Rusty barbed wire slices through the setting sun, and Lucas can't count the number of times he's been nailed to the "death corner"-the farthest edge of this street court, reserved for the worst players. Sweat seeped into the corners of his cracked mouth, salty like tears from a hangover.
"Last ball! Rookie team get out!" The burly white man across the field with a demon tattoo grins, his gold teeth refracting malice. The crowd on the sidelines raised their cell phones, the lenses colder than the muzzles.
Marcus suddenly bumped his shoulder, the breath of mint-flavored gum mingling with sweat coming on, "Pass it to me, don't be a fucking hero." The brand new Nike wrist guards on his wrists stung Lucas's eyes-Lucas had stared at the fluorescent green for a good three minutes when they'd passed the thrift store last week, and ended up buying a fried Oreo to share.
The countdown was ten seconds.
Lucas's palms were clammy, the lines of the inferior basketball long since smoothed out, as chaotic as the seventeen years of his life. The moment he accelerated, his left sneaker suddenly let out a dying wail - the cracks in the sole gnawing at the asphalt. He heard Marcus cursing behind him, heard the Devil's gold teeth cooing, but couldn't hear the muffled thud of his own knee as it hit the ground.
Worse came.
The right sneaker rose into the air in a comical parabola. The old laces snapped in the air, just like the rubber band "vows" they tore when they bonded at a cheap motel last summer. The 2008 Air Jordan 5 slammed into a garbage can by the chain-link fence, sending a flock of pigeons pecking for scraps.
"Holy fucking shit!" the Devil's gold-toothed henchman laughed maniacally on his knees, "That'll raise a hundred thousand fans!"
At 3:17 a.m., Lucas hunkered down in a convenience store restroom and flipped through his phone. The video of the garbage can shot has over a million likes, and the #ClownBasketball hashtag is filled with spoof pics of "Ghetto Michael Jordan (bankruptcy version)". Marcus's text message hovered at the top of the notification bar: "Varsity tryouts tomorrow morning at 7:00 a.m. If you do any more performance art, I'm going to assume you're dead."
The storage room smelled musty and pungent. Lucas yanked off the faded wrist guards, the threads crumbling like a heart being torn open at the seams. Deep in the shelves, the half-bottle of whiskey the night clerk had forgotten glowed amber.
Suddenly, there was a muffled thud in the direction of the trash can.
A bony hand picked up his worn sneakers