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1.

“Ball,” I shout, but just get ignored. Instead, I watch some thirty-year-old chump with gray in his goatee and a belly hanging down over his shorts dribble and dribble and then jack one up from twenty-five feet. Barely scrapes iron.

Two possessions later my Uncle Kid backs his man down to hit the game-winner, and my five is run off. Someone’s left an empty water bottle by the court and I chuck it in disgust. It clears the chain link and clatters into Fall Creek Parkway, gets squashed by traffic. I sit in the grass and watch the next five take the court, waiting my turn to get back out there. Worst of all, I have to listen to that guy run his mouth like he’s some kind of baller. Brownlee is what they all call him, and I’ve seen him here before. Always the same shit. He makes one nice shot, then chucks away the rest of the game—and then has the nerve to make noise at other players about what they did wrong.

“Little man,” he says. He mops his face with his t-shirt. “You, little man.”

I look away, watch Uncle Kid—Sidney, really, but everyone still calls him Kid—knock in another turnaround. My uncle’s pushing 40 and has seen better days, and, I mean, it’s embarrassing to watch him walk up to the court with some fake limp in his stride like he thinks he’s a bad-ass. But the man flirted with the NBA. Had coach after coach tell him he was this close to making a roster. So he can still bring it between the lines.

“Little man, you need to pay attention. I was telling you, you got to clear out some. You got in my way on that last trip.”

I look at Brownlee, watch him squint at me, his sweaty black face glistening in the sun. He’s got that twitchy, bossy teacher look some men get, like if he just keeps telling everyone else their business they’ll think he knows what he’s doing. Even his goatee is annoying, like he thinks facial hair gives him some kind of authority. And right then I hate being fifteen—because being fifteen means I have to sit here in the grass and listen to him talk nonsense even if I’m the best player on the court. It means I have to be called “little man” even if I’m pushing 6'3". It means all Brownlee’s friends will pat him on the back because they’ve been coming to this court with him since before I was born, and they’ll be damned if they admit there’s not one of them can check me. And it means that come November, I’ll just be a freshman trying to crack the starting five at Marion East, at least until Coach Bolden realizes I’m his best option, even if Nick Starks is already rated one of the state’s top point guards.

“Little man, you still not listening?” Brownlee laughs now, like he’s the funniest man in the world.

“I hear you,” I finally say. “But I’m done listening to anything you got.” That turns some heads. A few of them have played with me enough to know I’m no joke, but mostly everyone just wants a rise out of Brownlee. You gonna take that? they ask, laughing at him.

“You got a lot to learn, little man,” Brownlee says. He puffs out his chest like he might swagger over and knock me around, but I know better than to flinch. He stares at me for another second, but then just repeats, “Lot to learn.”

Everyone settles back for a second, waiting for the next game, and I feel the adrenaline pumping through me. My fingers feel hot and my pulse is pounding at my temples. I listen to traffic zip by, smell the exhaust from a city bus, feel the grass—dry now in the first week of October—scratch at my legs. It just makes me feel antsy, all of it, and I suddenly can’t wait to get back on that court, kick game to shut Brownlee up. And more: I want my season to get here, want to see myself on the evening highlights bringing the crowd to their feet, want to see the scouts lining the bleachers to witness it all. The waiting for it makes me want to burst.

At least I don’t need to wait long to get a shot at Brownlee. Kid’s team wins again, but one of their players begs out of the next game. They try talking him into it, but he grabs his Gatorade and chugs, then says, “If I’m late for work today I won’t have a job to go back to tomorrow.” So Uncle Kid cocks his head my way, says, “D-Bow, you wanna run?”

I’m on that blacktop in a heartbeat.

One of Kid’s teammates—he’s good, but I’ve never seen him here before—mutters something about not wanting a punk on his team, but Uncle Kid says, “That’s my nephew. Trust me. Young pup has some skills.” Uncle Kid’s word has weight on this court, even if he looks a little worse these days, growth splotchy on his ashy face, his body more wiry than ever, like he’s lived all these years and nothing’s stuck to him.

When the ball gets checked I’m staring straight across at Brownlee, who all of a sudden doesn’t look so confident in teaching me lessons. First time down, I get my hands on the rock but slide it down to Uncle Kid—no sense in getting trigger-happy early, especially when Kid’s the one who got me back on the blacktop. He knocks in a turnaround, and then, on the other end, I just hound Brownlee. He makes a couple cuts, tries to throw his weight into me to bounce free, but soon enough he starts standing, knowing he has no chance. I can smell his sweat mixed with some nasty cologne, and he keeps coughing like he’s getting nervous. He was the one trash-talking, though, so he deserves what’s coming.

When their shot hits iron, I rip it and am off. I’m past Brownlee by mid-court and only his buddy keeps me from taking it rack-to-rack. Still, I settle for a mid-range runner. As I backpedal I bark at Brownlee: “Call me little man, now.”

“Easy, kid,” he says, trying to sound wise. The wisest thing he’s got, though, is an elbow in my ribs—a cheap shot to get him free. He tries floating one up from the near baseline, but I recover quick and—Whap!—smack that thing off the backboard.

It goes on like that for a few minutes. Between me and Uncle Kid our five pulls ahead fast. I even drop a dime to that big man who didn’t want me to play, feed him right in time for him to muscle one down, and he gives me this nonchalant nod and raises a lazy index finger in my direction: subtle but serious praise from a grown-ass man.

I haven’t finished with Brownlee though. We’re at game point and I still haven’t put my stamp on the game, on him. But I wait, looking for the right moment. And then it comes: on our defensive end, there’s a loose ball, and it gets ricocheted back and forth in the lane for a few seconds. Everything in there is just a tangle of sweaty arms, everyone clawing for the rock, until it squirts free to me on the wing. I pluck it clean and turn. I see Brownlee hustling back, nothing but me and him and blacktop.

His eyes go wide. He knows what’s coming and can’t stop it. Two dribbles and I’m past mid-court. One more and I’m on top of Brownlee and in the lane. And then I rise.

The last thing Brownlee sees before I throw it down is a nice up-close look at my LeBrons, right about at the level of his silly goatee.

Game. My teammates howl and talk trash, giving me fist bumps and high fives.

“Call me little man, now,” I say to Brownlee again. I don’t yell it, just kind of throw that line at him as I saunter off the court. I’m so amped that part of me is itching for him to talk back, give me some excuse to make a ruckus.

He thinks about it, I can tell. His upper lip curls into a sneer and his eyes narrow. But then he exhales, looks away for a second. “All right, kid,” he says. “Tell me your name so I remember it.”

“Derrick Bowen,” I say.

“D-Bow,” Uncle Kid says. He’s standing a few feet away, a proud smile spread across his face. The other guys are grabbing drinks, getting a breather before we run again. “I’m telling you, that’s what they’ll all call you someday when you’re hauling in NBA hardware.”

I kick at an old tattered t-shirt left near the court. It’s no lie that I think about the NBA, but when I hear somebody else say it, I get embarrassed. “I’ll be fine with just starting for Marion East this year.”

Brownlee’s gone from trash-talker to super-fan in minutes. “Oh, you’ll be the best player at Marion East in years,” he says. I’m not ready to have him on my side yet so I just look away, see a black Lexus with tinted windows rolling toward the court real slow. It kind of creeps. No music playing, nothing, which is in some ways a lot more intimidating than someone rolling up with beats blaring.

“He’ll be the best since they had me,” my uncle says. Uncle Kid’s jersey still hangs in the Marion East gymnasium. He was a legend, even if he never became the superstar everyone expected. “If that coach they got doesn’t mess it up. Or if you even stay at Marion East.”

I look up quickly, see Brownlee checking out my uncle, too. Those last comments were loaded, like he knows more about my future than I do. I hate it when people do that—talk over my head, like just because I’m fifteen they can wall me out of the conversation.

Over on the court, guys are looking our way, impatient for us to get back out to run, but then I realize they’re looking past us.

“Kid!” a voice yells.

I turn, instinctively, so used to being called “kid” or “little man” or “junior” or any variation of those names, but when I look there’s only the Lexus, one tinted window down no more than an inch. And it’s my uncle they want, not me.

My uncle runs his tongue across his teeth like he tastes something bad and then says, to nobody in particular, “Gotta go.” He starts toward the Lexus, and the window on the car rolls back up silently. Uncle Kid turns back to me and smiles. “Catch you later, D-Bow,” he says, like there’s nothing strange happening at all.