Night Hoops (3 page)

I stuck a hand right up in his face on his next shot, another long-range bomb that fell short. I was on the rebound like a hawk. I took the ball back, then worked my dribble in close, finally blowing by him with a crossover dribble for a lay-in.

That's how the rest of the game went—Scott casting off long jumpers while I scored my points in the key. I closed to 8–5, then 9–8. He missed a twelve-footer, I shagged the rebound, raced to the corner and—for the first time—let an outside shot go. Nothing but net! We were tied.

He grabbed the ball as it went through the net and bounced it to me. I faked another long jumper. He lunged out to try to block it, and I drove past him for my tenth hoop.

Scott carried the ball out and shoved it into my gut, trying to intimidate me. But I wasn't backing down.

He crouched low. I swung the ball in front of him, tempting him. Finally he swiped at it, but his hands were too slow. As his body moved forward, I took two hard dribbles to the left. He was a half-step behind me, and when I pulled up for the jumper, he stumbled a little. I had a good look at the hoop, and knocked down a twelve-footer for the victory. "Yes!" I shouted, making a fist and pumping it. "Yes! Yes! Yes!"

I'm not going to say I won every game after that. But I won more than my share. Sometimes down at Golden Gardens, you can actually see the tide come in, see each wave claiming more and more of the beach. I was like those waves. Every day I felt my game growing stronger. Scott could push me aside when his buddies arrived, but when tryouts came, there'd be no sending me to my room.

Then it was September and school. I thought I'd be going in with Scott, but he had band during zero period, and I didn't start until an hour after that. So I was on my own.

My last year at Canyon Park Junior High I'd pretty much had the run of the school. All ninth graders did. We ate lunch up on a patch of grass that we called the ninth-grade island. Unless there was a fight or something, not even teachers ventured there. In the school hallways, the little seventh-grade girls looked up at us as if we were gods, while the seventh-grade boys—the "sevies"—cleared a path for us. If we barked at them even a little, a terror-stricken look would come to their faces as if they were afraid we were going to wait for them after school and then chop them up into little pieces with a hatchet.

In the halls of Bothell High that first day, my world was suddenly upside-down. I was the little kid; the senior guys, especially the football players, towered over me. I found myself hugging the walls, nervously moving out of the way for them, praying that no linebacker would pick me out and start riding me the way some guys at Canyon Park had ridden seventh graders, making their lives hell for a year.

It wasn't just fear of being tortured that made Bothell different. At the junior high most of the girls looked like little kids; here lots of them looked like grown women. And the school was huge compared to Canyon Park. I had a class in Room 303, then my next class was in 107, and I finished the day with geometry in 705—which turned out to be a portable behind the gym.

Still, all that stuff was minor compared to the biggest problem: Trent Dawson. He was in my English class, my gym class, and my geometry class. We had the same lunch period, too. Every time I turned around, he was there.

And he was no different. Nobody fools around on the first day at a new school. Nobody except Trent. He saved his best—or worst—for last. He was late for geometry, talked while Mrs. Glandon was giving us the rundown on her rules, and on his way to the water fountain in the back of the room, he knocked the books off three kids' desks. When Devin Klein told him to cut it out, Trent stuck his face right up in Devin's and sneered: "Yeah, and what are you going to do about it?"

The walk home takes about thirty minutes. For the first fifteen I replayed the day in my mind. But once I reached my own block, my thoughts turned to basketball. I hoped I could get Scott to play, even if it was just horse. As I opened the front door I heard the trumpet coming from the downstairs den. I walked to the doorway. "You want to shoot some hoops?"

"No," came the answer.

"Why not?" I asked as I headed down, but before I reached the bottom step I knew the reason. Sitting next to Scott on the sofa, clarinet in hand, was Katya Ushakov, back from her summer vacation in Russia.

Mom had met the Ushakovs at the grocery store a couple of years earlier. They'd come to America after the Soviet Union had broken up. Both of Katya's parents played for the Seattle Symphony. Every time you walked by their house, you'd hear music leaking out the windows and doors.

Katya's brother Michael had been in some of my classes at Canyon Park. They hardly seemed as if they could be brother and sister. She was beautiful, long and lanky, with red-blonde hair and blue eyes. She spoke English with an accent that made her even more attractive. Michael was dark, had little pig's eyes, and was so fat his flesh jiggled when he walked. When he talked to you, he stuck his face right up into yours, so close you could see the yellow on his teeth and smell the garlic on his breath.

For months he did terrible in school, but everybody figured it was because he didn't know English very well. Then one day in the cafeteria Trent called him a "retard." That got a laugh, so after that Trent ridiculed him all the time, especially after school, when no adults were around. On weekends Zack would join in. They'd follow Michael down the street, taunting him, "Michael, buddy, you need a bra? There's a sale at K mart."

This went on for a couple of months, until one day Michael was gone from school. Somehow we heard that he'd been transferred to Sherwood, which is a school for kids who can't learn in a regular class. But he wasn't gone from the neighborhood. The symphony's performances were at night, and that's when he'd wander around singing songs in Russian or feeding the ducks along the Burke-Gilman bike trail. Seeing him out at night worried Mom. "I don't like it," she'd say. "I don't like it at all."

"Don't worry. Bothell's safe," Dad would answer. "Besides, what can the Ushakovs do? They've got to work."

That afternoon I said hello to Katya, and then asked her about Michael. "He's okay," she replied in a way that made it clear he wasn't okay at all. "You should come by, Nick. He'd love to see you."

"I will. Once school settles down."

She nodded, but I knew she didn't believe me, and for good reason. Feeling guilty, I turned to Scott. "How long are you going to practice?"

He laughed. "Every spare minute I've got."

"Oh," I said. As soon as I left, they started playing again, and their music followed me to the back yard.

I had the basketball court to myself, but for a while all I could hear was their music. I thought about how angry Dad would be if he came home day after day and found Scott playing the trumpet. Then I pictured Mom, and how she'd take Scott's side, and how they'd all argue, and my head started to pound.

Basketball. That's what matters,
I thought, shaking my head. I practiced dribbling with my left hand and then my right, behind my back, between my legs, crossovers, stutter steps. I practiced shooting pull-up jumpers and finger rolls, sweeping hooks and reverse lay-ins. I practiced my defensive footwork and blocking out on rebounds. I practiced that day and every day, the rhythm of my basketball nearly, but not quite, drowning out Scott's trumpet and Katya's clarinet.

While 1 shot around, first Mom and then Dad, would come home from work. Mom would wave and go inside to make dinner. Dad would shoot a hoop or two, maybe even play a little horse. And every day he'd ask the same question. "Did your brother practice at all?"

Every day I'd shake my head, and his eyes would darken.

Toward the end of September Dad was injured at work. A forklift driver started to lose a bunch of boxes, and when Dad grabbed for them his fingers were squashed. It was no big deal, nothing broken, but his left hand was so swollen the doctor told him to stay home for a couple of days.

When I returned from school that first afternoon, he was playing ball in the back yard. That didn't surprise me; puffy fingers weren't going to keep him down. What did surprise me was seeing Scott on the court with him. Katya was sitting on the back stairs, clarinet in hand, a bored look on her face. I sat down next to her to watch their game.

They were going one-on-one, and they were playing hard. Even with his swollen hand, Dad was crushing Scott. He'd post Scott up and shoot over him. If he missed he'd crash the boards, grab the rebound, and put up another shot. Power basketball, and Scott couldn't stop him.

Once Dad scored his eleventh point, Scott started off the court. "Where you going?" Dad asked, a sharp edge to his voice.

Scott wheeled around, frustration on his face. "Like I've been telling you for the last half hour, I've got to practice. That's why Katya's here, you know."

"Yeah?" Dad said. "Well, Katya can wait a few more minutes. I want to see you play Nick."

"Why?"

"Because I want to. Is that so much to ask?"

Scott gave Katya a look, sighed loudly, then turned to Dad. "One game?"

Dad nodded.

"And then I'm done."

"Then you're done."

Scott looked to me. "All right, Nick. Let's play."

I thought I'd win easily, that Scott would roll over to get the game finished so he could play his trumpet. I'd forgotten that Katya was watching.

In the beginning I think he forgot too. I scored the first three buckets, two on pull-up jumpers and one on a lay-in. But after the third hoop Katya called out, "Come on, Scott!" and I knew he was coming after me.

It was on the boards that he did it. He was taller than I was by four inches, and without a ref to call over-the-back fouls, he could pound away inside. He did to me exactly what Dad had done to him. A couple of times he bodied me right off the court.

Down 9–6, I backed up a step and sunk a long jumper. He shook his head. "Pure luck," he grumbled, but I swished another one, and then a third to tie it up.

That brought him right out on me, so close I could smell his sweat. I drove hard down the right side of the lane, then went behind the back and scooped up a little left-handed running hook that dropped. Score: 10–9, my lead. One more basket and I had him.

Again he guarded me tight, and again I drove the lane. Only this time I pulled up for the jump shot. He stayed with me though, and he swatted the ball out of the air. The ball was headed out of bounds, and it would have been my possession, but I hustled after it anyway, hustled because that's the way you win.

Scott watched me, not realizing what I was doing. So when I did grab the ball just before it went out-of-bounds, I was in the clear, so open in fact that I was afraid I'd choke the shot. I dribbled once to get some rhythm. Scott flew at me then, but he was way too late. I pulled the trigger. The ball soared high, tracing a beautiful rainbow, then fell out of the air, down and through. I'd beaten him.

As soon as the ball whistled through the net, Scott headed off the court. "You quitting?" Dad asked him, incredulous.

Scott didn't answer. Dad followed behind him as he headed up the back steps. "I don't understand you. Nick beats you in front of your girlfriend, and you don't even want a rematch."

Scott turned on him, his face contorted with anger. "What is it you want from me, Dad? What is it? You want me to be the big basketball star you never were. Is that it? Well, I'm not going to be. Got that? I'm not going to be. Maybe Nick will be, but I won't. So spend your time with him, and leave me alone."

The back door opened and Mom stepped out. I hadn't known she was home. I don't think Scott or Dad had known either. "What is all the screaming about?" she demanded, looking from Scott to Dad.

No one said anything. Scott looked at Dad, then turned to Katya. "Come on. Let's go downstairs."

"You're a quitter," Dad called after him. "You hear me! A quitter."

Mom stepped aside as Scott, red-faced with rage, stormed by her into the house. Katya followed him, her face pasty white. I stood on the court, holding the ball, looking from Mom to Dad and then back again to Mom. She was at the top of the stairs, her whole body quivering with fury, glaring at Dad. "What are you looking at?" he asked scornfully.

She studied him for a long time. "I don't know anymore. I just don't know." Then she went back inside the house, the door quietly clicking closed behind her.

Both Dad and I stared at the closed door for a while, almost as if we were in a trance. Then all at once he turned to me. "What do you say, Nick? You want to play some?"

I heard the voices after midnight. At first it was the way it usually was, the low urgent tones, Dad louder than Mom. Then came the screaming, screaming like I'd never heard before. Scott's door opened. We stood side-by-side at the top of the stairs and listened.

"Why does he have to play basketball? Will you tell me that? It's perfectly clear he likes music more. Is that so awful?"

"Get a clue. How many times do I have to tell you this? It isn't music he likes; it's Katya Ushakov's body. And you know what he wants to do with her—or should I say
to
her—as well as I do."

There was a long pause. "You've got a filthy mind, Matthew, but that doesn't mean Scott does."

"Every boy has a filthy mind, Caroline," Dad said. "That's one of the many things that you don't know about boys."

"I'll tell you one thing I do know," Mom shot back. "I do know how to talk to my son. He doesn't look at me with hatred in his eyes. At least not yet. But if you don't back off, he'll end up hating both of us. You're poisoning this house."

The laugh again. "So now I'm poisoning the house! If I'm so awful, I'm surprised you still want me around."

"Who says I do?"

It was as if a blast of icy air had filled every corner of the house. Mom's voice was different than I'd ever heard it, dark somehow.

"Watch yourself, Caroline," Dad said, his voice now dark too. "Don't push too hard or I'll walk out that door and never come back."