Fadeaway by E. Vickers (ebook smartphone TXT) 📗

somebody, think about your mom and your little brother.”

Their faces come back to him in a rush, and he has to sit down.

Mom, her hair pulled into a knot on top of her head, looking up from chopping peppers to smile when he comes through the door.

And Luke, writing notes and poems and stats in that old notebook and hiding it where Jake can’t help but find it.

“You want to see them again, right? You don’t want them to hurt anymore?”

“Yes. No.”

The room starts to spin. Since he’s been down here, he’s become so weak that already those clear images of the people he loves are getting fuzzy, and he can’t seem to hold on.

“Then you’ve got to learn to follow instructions. Do we understand each other?”

Jake will do anything to make all this stop. To see them again.

“Yes,” he says as the room swirls around him.

“Good,” says the man, and the last thing Jake hears is the sound of retreating footsteps before everything is dark again.

How old are you, Luke?

Eleven.

And Jake is eighteen.

And a half.

Do you like your brother?

I love my brother.

Sometimes it’s hard to have a brother who’s that much bigger, even if you love him.

[Pause.]

That wasn’t a question. Do you have another question?

Did Jake ever talk about running away?

Only for an adventure. And only together.

Where were you two going to go?

Springfield.

Excuse me?

Springfield, Massachusetts. The Basketball Hall of Fame.

Tell me about the night he disappeared. Jake usually threw his warm-up jersey to you in the stands when they announced the starting lineup. Is that right?

Yes.

And did he do that the night of the championship game?

No.

Do you know why not?

No.

Did you talk to him that night?

I told him good luck before the game.

And what did he say?

[Shifts in his chair.] He didn’t say anything.

Was that normal?

No…Maybe…Normal sometimes changes.

I understand, Luke, and I know these are hard questions, but we need to ask them so we can understand what happened. Was Jake ever mean to you? Did you ever fight?

He was never mean to anybody. He never fought with anybody.

What about Kolt Martin or Seth Cooper? Did he fight with them sometimes?

[Picks at a stain on the table.]

Luke? Did Jake fight with his friends?

No.

Were you ever afraid of him?

I’m afraid now that he’s gone. Can we talk about something else?

Okay. I like your Space Jam shirt.

Thanks. Jake gave it to me.

Space and basketball. Those are your favorite things, right?

Actually, can we be done talking?

Once upon a time there was

Nothing

and then there was

Something.

No, that’s not totally true.

Once upon a time

there was a very small, very dense, very hot

Something.

It wasn’t Nothing, but it didn’t look like much.

At least, I don’t think it did, but who knows?

There was no light to see it by.

And there was nobody to look at it.

Unless you believe in God.

Unless God was there before the

Nothing

that became

Something.

I believe in God.

I think.

But anyway, that very small, dense, hot

Something

E X P A N D E D

with a bang

(yeah, a BIG one)

and then there was a

Universe.

At first it was just

light

energy

gas

(not that kind)

and only the smallest, simplest atoms.

But after a while

(if you can call billions of years a while)

there were

galaxies

planets

oceans

mountains

grass and trees

seasons

whales

birds

cows

spiders

people.

And it was good.

Mostly.

Because as soon as there were people,

they could hurt themselves.

They could hurt each other.

And they did.

And it hasn’t stopped.

That’s what happened to my brother

when he disappeared.

Somebody took him in the night

when it was dark and the world felt small and secret

and nobody saw it coming,

except maybe God.

Now nobody knows where he is

on heaven?

or earth?

Nobody knows,

except maybe God.

So where is He?

And where is he?

The opposite of a big bang is a fadeaway.

Disappearing instead of

appearing.

Jake taught me to shoot a fadeaway two summers ago.

“My signature move,” he said.

“Impossible to defend without getting in my face,

in my space,

and the stripes call that foul

every

single

time.”

He was already falling backward

as the ball

rolled

off

his

fingertips,

and as beautiful as they were together,

the sight of them coming apart,

of Jake catching himself

as the ball whispered through the net—

it was so perfect I stopped breathing for a second.

“Try it,” he said.

“Make a hundred, and I’ll level you up to Beginner.”

So I tried

and I failed,

but with my brother beside me

I tried again.

Again.

Again.

By the time I made a hundred,

my arms were spaghetti.

The night he disappeared,

Jake made twelve of his famous fadeaways,

including the

game-winning shot.

Thirty-four points, fifteen boards,

twelve assists.

That triple-double

took the ball to the rim

and his team to the state title.

I felt so lucky to be his brother,

even though he didn’t throw me his warm-up

or give me a salute in the stands

like he had for

every

single

game

since freshman year.

Instead, he looked up

at a shady, shadowy person in the back

during every timeout,

after every shot.

Who was he?

There was something familiar about the face

or the way he moved

or just

Something

that told me

I’d seen him before.

I usually like writing

more than talking,

and that is one reason why

I like

The Book of Luke and Jake.

The Book of Luke and Jake

sounds fancy, but it’s not.

It’s just a notebook

from the dollar store

and the title is written in Sharpie,

not gold.

It started that time

when Jake lost his biology notebook

and borrowed one of mine.

When he gave it back,

there was a joke inside

in his dark, spiky lowercase.

Why did Cinderella stink at basketball?

Because she kept running away from the ball.

After that, we started passing it

back

and forth,

writing

jokes, memories, and things to look forward to

(that’s Jake),

poems, basketball statistics, and science facts

(that’s me).

When you’re done writing,

you slide it under the other person’s pillow

and wait for him to find it

and wait for it to appear

under your pillow one night

with a new message on the next page.

It’s like getting a letter in the mailbox but

so

much

better.

Why else did Cinderella stink at basketball?

Because her coach was a pumpkin.

The record is eighty-seven days between messages,

but it is not the kind of record

you want to break

or even have in the first place.

Eighty-seven days means

almost three months of nothing last fall,

and I’m afraid it happened because of what I saw

that time on