Night Hoops (18 page)

For an answer Trent faked a hard chest pass in Chang's direction. Chang flinched, and Trent laughed in his face.

The attitude continued into the scrimmage. Trent didn't hustle after loose balls; he dogged the fast breaks. He was so out of it that twice in a row Markey took baseline on him, both times driving all the way to the hoop for uncontested lay-ins. When it happened a third time, Matt turned on Trent. "In your face!" he shouted, pumping his fist.

Trent went ballistic. He drove into Markey the way a blitzing linebacker drives into a quarterback, knocking him down and then pummeling him with fists to the stomach. O'Leary, his face bright red, started blowing his whistle; guys jumped in to yank them apart. The whole thing couldn't have taken more than thirty seconds, but it seemed like forever before McShane, Luke, and I pulled him off.

"Take a shower, Dawson," O'Leary shouted, when Trent was finally off Markey.

Trent glared at O'Leary.

"I said take a shower!"

He stomped off the court.

Markey was leaning over, holding his stomach. "What's with him? Is he crazy?"

After dinner that night, Scott and I cleared the table and washed the dishes. Then Scott went to his room. I didn't have much homework—ten problems in math, four questions in history. I brought my books to the kitchen table just as I always did.

I knew Trent wasn't coming. I knew it in my bones. But every time I heard anything, and sometimes when I didn't, I'd look to the back door, hoping to hear his knock.

When I finished the last history question, I pulled on a sweatshirt, grabbed my basketball, and headed out to the back yard to shoot around.

It was cold and growing colder, my shots weren't dropping, and I suddenly felt disgusted with everything. What was I doing out there by myself, shooting hoops in the dark?

I grabbed the ball and started back into the house. But that wasn't right either. I put the ball down on the back porch, went through the gate, crossed the street, and pounded on Trent's front door.

There was a light on in the back, and my pounding caused two more to go on. Finally the door opened a crack. I could barely see him. "We've got to talk," I said.

"About what?"

"Come off it, Trent. You act crazy at practice, you don't show up to shoot hoops. What's happening?"

His mouth turned downward. I could feel him deciding. Finally he pushed the screen door open. "All right," he said, "come in. But you've got to be real quiet. My mother is sleeping upstairs."

It was the first time I'd been inside his house since we'd played pool on his little toy table more than a year before. It didn't look like the house had been cleaned since then. Mailorder catalogs were still strewn around the living room floor. Cigarette butts still spilled out of a paper cup and onto the coffee table. Plates with dried food on them sat on top of the television set. He caught me looking around. "Nice place, isn't it?"

I sat on the sofa and he dropped into a chair across from me. "Did he call?" I asked.

He nodded toward the duffel bag I'd seen before. "Yeah, he called."

My throat went so dry that it was hard for me to swallow. "You think it's smart to go?" I asked. "I mean, aren't the police still watching you? Won't you lead them right to him?"

He laughed. "The police aren't watching me, Nick. Why should they be? Ushakov got shot with a little tiny bullet from a little tiny gun. It wasn't much worse that getting hit with a BB. No big deal. "

"No big deal?" My voice rose with each word. "Who do you think you're kidding? Two or three inches and Michael would be dead."

"Keep it down!" he snapped, looking toward the stairway. "I told you my mother is sleeping."

I took a deep breath. When I spoke again it was in a whisper. "I don't get it. I know you love basketball, love playing. And you're good at it, really good. So why throw it away for Zack? What's he ever done for you?"

He looked down. "Plenty."

"Like what?" I said.

"You really want to know?"

"Yeah," I said. "I really want to know."

He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. It seemed forever before he spoke, but it probably was only ten seconds. "What's your earliest memory, Nick?"

"I don't know for sure," I answered, thrown off by the question. "I guess my dad swinging me at the park. Why?"

"Your dad swinging you at the park." He laughed softly. "Well, here's mine. I was three years old, and it was morning, and I was hungry. I went into my mom's room and found her lying naked on the bed next to some guy I'd never seen before. I shook her a couple of times, but she was so drunk or stoned I couldn't wake her up. So I woke up Zack. And what was he? Five years old? Six? The first thing he did was to close the door to my mom's bedroom. Then he led me to the kitchen, got up on a chair, and brought down a big bag of pretzels. Next he went to the refrigerator, and he got out two cans of Coke. He poured the Coke into glasses and spilled those pretzels onto paper plates. And we sat there and had breakfast together." He paused. "All my life he's gotten me the bag of pretzels. Now he's out there alone. You think I can leave him like that?"

We both sat there in the near dark for a long time. "Look," I said at last. "Stay two more games. That's all. At least see the season to the end. Then, if you want, go. Though I still don't see how screwing up your own life is going to help him any."

"You really want to win, don't you?"

That made me mad. "Oh, come off it, Trent. We've come this far. I want to play it out to the end, and you do too. I know you. One week more. That's all I'm asking. One week."

"All right, Nick. One week. But then I'm gone."

"You've got bags under your eyes," Mom said to me the next morning at breakfast.

"I had a tough night," I admitted.

She frowned. "I'll be glad when basketball season is over. It's absolutely wearing you out."

"This is going to surprise you," I said, "but I will be too."

I didn't see Trent as I walked to school. And I didn't see him before the bell either. My head started pounding. What if he'd been blowing smoke in my face to get me off his back and then had taken off as soon as I'd left? What then?

Then, just before first-period class was about to start, he walked in, sat down in his usual seat, and nodded as if it were any other day.

Instead of feeling better, I felt worse—dizzy somehow—as if I were on a ship in a storm. The ground didn't feel solid under my feet. In history I forgot the years of the Civil War; in English I was on the wrong story. When it came time to pay at lunch, I stood there looking at the woman until the kid behind me nudged me. "You waiting for somebody to buy it for you?"

After school I couldn't get my hall locker open until the fourth try. By the time I was on the court for practice, O'Leary already had Trent in the coaches' office. As the rest of us shot lay-ins, we could see him giving Trent a good chewing-out. When the two of them finally emerged, O'Leary called us all to him. "Trent has something to say," he announced.

Trent looked right at Matt Markey. "Sorry about yesterday," he said, sticking out his hand. "It won't happen again."

Markey shook his hand. "Forget it."

"All right then," O'Leary growled. "Let's get back to basketball."

That was exactly what I wanted to do.

We had a monster practice. The second string played tougher than the teams we'd been crushing. Our passes were crisp, and our shots found the bottom of the net. In the locker room afterwards the guys were sky high. "Two more," McShane shouted. "Two more."

Others took up the chant. "
Two more! Two more! Two more!
" They were still chanting when Trent closed up his locker and slipped out the door.

And then it was Thursday: Game day. The halls of Bothell High buzzed with excitement. Kids I didn't even know were coming up to me. "Go get 'em!"..."You can do it!"..."We're behind you!"

Game time was seven-thirty. I was in the locker room dressing at six-thirty when Trent came in. He nodded to me, but that was it.

The other guys filed in one-by-one. They were nervous, not talking much. In our first game against Franklin, Trent and I had scored all those points when they weren't taking us seriously. There'd be no sneaking up on them tonight. Half an hour before game time O'Leary went to the blackboard. The chalk banged as he spelled out, in huge capitals, the word TEAM. Then he put about ten exclamation points next to it, smacking the blackboard so hard that the chalk finally broke in half, one piece flying across the room. "This is it, gentlemen. This is what we've been working for. This game. These couple of hours. All of us, together."

Everything moved quickly then. The door leading to the court was thrown open and I was swept along into the throbbing gym. We did our passing drill; the ball boys threw out a half dozen balls and we shot around. The horn sounded, and the next thing I knew the second-stringers were moving to the bench and, along with Darren and Tom, Luke and Trent, I headed to center court. Then the toss went up and the ball came to me. The instant I touched it, I came alive from head to toe. The whole world was a rectangle ninety feet long and fifty feet wide, and what happened inside it made sense.

It's tough to run the fast break early in a big game. The defense is pumped. At every practice, all they've heard is "Get back on defense." Nobody is tired, nobody is discouraged, everybody is hustling. You can blow a team out of a game late in the half or early in the third quarter. But in the first quarter, it's your set offense that's got to carry you.

I'd always run our set offense through Trent, and I started out that night doing the same. But Franklin had scouted us; the second Trent touched the ball, they ran a swarming double-team trap at him.

He didn't panic and he didn't force stuff. He did exactly what he was supposed to do, which was zip the ball back to me. I swung it around to the open man—usually Luke or Darren—on the weak side. Time after time they had good looks at the hoop. Fifteen, eighteen footers, the kind of shots they could make in their sleep. Only now they couldn't get anything to drop.

After three minutes we were down six points. O'Leary called time-out. "Relax," he said to Luke and Darren. "You can make those shots."

But they didn't.

That made Franklin's double-team all the more tenacious. Two Franklin guys would totally commit to Trent every time he touched the ball. They'd even double-team him on rebounds to keep him off the glass. He couldn't score, he couldn't rebound, and Luke and Darren kept missing four out of every five shots they took. Our fans had filled the gym; they were dying to scream their lungs out. But there was nothing to cheer. Franklin's lead grew to seven by the end of the first quarter, eleven at the end of the second.

The locker room at the half was a morgue. Twice O'Leary went to the blackboard and started to write something. Both times he stopped. Finally he smacked the blackboard with his piece of chalk. The noise snapped us to attention. "Gentlemen," he said, his eyes scanning the room, "I know you're hustling, giving me one hundred percent. I'm not faulting anybody's effort. If anything, you're trying too hard. Be yourselves. Play your game."

But the third quarter wasn't all that different from the first half. Franklin stuck with their game plan—double-teaming Trent. I stuck with ours—working the ball to the open guy. But Darren and Luke stayed cold. Their shooting percentage must have been below twenty. Franklin's eleven-point lead grew to fourteen. The score was 53–39 when the horn sounded ending the third quarter.

We had to try something different, and I knew what it was. On our first possession of the fourth quarter, I dumped the ball into Trent; the double-team came; he popped the ball back out. Darren was open to my right, but instead of dishing it to him, I stepped back behind the arc and fired off a three-pointer. I had a nice stroke on the ball, good backspin, good height. It was like all those shots in my back yard—absolutely in the heart.

Franklin missed their shot, and again I brought the ball down. This time I didn't even dump it in. I went to the top of the key, set my feet, and let it fly. Perfect—another three-pointer, the net again snapping as the ball swished through. Our fans came out of their seats with a roar. We'd played twenty seconds and Franklin's fourteen-point lead was down to eight.

The Franklin point guard brought the ball up. I'd been matched up against him all game, and all game he'd been totally in control, cocky even. But now there was something different about him. I could see a little doubt in his eyes, a little fear. Two three-pointers in your face will do that to you. He was tentative with his entry pass. I got a hand on it, deflecting it forward. Darren picked it up and raced toward the hoop. I trailed behind. He drove to the hoop, went up, and then left a soft little pass for me. I was so surprised I actually fumbled it a little. But I got it under control and cozied in the lay-in. Eight straight points—Franklin by six.

They scored on their next trip, slowing our run. But they didn't regain the momentum. I made sure of that with two more hoops in the next couple of minutes. The game that looked out of reach was back within our grasp—and with plenty of time left.

Their coach called time-out. "Look for a change in their defense," O'Leary warned us. "They're going to come after you, Nick. I'm sure of it. So don't force things. If you're not open, pass the ball."

O'Leary called it exactly right. For the rest of the game Franklin smothered me. But confidence is as contagious as fear. Luke nailed a jumper from the corner. Trent scored on a running eight-footer. Darren sank a set shot from beyond the arc, and our crowd went crazy because for the first time in the game we had the lead. Then came another jumper from the corner by Darren. A miss by Trent, but a put-back by McShane. The baskets poured down like rain.

Just before the buzzer I sunk a final three-pointer, pushing the final margin to twelve. The horn sounded and we raced off the court, arms raised above our heads, as our fans chanted: "We're number one! We're number one!"