“This is going to be so funny,” Dirk giggled as he sat on the floor next to J.J. Barea’s locker, applying mortar to a pile of nearby bricks. “J.J.’s gonna be pissed.”
“I hope he gets the joke,” said Harrison Barnes, who was overseeing the construction project. “It would be lame if we had to explain it to him. But anybody paying attention to current events would figure out pretty quickly.” He checked the time on his phone, then urged Dirk to work faster; J.J. was due to arrive in only ten minutes.
Soon, a cinderblock wall had been constructed to a height of eight feet all around J.J’s locker. Harrison knocked on it with his fist to check its strength. “Totally solid,” he proclaimed. “J.J’s never gonna be able to get to his stuff.”
Dirk used his shorts to wipe the dust off his hands while admiring his handiwork. “He’s gonna be so pissed, man.”
—
When J.J. entered the locker room, Harrison and Dirk were innocuously getting dressed for their practice. They could barely contain their laughter as they saw J.J. walk towards his locker, then stop with a confused expression on his face. “Uh, guys? What did you to my locker?”
“Nothing,” Dirk said, snickering. “Oh, it looks like somebody built a wall there. Weird. You should talk to the maintenance staff about that one.”
“Not funny guys,” J.J. said. “I’m not even from Mexico. I’m from Puerto Rico. So the ‘build a wall to keep the Mexicans out’ joke doesn’t even apply to me. Puerto Rico is part of the U.S. just as much as Texas is. Now, which one of you is going to take it down before Coach finds out?”
“We didn’t even build that wall,” Dirk said defiantly. “I don’t know who put it there.”
“Dirk did! It was Dirk’s idea,” Harrison blurted. “I tried to stop him but he wanted to make a racist joke at your expense and I couldn’t talk him out of it. I knew all about how you aren’t really Mexican but I didn’t tell him about it because it would make him look stupid.”
Dirk looked outraged. “No way, man! It was your idea all along. Of course I know J.J.’s not from Mexico. Everybody knows that. I definitely knew that the whole time.”
J.J. set down his duffel bag. “I’m going to go get taped up,” he said. “Maybe next time you can come up with a joke that actually makes sense given my racial and cultural heritage.”