Wrong Side of the Court Read online

  Penguin Teen

  an imprint of Penguin Random House Canada Young Readers,

  a division of Penguin Random House of Canada Limited

  Published in hardcover by Penguin Teen, 2022

  Text copyright © 2022 by H.N. Khan

  Cover design by Jennifer Griffiths

  Cover art by Anju Shrestha

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  Publisher’s note: This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Title: Wrong side of the court / H.N. Khan.

  Names: Khan. H.N., author.

  Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20210090650 | Canadiana (ebook) 20210092718 | ISBN 9780735270879 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780735270886 (EPUB)

  Classification: LCC PS8621.H36 W74 2022 | DDC jC813/.6—dc23

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2020951760

  www.penguinrandomhouse.ca

  a_prh_6.0_139403811_c1_r0

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Acknowledgements

  This book is for Regent Park, no longer a housing project, no longer a slum, but forever a gathering place for those yearning for new beginnings and dreaming of something more.

  PROLOGUE

  I can’t believe I didn’t shoot. Agh. I could’ve won us the game, but no, I was too busy worrying about what Omar would’ve done to me if I didn’t pass it to him. And what did he do? Miss.

  Can’t do anything about it now. I’m exhausted. I just want to close my eyes and sleep like a baby. I can’t remember the last time I did that. Like, it’s literally the one thing we should all be proficient in. It’s all we did when we were fresh out of the womb and not crying or shitting ourselves.

  Blame it on technology: all the glare from this stupid phone, the highlights of Curry draining threes on YouTube, getting sprung off Cardi B videos…wait, scratch that last part. Or at least don’t tell my mom.

  It doesn’t help that my room and Gerrard Street don’t have much between them. Sure, there’s a wall and a large window, but I can hear everything. Cars whizzing by, people talking, dogs barking, and streetcars flying by like they have somewhere to be. Who needs to go to Main Street subway station at this hour at lightning speed? I feel like someone jolts me awake with one of those resuscitators every time one passes. Maybe I need to put a sign outside my window, like those stickers on the backs of cars announcing there’s a baby on board, but something more to the effect of “growing teen who’s an insomniac and would really benefit from sleep lives here.” Not that anyone would pay attention. It is Regent Park, after all.

  Wait, it’s starting to rain, I’ve got the pedestal fan on high, and the ambient noise is starting to make me a little drowsy.

  I’m not tossing and turning as much. I start to feel my body give in. Thank you, Lord. I will repay you by not replaying those Cardi B videos in my sleep.

  Bang!

  I jolt up. What the f—

  Where’s my phone? My hands scramble to find it. My heart’s pounding a mile a minute and don’t get me started on the sweat. I hear nothing for another moment. Is it over?

  Bang! Bang!

  A car roars down Gerrard Street. I’m feeling around on my body. Am I hit? Am I bleeding? It’s outside—whatever went down is right outside my window.

  Mom barges into my room. The doorknob smashes into the wall. She’s heaving and disheveled.

  “Fawad, beta, are you okay?” she screams.

  1

  48 HOURS EARLIER

  “You gotta hold the ball with your finger pads, see?” says Abshir, showing me the ball in his hand. “And leave space between the ball and your palm.”

  It’s Friday afternoon. We’re both sweating from our one-on-one game, which was after playing a few pickup games with some randos. Came right after Friday prayers at the mosque.

  I nod, wiping beads of sweat off my forehead and brushing my hair back. I can feel the side of my skull where I just got a high fade from Mary-Jo, the local Chinese barber me and the boys have been going to since forever. My cut-off tank top is drenched, and my only pair of Nike sports shorts aren’t doing much better. Mom’s going to hate me for stinking up the laundry, again.

  Abshir has his Afro back in a bun and he’s rocking a long black T-shirt, black sweats that he’s pulled up toward his knees, and oh, those sweet monochrome black Air Jordan 11s.

  “How do you line up your shot, though?” I ask, taking the ball from him, pressing my finger pads to it, and spinning it in the air, trying to practice the motion Abshir’s just shown me.

  “All right, I’m going to tell you and only you, so you’d better keep this between us,” says Abshir, taking the ball from me and getting a few steps closer to the rim. “Keep your elbow and wrist in line with the basket, but the real key is right up there. See them rim hooks?”

  I look up at the rim. I’ve seen them about a million times and never paid them much attention. “What about them?”

  “That’s how you take aim,” says Abshir, dribbling way past the three-point line, shooting, and hitting nothing but net. That swoosh sound…if it were up to me, I swear, I’d just listen to that on a loop all day long.

  “Okay, let me try,” I say, grabbing the rebound and going not as far as him but far enough. I line myself up with the basket and eye those hooks before I let it fly. Swish. Holy shit, it works.

  I let another one fly and hit again.

  “One last thing, always, and I mean always…extend your arm all the way every time you shoot,” he says. “And that’s all the free advice you get out of me today, unless your mom’s making some of the seekh kababs or whatever you call ’em.”

  “I can bring some. This shit’s priceless.”

  “I’m joking. Keep practicing, I’ma go hang with Irv,” he says, walking toward the exit. There’s a lounge just a few steps away.

  We’re in the North Regent recreation center, or my second home, but don’t tell my mom that. It’s not a crazy nice gym, but coming down the flight of stairs whenever I enter, I swear I feel like a king strolling about his kingdom. I didn’t always love ba
ll this much. I wasn’t even good up till recently.

  But this year was different. Not only did puberty work in my favor and have me shoot up five inches so I can officially say I’m six feet (okay, five foot eleven), but also I’ve been training all summer. Hell, I might finally try out for the school team when school starts back in a couple of weeks. Tenth grade is going to be different. I don’t want to sit on the bleachers wishing I was on the court. I want to be in the game. Sure, I gotta get my mom’s permission first, but who’s keeping score?

  I’ll figure out a way to get her to say yes. First things first: there’s an inner-city summer league championship this Sunday. The league pits neighborhood recreation centers from all around the city against one another. My best friend, Yousuf, and I have been training with the Regent Park team and playing all summer. Yeah, my mom knows. At first I thought there was no way I could keep up, and now I’m up for sixth-man award with the stats I’ve been averaging. No big deal.

  Arif and Yousuf stroll in. They’d better not have been smoking up…I hate it when dudes show up high to the court. Straight-up disrespectful.

  “Took you both long enough,” I say, practicing dribbling the ball low around my ankles. Really, I’m just trying to show off.

  “Yo, there’s more to life than basketball,” says Arif, removing the duffel bag from across his shoulders and placing it to the side. He’s been working out all summer and posting photos on his Insta. Even started doing workout tutorials on TikTok. Why? Not to spread his love of fitness to the masses, but for the DMs from girls across the GTA and beyond who can’t stop gushing over his six-pack. Agh.

  “Y’all missing out. Abshir was dropping some serious knowledge and now you’ll never know,” I say, taking a shot and hitting nothing but net.

  “Man, he don’t even do that shit for me,” says Yousuf, removing his baseball cap and taking out his ball sneakers from his bag. “I swear if I asked him to come train with me, he’d just laugh at my ass.”

  Yousuf is a little on the heavier side, likes his head shaved, and wears glasses, which he takes off and puts on a ledge. He’s got a bit of a baby face, with big eyes and thick lips. There’s an inkling of a beard along his jaw, but it’s super patchy.

  The two of them start warming up. Yousuf wasn’t lying exactly when it came to Abshir. Ever since my dad passed, Abshir has taken me under his wing. I know Yousuf’s a little jelly, but his older bro looks out for all of us.

  We’re shooting around when someone kicks open the backdoor. It’s Omar, Johnny, and the rest of Omar’s crew coming in. They usually hang in South Regent, but the gym must be closed for some kids’ camp or something.

  At six foot four, Omar’s got a solid four inches on me. That’s just height. If we’re talking muscle, that’s a whole other story. His Afro is poking out from under his hood. I stare at his unlaced Timberland boots and baggy jeans and imagine how much damage he could do if I ended up on the floor and he stomped on me.

  Johnny’s Vietnamese and has a stocky build with broad shoulders. He rocks a ponytail, and despite his size, dude can shoot. We all went to the same middle schools together.

  “Hey, it’s Fuckwad and his little bitches,” says Omar, dribbling and taking a shot at the other side of the court. That gets Johnny and them laughing. It irks me, but I know better than to bite. It’s nothing new at this point. I keep shooting, but I can tell Arif and Yousuf are pissed off. Besides, there’s six or seven of them and only three of us.

  We ignore them as they get their ball gear on and keep shooting. The funny thing is, when Omar first came to Canada, we were in the same class in seventh grade, even friends, and he was as clueless about Regent as I’d been when I first moved here two years prior. Hell, we even used to get bullied together.

  What changed? He was really athletic and tore it up no matter what sport we played, and as for me, let’s just say I was better with numbers and an easy target. His crew changed quick and I mostly just hid behind Yousuf and Arif. I’m not a straight-up nerd now; hey, we all gotta adapt. I can hold my own on the court, which helps.

  Arif jumps to grab a rebound to my shot, and I had no idea he could jump that high.

  “How’d you that?” I say, jumping up to try and touch the backboard and missing. One day, I wanna tap the backboard after a layup. It’s not a dunk, but it’s close.

  “Check this,” he says. He hops and grabs the net to pull himself up, goddamn Spider-Man that he is, and hangs off the rim, his muscles flexed. “Give me the ball.”

  He’s hanging with one arm and holding out his other hand.

  “Damn monkey,” says Yousuf, chuckling and putting a ball in his hand.

  Arif grabs the ball and then “dunks” it. I’m still shaking my head. He then slowly lets himself down.

  “If I had your hops, I swear, I’d be unstoppable,” I say, jumping again, unable to even touch the tip of the net.

  I turn and see Omar and his crew walk up to the center of the court.

  “You pussies wanna play a game?” he says.

  “Hey, who the fuck you calling a pussy?” says Arif, cracking his neck side to side, then walking up to him.

  “Why you gotta talk shit all the time?” says Yousuf, shaking his head in Omar’s direction.

  “Whatever, let’s just play threes,” I say. There’s only one way to shut him up.

  “Which ball?” he says.

  “This one,” I say, feeling my NBA Official Wilson leather ball for good measure before I dribble to the top of the key. I’m guarding Omar, Yousuf’s on Johnny, and Arif grabs Steven, the lone white guy who runs in their crew. “Shoot for ball.”

  I drain a long three-pointer. Our ball.

  Omar checks it to me and doesn’t even bother getting up close. If I didn’t have to pass the ball, I’d love to chalk it up just then. I swing it to Yousuf, who’s in the paint, his back to the rim, bodying Johnny. He fakes right, then spins and lays it up.

  “Fluke,” says Omar, checking it back up.

  This time I dribble in and find Arif cutting, so I give him a sweet dribble pass that he catches en route to the rim, and he lays it up.

  “All right, enough of this shit,” says Omar, tightening up the laces on his sneakers. Now he’s got a hand up. I lob it to Yousuf, but Omar quickly double-teams him and strips the ball from his hand. I’ve got my knees bent and arms up. He pulls up and nails a jumper.

  “Come on, Fawad, get up close to him,” says Yousuf.

  He’s right, my defense is weak. Omar throws the ball to Steven, who shoots and misses. I grab the rebound and dribble out to clear the ball, and stare down Omar, who’s just standing there. I jack up a shot and drain it.

  “3–1,” I say. “Up to 7.”

  His crew and some of the other players are gathered around watching close. He checks me the ball. I throw it to Arif, who passes it back to me.

  I line up and drain another shot.

  A dude from Omar’s crew says, “Ooooooh, Omar, you gon’ let him do that to you?”

  Omar gives him a dirty look and a middle finger, then turns to stare me down. “Fuck this shit.”

  He checks me the ball, but this time puts a hand up and sort of bends his knees. There’s a part of him that refuses to think I’m any better than I was back in grade seven. Oh well, I guess he’s gotta face the music. I’m quick off the dribble and fly by him, drawing Johnny toward me. I dish it out to Yousuf, who hits the jumper.

  “5–1,” I say, this time with a smirk on my face. I can tell he’s cooked, ready to blow. I so badly want to drain the final jumper on his ass. He thinks he’s all that. Well, this ought to show him.

  Except he intercepts the pass, and this time he’s not letting Johnny or Steven put up a shot. He gets them to pass to him every time as he shoots off the dribble or drives and lays it in, emphatically tapping the backboard. A few more rounds of this
and he says, “5–4.”

  Arif grabs a rebound from his missed shot, dribbles it out, then spots an open Yousuf by the rim, who lays it in easily.

  “What the fuck are you dumbasses doing?” Omar yells at Steven and Johnny, while slamming the ball between his hands and shaking his head. “Man up. If they score, swear on my mom’s life…”

  “6–4, game point,” I say. I tell Yousuf to come up top because I want the final shot. I wanna shut Omar up.

  Yousuf checks the ball to Johnny and when he gets it back, he hands it off to me. Now it’s just me and Omar. And he’s playing defense all right. He’s on me, trying to steal the ball. I push off, giving him a stiff elbow, and he’s livid. Next thing I know, I cross him up and his whole crew’s losing it, erupting in ooohs and damnnns. I get myself an open look. But before I can get the shot up, he quickly gathers himself and shoves me so hard I get the wind knocked out of me, and I hit the floor hard.

  “The fuck you push me for?” says Omar, jumping on top of me, grabbing my tank and yanking me up. His boys rush over and circle around us.

  “I didn’t push you—you were fouling me,” I yell, bracing my face while trying to squirm out from under him.

  “Get off him, you piece of shit,” says Arif, pushing through.

  “Watch your lip, son,” says Johnny, cocking his head sideways.

  “Or what?” says Yousuf, giving him a shove.

  The rest of their crew’s ready to pounce.

  Abshir rushes in from the lounge, clears the way, grabs Omar off me, and throws him to the floor.

  “Wallahi, I’ma fuck you up the next time you touch him,” says Abshir to Omar, before saying something else in Somali. Omar responds and they exchange a few more words before he nods and starts walking off.

  “Fucking lucky punk,” says Omar under his breath, taking one more look at me still on the floor, his lower lip trembling even as he bares his teeth, his face tight.

  Omar and his crew exit from the back and it’s just me, Arif, Yousuf, and Abshir left. I’m breathing heavily, still lying down. That was a close call.