Shabazz Muhammad heard his doorbell ring. Hustling to see who it was, he opened the door only to see a UPS driver walking back to the familiar brown truck parked on the street. Looking down on the porch, there was a medium-sized cardboard box. This surprised Shabazz, since he had not ordered anything online recently and was not expecting any packages.
Picking it up and taking a closer look at the label, Shabazz smiled when he saw who the sender was: his old friend Alexey. He brought the box inside and set it on his kitchen table, where he snipped away the tape to see what was inside.
On the top of the package was a card. Shabazz opened it and read:
“Dearest friend Shabazz,
I was so much happy to see that you score 35 against Warriors. Everybody on team here in Khimki watched game. I kept tellings them, “that’s my friend Shabazz! That’s my friend Shabazz!” and I tell them of how good friends we are even with great distance between. My heart was so big with joy when you win game.
I sent you a gift I thinking you like. One day soon we will hanging out.
-Alexey”
Touched, Shabazz set aside the card and began to remove the packing material from the box. Shortly surrounded by a small drift of packing peanuts, he lifted out a kind of book or binder with a leather cover. Opening the book, he saw that Alexey had given him a handmade scrapbook.
Emotionally, Shabazz turned slowly through the pages. Every photo where Alexey and Shabazz had appeared together was present, with small messages of friendship written in the gaps between the photos. Most of the photos were of various team functions. The last few pages, though, were blank. On the first of these empty pages was a post-it note:
“We will filling up these pages soon with new memories!”
Shabazz set down the book and smiled as a tear escaped his eye and ran down his nose. “We will, Alexey. We will.”