Julie Plays Ball


"Come on, Andy, if I watch one more of Grandma's fucking novelas I'm gonna fucking die."

"Ay ay, pinche drama queen. You're like one of those fucking characters and shit." Andy put the back of his hand to his forehead and pretended he was the star of Lo Impernodable. "Voy a morir, que lastima!"

"Fuck you, I'm serious. If I don't go brain dead from boredom, I'll blow my fucking brains out." Julie had been in sunny Southern California for four days, and it felt like four decades. They hadn't gone to a baseball game, an amusement park or even the beach. All she did was sit around the house while her tia, grandma and mom gossiped and played cards.

"Look, Julia, I'll take you, but these vatos are the real deal. They're fucking g's, a'ite, so no fucking around. Tienes respeto ayi, entiendes?"

Julie smile at her cousin's concession and happily agreed. "Of course, cousin. I always have respect."

"Ay dios mio, what am I doing?" Andy sighed.

They both knew Julie had a mouth on her that often went unchecked, but Andy was acting like LA was the only place in America with cholos. Julie had been around thugs and gang-bangers before, and she knew how to handle herself. It was nothing special really, just don't show them any weakness. Guys like that respected ganas, and she had that in spades. "Relax, cuz, I'll be fine. I think you're just scared I'm gonna show you up with my sick skills."

"Yeah, whatever prima, I know you got moves, but you can't get past the tower of power, esa." Andy jumped up and swatted at an imaginary ball.

Julie rolled her eyes and laughed. "Okay, dude. We'll see."




When they arrived at the park, Julie saw there was a game already in progress. While she wore black basketball shorts, hi-tops, and a sleeveless tee shirt, nobody else appeared dressed for the game. The players wore Chucks and Cortezes, wife-beaters and over-sized tees, and baggy khakis or denim shorts that sagged below their knees. Half of them wore no tops at all, and Julie understood it was a skins versus shirts game.

When there was a break in the action, one of them noticed her and her cousin and whistled. "Hey, what's up, holmes, who's the ruca?"

"She's my prima. She thinks she's gonna take all you putos to school."

One of the others spoke up then, clad in a tank top and locs, with a shaved head and at least a dozen tattoos up and down his arms. "Orale. That makes it five on five. You're with us, Puppet. Tell your cousin to take off her shirt so she can be a skin."

Andy looked at Julie and Julie looked back at Andy, then she flashed with anger. "Bullshit, motherfucker, you take off your shirt and join the skins."

"Oye, chica, that's not how it works. I get first choice, and I pick your cousin Puppet. You wanna play on our court, you gotta play by our rules."

Julie saw the apologetic look on her cousin's face that told her this is the way it is, and she knew she either had to roll with it or go back home. Julie stripped off her shirt indignantly, then glared at the tattooed punk, "You happy now, perv?"

"Chale, that sports bra tambien, esa."

"Are you fucking serious?"

"We can't be getting confused and shit," Tattoos told her with a half-smile. "I need to see that skin to know you're not on my team."

Julie hesitated for just a moment before deciding to go through with it. She wasn't going back to the house to sit on her ass another day, not when she could spend the morning playing five on five. There were a couple spectators sipping on quarts of beer, and nine other players including her cousin, but nobody else would see her. The park was otherwise deserted, and the court was surrounded by a chain link fence and towering oak trees that provided shade. She pulled off her sports bra, freeing her springy, small, budding breasts to bounce in the warm summer air. "Alright, fuck it, let's play"

"Orale, now we got a game!"

Julie felt self-conscious at first, her flesh hot with embarrassment, but she shrugged it off. She knew everyone was looking at her with lust in their eyes, but what could she do? It was no secret that she was a very attractive girl. She pulled a white head band from her pocket and pulled back her chocolate-colored hair, stretching her soft stomach taut, then held her hands behind her head for a moment and jiggled her titties, showing them off. "You fuckers got a good look? Can we fucking play now?"

"You got some fire in you," Tattoos told her. "What's your name, homegirl?"

"Julie. What's yours?"

"I'm Flaco. You're with Smiley, Payaso, Guero, and Chino over there. Fucking skins. Your ball. Bring it in." Flaco tossed her the ball and Julie flipped it to Chino, whom she quickly learned was the best ball-handler on the court, excluding herself of course. Payaso could shoot when she got him the rock with an open look, and Smiley and Guero were mostly useless, although Guero had enough size to grab a few rebounds and set a few picks. Still, Julie and Chino ran the court for three games, weaving around defenders and scoring almost at will, occasionally kicking it out to Payaso for an easy jumper, and all three times the skins won by a sizable margin.

During the fourth game Flaco's frustration was beginning to show, and Julie smirked at him. "Maybe you should have picked me and made my cousin a skin, huh?"

"Maybe I should have, but then I wouldn't have got to see these titties," Flaco reached out and pinched Julie's left nipple, and without thinking she slapped him hard across the face. She saw the quiet rage behind his eyes and knew she had crossed a line, immediately regretting her lack of self-control. She wouldn't apologize, because the bastard deserved to get slapped, but she timidly backed away.

"Thanks for the games," she said to no one in particular, knowing it was time for her to leave, with or without her cousin. She turned to go pick up her shirt and was met with a knife in her belly.

At first she thought she had been punched, but when she looked down she saw the handle sticking out of Payaso's hand and her blood beginning to spill out of her gut. Her stunning blue eyes opened wide as sand dollars, and her perfect lips yawned in an O of shock and horror. Five minutes ago she had been fist-bumping this kid after he nailed a three-pointer. Was he really now on the other end of the knife buried in her belly?

As quickly as he had inserted the blade, Payaso retracted it, and Julie shoved him away, only to feel the sharp pain as another knife slipped into her lower back. She arched forward and reached around with her left hand to feel the wetness of blood on her back, and again the knife was removed almost as soon as it had entered her. She turned to see Flaco holding a bloodied switchblade, and when she looked at the other players on the court she saw they had all produced butterfly knifes, switchblades, or some other version of a flip-out pocket knife. Even the pair of spectators had put down their brews and were hustling onto the court, brandishing blades of their own.

"Wait," Julie stammered as Li'l Sniper stepped forward and jabbed at her. She managed to catch his arm and stall his attack, but she was forced back a step and she felt three blades slip into her flesh from behind - one in her lower left ribs, one near the center of her back, one below her right shoulder blade. With Julie weakened by the pain and surprise of these three fresh stab wounds, Li'l Sniper was able to drive his blade home in the right side of her abs. Before he could retreat with his knife, however, Julie slammed the palm of her right hand into his Adam's apple, crushing his wind pipe and causing him to collapse, his knife still buried in her gut.

Julie yanked the blade from her body and took a swipe at Smiley, who darted out of harm's way, and then she felt a pair of arms envelope her from behind. Her wrist was snared and the blade was plucked from her fingers and her hands were pinned behind her head, while Guero and Payaso stepped forward and perforated her outstretched and vulnerable belly with a flurry of thrusts. In and out, in and out, in and out. A horrified Julie watched helplessly as she was savaged, grunting with each piercing. Eleven fresh stab wounds opened in her midriff while she worked out her next move.

Stamping her heel on the toes of her ensnarer afforded enough wiggle room to toss her head back and connect with something considerably softer than the back of her skull. There was a satisfying crunch and suddenly she was free. She caught the wrists of both Guero and Payaso, and she disabled Payaso with a knee to the groin. Guero was too strong, and when he drove his blade into her tummy again, this time he began to carve her up.

Cold steel moved in a curve, working up through her bowels, until Julie reached up and pressed her thumb into Guero's left eye socket. The bastard screamed and backed away, withdrawing his blade and clutching his wounded eye. She thought she saw blood pouring through his fingers, but she didn't have time to look closely.

Smiley was back, sliding his knife through the third and fourth ribs on her right side, then narrowly avoiding her elbow when she threw it at him. "Stop!" she screamed, with enough force to give pause to the boys grouped in front of her. Behind her someone jabbed a blade into her lower left dorsal and someone else stuck her in the right shoulder blade, but then there was a brief moment where they all just looked her, this beautiful dying animal, and time stood still.

Julie looked down at herself and splayed both hands across her belly. Blood squirted and gushed, and a loop of intestines was squirming through the moon-shaped laceration Guero had left in her, and when she looked back up at her assailants she was out of breath and her bangs dangled messily in her face, her pale skin was pallid and waxy, with the exception of her cheeks, which were still flush from her workout, and she was perhaps more beautiful than ever. "Please. Stop. You don't have to kill me," she panted, and then the moment passed.

A hand clasped her on the shoulder and a knife slid into the center of her back. "Sorry, prima, you should not have disrespected mi familia." It was almost a whisper, right next to her ear, and Julie thought it was the stupidest thing she had ever heard.

"I'm your familia," she hissed, and her cousin stabbed her a second time, steel scraping against her spine. That asshole disrespected me, she thought, but lacked the strength to say aloud. A shove sent her stumbling, but she caught herself and held her arms out for balance, while Smiley, Chuco, and one of the beer-guzzling spectators closed in on her.

"No," she cried, as the spectator attacked first, and she met his knife with her left hand, stopping the blade as it punched through her palm. Chuco's blade came unmolested and found her firm right breast, piercing the outer areola, and she got a hand on Smiley's blade but only managed to slice open her middle finger before it poked into the right side of her ribs, just above her stomach. All three boys pulled back, knives in hand, leaving Julie reeling, and the second spectator came next, but Julie managed to catch him in the gut with a sidekick.

The boy doubled over, but he held onto her foot and a crowd closed on her outstretched leg like jackals. Knives stabbed into her thigh in three different places, another found her calf, and a fifth poked her in the right buttock. She glanced over her shoulder and complained, "Seriously, you stabbed me in the ass?", and she managed to pull her leg free, losing her shoe in the process.

A knife punctured the small of her back, to the left of her spine, and another got her in the back of her ribs, off to the right. Julie spun around, hobbling on her one good leg and swinging wildly. She got a good look at the next bastard to come at her, Cholo, she thought his name was, and she caught him in the jaw with a solid right hook. Nevertheless, he slashed at her as he was hit, and he opened up the left side of her belly with a gaping diagonal gash, spilling even more of her intestines.

Faces began to blur together at that point. Here was Chino, sticking her in the left side. Here came Guero, his eye blood red, and she just managed to get her right arm up between them before his knife came slashing forward, sinking deep into the muscles of her forearm. Flaco and his busted nose came from the left, and she flailed at him, catching his knife with her upper triceps. Her cousin jabbed her in the left breast, Payaso in her right. Someone poked a new hole in the small of her back, and someone else poked a couple more a little higher up. One of the beer-guzzlers stabbed her in the right shoulder. Chuco or Cholo or some damned thing stuck her below her left breast, then above her left breast. Chino was back, stabbing her three times in the right side of her chest. Julie raked at his face, digging her fingernails into his cheek, and he backed away, but then there was Guero again, jabbing her in the upper left abdomen, and her cousin stabbing her just below her sternum. She tried to stop another attack from Flaco and sliced her fingers to the bone, cut the webbing between the third and fourth digits of her right hand, and still got stuck in the upper swell of her right tit. A figure on her right slipped a blade through her ribs, and another on her left ventilated the back of her torso, below her shoulder and near her underarm.

Julie grunted and gasped and cried each time cold steel found her flesh, and in between she tried to beg, plead and reason her way out of this, but the onslaught was coming too quickly, so all she could manage was the occasional, "No!", or "Stop!" or "Please!"

A knife gouged her in the right side of her neck, and another sunk into her back between her shoulder blades. A knife came at her chest, it might have belonged to Chuco/Cholo, were they the same guy?, and she slapped it away, earning another deep cut across her left palm. She raised her right arm to fend off one of the beer-drinking spectators, and someone seized it and there was suddenly a knife in her forearm, then another, and then another in her biceps. While she was wrenching her arm free she got stabbed two more times in the left breast, and twice more in the left side of her back. Someone else buried a blade in the base of the left side of her neck.

Julie continued to fight for her life, but she was running out of steam and her flailing was becoming increasingly ineffectual. Boys no longer needed to stick and move, and as evidence of this, Guero came forward and took hold of her right arm and just began poking holes up and down the right side of her body. Once, twice, three times, four times, five times, his blade sought out her soft teenage flesh, and she was helpless to stop it. Three wounds ascending up her abdomen, another in the ribs, another in the outer curve of her breast.

Meanwhile, Chino was holding her left arm and jabbing away. Two quick thrusts around her navel, a third off to the side and slightly higher up, in the upper left quadrant of her tummy, then a fourth in the same area, two more in the side of her ribs, one through her left nipple, and another above her breast.

While Guero and Chino were assaulting her front, she was simultaneously being stabbed in the back. Five fresh punctures spread across her lumbar region, then six more were gouged in her upper back, from shoulder to shoulder. Having sustained eighty-seven stab wounds, her struggles all but ceased, and she was released. Julie slumped to her knees as her attackers circled around her, pausing to see if she would fall.

Her hair hung in front of her brilliant blue eyes, her breathing was labored, her shoulders were heavy, and occasionally a harsh wheezing cough brought blood to her lips, but Julie remained upright, refusing to drop. She knew if she went down she'd never get back up, and she wasn't ready to die.

"Puta!" Flaco hissed, and he kicked her in her gorgeous face. Julie's lower lip split open and she reeled from the blow, placing her palm on the pavement to brace herself before bobbing back up like a free-standing punching bag. Someone kicked her in the ear, and again she kept her balance. Then she was donkey-punched in the back of the head, and her world went black for a moment.

When she regained her senses, she was on her hands and knees, trying to crawl. She didn't know where she was going. Clearly she wasn't going to crawl all the way back to her grandma's house, and it was painfully apparent that these boys had no intention of letting her escape, but what could she do? So she crawled, and kicks rained in on her from all sides, pummeling her ribs and stomach.

Her intestines dangled grotesquely from her tummy, and more than once a shoe got tangled in her viscera and gave them a nasty tug, but Julie persevered. A knife sank into the left side of her back, and another in the right. Someone jabbed her three times in her left buttock while cackling, "You stabbed me in the ass," mocking her, and still Julie crawled. Someone planted a foot on her side and gave her a shove, toppling her over, and Julie picked herself back up and continued crawling.

It wasn't until she reached the chain link fence that surrounded the court that she stopped, realizing the exit was on the opposite end. She put a hand on the fence and tried to claw her way back to her feet, struggling to her knees with someone shouting obscenities and insults in her left ear, and someone else sticking a knife into her right side over and over, adding another six wounds to her badly perforated body. Just as she was starting to think she might stand again, a group of fingers grabbed a handful of her hair and gave it a yank.

Julie tumbled and went sprawling on her back, looking up at all the hateful boys who were jeering and cat-calling and scowling at her. Too exhausted to continue her struggle, Julie finally gave in to her fate. So this is it, she thought with a shudder. I'm done for. She remembered telling her cousin that she would die if she had to watch another novela, and she almost laughed. How wrong she had been. She'd give anything to be back at her grandma's house right now, even if it meant watching a marathon of novelas.

I just wanted to play basketball! Julie tried to shout, but panic made it impossible to speak, and she lacked the strength to shout anyway.

"Vamanos, that bitch is toast," Flaco announced, and her tormenters left her to die. One by one they filed through the exit on the opposing side of the court, occasionally pausing to hurl unpleasantries at her, and Payaso even spit on her as a parting gift.

Once she was alone, her mind turned on her, and doubt and fear clouded her thoughts. She remembered a time not so long ago when she would have claimed unshakable faith in God, and thought death was nothing to fear, but now she understood death was the only thing to fear, and her faith in God was fleeting. She made one final attempt to pick herself up off the ground, lifting her head enough to see the mess that had been made of her hot young body, and she saw that Li'l Sniper still lay on the court, several yards away. His lips were blue and he did not appear to breathing, and Julie realized she must have killed him when she collapsed his wind pipe.

It was something in which she would have thought she could take solace - a sixteen-year-old girl had been ambushed and attacked by eleven older boys, all of them armed, and the unarmed girl had managed to kill one of them and injure several more - but as her efforts to stave off death failed, she found nothing could console her.

Her head dropped back to the concrete, and she stared up at the warm summer sun and wondered if there really was a God, and if she might have damned herself by killing that boy. I can't believe this is over. What could I have accomplished? What would my life have been like? I wonder what Andy will tell my mom. Those were the final thoughts to flutter through her pretty head.