The Rising Storm

            You’ll enter the room and at the time, it’ll feel like the whole world is crashing down on you. The letters on the wall will be peeling from their cartoonish prisons, and you’ll only be able to read the numbers hanging over the desks backwards as though they’re counting down towards something unfathomable. The googly eyes on the six will be looking down at you in pity, just like the eyes of everyone around you. 

            You’ll be silent when the teacher introduces you to the class, it was more than enough effort to even stand up beside your desk, much less speak when prompted. Your hands will shake and trigger the Richter scale, your gaze will focus on the multi-colored carpet and nothing more, and a dozen beads of sweat will drip from your frizzy hair and cascade down your dark skin like rain on a windowpane. Your skin will glisten under the white lights hanging from the ceiling and you’ll flash with an ironic albedo effect, as if you didn’t stand out enough. 

            All the other children will be looking at you, transfixed upon the rare sight that is you. Is it hate? Wonder? Confusion? You’ll be none the wiser, and it’ll remain a curiosity long into your adulthood. Their eyes will seem like they’re full of nothing, just white orbs tracked onto you like heat seekers. And they’re children, so their looks will never falter until told to do otherwise.

            “What’s wrong with you?”

            “Justin!”

            “Sorry Ms. Franklin. He’s just standing there. Is he deaf or something?”

            “He’s shy Justin, be nice.”

            “Why?”

            “He doesn’t know any of us.”

            “My dad’s brown too so don’t worry.”

            That one will get your attention, and despite your better judgement, you’ll look towards the source of the claim hoping that something familiar will await you. But when you lock eyes with the other boy, he’ll be no darker than the rest of the kids. He’ll be looking at you with the only set of eyes you can read: curiosity. They’re narrowed, focused not just on you, but on everything he can comprehend at his age. 

            “I call him Jeff though.”

            “You’re white.”

            “So, you do speak!” Justin will jump up in his seat. He’s a few rows away from you and about as far back as any student could’ve been. He’s almost seated in a spot a bit further spaced out than the rest of the huddled students. He’ll walk over to you, and though you don’t see her, the teacher has stopped her insistence on silencing the boy. “My name’s Justin. What’s yours?”

            You’ll hesitate for a moment as he makes confident steps towards you like he’s known you for years, his stubby legs careful not to trip over his untied shoes. He weaves through the small desks like a maze, and his large gut rubs against the tops of the plastic tabletops as he knocks over pencils and unknown pages. Other children cry their displeasures at him, some accusing him of being gassy as he passes them.

            But when he makes his way over to you, he doesn’t speak another word until his eyes are directly in front of your chest. He’s looking up at you, waiting for you to make your move. 

            “Justice.”

            “That’s my name!”

            “No it’s not. You have an ‘n’, I have an ‘i-c-e’ at the end.” 

            “I don’t know what any of that is. Wanna sit by me at lunch?”

            Justin will be your guide throughout your elementary years. He’ll show you around the small town, through the wheat fields, through the haunted cemetery, and through the town square where everyone will shoot you both looks. You’ll learn the ways of the farmland through him and his comforting stepfather, who through a sea of unfamiliar snow, stands in sharp contrast just like you and your family. When your families eventually meet, your parents greet him and his white wife as if they’ve known them for years, skipping the pleasantries they put forth when meeting your teachers and coaches throughout the years.

            Justin will be the one to nudge you into sports with him. He’ll tell you he wants to get more fit, and thinks you’ll be able to help him since sports runs in your blood. At the time, you’ll give him a not-so-light punch on the arm, but eventually both of you find yourselves making the slightest of problematic jokes to each other like it were breathing. When you both sign up for basketball, you’ll try your best to advertise yourselves as white and wheat bread, but it’ll never catch on. 

            The games begin when you’re young, and you’ll both be as good as you can be while you’re still learning to divide. You’ll work off one another with a strange sort of symbiosis; he pushes you to put yourself out there and become a fellow Idahoan, and you’ll push him to do swift layups and avoid travelling wherever possible. He’ll teach you how to tell the gender of a cattle without touching it’s plumbing, and you’ll teach him how to estimate the arc of a basketball within a fraction of a second before throwing it towards the chain-link hoop. 

One night in the eighth grade, the two of you will be sitting in the dirt in the middle of his parents’ cornfield with a pack of cigarettes he took out of his step-father’s desk. You’ll finish lighting up your Marlboro and pass the gold lighter to him to light his own, of which you both countdown from ten before putting the filters in your mouths and inhaling at the same time. By this point, both of you know you have asthma and as a result, both of you cough violently until something other than air comes out of his mouth, and specks of red seep into the dirt. 

“Dude!” You’ll scramble over to him as he’s hunched over the dirt with his hands barely propping his slowly thinning body over the ground, but before you can grab him, he waves you off while he continues to cough. 

“It happens, it’s all good.”

“Is that blood dude?”

“No it’s fruit punch. Of course it’s blood idiot.” He’ll sputter out a few more harsh coughs before the only sound in the field is his labored breaths. “Asthma sucks.”

“That’s bad dude. Mine’s not that bad.”

“It’s always been like that. Fat kid problems.”

“You’re not even fat bro. You’ve thinned out a lot.”

“I still look like I eat butter.” Justin will then fall to his back on the dirt and take a few more labored breaths. “I think I’m done with my cigarette.” 

“Me too. I think we should throw them in the field while they’re still lit.”

“Very funny. I’ll give you a dollar to eat yours.”

“Eating everything is your thing white bread”

“Good one whole wheat.” Still lying on the ground, he’ll tilt his head to look at you. “Can’t believe they wouldn’t let us put that on our jerseys.”

“I know. Everyone here is racist.”

“You pick a team yet?”

“The Thunder. I’m from Oklahoma City as is, it just feels right. You?”

“Celtics. Their mascot kinda looks like me.”

“They also have all the bad players, perfect fit.”

“Dude.” You won’t notice, but he’ll throw a patch of dirt right in your face.

“I hate you.”

“Can’t even see it, it blends in.”

“Well if it were winter, I’d lose you in an instant.”

"Only time you'll lose is when my Celtic ass is standing victorious on the court with you kissing my Nike shoes, Thunder boy."

            In your senior year of high school, you’ll both be sitting behind the bleachers after your final game that you won in a landslide. In your hands, both of you will have a single envelope in your hands with the same university sprawled across the front. You’d both received it at the same time but had agreed to open them at this very moment. 

            You’ll look each other in the eyes with a mix of eager, and worried anticipation. You know why you feel the way you do, but you aren’t entirely sure why Justin looks more worried than anything. 

            “Ready?” Your mouth will taste like salt with every syllable, all your sweat is still fresh as it rolls down your face. Your arms will be damp to the touch, and the light from the doorway leading into the rest of the school will be the only thing showing that you’re there. 

            “Yeah. Totally.”

            “You good whitey?”

            “Yeah, let’s open these.” He’ll start to rip open the envelope, but you hesitate. With all the excitement from the night and the anticipation for this moment, you expected him to be livelier, to be matching your anxiousness. But none of it will be there, and you won’t know how to ask him about it.  After some hesitation, you start to peel away the paper from your letter just as he pulls his letter from its parcel. You’ll try to feign excitement, but most of your joy stays dormant in your confusion. 

            “’Dear Mr. Frederickson. We are pleased to inform you that your application to the University of Oklahoma has been approved due to your excellent repertoire and extracurricular success. We are happy to announce that we have awarded you a full-ride to our esteemed university with the hopes that you will be part of our wonderful Basketball team for the years to come.’” You’ll read over the rest of the letter to yourself, a smile growing on your face, but when you look back at Justin, you feel your smile fade into nothingness. “What’s yours say.”

            “I got in.” 

            “Hell yeah dude! Team captains for U of O!” You’ll raise your palm, expecting his to slap yours in excitement, but his somberness falls over you like a flood as you’re drowned in confusion and worry. “Justin?”

            “I got in, that’s all that matters. I’ll see you there.” He’ll get up to leave, his brown hair falling in front of his face as he raises himself to a knee, but you’ll grab his arm before he can fully stand up. “Let go of me.”

            “Justin what the hell is—”

            “I didn’t make the team, okay? I knew I wasn’t going to.” 

            You stare at each other for what feels like hours. Your eyes speak everything that your mouths refuse to say, and his sadness seems to seep into your veins as though your tight hand around his forearm is a conductor of emotions. Sparks of every emotion fire through your brain like arcs of lightning flashing through your cells. A strike of joy, an arc of sadness, and a flash of anger. Your mind is racing with everything you’ve ever felt, but as you stare into his eyes, you know the only thing radiating from his eyes is loss. 

            “Why didn’t you tell me.”

            “Because I knew you’d try to doll it up and make it less of a thing than it actually is. This was my last game Justice, my body isn’t going to let me do anymore.” He pulls his arm away and he jolts up under the bleachers, the light from the hallway enunciating the single tear that slides down his cheek. 

            “Dude screw that, you can’t let that stop you from being a Celtic man—”

            “See! That’s exactly what I mean. I’m an asthmatic, wheezing fat kid who’s great at high school basketball, but couldn’t dream of making a college team, much less go pro.”

            “Shut up Justin, you don’t mean that.”

            “I do! Basketball is like breathing to you…you…”

            “Don’t.”

            “Don’t what? All the other kids always told me you’d outshine me in everything we did. They laughed at me for trying to keep up with you and all you did was prove them right!”

            You’ll stand up and look him dead in the eye without having to arc your head in any direction. He’s bigger than you, wider and more built, but recently you’ve noticed that you’re both the same height despite it all. You’ll be eye-to-eye with him, clawing through your mind to try and find the words to say. But the storm in your mind is growing worse, and the flashes of feelings run rampant through your head until you can’t determine which one is which. “You’re insane.”

            “Insane? You’re insane for thinking we could ever go down the same path.”

            “Of course I think we can! Anything’s possible you idiot! I shouldn’t have even survived being in this god damn town, but you thought I could and here I am!”

            “Oh for Christ’s sake you would’ve been fine. You could’ve dropped me at any moment and been fine you crybaby. ‘Oh I’m a brown boy in Idaho what am I to do? Oh, this fat white outcast is here to guide me? Hell yeah that’ll make me feel better.'”

            You’ll stand there in disbelief as your jaw hangs open like a curtain. You’ll feel the heat radiating from his body, and the poison leaking into the air. You’ll see the anger in his eyes, a look you can’t remember the last time you saw from him, and you won’t know what to do as you your own anger is welling up in your chest. “What the hell has gotten into you?”

            “Gotten? It’s always been there but you never cared to ask until it was obvious to you.”

            “I’m not dealing with this anymore.” You’ll point a finger in his face, but he’ll slap it away with a force you’d never seen.

            “Don’t point at me you ni—” But before he can finish, you’ll shove him away with all the emotions you can muster, including the ones you’d never felt before. 

            “Call me that, and we’re done.”

            “You don’t get to decide everything. You never did.” He’ll snort at you, before turning to go through the lone hallway that had been highlighting the two of you. “Have fun on the court. I know you’ll breeze through their little winter bootcamp as if it were nothing.” Without looking back at you, he’ll wander into the hallway with his back turned to you and his feet echoing across the linoleum like thunder. Before he turns and crosses under the bright red exit sign, he’ll rip off his jersey and throw it on the floor just as the last of the lights turn off. In an instant, the world goes dark all around you and just like before, the world is crashing down on you with only the dim letters of the exit sign casting their sparse light on your world.