Ball Don't Lie Read Online Free PDF

by halftime.
    Come on,
Anh-thu said.
We just got this cool new line of
Bugle Boys. I’ll show you.
    Anh-thu, on the other hand, she’s always had a pack of dudes on her heels. Blacks, whites, Mexicans, Asians—even grown men who come in shopping for their kids scribble down digits on a business card, try and slip it to her while she rings them up at the register. It’s been this way since she moved to L.A. from Modesto. Her pops, who refuses to speak English in their house, has tried everything: ten o’clock curfews, big brother chaperoning her Saturday nights, checking skirt length with a ruler before letting her leave the house for school. But it’s all hopeless. The more he tries, the more they blow up her cell phone.
    American boys,
he always mumbles in disgust.
    Here, how do you like these?
Anh-thu said, holding up a pair of khakis with white stitching. What size are we looking
for? Yeah, these will look way cool on you
.
    In the dressing room Sticky experienced his first episode of shoplifting jitters. He stared at the pants like they were a pile of undercover cop bait.
    He took off his baggy jeans and slipped the first Bugle Boy khakis over his boxers. Snapped, unsnapped, and snapped again. Perfect fit in the mirror. Kinda smooth, too. Unsnapped and snapped. Unsnapped and snapped. Unsnapped and snapped. He spun around to check the sag. Belt loops hung just below the boxer label, like they’re supposed to. Unsnapped and snapped. Unsnapped and snapped. Slipped on the second pair, a little lighter shade with deeper pockets. But they were cool too.
    How we doing in there?
Anh-thu said through the door. You need a different size or anything?
    Nah,
Sticky said.
    He sat down on the bench and spent a few seconds looking at his face in the mirror. The scars. The dark brown eyes and long eyelashes. The closely cut brown hair. He had a pretty face, according to his old foster friend, Maria.
You’re a
boy with a pretty face,
she’d always tease him. He looked away from the mirror.
    He could still see Anh-thu in his head, and he didn’t know what to do about it. He could still smell her smell through the door. Something wasn’t right in his stomach.
    The kid was shook.
    He went to slip his jeans over the khakis but stopped himself cold. Tried again but couldn’t come through. It wasn’t fear so much, that maybe this girl was secretly keeping a head count of all his items. Nothing like that. And he dug the pants all right. Needed some khakis for school and everything. But he couldn’t finish the play. There’d be no stealing this time. Do the right thing out of respect to this super-pretty Vietnamese girl. The one that had his mind doing some crazy jig.
    He stripped and zipped up his jeans alone. He even folded the Bugle Boys up super nice to give back.
    When he broke out of the dressing room, holding a pile of pants in his arms, he found Anh-thu helping some other buster. A black kid from the varsity football squad, one of the starting defensive backs. He watched the guy’s mouth move as he walked up on them. Anh-thu bent over to let out a laugh.
    I smacked the crap outta my puppy,
the guy said, working the scene.
He’s gotta learn about that. I shoved his nose right
in my ripped-up shirt and told him, No, little Pepper! You can’t
be messin up my gear like that
.
    Anh-thu seemed all jazzed by what the guy was saying so Sticky hung back. On the sly he spied the defensive back lightly touching Anh-thu on the shoulder, Anh-thu looking up into the guy’s face with her full attention.
    Sticky decided to say screw it and turned to take off.
    But just as he was about to set the pile down and flee the scene, Anh-thu dropped the hammer on the defensive back.
You know,
she said,
it sounds fun and everything, but I have
a boyfriend
.
    The guy smiled big, pushed out a laugh.
For real?
he said. He put the flashy shirt back up on the rack.
    But thanks for asking.
    Who’s the lucky Jack?
    Anh-thu turned around and pointed at