Читать книгу Quicks - Kevin Waltman - Страница 9

2.

Already you can feel the heat easing up. The cool is coming. And with it, hoops. First practice in three weeks.

I’m in senior study hall, killing time. At Marion East, if you keep your head down and plug away—don’t show up high, don’t get arrested—you’re golden. Sure, I’ve got to keep cranking in trigonometry and English and on and on, but I’ve got this game down. Hell, at this point they basically tell you exactly what’s going to be on the tests, so I’m not sweating it. So I use this time to get my head right.

Except Darryl Gibson keeps intruding on my thoughts. He’s a surly guy. Doesn’t say much. But his legend grows daily. He’s still wrecking it at the Fall Creek court, to the point that he’s earned an obnoxious nickname—D-Train, after the way he barrels to the rim. And at school, he’s earned a rep of someone not to be messed with. Word is a couple thugged-out guys tried to jump him the first week and he put them both on their asses in the bathroom. Probably just a story, but people believe it.

Just this morning, he came cruising down the hall while I was kicking it with my teammates and he barely nodded at us. Like he’s too good or something. It makes me think back to when I was a newcomer. I used to walk these halls thinking I had something to swagger about, too. I remember how I resented Nick Starks—he was the senior point I was trying to uproot from the lineup—and maybe that’s how Gibson sees me. Whatever. That’s his problem, not mine.

“Bowen,” a voice calls. I come out of my daydream. There’s Mr. Mason, in front of me. He’s holding up a hall pass with one hand, his other propping up his head like it weighs a hundred pounds. “Looks like you got a get out of jail card.” He’s got retirement in his eyes, and he gives no shits at all. Doesn’t even look at me while I walk up and pluck the pass from his hand. First couple weeks of study hall, kids would try to get a rise out of him. They’d pull out phones and play games at full volume. They’d drop f-bombs in casual conversation. They’d stretch out on the floor, plop down their bookbag for a pillow, and nap. Mason never blinked.

Now some people actually study. What’s the point of acting out if you can’t get a teacher to notice?

I check the clock, see there’s only twenty minutes left in the period. “Do I need to come back here before next bell?” I ask.

Mason shrugs. He opens his desk and pulls out a bag of chips, opens them with a loud crinkle. “No point, I guess.”

Then I’m gone. As I walk down the hall, I check all the slogans.

Belief Efficiency Schoolwork Tenacity = B.E.S.T.

We Are the Hornets. Our Strength is in the Hive.

Always Aiming Upward!

They’ve been there forever. Same slogans and signs since the first day I set foot in Marion East. Every school has them—constant attempts to keep kids motivated. When you’re young, they seem to mean something. Like a little life instruction manual written on the walls. Then you hit junior year. Senior year. Things change. You see kids who had promise spiral down. You see kids who graduated full of hope stuck in their parents’ house, no better prospects than minimum wage jobs. Over and over and over.

Then again, what’s the choice? To not believe in possibilities? To just give up? No way. And whenever I get that kind of feeling, I’ve got something to save me—hoops. There the rules make sense. Nobody’s going to change them on you mid-game either. Give me the rock. Get me between the lines. Then I’ll show you what’s B.E.S.T.

I hover outside of Coach Bolden’s door before I knock. I’ve been called down here so many times over the years that I don’t even worry. Sometimes it’s been a pep talk. Sometimes a brutal lecture. Sometimes it’s been to take a long look at my mid-term grades.

I knock.

“It’s open,” a voice says.

Then, when I duck my head in, there’s no Bolden. Instead, the other two seniors on the squad—Fuller and Chris Jones, our big who spent all summer bulking up—sit silently in folding chairs. Across from them, behind Bolden’s big old desk, sits Lou Murphy, Bolden’s longtime assistant. He points at one last chair that leans against the brick wall. “Grab a seat, Derrick,” he says.

I do as I’m told, but my senses are on high alert.

Once I sit and face Murphy, he clears his throat. He clasps his hands in front of him and sits them on the desk, then decides against it and lays them palms-down as he leans forward. Murphy’s always been our go-to guy, that players’ coach who strokes our egos when Bolden comes down too hard. But now he just looks too young. Instead of his smooth, copper-colored face and that nervous smile behind the desk, there should be Bolden’s hawkish scowl—dark, wrinkled, ready to attack.

Finally, Murphy just pops up, like the seat’s full of thorns. He claps his hands. “Let’s just get to it,” he says. “I wanted to let the seniors know first. Coach Bolden isn’t coming back this year.” As he says it, he motions back to the chair. Maybe he meant it as a sign of respect—like it’ll always be Bolden’s seat—but it makes it feel like the old man’s dead.

“What’s wrong?” Fuller asks. He’s a senior in high school whose forehead wrinkles up like a senior citizen’s. He’s a bull, always moving straight ahead, on the court and off. “Something happened to him, right?” he says, as much an accusation as a question.

“No, no,” Murphy says. “It’s nothing like that. He just decided it was time to retire.”

I don’t say anything, but I’m angry. I’m not sure why, but it seems like a betrayal. Jones must feel the same way, and he doesn’t hold back. “Just like that?” he yells. “The old man said forget it right before my senior year? After all the work? After all the damn suicides I’ve run for him, he just walks?”

Murphy nods, understanding. “I hear you,” he says. Then he catches himself and takes a harder tone. “But Jones, it is what it is. Man up about it. Coach was getting up there. If he wants to spend his days doing the crossword and watching cable, he’s earned it.”

Nobody says anything after that. We just let the news settle over us the way a January snow silences the city as it falls. There’s just the wheeze and rattle of the air conditioning unit. I start remembering all my go-rounds with Bolden—the fight over playing time my freshman year, his crazy lineups that put me at the four-spot, the heart-to-hearts during my sophomore slump, his fire-breathing lectures when I let my head get too swole as a junior. And then his patience and counsel through my recruitment and my injuries. It’s hard to imagine Marion East hoops without him prowling the sideline, chewing out officials, stomping his foot on the hardwood. Gone. Retirement isn’t death, I guess, but it kind of feels like it to the people left behind.

“So?” Jones asks at last.

“What?” Murphy says.

“So who’s the new coach?”

Murphy widens his eyes. “I am,” he says, a little too defensively. Then he softens, remembering that he didn’t exactly explain that part to us. And finally, he lets a little smile creep in. He shakes his head. “The old man didn’t really give the school much of a choice to do anything else,” he says. “He just dropped the news on them yesterday. Probably knew it all summer long, but held out so they’d have to let me have a crack at it.”

Then he cuts us loose. We’re under orders not to tell anyone until the other players hear in person from him. The three of us walk together down the halls. Right now they’re empty, but any second that bell will ring and the whole school will spill out. Noise. Clamor. Chaos.

“Well, what do you guys think?” Fuller asks.

“I think it’s some bullshit,” Jones says. He’s a hulking 6’8", but when he acts this way his face sags into a mope. It makes him look soft, not menacing. “My senior year.”

“Our senior year,” I remind him. But I don’t say anything else. Truth is, I’m as sad as I am angry. But ballers aren’t gonna sit around and cry for the dearly departed. Next man up.

“Whatever,” Jones says. “I spent all summer banging weights and this is what I get.” He storms off, leaving Fuller and me standing under that big red sign: We Are the Hornets. Our Strength is in the Hive.

Then the bell rings and everyone swarms out around us.

Those slogans are flat-out lies.

There’s no time to sulk. After school, it was just a quick Catch you later to Lia, and then I hopped in my car to trek here: the doctor’s office. One last check-in before the season starts. Lia offered. My parents offered. Hell, even Jayson offered. But I didn’t want company on this one. Some things you have to do solo. If I get a bad report now, I don’t want to have to face anyone to talk about it.

Hanging in the waiting room about kills me. It’s worse than watching another player step to the line with the game in the balance. Nothing you can do but hope. Thing is, I should be more confident. The knee doesn’t give me any problems anymore. Not even tightness after workouts. But I don’t get to turn it loose without the doctor’s say-so.

“Bowen. Derrick.” I look up to see a nurse with a clipboard. She looks around, then sees me rising. She motions me to follow.

First things first. She gets me on the scales. “One-ninety-two,” she mutters to herself and writes it down. It’s a little more than I’ve weighed in the past, but no surprise. The one thing I could do while injured was add some bulk. If there’s any extra fat, it’ll burn off with a week or two of practice. Then she has me stand straight to measure my height. I’m not even really paying attention—just hoping to get this over with and get a green light from the doc—but when she reads it off I ask her to repeat herself.

“Six-four,” she says, narrowing her eyes at me. It’s like she thinks I called her a liar or something. Then she relents. “Okay. Six-four-and-a-half. That better?”

I nod, but she’s misreading me. I didn’t think she was cheating me of an inch. It’s just that I topped out at 6’3" before freshman year and haven’t grown a millimeter since. No wonder my kicks have felt tight. But, hey, I’ll take it. An extra inch and a half? That’s another board per game. Another bucket or two among the bigs. Maybe a dozen more blocks over the course of a year.

Provided I get to wear a uni at all.

After that, she ushers me to a smaller room and tells me the doctor will be right with me. Right. That means I sit there in silence for half an hour. I thumb through an SI and a SLAM, but even they can’t distract me. I look at pictures on the wall, some signed photos of semi-famous athletes this doctor’s put back between the lines.

Finally, the door swooshes open and in he comes. He’s young, thin. His skin is honey-colored, but it’s impossible to figure out what ethnicity he is. He speaks in a clipped but cheery tone—the kind of thing that usually bothers me, but he’s been a pretty steadying force through this whole journey with my knee.

“How we doing today, Derrick?” he asks. He extends his hand.

I rise, shake his hand. “I guess how I’m doing depends on what you tell me.”

No more small talk then. He knows I need him to get down to business. He measures the circumference of my leg and writes it down. He quizzes me on my workouts. Any swelling? Soreness? Am I hitting full speed running? Any problems after downhill running?

It’s a little weird. I mean, I know what the right answers are. But I try to be honest with myself and the doctor—the last thing anyone wants is another injury. So I give him the truth. I haven’t had any soreness or swelling in over a month. Everything feels good. Except one thing. “I hit top speed,” I tell him, “but I don’t feel like I get there as fast as I used to.”

The doctor nods. Then he frowns a little and scans a chart in front of him. He flips a page. Then another. It’s like he’s on the beach, browsing some summer read while I’m in deep water in need of saving.

He looks up at me again. He smiles, but I can tell there’s something lurking behind it—the way a parent might smile right before they drop the hammer on you, like I hate to do this to you, but your ass is grounded.

“What you’re experiencing is normal,” he says. “I could count on one hand the number of athletes I’ve had who felt they had the same power. For most of them, it takes at least a full year from their injury. And yours was in”—he double-checks his chart—“late January. So, like I said, totally normal. You’ll get that power back as your knee returns to form.” Then he taps his temple with his finger a few times. “But some of it’s in here, too. Tearing your ACL isn’t like stubbing a toe, Derrick. Sometimes our mind holds us back a little longer until we feel safe.” I stare at him, still waiting on the verdict. I didn’t come to the doctor for some psychology lesson. He must sense it because he waves his hand in the air, as if to say Forget all that nonsense. “You’re good to go, Derrick.”

“For real?” As badly as I want to believe it, the thought almost scares me somehow. Like any second, a camera crew’s going to pop out and let me know the doc was punking me.

“You check out,” he says. “Every test up and down the line. We’re going to want a brace on you for a good while longer, but you can resume full basketball activities.”

“Right away?”

“Derrick, as far as I’m concerned, if there’s a court on the other side of that door, you can start a pick-up game.”