Night Hoops (11 page)

As I stepped onto the court, my heart was pumping blood by the gallon. It was the home opener, the league opener. The gym was rocking. My mom, dad, and brother were watching.

The Eastlake player swished the free throw. I took the inbound pass and raced the ball up the court. The guy guarding me backed off, looking to clog the passing lanes. I rose for the three-pointer. It felt good when I released it, but I must have been too pumped, because it clanged long.
That's all right,
I thought to myself as I back-pedaled.
You'll make the next one.

But that miss took away my confidence. My man gave a simple head fake. I bit, and he blew by me for a lay-in. As I brought the ball upcourt, I saw O'Leary pacing in front of the bench, his hands behind his neck, dark half-moons of sweat showing on his light blue shirt. He had the same look on his face that he'd had just before he yanked Fabroa.

I picked up my dribble at the top of the key. I faked a pass to Carver; Luke flashed into the key. I fed him a lob pass that he took at the free-throw line. My guy dropped into a double-team, so Luke whipped the ball right back. I was open for the three-pointer, but my hands were so sweaty the ball slipped, and my shot was ugly—a low-liner that sailed under the backboard and out of bounds.

"Air ball! Air ball! Air ball!" The mocking chant rose from the Eastlake fans. I felt my face go red as Eastlake quickly in-bounded the ball. As my man raced up the right side of the court, I reached in, tipping the ball free. I barely nicked his arm, but the whistle blew and the ref's finger was pointing at me. A second later the horn sounded. Fabroa raced onto the court, and he was pointing at me, too.

O'Leary didn't even look at me as I came off the court. I grabbed a towel and, totally dejected, walked all the way down to the end of the bench. I dropped my head and covered it with a towel. That's when I felt the pat on the back, and the low, whispered words: "You'll get 'em next time."

We lost by ten. After the game my father took me home. I didn't want to eat anything, but he insisted we stop for pizza. While we sat waiting for our food, he let me have it, telling me everything I already knew: that I'd played like an idiot, that I was too tentative in the first half and too wild in the fourth quarter. "You've got to think when you're out there. You understand? You've got to think."

He reached over and rubbed the top of my head. He did that all the time when I was little, and I'd always liked it. But now he rubbed too hard, so that it hurt. Besides, I wasn't little anymore. I pulled away.

My mother had waited up. "You did your best, Nick. That's all you can do. No one can be great every time, not even Michael Jordan." Scott had the sense not to say anything.

Upstairs, staring at the ceiling, I kept seeing my mistakes. It was as if I were locked in a movie theater and were being forced to watch a gruesome clip from a horror film over and over. Then, just before I fell asleep, I let the film run a few seconds longer in my mind. I saw myself after I'd been taken out of the game. I was at the end of the bench, a towel over my head. Then I felt the pat on the back, and the words of comfort.
You'll get 'em next time.

Could that have been Trent?

Monday morning Luke was at my door. We didn't usually walk to school together, so I knew he'd come by to try to lift my spirits. For a while we talked about school—midterms were that week—and how hard it was to find time to study. Then the conversation turned to basketball.

"You're going to be okay, Nick. You're going to be okay."

"When?" I scoffed. "My senior year?"

"No, no. You've just got to become more of a team player."

His words stung. "What's that supposed to mean?"

He caught my tone. "Nothing ... just..."

"Go on. If you got something to say, say it."

He shrugged. "Well, it seems like you're trying to do everything yourself when you're out there. You've got to remember you've got teammates who can score too."

My whole body tensed, but I kept myself under control. "And I suppose you don't care about scoring."

"Come on. You know what I mean. Everybody likes to score. But if it doesn't come to me, I don't force things."

"And I do? Is that what you're saying?"

"A little, you have been."

I exploded. "You've got a lot of nerve, Luke. I'll tell you, a lot of nerve. Because you count your points more than anybody I've ever played with."

"Oh, is that right?"

"Yeah, that's right."

He glared at me. "Fine, Nick. Keep doing things the way you have been. You can sit on the bench all year for all I care." With that he stormed off, leaving me to myself.

All morning I thought about how unfair he was. You miss the big shot and you're a glory hog. You make it and suddenly you're the guy with courage, the guy willing to step up with the game on the line.

I'd always eaten lunch with Luke, and out of habit I looked for him that day too. But when I spotted him, he was in thick with Carver and the other senior starters.
Fine,
I thought, my anger returning.
You eat with them. See if I care.

I had my history midterm that afternoon. I wasn't exactly unprepared for it, but I could have studied harder. When I finished my essay I looked up and saw everyone else—including Trent—still working. What a joke it would be if he ended up eligible to play and I flunked myself right off the team. I put my head down and went over my essay, checking for misspellings and lousy sentences, improving it wherever I could.

The school day ended and I walked to the gym for practice. I was tired of being on the outs with Luke. I needed a friend. If he'd done anything at all, even looked at me, I'd have gone over and made it okay with him. But the instant he saw me he turned away. I found an empty corner and suited up without saying a word to anybody.

We'd gone through all our warm-up drills and were getting ready for scrimmage when Coach O'Leary called me aside. "Listen, Nick," he said, his voice soothing, so soothing that I knew bad news was coming. "You're a good player. I know it; all the guys know it. But you're pressing."

"I'll play better," I said anxiously.

"Sure you will, sure you will. But for right now, I've decided to move you to the third team and let Brian Chang take your minutes. During the scrimmage today, I want you to sit up in the stands and watch. You can learn a lot from watching. You understand what I'm saying?"

It was like taking a fist to the gut and then having to act as if it hadn't hurt. I nodded, and even managed a sort of smile.

O'Leary put his hand on my shoulder. "Good, good. That's the attitude."

He blew his whistle and called the whole team to him. I could tell from the grin on Brian Chang's face that he knew he'd get my playing time. A couple of guys sneaked looks over at me, and I met their gazes as if nothing was wrong.

When you're scrimmaging, time always goes by fast. But when you're stuck watching, it's a whole different story. There were two of us sitting up on those hard bleachers: me and Trent. We sat as far apart from one another as we could, and didn't say a word.

The hardest part was knowing that neither Fabroa nor Chang had my ability. That's not bragging; it's just true. They weren't as fast; they didn't dribble as well; they didn't have my touch, inside or out. But during that practice they moved the ball around, keeping everybody involved. "That's it!" O'Leary called out a couple of times. "That's it!"

By Wednesday afternoon I knew there was no way I was getting into Thursday's game against the Redmond Mustangs. Not even for a minute.

Wednesday night I sucked up my courage and called Dad.
He answered, not his girlfriend, and that was something. But he didn't take what I had to tell him very well. "What do you mean you're not playing?"

"I'm third string. Unless it's a blowout I won't get in."

"What's going on, Nick? You arguing with the coach?"

"No, no. Nothing like that." I paused. "Look, Dad, there are only three sophomores on the team and I'm one of them. So I don't play a whole bunch this year. So what? I've got time."

There was a long stretch of silence. At last he spoke. "Well, thanks for telling me. I have the opportunity to work some overtime, and I might just take it. You keep playing hard at practice, you hear? And if anything changes, call me."

Bench warmer. That's what I was for games three and four. I couldn't even kid myself that the guys needed me, because we won both games, beating Redmond at home 64–50 and then going on the road to stop the Lake Washington Kangaroos 56–44. Not that the victories meant much. They were the weakest teams in our league. No height, no speed, new coaches every year.

Fabroa and Chang ran the plays just the way O'Leary wanted them run: nothing flashy, but nothing stupid. They didn't blow either team out of the gym; they methodically ground them up the way a butcher grinds up meat to make sausage.

If we'd opened against these two loser teams, everything might have been different. With less pressure, my shots might have dropped, and I might have made the plays on defense. If I had, then...

During those two games O'Leary didn't call my number once. I could have ordered a pizza and eaten it on the bench and he wouldn't have noticed.

Zack was released from juvenile hall the day after we beat Lake Washington. December in the Northwest is cold, dark, and drizzly, but he made a point of sitting on his porch every afternoon and evening, stereo blasting, cigarette in hand. It was as if he were flipping off the whole world.

The music didn't get turned down until Steve Clay came home, and then only after loud arguments that usually ended with Zack climbing into his mother's old Corolla and somehow making it sound like a Ferrari as he raced off into the night.

Katya was around our house more than ever those days, supposedly because of the jazz band, but really because she and Scott were an established thing. Like the rest of us, she tried to ignore Zack, but one evening when she stayed for dinner we heard him screaming in the street, and her frustration boiled over. "I don't understand," she said. "Why did they let him out? Michael saw him. He told the police. And nothing happens?"

My mother's voice was calm. "We don't know that for sure. He might have to do community service, or maybe undergo counseling. We don't know what the court decided."

"But he's there," Katya cried, pointing toward the Dawson house. "He's right
there,
and he's no different, and all those poor birds are dead."

No one could say anything to that.

Then, the night before Christmas vacation began, Steve Clay was at our door again. His face looked grayish, and the creases running by the sides of his mouth seemed deeper.

I let him in, called Mom, and slipped into the kitchen to listen. "You must be sick of seeing my face," he said softly as he sat, his back hunched.

"No, not at all," my mother answered. "What can I do for you?"

"Actually, I came over to say goodbye."

"Goodbye?"

He took a deep breath, sighed. "It didn't work out with Ericka and me. It's not Ericka's fault. It's just..." his voice trailed off.

"I'm sorry for you and for Ericka, and for the boys, too," my mother said. "You were good for them."

"It's the boys I want to talk to you about." He stopped for a moment. "Listen, this is the last time we'll ever talk, so I'm going to lay it all out. I got nowhere with Zack. Nowhere at all. But Trent's different. There's a chance for him. I'd like to think he had some place to go at night other than out with Zack. So I was wondering—"

"That basketball court is his whenever he wants to play," my mother said, anticipating his request. "You tell him that. And we've got a sofa downstairs to sleep on if he ever needs it. You tell him that too."

Steve Clay's spine straightened. "Thank you. Thank you very much. You're a good woman." He pulled out his wallet, wrote down a phone number on a scrap of paper. "I'm moving in with my brother. I won't be there for long, but if you ever need to get in touch with me, he'll know where I am."

My mother took the little piece of paper.

Steve Clay left, and my mother stood in the front room looking at the door. Finally she turned to me. "You heard that, didn't you? Is that okay?"

I remembered how angry I'd felt when she first allowed Trent to use my basket, but now I couldn't remember exactly why. "Sure," I said. "It's okay by me."

We were entered in a three-day Christmas tournament in Victoria, British Columbia, beginning December 28. The games had popped right out at me the first time I'd seen the schedule. Riding the Victoria Clipper with the guys, staying in a hotel, seeing R-rated movies at night—the whole thing seemed great, almost like being a college player.

From the start Mom hadn't been crazy about the trip. She'd considered coming along as a chaperone because she didn't trust O'Leary. "I heard he's a drinker," she said one night at dinner. But Scott's jazz band was headed to Monterey, California, over Christmas for the music festival, and she wanted to go with him.

For a long time she stewed about it, then over Thanksgiving Dad solved the problem. "I'll go up with Nick, keep an eye on him," he told her. To me he said: "Don't worry. I'll stay out of your hair. You hang out with your buddies, not your old man."

School was out for the holidays, and there were no games until after Christmas, but that didn't mean time off. It was practice, practice, practice—twice a day. O'Leary called it our "readjustment" time. "We can make a run at the league title," he said. "But these practices are crucial. This is not playtime."

I wanted to use those practices to push Chang from his spot on the second team, and maybe make Fabroa nervous about his spot on the first team. I was going to show O'Leary that what he'd seen was a slump, and that it was over. But it didn't work out that way. At every practice something went wrong right away. I'd miss my first shot, or double-dribble, or make a bad pass. The harder I tried, the worse I did. If guys were open, I'd double-clutch on my passes, and then either chuck them out-of-bounds or get them picked off. It was like a rock slide that I once saw up in the Cascade mountains. First one rock came tumbling down, and then another, and pretty soon it seemed as if the whole mountain was caving in.