Chapter 14 — That Is My Friend
2218 Words
Li-Mei had known about the tournament for three months.
The rest of the school had known for two weeks.
The difference was that Li-Mei had spent all three months telling everyone she encountered — neighbors, restaurant regulars, classmates, the elderly woman who bought bread every Thursday morning, Mr. Huang who already knew but listened anyway because Li-Mei telling a story was always worth hearing twice — that Wei Chen and his team were going to win.
Not might win.
Were going to win.
She stated it with the particular calm certainty of someone presenting an established fact rather than an opinion.
Mama Chen had heard the speech so many times she could recite the key points from memory.
Papa Chen had started nodding preemptively whenever the tournament was mentioned within Li-Mei's hearing range.
Wei Chen's mother had told her husband that she was genuinely concerned Li-Mei might injure herself from sheer enthusiasm before the game even started.
Wei Chen himself had said nothing.
He never said anything when Li-Mei was like this.
He simply let it happen around him the way you let weather happen — present, undeniable, and entirely beyond anyone's ability to control.
The morning of the tournament Wei Chen woke up and felt the anxiety sitting in his chest like something heavy and solid that had arrived overnight without asking permission.
He had played in competitions before. He had played in front of crowds before. He was good and he knew he was good and knowing it had never been the problem.
The problem was today felt different.
Today the whole school was coming.
Both schools were coming — his and theirs, two sets of students and teachers and supporters filling the gymnasium with the particular charged energy of people who had come specifically to witness something decisive.
Their neighbors were coming.
Both families were coming.
Li-Mei had made sure of that personally and thoroughly and with a level of organizational commitment that suggested she had missed her calling as an event coordinator.
Wei Chen sat in the changing room before the game and tried to breathe evenly.
His teammates could tell.
They had played enough games alongside him to know the difference between Wei Chen focused and Wei Chen inside his own head. Today he was inside his own head and the game had not even started.
His legs would not stop moving.
A quiet restless trembling that he could not control no matter how still he tried to sit.
The coach noticed.
He pulled two teammates aside quietly.
"Find Li-Mei," he said simply.
They looked at each other.
Then at the coach.
"She is probably already—" one of them started.
"Find her," the coach said again.
They went.
They did not need to look far.
Li-Mei was already running toward the changing room entrance when they came out — bag bouncing on her shoulder, expression focused, moving with the particular purposeful energy of someone who had already identified a problem and was on her way to solve it.
She had known.
Of course she had known.
She pushed past them with a brief "excuse me" that left no room for response and went directly to Wei Chen.
She found him on the bench.
Legs trembling. Jaw tight. Eyes on the floor.
She did not say anything immediately.
She set her bag down.
And squatted directly in front of him so that he had no choice but to look at her face.
He looked at her face.
"You are the best basketball player I know in my entire life," she said simply.
Wei Chen looked at her for a moment.
"That is because you do not watch basketball," he said.
Li-Mei considered this.
"That is true," she agreed.
They both laughed.
It was small and brief — the kind of laugh that exists purely to release pressure rather than because anything is funny. But it worked. The tight line of his jaw loosened slightly. The trembling in his legs slowed.
Li-Mei looked at him steadily.
"It is just a game," she said. "Of course it is fated that one team must win and the other loses. That is simply how games work."
He nodded slightly.
"I have faith in you," she continued. "Your parents have faith in you. My parents have faith in you. Your teammates have faith in you. The neighbors have faith in you." A pause. "Mr. Huang has faith in you and he told me so specifically on Thursday which is significant because Mr. Huang does not say things he does not mean."
Wei Chen was listening.
"But do not let the faith pressure you," she said. "Let it be your strength. It is there to carry you — not to sit on top of you."
She looked at him.
"It does not matter if you lose or not—"
He raised an eyebrow slightly.
"—I mean it does matter because if you lose I will not be able to face this neighborhood for approximately one year. Especially Mr. Huang. He will tease me about my bragging every Tuesday and Thursday for the rest of my life and I will have to find a new restaurant to manage."
Wei Chen's mouth curved.
"But that is my problem," Li-Mei said firmly. "Not yours. What I care about is my friend going out there and having fun doing the thing he loves most. Okay?"
He looked at her for a long moment.
Something in his chest — the heavy solid anxiety that had arrived overnight — did not disappear.
But it shifted.
Made room for something else.
"Okay," he said quietly.
She stood up.
Picked up her bag.
Then she looked at the rest of the team sitting around the changing room — the tension visible in every pair of shoulders, every pair of eyes, the collective held breath of a group of people about to do something that mattered.
She looked at Wei Chen.
He gave her a small nod.
She turned to the team.
"Okay," she said. Louder now. Addressing all of them. "I need everyone to look at me for one moment."
They looked at her.
"You have all worked for this. Every practice, every early morning, every game that came before this one — it all brought you here. You are ready." She looked around at all of them. "And if you are not ready — pretend. Pretend so well that your body believes it. Because your body will do what your mind tells it to."
She paused.
"Also the other team is nervous too. They are sitting in their changing room right now feeling exactly what you are feeling. Remember that."
Someone laughed.
The tension in the room dropped several degrees.
"Alright," Li-Mei said. She held out her hand flat in the center of the group. "Everyone. Hands in."
They looked at each other.
Then one by one hands came in — teammates, Wei Chen, the coach who had appeared in the doorway and joined without comment.
Li-Mei looked around the circle.
"One, two, three—"
"LET'S HAVE FUN!" they shouted together.
The hands went up.
And the changing room filled with the particular energy of people who have just remembered why they love what they do.
As the team filed out toward the gymnasium Li-Mei stood at the door.
"Break some legs!" she called after them.
A beat of silence.
She realized immediately what she had said.
"No — do NOT — I meant good luck — do not actually break anything you will be banned from the—"
The team was already laughing.
She pressed her hand over her face briefly.
Then she reached out and caught Wei Chen's arm as he passed.
She produced a piece of chocolate from her pocket — his favourite, the same kind she had been sharing with him since they were twelve years old on a summer afternoon — and held it out.
He looked at it.
Then at her.
"For the nerves," she said simply.
He took it.
Ate it.
Nodded once.
And walked out toward the court.
The gymnasium was full.
Both schools packed into the bleachers, the noise already building into the particular wall of sound that only a genuinely contested competition produces.
Mama Chen sat three rows back with Wei Chen's mother beside her — both of them in their good clothes, both of them with the carefully composed expressions of women who were much more nervous than they intended to show.
Papa Chen sat beside Mama Chen with the focused attention of a man who had been briefed extensively on basketball rules by Li-Mei over three months and was determined to apply that knowledge correctly.
Mr. Huang had arrived early.
He had brought snacks.
He was already eating them.
Li-Mei positioned herself as close to the court as the seating arrangement allowed — which given her determination and her complete indifference to the concept of designated seating was considerably closer than the official boundaries suggested.
She had somehow ended up standing beside the coach.
The coach had looked at her when she appeared.
She had looked back at him with the expression she wore when something was not a negotiation.
He made room.
The game began.
Li-Mei began immediately.
Her voice cut through the gymnasium noise with the particular carrying quality of someone who had spent years announcing things in a restaurant full of people.
She cheered every good play. She called out observations about positioning. She tracked the opposing team's patterns with the same focused attention she gave to restaurant accounts — noticing, calculating, anticipating.
She was not simply cheering.
She was coaching.
She used signs — left, pass, shoot — with the focused efficiency of someone who had been doing this long enough that Wei Chen and his teammates had started recognizing and using them.
The coach watched this from beside her.
Then he said — loud enough for her to hear, with the careful expression of someone making an announcement —
"I do not remember when the school hired another coach."
Li-Mei laughed nervously.
"You are the coach," she said immediately. "I am just — I am the supporter. You are the coach and I am—"
"Mm," he said.
"I am just enthusiastic," she said.
"Mm," he said again.
They looked at each other.
Then they both laughed.
And Li-Mei turned straight back to the court and continued exactly as before.
Mama Chen watched from three rows back with growing concern.
She leaned toward Wei Chen's mother.
"She is going to lose her voice," she said.
"She has been like this for three months," Wei Chen's mother said. "I think her voice has adapted."
Mama Chen watched Li-Mei produce a sound that seemed to briefly alter the acoustic properties of the gymnasium.
She tried to catch Li-Mei's eye.
She gestured — slow down, quiet, please.
Li-Mei did not look at her.
Li-Mei was not looking at anything except the court.
"Honey tea," Mama Chen said firmly to nobody in particular. "Every night this week."
The game was close.
Closer than Li-Mei had publicly predicted.
At the halfway point the scores were level and Wei Chen's team had made two mistakes that Li-Mei was going to discuss with him later and the opposing team had a player who was genuinely concerning.
Wei Chen was playing well.
But she could see it — the slight tension returning to his shoulders. The half second of hesitation before certain decisions that was not usually there.
He was going back inside his head.
She waited.
Then he looked for her.
She knew he would.
He found her immediately.
Standing beside the coach.
Arms crossed.
Watching him with the calm complete certainty of someone who had decided the outcome of this game months ago and was simply waiting for the court to catch up.
She gave him one single nod.
He turned back to the game.
And something in his shoulders released.
They won.
The final moment was loud and sudden and complete — the ball leaving Wei Chen's hands at exactly the right point of the jump, the arc clean and certain, the sound of it going through simultaneous with the buzzer and the roar of their school's half of the gymnasium.
Li-Mei's reaction was immediate and total.
She was on the court before anyone had fully processed what had happened — running toward Wei Chen through the celebrating players, completely indifferent to the concept of court boundaries.
She reached him.
And grabbed him in a hug that communicated everything three months of telling everyone he was going to win had been building toward.
"THAT IS MY FRIEND!" she announced to the gymnasium at large.
"THAT IS MY FRIEND RIGHT THERE!"
Wei Chen's arms came around her automatically.
His face over her shoulder was doing something complicated — the particular expression of someone experiencing too many things at once to separate them into individual feelings.
His teammates celebrated around them.
The gymnasium roared.
Mama Chen was crying quietly three rows back and not trying very hard to hide it.
Wei Chen's mother was not trying to hide anything at all.
Mr. Huang finished his snacks with the satisfied expression of a man whose predictions had been thoroughly validated.
- Writer
