“No te parece.”

“Qué?” Seba turned, leaving to others the task of herding across the parking lot the younger Kosciusko siblings, who were busy chittering over their purchases of Wildcards merchandise.

His mother was facing, head cocked, back toward Fremont Palace. It stood gilt and steel in the morning sun, rays glinting off girders and glass panes. Around the perimeter hung posters of the Wildcards lineup and, right above the main entrance, the new promotional photo of Seba himself: backlit, arms stretched out to either side, gesture and smirk confidently calling for a challenge.

Seba was beside his mother after two strides. Ramona Galván de Kosciusko squinted into the glare. “I said that it doesn’t look like you, really.” A pause. “I have seen a lot of players with that expression, but not you. It looks cocky.”

Seba considered the photo out of one eye, working his jaw a little. The shoot had been uncomfortable, and not only because of the protracted length of time it took to capture something that finally met the photographer’s approval. Seba had felt contorted, shaped to someone else’s vision. He understood what his mother meant, but he couldn’t say that right now. “Mamá, you know that the photo… it is a promotional thing. They asked me to pose that way. It’s for publicity, for the fans. They love that type of thing.” He paused a moment. “Especially when the team is not doing well...”

Ramona nodded slightly. “Si, mi hijo. It is just… I do not…” A sigh. “It is hard to see children do other things. Become other adults, different people… at least a little.”

“Mamá,” Seba said consolingly, reaching out and looking down to his mother’s eyes, “you do not have to worry. Of course I will not change because I am in the FBA. That would be silly.”

She looked away from the giant banner and toward her son. “Ah, I know. It is just hard sometimes that you are away so far… You think if would get easier after four years, but no… hard…”

Gently grabbing her shoulders, Seba pulled her into a close embrace, speaking into her ear. “Don’t worry, mamá. I will always be me.”

The cool breeze blew past and Seba’s face, looking on above, fluttered.

----

The same breeze squeezed between the jetway and the plane’s fuselage several hours later as Seba boarded.

He’d bidden farewell to his family after too short a visit, but the game in Edmonton that night could not be budged. Danny would take them down to Los Angeles to see his mother’s sister and her family, and after a few days they would be on their way back to Posadas. Back to seeing him on the television and on their new computer once every other week.

Halfway down the aisle, he tossed his duffel bag into the overhead compartment and bent himself into the seat. Even the new first class accommodations, he had found, could cramp a six-foot-nine frame. At least now he had room to keep his head upright.

As the team filed past, he instinctively pulled out the in-flight magazine. Alongside the features on concerts, magic shows, and casinos, there was always a page or two on Las Vegas’s teams, the Wildcards and the Outlaws. It was interesting to see what the airline’s tourism agency had to say about their performance.

Surely enough, today the magazine fell open to the very page, greeting him with the same photo that earlier he saw draped on Fremont Palace. It was a feature with the Wildcards rookies, all three beaked faces looking intimidating—but Seba stared back at the top, looming.

Seba frowned. The conversation from earlier was, of course, fresh in his mind. He was getting used to being recognized by strangers; he had never anticipated not getting recognized by friends… or family. He repeated to himself that it was superficial, the face they all had to wear as celebrities in public, but he couldn’t shake the unnerving sense of inauthenticity. His feathers involuntarily puffed out in consternation.

After shaking his feathers flat, Seba closed the magazine, folding it and shoving it into the seatback pocket. Paying his seat-claiming teammates no mind, he pulled out his phone to turn it off. He had missed a single text. From Danny.

He swiped the screen to open the message: “Buena suerte en Edmonton! Toucan do it! ;>”

Seba rolled his eyes with a sigh at the all too well-worn pun. But accompanying it was a photo. He enlarged it, turning the phone on its side.

He hadn’t seen this one before, but he recognized it immediately. Right after the West had lost the Rookie Challenge and most of the spectators had cleared out of the stands, Seba had escorted his family down to the court and arranged them, all smiles, for a pose. Here it was. Mother, father, all six siblings. In the United States, watching him play professionally. Seba noticed Little Anahí in front clutching a basketball, which was far too large for her. Anahí, who Seba had first seen in person had been the summer before.

If he was honest with himself, by now the game’s loss was a lesser pain than saying goodbye.

Seba always tried to be honest.

In his reverie he didn’t notice a large iguana slump into the seat beside him. The toucan only noticed when Nathan Spinner craned his neck over to look at the zoomed-in picture and spoke.

“It’s your family, no?” the iguana asked in his pronounced Buenos Aires accent, which had sometimes served Seba as a phonetic refuge of familiarity. Sometimes. Right now was not one of those times.

“Yes,” replied Seba, still halfway absorbed in his thoughts.

A clawed finger made its way into his field of vision, picking out the tallest of the photographed party, the one in the red and white West jersey. “And this is you, no?” His smile was audible.

Seba, slightly confused, looked at Nathan. “Of course it is…”

Nathan chuckled. “Well, it is just that I have never seen you look so relaxed, like that!”

Seba glanced back at the photo, studying his mirror image with his brow furrowed. Was it really so different?

Nathan continued with a grin, gesturing toward Seba’s new facial expression. “Yeah, chamigo, that’s more normal.” He stowed his bag under the seat and plucked up Seba’s folded magazine. “That photo, though?” A nod toward the phone. “No te parece.”