered as if it had suddenly been nudged awake.

  I sat up.

  Earthquake?

  The bed trembled again.

  But no.

  It was the cellphone on vibration alert under my pillow.

  It was just a text message.

  I pulled the phone out. The little screen flashed blue in the darkness.

  The number had a +44 country code for the UK. It was Mama.

  gud night nardo. cant w8 to c u.

  I texted back: night ma. c u soon.

  I lay back again, awake now. Shadows huddled on the ceiling. Only a few more days and I would be on a plane to London. But in the pit of my stomach, angry teeth nibbled.

  You don’t need a player, you need a sideshow. You only want me as the team freak.

  I clenched my fists. Jabby might as well have punched me in the face. How could he use his best friend like some sort of thing to barter at the market? How could he?

  He didn’t know, did he, that I was about to leave? I imagined it. Jabby turning up at the front door like he always did, touching Auntie’s hand to his forehead before calling for me over her shoulder.

  Nardo! Nardo!

  And Auntie smiling sadly at him.

  Nardo isn’t here! He went to London.

  And him gazing down at Auntie, jaw dropping in shock.

  London?

  I’m sorry. We couldn’t tell anyone. He’s not coming back.

  And Jabby would be sorry. Sorry. Sorry.

  My face was suddenly wet and my heart seized with guilt.

  Jabby would be sorry but so would San Andres.

  Everybody would be sorry to see me go.

  And frightened.

  Because what if the earthquakes returned?

  Remorse suddenly had me by the throat. Was I about to bring calamity to my village? How could I even think of leaving? What if something happened?

  I rubbed my eyes. No. No. No. Nothing was going to happen. The whole Bernardo Carpio thing, it was just a legend, wasn’t it? Nobody really believed it, surely. I laughed. But all I made was a hollow, rusty sound.

  Mad Nena made things worse of course, with her crazy, apocalyptic declarations.

  But it was Old Tibo who had made everybody believe. Poor Tibo with all his stories of gods and giants.

  Whenever I went to Tibo for a haircut, the old man greeted me like a VIP. When I tried to touch his hand to my forehead to show my respect, he waved me off like he didn’t deserve it. And then he ceremoniously took mine and touched the back of my hand to his forehead. It was so wrong, an old man giving respect to a boy. His dog, Flash Gordon, fluttered around my knees like a little bird, he was so overjoyed to see me.

  Every man and boy in the village had experienced their first haircut at Tibo’s ancient hands. It was like a benediction. Tibo was the oldest person in the barrio; his family had run a barbershop on the same spot on our road for almost a century.

  The year Ma came to visit with little Amandolina and Uncle William, when the big earthquake hit, we all rushed out into the streets in our nightclothes, Amandolina in her father’s arms, me in Uncle Victor’s, and Ma and Auntie clutching each other like young girls. I remember hearing the sharp crackle of windows shattering like popcorn, the high wail which at first I thought was a fire truck’s siren but turned out to be screaming as people ran out into the street. And I remember Old Tibo weeping as he fell on his knees in the rubble. The earthquake had shaken his barbershop into kindling.

  ‘Why, God? Why?’

  Much later, when I was older, Auntie told me that it was not the first time Old Tibo’s shop had been levelled by an earthquake.

  The first time was many, many years ago, before Auntie was born, before most people now living in the village can remember. That time, the earthquake had struck while Tibo, his young wife and baby son were inside the shop.

  That time, the tremors had been stronger, levelling a chapel and the municipal hall. A few miles away, the hillside had yawned open and swallowed a schoolhouse, just like that. The seabed thrust giant waves onto the shore. A fishing village drowned.

  Tibo was pulled out of the wreckage of his shop after twenty-four hours. He broke both his legs and a hip – but at least he was alive.

  But both his wife and son were crushed to death.

  16

  Andi

  We pulled into the school car park. The new gym sat on a fat cushion of mist.

  Mum frowned and checked the clock on the Toyota’s dashboard. ‘I thought you said the trials were at eight o’clock? There’s nobody here—’

  ‘Eight-thirty,’ I said, kissing the air next to her cheek and jumping out before she’d even finished her sentence. ‘I wanted to get here early.’ I ran into the gym, basketball under one arm, ignoring her squeal of protest.

  The gym was pretty snazzy; it was so new it had yet to absorb the odour of socks and sweat and trainers, the default aroma of any secondary school gym.

  I came early so I could warm up.

  No. I lie.

  I came early because I couldn’t wait a minute longer. I was so excited, the butterflies in my stomach had morphed into monster ostriches.

  There was an arctic gale blowing through the gap between the double doors but I shrugged my tracksuit off anyway, I was that eager. On impulse, I had worn the Chicago Bulls basketball kit Dad got me on eBay. It was the first time I’d worn it and it felt crispy on my thighs.

  But what if they took one look at me and said, ‘Sorry, you’re too short’?

  The thought sent the ostriches galumphing. Stop thinking. Get going. Shoot some hoops.

  I threw my stuff on a bench and ran out onto the court, dribbling the ball low as if a defender was already sweating over me.

  OK, this is the thing about me and basketball: I may be small and I could be faster … but I never miss.

  I. Never. Miss.

  It’s some kind of weight-versus-strength-versus-balance thing. I just don’t miss. I shoot and the ball swishes through the basket. Hook shot. Set shot. Turn-around-jump shot. Lay-up. Under the basket. From the free-throw line. And even way, way out, from the three-point line.

  It all goes in.

  Swish.

  Swish.

  Swish.

  I’d shot twenty in a row before the sound of the gym doors creaking open made me turn round to meet whoever it was – the coach? My new teammates? Heart booming, teeth shredding my bottom lip, I wondered if I looked like an idiot in the Chicago Bulls kit, like I’d dressed up all posh for a jeans-and-T-shirt party. Suddenly I wished I’d worn my plain old Nike sweats instead.

  The heavy double doors swung open slowly and a boy shouldered his way in, one arm wrapped around a large kit bag, the other dragging a net sack full of basketballs. Our eyes met and then both of us looked at the other from top to toe. Oh Holy Mother of God, he was wearing a Chicago Bulls kit too. I felt a blush start up in my cheeks and spread to my forehead and ears like a rash.

  The boy pointed at the No Entry Unless Authorized sign on the door. ‘Uh, you can’t play here, we’ve got basketball trials scheduled for eight-thirty.’ The stubby dreads on his head bounced like coiled springs.

  ‘I’m here for the trials,’ I said, hating that my whole face was now radiating more heat than a radiator
. I probably looked like a well-boiled lobster. With freckles. ‘Are you the coach?’

  The boy put the kit bag down, let go of the sack, and folded his arms across his chest, looking me up and down. ‘There’s no coach. Just me. My name’s Rocky. I’m the team captain.’

  He was tall, probably six foot two, maybe more. I had to bend backwards from the waist to look up at him. He had biceps like boulders.

  He stared at his shoes. ‘Listen, I’m sorry but …’

  ‘My name’s Andi,’ I said. ‘Andi with an i. I started at Saint Sim’s two days ago. My family just moved here. Near the hospital.’

  ‘Ah,’ the boy said. ‘That explains everything.’

  ‘Explains what?’

  He smiled and scuffed the floor with his feet. Which were huge. I could probably swim in his Converses. ‘Well, it’s just that …’

  I tried to relax. ‘Oh, well. I know. I’m really small. But you’ve only got to see me play …’

  ‘No, no.’ Rocky’s tan seemed to darken. Was he blushing too? ‘It’s … well, I’ve got to tell you now, before anyone else arrives. You’ve got it wrong.’

  I closed one eye and peered up at him. What was he on about?

  ‘Andi … it is Andi, isn’t it?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Andi, it’s great you’re here but … you’re new to the school so you had no reason to know …’

  ‘No reason to know what?’

  There was real sorrow in his doggy brown eyes. ‘The Souls. It’s a boys’ team.’

  For the first time in my life I wanted to be even smaller than I was. I wanted to shrink away until I disappeared.

  ‘But your poster said: “Basketball, anyone”,’ I mumbled. ‘And Saint Sim’s is a mixed school – surely there’s a boys’ and a girls’ …’

  Rocky sucked his teeth and stepped closer, as if he wanted to do something sympathetic like pat me on the head.

  ‘It’s boys only. I’m sorry but you can’t join the team. There isn’t a girls’ basketball team but there’s a girls’ netball team. How about—’

  But I didn’t wait to hear more. I grabbed my stuff from the bench, picked up my ball and ran.