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Kwame Mbalia BOOK 2 KWAME MBALIA • HYPERION Los Angeles New York 1 Tr!"#$%Er& a'( Wh!)*+,S No!"#$ l%&'( g)*+,-G p./012D i3 t45 f67'. Call it a hunch or an educated guess. Either way, I can con face is way down on the list of enjoyable activities. It’s some where between eating a halfwayscraped toast and giving yourself a wedgie. Nope. Don’t like it. Espe cially when it’s accompanied by my grandfather’s trash talk. POP! “C’mon, boy! Keep your head moving! Unless you wanna make your living lying down on the mat. You want me to build you a house down there? I can get you a oneroom stu dio, utilities included.” When I opened my eyes, Granddad was standing over me with his hands on his hips. Well, his mitts on his hips. He wore gray jogging sweats and a crisp white Tshirt that 1 he had probably ironed. His afro, neatly trimmed and nearly all gray, moved from side to side as he grumbled and shook hand with scars on the knuckles. When I reached up with my right glove and he pulled me to my feet, I could feel the crouch and started bobbing and weaving his head. “You’re back. What’s wrong? You asked for this, remember? You tired?” We were inside the old barn on my grandparents’ farm. The earlyafternoon sun peeked through gaps in the walls, sending warm yellow rays down in stripes across the packed clearing now stood in the middle of the open space, and a few other adults were setting up benches. Why, I hear you asking, did I volunteer for this? Well, a few days ago, Granddad had gotten a call from an a trainer himself. A practice bout for one of his new pros pects had been canceled because of a storm, and he wanted to know if Granddad knew of anyone they could spar with. Why yes, I imagined Granddad saying, I have the perfect sparring partner. No, don’t worry, he’s up for the challenge. 2 That, my friends, isn’t volunteering. That’s called being voluntold. So I had a sparring match in an hour or so, and I was not looking forward to it, but Granddad had insisted I get in one good match before I left to go back home to Chicago. Yay. But don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t backing down. I wanted the challenge. Kept me distracted. Helped suppress unwanted thoughts. Mr. Richardson, my counselor, called them intru sive thoughts. Busy hands, calm mind. And when you trained with Granddad, your hands stayed busy. “No, sir, I’m not tired.” I hopped up, slammed my gloves together, and started the routine again. Granddad held up his mitts, and I let my hands go to work. “All right, boy,” my grandfather said. “Onetwo.” Sharp. Quick. Had to be better. Had to get stronger. Step Faster. FASTER. FAST “All right, boy, all right. Don’t get too worked up.” Granddad backed away and dropped the mitts. I stopped in midjab, breathing hard. “I told you, we’re warming up. What’s gotten into you?” 3 I started to answer, then closed my mouth. I didn’t know shoulders. Granddad watched me closely. “Take a deep breath. You sure you ain’t tired? I heard you up late last night, then early this morning. You getting enough sleep?” I bounced on my feet. “I’m okay, Granddad. I’m ready.” “I’ll tell you when you’re ready. Just breathe. You look tired.” I rolled my neck, trying to loosen up, looking everywhere around the barn instead of at Granddad. Pictures and post across the high twostory ceiling. But the real eyecatcher was up as he curled a bicep, and his cornerman, towel slung over It was Alvin Strong, my dad, the night he defended his StrongGranddad. I once asked Granddad why he’d chosen to commemorate like Dad in the mural. “Taking the belt was a feat, I’ll grant you. Somethin’ hard, worthy of a mural, I suppose. But it’s one 4 thing to take the belt when don’t nobody see you coming. It’s another to stare down an entire country while you got a target on your back, and then beat them challengers into submission. It’s hard to win a belt.... It’s even harder to keep it.” As I shook my arms to loosen them and then slipped my mouthpiece back in, Granddad stood beneath that mural. He might have been older, skinnier, with more wrinkles and less hair, but the same strength still radiated from him. I had that strength, too. I’d used it before, and I was going to have to use it again. Because, as much as it pained me, I had asked to train. I needed to get stronger. “I’m okay, Granddad. Honest,” I said, pounding my gloves together again. “I’m not tired at all.” “Mmhmm. We’ll see. Here we go. Onetwo. Onetwo. Good. Hook coming in. Onetwo. Onetwo. Tuck that chin in, boy, show these hands some respect! Onetwo. That’s it, that’s the Walter Strong special. Watch it, now. Good!” POP! POP! I snapped lefts and rights at the mitts as Granddad called the cadence, and for a while I did good. When the hooks came in from either direction, I ducked them, and when the straights came in, I dodged them, weaving from side to side so they went sailing by. A rhythm had me bouncing on my feet and practicing the sweet science. It felt good. I got into a groove. 5 POP! POP! And then it happened. A sound drifted past my ear. Something tiny and faint. A breath of wind brushed my cheek. A chill gripped my chest, making it hard to breathe. Tristan . Someone whispered my name. And right after that, dropped as I turned toward whateveror whoeverit was. “Tristan!” I recovered too late. WHAP! The hook came again and clipped the side of my head, sending me head over heels. It didn’t hurtit just knocked me upside down mitts and tossed them out of the ring. “Now what done got into you?! What is so fascinating that you’d take a punch from your opponent just to get a peek at it? Hmm? A piece of trash on the ground? You ain’t even here bling between the feet of the adults who were trying hard to not look at us. It was a receipt, crumpled up and harm less. I let out a shaky breath. Granddad waited, then sighed and motioned for me to come over. He unlaced the gloves 6 wrists. He worked quickly, then gathered up everything and stared at the mural on the barn wall. and you’re chewing on something in that head of yours and need to spit it out. Whatever it is, you can’t bring that into the ring. Distractions will be the end of you before your opponent throws a single punch.” into a giant faded stopped and took a deep breath. With a grunt, he lifted the body pads,” he said over his shoulder. “Then we’re going to Granddad marched out and the spectators followed him, leaving me alone in the barn, staring at the balledup receipt. Tiny. Like a small wad of cotton. That had bad associations for me. But the piece of paper wasn’t the actual distraction. I just couldn’t tell Granddad that. A whisper? He would’ve And who could blame him? How could I tell him that, just for a second, I’d thought I heard a faint drumbeat? “You know, boy, the least you could do is remove me from 7 your sweaty pocket before you start prancing about in your you plan on moping forever?” It came from my training shorts. I rolled my eyes and pulled out a shiny black phone with a gold spider emblem on the back, sleek and brandnew. When I raised it, the screen blinked on and a splash screen appeared the word STORY written inside it. The image faded away, and in its place appeared a tiny brown man stomping back and forth, hopping over glowing app icons and kicking aside the or shorts that were too long, and a Tshirt with a grinning spider on it. Anansi’s sense of style was somewhere between lazy dad and retrochic teen, and I could only shake my head. Why was Anansi, the original trickster, the master of story telling, the weaver of tales and webs of mischief, inside my phone? Great question! Because a month ago a tiny loudmouth stole my dead best friend’s journal. realm where Black folktale heroes and African gods walk around like you and me. Because I accidentally brought a diabolical haint with me, stirring up an even more ancient evil. Because I caught Anansi trying to use all the confusion 8 to gain power for himself instead of helping the people, and this was his punishment. Because I am an Anansesem, a carrier and spreader of those stories are stored, and which it is my responsibility to Because I got the hookup, that’s why. Now stop asking questions. Anyway, that was a month ago. It had been thirty days since Eddiewell, his spirit, actually, since he’s my dead best friendtold me goodbye for the last time. Since then I’d read aloud every word in the journal he left me and recorded it give The SBP’s screen went blank, and then the lock screen out of the background and began to toss it against the edge of the screen like a ball.
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