Free Lockdown by Walter Dean Myers

about getting to some place where people aren’t even talking about dying. When I get out of here I got to chill for a few years until I can figure out a way to get paid. I’m not into no quick get overs because I’m tired of being locked up. I was thinking about you and me opening a business. Maybe we could open a grocery store and be like the kind of guys who everybody in the neighborhood looked up to. We could even open up a supermarket and hiresome guys from the hood. Icy could go on to college and maybe run for mayor of New York, and you and me could get all the people in Harlem to vote for her. The newspapers would run stories about why people should vote for some black girl from Harlem but then Icy would come out and blow everybody away with her plans to make New York the best city in the world for everybody (not just for white people) and she would be mayor. I bet that would even straighten Moms out.
    Anyway, Moms asked me to write to you but I can’t say nothing too heavy because I don’t really have anything useful in my pocket right now. As you know my situation is definitely not all that tight, either.
    Write back if you get a chance.
    Your brother,
    Reese Anderson

CHAPTER 15
    Saturday. Miss Dodson from ACS—Administration for Children’s Services—and Miss Rossetti from Progress announced that instead of our regular Saturday routine we were going to have a basketball game and then a co-ed group session.
    Miss Dodson handles kids in the foster system, and I figured that had to be a hard road because they didn’t have a home to go back to when they got out.
    “Remember they did the same thing before Christmas?” Play asked. “We’re supposed to be smiling and stuff when we play.”
    “Yeah, first they divide us into two teams and run the game,” I said, remembering the Christmasprogram. “They video the game and then the whole group thing is about how basketball is supposed to be about life.”
    “What they call it again?” Play was eating an apple. “A semaphore or something like that.”
    “A metaphor,” I said. “Remember Miss Dodson asked us to show how basketball was like life, and that kind of girly dude said that the ball was round and life was round, and she asked him what that meant and he said he didn’t know but he had noticed all balls were round.”
    “That guy was a goof,” Play said.
    “Why you eating the core of that apple?” I asked. “You that hungry?”
    “No, I’m too lazy to take it over to the garbage can,” Play said.
    Miss Rossetti set up the teams with me, Toon, Play, Mr. Pugh, and a skinny kid who was on some serious meds on one side. On the other side they had Mr. Wilson, Diego, Leon, a fat white kid everybody called Lump, and the King Kong dude who was messing with me before.
    My team was the shirts, and when King Kong took off his shirt I saw he had a bird tattooed on hischest with some Chinese writing on it.
    He said that it was his name in Chinese letters and that his name was Tarik.
    “That’s why it’s got five letters,” he said.
    “You know I read Chinese,” I told King Kong. “And it don’t say no Tarik.”
    “What it say?” He looked at me sideways.
    I got real close and squinted at the letters. “It says, ‘Please flush after each use.’”
    Mr. Pugh and Play cracked up, and Mr. Wilson put his hand over his mouth. Everybody was laughing but King Kong Tarik.
    The game started and the only real ballplayers on the court were me, Play, and Mr. Wilson. Everybody else was jive. Mr. Pugh was running around knocking people down and walking whenever he got the ball. Me and Play were scoring; all we had to do was to keep the ball away from Mr. Wilson.
    Toon was a trip. If he had the ball and you came near him he’d give it to you. We’d be waving for him to pass but he’d panic and give the ball to anybody near him.
    When I got into the low post, King Kong kept coming over to me and leaning his body againstmine like he was digging me or