Teenage archenemies, Eddie Mitchell (black) and Cruise Russell (white) are zapped into each other’s body, and they must learn to work together to find the genie in the hood before it's too late.
Please let me know what you think about chapter one. Though, its chapter two that really takes off. Don’t be afraid to respond. I enjoy both positive and constructive feedback. Yes, I'm sure there are typos. I will be getting this novel professionally edited. You can best believe that! ;o)
Thanks for reading! Have a fantastic day.
~ Jennifer
Soul Brothers
(Copyright 2009)
By Jennifer Lightburn
Chapter One
Eddie Mitchell saw the old witch just before his fist slammed against Cruise Russell’s chin. He saw his body and Cruise’s body fall to the ground as he flew up to the sky. He soared above the trees and through the clouds and into the atmosphere so elevated that the earth’s continents and oceans were minuscule. Eddie was the spiritual form of himself, neither white nor black or any other variety of the human race. He was a beam of light, shooting across the sky like a meteor, and just as he was about to touch the moon… BUZZ!!! His alarm clock assaulted his ears.
The annoying noise rang in his mind even after he hit the snooze button and knocked the clock onto the floor. His body felt heavy, stiff, and his mind lethargic, but he forced himself to sit up, knowing that if he didn’t, he’d snooze right through the morning. As he sat with his back against the headboard, a black star darted off his face and onto the ceiling and exploded into several tiny vanishing pieces. Am I still dreaming, he drowsily pondered, as he removed crust from his eyes.
Without any logical reason, he was anxious and irritated first thing in the morning. He half-heartedly tried to recollect the events that dramatized his slumber. Not able to shake the funkiness that plagued his mind, Eddie climbed out of bed, slipped on his slippers and robe and removed the silk Du-rag from around his head. He walked to his bedroom window and wiped the condensation to see yet another dreary day. “Funky. Funky,” Eddie said, feeling the coolness penetrate the glass and listening to the steady fall of rain. The current weather condition was reason enough to skip school, but he knew his mother would go upside one side and downside the other if he made such an irresponsible decision.
Just as the teen turned to start his morning routine, he saw the old woman that was in his dream. She lived in the building across the street, and she walked casually alone in the cold rain without a coat or umbrella. Her long grey hair was soaked and stuck to her face, and she spoke noticeable aloud, as if she was speaking to someone next to her.
Since Eddie could remember, the elderly woman gave him the creeps, and not many people freaked him out. The constant whispers and horrific rumors were too many to ignore and not be cautious. Like some project residents, the old woman was given a nickname. People called her “hood witch,” and they said she had powers that were supernatural. So, when she peered into Eddie’s window with her stone cold eyes, he moved quickly behind his curtain to avoid eye contact.
That was close, Eddie thought, as he pulled out the pajamas that were lodged into his butt, relaxed his Frankenstein swagger and walked into his sister’s room to wake her up.
Eddie shook Jasmine gently.
“It’s too early to be morning. Please. Please. Please give me five more minutes,” Jasmine moaned.
Feeling absolutely no remorse, Eddie pulled her arms until her body fell to the floor. “Nope! It’s time to get up.”
We can’t be late, he thought, remembering his coach’s warning the morning before. Even though, Eddie’s excuse was valid… His sister did forget her lunch box. Eddie did have to run home to get it, causing both of them to miss their school buses and forcing big brother and little sister to walk to school... Still, the coach made no allowances or exceptions for being a responsible brother. Therefore, Eddie couldn’t shake the feeling that his coach was being overly stern because the coach’s son, Cruise Russell, wanted to start in the semi-championship game, and there was only one starting point guard slot.
“That spot is mine,” he said aloud to himself, shooting the invisible basketball perfectly off the tip of his fingers and into an invisible net.
Saying that Eddie loved basketball was an understatement. Basketball was all part of his master plan. With his master plan in mind, Eddie double-timed his morning routine with images of becoming the next NBA great and showcasing his beach front penthouse on MTV Cribs, which made his present residence look like a concrete jungle. His mind was constantly focused on money. Even though, his mother always said that money can’t buy happiness, Eddie wanted to find that out for himself. He was tired of being underprivileged. It wasn’t as if his family of three was wanting for anything; at least that’s what his mother always said. They had a roof over their heads, clothes on their backs and food on the table. However, in the American sense of economical status, he and his family were poor. Not dirt poor, sharing a chicken leg poor, or begging on the street corner poor, but poor all the same. His mother couldn’t even afford an X-Box, for God’s sake. Her notion of designer shoes was Shaq’s line sold at Wal-Mart, and Eddie was lucky if he got that.
Eddie’s wants were not unrealistic for an American teenager. He wanted more, but not just for him; for his family too. He wanted to move his mother and sister out of the ghetto and into a house with a backyard that had a swing set for his sister. He wanted to buy his mom a car so she didn’t have to take the Metro. He wanted to wear clothes that didn’t make him uncomfortable. He wanted to wear a pair of shoes that weren’t bo-bos or Wal-mart specials. He wanted money in his pocket. And if money could buy it, he wanted some dignity. He hated that he was poor, the sales rack clothes that he wore and how people stereotyped him because of where he lived.
He reached in the cabinet for cereal, with the thought of someday being on a box of Kellogg’s. After putting Corn Flakes and a banana on the table along with two bowls, spoons, and milk on the table, Eddie shouted, “Jasmine, get up!”.
With no response, he returned to this sister’s room to get her moving.
Jasmine was sound asleep on the floor when he walked in.
“Your five minutes are up,” he said as he dragged her sleeping body to the bathroom and threatened to douse her with water if she didn’t start getting ready for school.
“Is daddy going to come and see us this weekend?” Jasmine asked.
“Probably not.”
Their father was almost completely out of the picture, so it always surprised Eddie that his sister still asked about him. Eddie was brother and father now. He’d voluntarily taken additional responsibilities so his mother could work extra hours in order to make ends meet. He hated those words “ends meet”. Those words haunted him since he was a child, even though as a child, he didn’t know exactly what the words meant. He just knew that he didn’t like his mother’s tone as the words rolled off her tongue. When she said those words, berating his father’s name would soon follow. Eddie tried to dismiss his father from his mind, for he was the man of the house now, and he did what he could in his father’s absence.
“I miss daddy,” Jasmine solemnly said.
Get over it. He was long gone before he was long gone, Eddie thought but he replied, “Get dressed, Jasmine.”
While Jasmine was in the bathroom, Eddie made their lunch and hung his sister’s Sponge Bob lunch pail on the same hook with her coat. He then took time to wipe down his bo-bos, and he made his bed so that his mother wouldn’t have a conniption when she got home. After he tucked in his pillows, he picked up the Nerf ball and shot for three points from the doorway.
“Swish! And the crowd goes wild,” he said imagining making the game dunk.
Pictures of a few basketball greats lined his walls along with Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and President Obama, and he gave them all an in the air pound before closing his bedroom door.
“I just want one pony tail,” Jasmine said from in front of the television, after they finished eating breakfast.
Eddie washed the bowls and spoons and grabbed the remote from his sister’s hand to see what the meteorologist predicted. Then he grabbed the grease, one bright blue pony tail holder, and a comb as he wished for the day his little sister could comb her own hair.
“Why do we put grease in our hair,” she asked.
“Because our hair is naturally dry,” Eddie replied.
“Do white people put grease in their hair?” Jasmine asked.
“No, their hair produces excessive oil, so they wash it out,” he said, preparing for his sister’s next question.
He finished brushing her hair, and then he double-checked that they both had all of their belongings before leaving the apartment, and they walked briskly to the bus stop. His sister’s bus pulled up as they arrived.
“We’ll have to get up earlier,” Eddie said. “Have a good day.”
He watched his little sister get on the bus and watched the bus pull away. On any other day, his bus followed hers by no more than five minutes. After seven minutes passed, he debated if he should walk up to the next bus stop to keep warm or stay put. The weatherman predicted the weather correctly. It was bitterly cold outside with a wind-chill factor cold enough to make steam flow out of Eddie’s mouth. His teeth chattered and goose bumps sprouted up and down his body.
If anything happened to the bus, at least I’ll be making time instead of standing here freezing to death, Eddie thought.
As he strolled up the block, he was thankful that he didn’t have to walk uphill, ten miles in the snow with a coat that was too small. Eddie could expect his mother to recite this tale anytime that he complained about taking the bus. He often pondered the legitimacy of his mother’s story, and wondered if it was urban legend, for the irony was that most of his friends’ parents had the same story as did his grandparents. Eddie walked backwards, against the wind and drizzling vertical rain. He walked backwards, passed the projects where he lived, passed the middle-class apartments, and the siding and brick townhouses to ensure the bus did not zoom by, and he gave a high-five to his friends that stood at the bus stop in the various subdivisions. Eddie passed the luxury apartments and ventured pass the single family houses before he finally made it to school. The bus was still nowhere to be found.
Eddie pulled his cell phone from his pocket and immediately started running when he saw the time. He had two minutes to get to the gym or he’d be doing extra push ups, benching practice, possibly losing his starting spot, or all of the above. He ran into the school and through the halls and didn’t slow down when the old maintenance man hollered “Walk!”
“I made it,” he said, as he entered the gym, gasping for breath and causing all attention to divert from the coach and assistant coach to him.
“You’re late Mitchell. After you get suited up, take a lap around the gym, give me fifty and then take a seat,” his coach said, wiping the perspiration from his massive forehead and turning back to the team’s huddle.
“I’m not late.” Eddie retorted, pointing to the gymnasium clock.
The coach turned around to face Eddie. “It’s not good enough that you’re in the gym at seven. You have to be ready for practice at seven. And I’m sure you don’t plan on practicing in that winter coat and backpack, so don’t argue with me. Suit up and give me fifty.”
“But…”
“No, buts!” the coach yelled.
“But, my bus never came and I had to walk to school. That’s why I was late! This is a crock of…”
“You’d better watch your mouth, young man, before you get kicked off this team,” the coach said, as he stood up from one knee and swept the few strands of hair he had from the left to the right side of his head. “You’re always full of excuses. Yesterday, your sister forgot her lunch box, and the day before that you came up with some cockamamie story.”
Eddie wanted to use profanity, but he checked himself, remembering the rules of engagement. First and foremost, respect thy elders or else. That was his mother’s rule, and she stood fast and heavy behind “or else” even though, Eddie was seventeen. But the coach’s son was another story altogether. He wasn’t an elder, so the only rule that Eddie had to follow was not taking the first punch. At that particular moment, however, Eddie wasn’t sure if he could follow that rule.
Cruise Russell mocked Eddie was made crude facial expressions while his father’s attention was diverted.
Eddie threw his backpack to the floor. “Keep it up, and I’m going to stick my size ten…”
“Suit up or get out of here, Eddie!” the coach yelled then turned around to see who provoked the situation.
Everything in Eddie but his love for basketball and his dream of going pro demanded that he quit the team, but quitting was easy. His mother constantly reminded him of that fact.
As much as he regretted it, an image of his father came to mind too. “Getting what you want takes hard work and usually doesn’t come on a silver platter,” his father used to say.
The thought of his father gave Eddie an ache in the middle of his chest.
He turned to walk away.
“If you’re not back here in five minutes, you’re off the team,” the coach said.
Looky here white man, don’t take it out on me because your old lady is playing hard to get, Eddie thought then chuckled aloud and jogged to the gym’s bathroom entrance.
Sneakers screeching on the court were music to Eddie’s ears as he returned to the gym with a few seconds to spare.
Eddie ran around the gym as he watched his team sweat and run drills up and down the court. He surveyed what he deemed to be the starting line up.
JJ, short for Jimmy Johnson, had much game. Maybe because he was the prodigy of a basketball great or maybe because he practiced his game three to four hours a day. He could fake out everyone on the team except Eddie, and could steal a ball and come down the court before anyone knew what happened. His Achilles’ heel, however, was the fact that he couldn’t make a free throw from the line to save his life.
Kwok Yo turned basketball into some kind of martial art, delivering high-kicks when he dunked the ball, and he hollered “Ya!” with every basket. Though he measured in at five-five, his precision of three point shots was like no other on the team. With the exactitude of his elevator two-handed double pump dunk, he would be the next Chinese Spudd Webb.
The coach blew his whistle. “No karate, Kwok!”
Danny Hernandez had the height that coaches dream of having on their team, and players jokingly teased that he must be the product of the mailman because his father could barely get on the big rides at the amusement park and his mother wasn’t any taller. The team’s height medium was at a steady five-ten and Danny was a millimeter short of six-two. The team counted on Danny for rebounds and free throws, and Eddie knew his defensive skill would grant him a starting spot.
Vinny Munoz had it all: height, skill and nearly a 4.0 GPA. They called him the Rebound King because he was always stealing balls under the basket. He not only got the attention of the local paper for his wise cracking remarks, but Vinny also received a lot of attention from young ladies of all ethnicities. They lined up after every game and every practice to gaga over his Coppertone skin and hazel eyes, and each begged to be the one to escort Vinny home after the game. Vinny lived in the building next to Eddie, and they’d been Ace Boon Coons ever since they could remember, so it didn’t bother Eddie that Vinny would surely be part of the starting lineup.
What ripped Eddie out of his frame was the fact that Cruise Russell had a starting shot. Eddie hated Cruise with a passion ever since kindergarten when Cruise used a Twinkie to bribe a girl with a Captain Hook hand into chasing Eddie around the classroom, knowing that Eddie was petrified of the metal prosthetic. He’d held a grudge for nearly twelve years, but what Eddie hated most about Cruise was that Cruise’s father was the coach of the team and consistently played favorites. Yes, Cruise could play some b-ball, for a white boy, Eddie thought. Still, Cruise often chocked when it counted and subsequently became hostile and needlessly combative, often getting himself thrown out of a game.
The rest of the team where fill-ins and played as good as any fill-in can.
Eddie finished his sit-ups, and the assistant coach let him off the bench.
“Ok, fellows, let’s play some ball,” Eddie said, giving Vinny a high five, and then grabbing a roll-away ball and forcing it from his chest to Cruise’s.
Eddie, Vinny and Danny played on a team together with two fill-ins against Cruise, Kwok, JJ and two bench warmers.
The two teams scrimmaged, and even with adult supervision, the practice game was far from affable. Within the first five minutes, Eddie and Cruise had three fouls against each other. Both Eddie and Cruise knew this scrimmage could ultimately determine who would play in the semifinals and possibly the national championship. With JJ’s defense, Kwok’s three-pointers, Danny’s rebounds and Vinny’s all around talent, Eddie and Cruise knew they both had to prove to the coach that they were worthy of starting as the point guard. Up until now, they took turns starting, so… it was on.
Cruise turned around, swiftly. His baby blue eyes were stern and his body language projected his intensity. “Show me how much you really want it because you’re going to have to take it away from me,” he said. The lean and muscular Cruise had perspiration pouring down his red face, as he bounded the ball with complete control.
“I don’t want to embarrass you in front of your daddy, but that’s the only way I’ll start,” Eddie replied and smiled coyly to rub it in.
It was the battle of the fittest.
“Call your play,” the coach shouted.
“It’s time for Dominos,” Eddie said, starting down low, dribbling with his left, and finishing the dunk with his right hand, twice more than Cruise faked a left and went down the middle for two. Eddie’s elbows kept Cruise at bay on the court and Eddie schooled the Larry Bird want-to-be as if Cruise was just learning the game.
When the coach blew his whistle and told everyone to head for the locker room, Eddie knew he’d start.
In the locker room, the coach stood in the doorway of his office and everyone gathered around for an impromptu meeting.
The coach swept his flyaway hair to the other side of his head and stood as poised as a middle-aged overweight man can. “Everyone on this team is a winner, and everyone will get an opportunity to play in the semi-championship game, but here is who will start.”
Eddie considered himself a shoe-in. In his mind, there was no denying the fact that with his skill he deserved to start in the game, and he bobbed his head and held his chest out in the cocky way that he typically did when he felt confident.
Cruise’s face was replete with disappointment, that is, until his father called his name.
Eddie could not control his outburst. “Oh, hell no!”
In a desperate attempt to mellow Eddie’s temper, Vinny put his arm around his best friend’s shoulder and walked him away from the coach.
“You’ll get a chance to fill in,” Vinny said, which only added fuel to the fire.
Eddie broke away from Vinny’s hold and marched to the coach’s office. He opened the door and walked inside without knocking or getting permission to enter.
“If he wasn’t your son, you wouldn’t have given him the spot!” Eddie hollered emotionally.
The team gathered and encircled the shouting boy and coach.
“If you were on time for practice once in awhile, you would have not only gotten the spot this game, but you would have gotten the starting spot on every game we played this season,” the coach hollered back. “You’re one of the best players on the team but you’re not dependable!”
Cruise looked down shamefully, pretending to wipe sweat from his eyebrows.
“Can we talk about this in private, coach? Please,” Eddie begged, though he felt that talking to the coach in private would be a huge waste of time.
“Alright! Nothing going on here! Get in the shower or you’ll end up sitting on the bench too!” the coach said to no one in particular.
While the team headed for the shower, Coach closed the door.
Eddie was about to lose his mind… up in here… up in here. He walked as steady as he could and mellowed his tone of voice to the best of his ability. “I know you think that I’m not dedicated to the team because I’ve been late for practices.”
The coach leaned back in his chair. “Well, I hear you have to take care of your baby. Where’s the mother?”
Caught off guard by that comment, Eddie rubbed his head quizzically. “The mother is my mother, and the baby is my five-year-old sister,” Eddie replied, irritated that the coach automatically type-casted him into a teenage statistic. “My mother is divorced and she’s raising me and my sister alone. She has to leave early for work, so I walk my sister to the bus stop. I’m not lazy nor am I making excuses. I love basketball, and I’d be here even earlier than practice time if I could.”
Eddie didn’t like to look people in the eyes when he was uncomfortable, and he was. There was an uncomfortable silence.
The coach leaned up and then back into his chair. “Why didn’t you just tell me this before?” the coach asked.
“I didn’t want anyone in my family’s business.”
Coach rubbed his head and swept his hair over and then said, “Eddie, you’ve got to tell me these things. It makes a big difference. You can start. Don’t say anything to the team. Let me handle it.”
“Thanks coach,” Eddie said then turned to leave.
“Eddie?”
“Yes, coach.”
I’m sorry, the coach thought. “Good practice but watch your elbows. I can’t have you foul out.”
“Thanks coach,” Eddie said, then opened the glass office door and headed for the showers.
Though, Eddie had not said anything to anyone when they asked what was up, he could not prevent from smiling.
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