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3.

When you’re over-matched on the court, there’s no hiding. When Uncle Kid used to take me down to the park when I was only 13 I’d get in over my head trying to guard some grown man. I couldn’t do it, and everyone knew I couldn’t do it, but I’d get no mercy. They’d single me up every time down.

That doesn’t happen to me anymore, most definitely not between the lines. But when I walk in the house and there’s something I don’t want to talk about with my parents, it feels about the same. Isolated with nowhere to hide. I swear, if I’ve got bad news—a D on a quiz, or, like now, a brutal day at practice—my mom can smell it. Marion East is only about six blocks from our door, and I bet she knows something’s off before I’m halfway home.

“Derrick,” she says, “what’s wrong?” She’s sitting at the kitchen table, where they’ve just finished eating, my plate still there waiting to be microwaved.

“Nothing.”

She repeats the question, this time with a little more concern. My mom has skin as smooth as glass, darker than my dad, and she has these eyes that look almost Asian, so most of the time she’s got a soft, young-looking face. But when she gets serious—or angry—there’s nothing soft.

My dad clears his throat like he’s about to say something, but he knows this is Mom’s show.

“Nothing,” I say again.

She pushes her chair away from the table and folds her arms. “Derrick Bowen,” she says, “you either tell me what’s bothering you or we are going to have one very unfriendly evening.”

With that, my little brother Jayson, who was chilling on the couch watching the Pacers pre-game, snaps off the television and scoots silently to his room. My dad stands, walks across the room to take a seat in his chair, not so he can relax, but so that they’re on either side of me. No escape.

“Coach Bolden,” I say. When it comes out, I know I sound like a whiner. I don’t want to be that player who comes home and moans about how tough coach is, who bellyaches and backstabs until he gets his way. I’m supposed to be the guy who just laces them up and gets back to work. In those summer games a few years ago if I hung my head after a bad game, Uncle Kid would come right over to me, say something like D-Bow, if you don’t like getting beat, you got two choices. Get used to it or get better.

It’s just that, right now, I’d like a little sympathy from my parents.

I explain to them what happened at practice, trying to shade the story a little bit my way. They both react, but neither with what you’d call sympathy.

My mom is all righteous anger. She’s convinced Bolden should be fired. She slams her hand down on the kitchen table and shouts, “That man has to be the most stubborn coach to ever sit on a bench.” So while she’s on my side, it just seems to be an excuse for her to get angry. She’s lived here all her life, moving from place to place in the patch of Indianapolis bordered by 30th, 46th, Meridian and Keystone. She loves it, but she also hates it. She loves the people she grew up with and loves being able to reminisce about her old times at Marion East. She can convince herself into thinking our little three-bedroom house is a better place to live than anywhere else in the city, even better than those mansions on North Meridian. But all of that means she feels free to criticize the area like nobody else. She goes on tirades about store owners who let people loiter, about how the city lets streetlights stay burned out and neglects potholes as big as craters, or about how someone needs to “put the fear of God” into some of the teenagers in the neighborhood. But nothing draws her ire like the subject of principals, teachers and, especially, coaches at Marion East.

My dad stays silent. While my mom rages on about Coach Bolden being blind to talent, he furrows his brow and stares at the floor. He’s a strong, barrel-chested man, tough enough to handle security jobs around here, but it’s a sneaky strength hidden behind his wire glasses, his calm demeanor that looks more like a teacher’s than anything else. Dad doesn’t share my mom’s love of this area, maybe because he feels like they should have better jobs and more money than they do. My dad never finished college, but he’s still the most well-read security guard in the history of the city. And he always says that my mom’s too good a teacher to be trapped in these schools. He’s less likely to say things about the area, but he’s convinced the only good thing about our neighborhood would be leaving it behind. When The Star runs stories on crime or exposés on failing high schools, they’ll sometimes snap some pics of our streets, of Marion East, to accompany their stories. To me, that’s easy enough to ignore. I know there are places in this city a lot worse than the blocks I rep, and it’s like The Star thinks every black guy in Roca Wear is some banger. But my dad gets grim when stuff like that comes up. Cranks out numbers on income levels. Starts rattling off graduation rates at Marion East and shakes his head. Now, when my mom finishes her tirade on Bolden, my dad says simply, “Well, maybe he shouldn’t play for that coach, if he’s as bad as you think.”

Mom stops, puts her hands on her hips and fixes my dad with an icy glare. “And just what exactly does that mean, Thomas?” I’ve seen that stare before, heard that tone. Pops better tread lightly.

Instead of answering my mom, though, he turns to me. “What do you think about Coach Bolden?” he asks. “You want to play four years for him?”

That tone is even worse than my mom’s. It’s the one people get when they ask a question that means something other than what they’re saying. Teachers, coaches, parents—they all do it, like they’re holding something back. I grab an apple from the counter and take a bite, trying to act nonchalant. I shrug my shoulders as I chew and then say, “Sure.”

“Thomas,” my mom says, “let’s not get into this now.” She clears their plates from the table and puts mine in the microwave.

“I’m just asking a question, Kaylene,” he says. “You were the one running down Bolden.”

“Well, I don’t like Coach Bolden, but I’m not going to let whatever happened with him and Kid way back when give you an excuse to mess things up now.”

The mention of Uncle Kid tears it for my dad. He’s slow to anger—unlike my mom, whose temper goes zero to sixty in two seconds—but she’s hit a sore spot with him. He stands, and though he doesn’t yell—he never really yells—he raises his voice just enough. “The only thing that bothers me about my brother is that he’s damn near forty years old and people still call him Kid instead of Sidney,” he says.

There’s silence in the room now, and I can tell that even though this conversation is about me, there’s a lot more to it than what they’ll say when I’m around, like they’ve had these little coaches meetings but can’t decide what they want to tell the players yet. The microwave gives three long beeps to break the silence, and I pop it open, grab my dinner and beat it to Jayson’s room. I’ve had enough conflict for one day.

I plop down next to my little brother. “What’s banging, D?” he asks, but doesn’t look up. He’s deep into a game of NBA 2K13, taking the sticks with the Thunder against the Heat. I cling to beliefs that the Pacers will break through some day, but Jay’s a front-runner, and as I finish my dinner he throws an alley-oop from Westbrook to Durant.

I pick up the other controller. “Start it over,” I say.

“Naw, D,” he says. “Lemme finish this.”

I nudge him with my elbow. “Start it over. I’m gonna run you off the floor.”

He laughs, cocky. “Bring it,” he says. There’s nothing better than spending time with my little brother. As soon as the season starts, though, we don’t get to hang as often so he’s excited to get a little attention. “I got the Thunder!” he calls.

“Take ’em,” I say. “I’ll run with whoever you want and I’ll still take you.”

He laughs again, then locks me in with New Orleans.

“Fine with me,” I say. “I can drop fifty with Gordon.” That draws more laughter from Jayson, but it’s not far from the truth. Being a young point guard from Indianapolis, I heard that name—Eric Gordon—whispered more than a few times last year. As in: That kid’s the next Eric Gordon. Sure, I know the line—I’m supposed to be the first Derrick Bowen, not the next anyone else—but I’ve followed Gordon’s rise in the league. Even slicing through his defense with Gordon, though, it’s not long before Jayson opens up a lead on me and starts talking trash.

“You too slow on the sticks,” he says.

“You got no skills,” he says.

“Oooh, I’m goin’ by you again,” he says.

I have no problem with my little brother running smack. He sure runs enough from the stands when he’s watching me play. Last year I swear he almost made the kid guarding me cry.

Finally, at the end of the first quarter, he looks up at me. “How’d your first practice go, D?” he asks.

For a second, I think about telling him about Coach Bolden getting on me, but then I realize I shouldn’t worry him. It made enough of a mess between my parents so no reason to drag Jayson into it.

“Let’s just say this,” I say. “All those things you do in the game with Westbrook? I’m gonna do that in real life.”

“Cool,” he says. As he looks up at me, I can see his imagination spinning out, envisioning all the buzzer-beaters and championships in my future. His excitement is so infectious it kind of puts things right for me again.

We turn back to the game. For a while, the only sounds are our thumbs on the sticks and the play-by-play on the television. At timeouts, though, I can hear my parents droning in the other room. They’re not yelling at each other, but I can tell they’re hashing out some serious stuff.

I ignore them and turn back to the game, but even as I do it, I know that those conversations won’t wait forever. As much as I resent not being treated like an adult—by my parents, by guys like Brownlee down at the park—I know that when I enter that world, it won’t be just games anymore.