Racing the Rain (28 page)

“It's the regional cross-country meet, more than twenty schools. Considering the race I ran earlier, I might be able to do pretty well.”

“Well enough that it's worth missing practice? Two thousand kids in this school and you're one of twelve guys who get to play the most important sport in our school. And you want to miss practice to compete in a sport nobody ever heard of?”

Cassidy looked down at his shoe tops. When he put it that way it did sound crazy. Bickerstaff, seeing that his point had struck home perhaps a little too forcefully, softened somewhat. Sitting back in his desk chair, he assumed a magnanimous expression.

“All right, here's the deal,” said the coach. “You can do it if you want to. I won't stop you. But if you decide to go ahead and miss practice, you'll lose your place on the starting team and have to work your way back up all over again.”

Cassidy thought about it for a second and made up his mind instantly. Springing to his feet, he said, “Thanks, Coach! I won't let you down!”

And with that he cleared out as fast as he could before Bickerstaff had a chance to change his mind.

T
his time it was different.

He spotted Mizner while they were warming up.

“Th-th-there he is,” said Demski

“Saw him,” said Cassidy. He had spotted the blue-and-gold uniform with the golden tornado on the chest among the sea of colors all around them. There was no mistaking that stride. He was warming up apart from his teammates, who were all jogging along together.

“Wh-what are you going to do?” asked Demski.

“I don't know. But I know I'm not spotting him two hundred yards this time,” said Cassidy.

When Mizner bolted to the lead after the first quarter mile, Cassidy was no more than ten yards behind him. This time Cassidy wasn't worried about what group he was in or who was in it. He only had eyes for Mizner out there sailing along in front. Everyone else could do whatever they wanted. Today he knew where the race was.

There must have been some mistake at the half-mile marker, where Mr. Kamrad was reading off the times: “Two twenty-
two
, twenty-
three
, twenty-
four
. . .
”

That couldn't be right. Cassidy was feeling the strain, but this time he was mentally ready for it and it didn't seem as scary. Mizner, like before, ran with that silky stride and did not look back. The second half of the first lap went quickly. Cassidy could hear no runners behind him, nor could he see anyone close when they went around a sharp turn.

The mile splits also sounded crazy, but Cassidy now had to believe them: “Four
fifty
, fifty-
one
, fifty-
two
. . .
”

Mizner must have thought it sounded too fast, because he eased up some as they headed down the first long straightaway again. As he reached the long row of pines, he looked back finally but did not seem surprised to see Cassidy ten yards back, running easily. Instead, Mizner motioned to him, as if he had been expecting him.

What's this?
Cassidy thought. But he poured it on a little and pulled up even.

Mizner didn't look over, just said, “Work. Together.”

Cassidy thought about it. Some kind of trick, maybe? But he said, “Okay.”

And so they ran like that, stride for stride, for most of the last mile of the race. Gasping with effort but showing no signs of real fatigue, they went through the midpoint again, where Mr. Kamrad tried to hide his surprise at seeing them together. He read off the times: “Seven
fifteen
,
sixteen
,
seventeen
. . .
”

This time Cassidy was more prepared to interpret the in-between time. All he had to remember was that at 10 flat pace they would pass the one-and-a-half-mile point in 7:30. But they were way under that. Was it possible to keep this up?

Mizner ran so beautifully that running beside him seemed to make Cassidy's stride smoother. And running side by side was mentally easier than hanging on from behind or trying to run from the front. Cassidy had not run many real distance races, so he was not sure how this whole thing was supposed to play out. Were they just going to run across the finish line together?

His answer came in another quarter of a mile as they turned for the home stretch. Mizner put on a sudden burst, and before he knew it, Cassidy was ten yards behind again. There must have been some Pompano supporters in the small crowd, because he heard a rousing cheer. But despite the strain and effort of the early going, Cassidy did not feel done in. In fact, he almost wished the race were longer.

On the rare occasions when he peeked back, Mizner always looked over his right shoulder, so Cassidy worked his way up to just behind his left shoulder, being careful not to expend too much energy. Cassidy held there and waited.

When they were two hundred yards from the finish chute, Mizner looked back over his right shoulder to see where Cassidy was. When he did, Cassidy instantly sprinted around his left side and went all out the rest of the way to the finish line. After he crossed it, he turned around and was surprised to see Mizner fifteen yards back.

The crowd had grown silent during that last sprint.

Cassidy had to grab his knees for only a few painful seconds. He straightened up to see Mizner stumbling toward him, hand extended.

“Nice. Race,” he said. “Didn't see you. At all there. At the end.”

“You, too,” said Cassidy. “Guess that's. My last time. Pulling that.”

Mizner laughed but stopped quickly, still needing the air.

Mr. Kamrad jogged over, holding his watch in front of him, huge smile on his face.

“Quenton Cassidy,” he said, “I hope Coach Bickerstaff doesn't give you too much grief for this, but you are now the south Florida class 4-A regional cross-country champion. And you have run two miles in 9:42.”

I
t made the Monday morning announcements.

“Friday was another red-letter day for Edgewater,” Principal Fleming said in his gravelly voice. A stir went through his homeroom when Cassidy's name was announced as the regional cross-country champion. Hardly anyone had any idea what cross-country was, but coming in first in a regional anything was apparently a big deal. Miss Waldron, beaming, offered congratulations. People came up after the bell rang and made a big fuss. Through the crowd Cassidy could see Demski sheepishly gathering up his books.

“Hey,” Cassidy said, “don't forget
that
guy! Demski finished fifth and ran the best time of his life.”

While the little knot of people turned their attention to Demski, Cassidy slipped around them and was out the door heading for first period. He was red as a beet.

* * *

Coach Bickerstaff did exactly what he said he would do. Cassidy found himself, jersey turned white side out for the first time since jayvees, playing on the second team. It didn't really mean anything during the warm-up or the drills. But when it came time to run plays in a half-court scrimmage, there he was on the taxi squad.

The second team played defense while the first team ran their zone offense. Carroll Morgan and Drake Osgood were the guards, and since Cassidy knew them pretty well, he was able to anticipate their passing patterns and make a few steals.

When the second team went on offense, Cassidy had a field day. Both Carroll and Drake were under five ten. At six two, Cassidy could shoot over them almost at will. And he knew the first team's defensive weaknesses. Cassidy motioned to his other guard, Dougie Arbogast, to rotate down to the baseline and come up from behind to set picks on the corners; it gave Cassidy easy eighteen-footers. When the first team adjusted and started sending big men up to help out, Cassidy and Dougie Arbogast were able to lob alley-oop passes in to Phil Jones and Jacob Stuart behind them in the key.

The first team was getting frustrated; the three big men started bickering among themselves. Cassidy just smiled and gave Stiggs a quizzical look, which he returned with a bird so quick and subtle no one else noticed. But the first-string guards were also irritated with each other. On the last play, Cassidy brought the ball down, motioned for Dougie to rotate down and take right wing, and for the wing to rotate to the other side. They were essentially in the same 1-3-1 they had used the previous year. They started passing the ball quickly around the outside of the zone, forcing the defense to adjust with every pass. The ball came back around to Cassidy at the top of the key, and as soon as it touched his hands he began the motion to pass it back. The defending guards shuffled quickly to make the next adjustment, so when they shifted prematurely, it left Cassidy completely open at his favorite shooting spot on the court, a little bit to the outside and a little to the right of the top of the key.

He faked the pass, kept the ball, and flexed his knees slightly, going up into a relaxed jump shot, which he buried.

Drake and Carroll were just about to get into it with each other when Bickerstaff's shrill whistle ended the practice. He didn't say anything, but as he was walking toward the stairway, a ball rolled into his path. He took one quick step and booted it into the corner of the gym where it hit the concrete wall with a
thwack.

The next day Cassidy was back on the starting team, but he knew some damage had been done. He just didn't know how much.

T
he first game of the season was at Palm Beach High. Their gym was small, packed, and intimidating, and the game went downhill from the opening tip-off.

Stiggs got outjumped by a kid named Bobby Segal who was barely six feet tall. And they pulled the same play that Edgewater usually pulled on everyone else: Segal tipped it to their tallest guy, who immediately flipped it to one of the guards breaking for the basket. It was two–zip Palm Beach and the game wasn't ten seconds old.

They weren't big at all, but they were cagey and well coached. And they kept changing their defense from zone to man-to-man and back again, all on some invisible signal that Cassidy couldn't figure out. Not only that, but they disguised both defenses so that their man-to-man appeared at first to be a zone, and vice versa.

Bickerstaff had not bothered to designate either of the guards to be in charge. The team captains were Stiggs and Randleman, so that didn't help. Whoever brought the ball down was supposed to recognize the defense and start the offense. But Carroll Morgan was especially confused by the shifting defenses and several times started the wrong offense, resulting in total confusion and turnovers before any shots were taken.

Palm Beach also pressured the ball coming upcourt. Cassidy had dealt with that many times the previous season. If it was man-to-man pressure, one of the wingmen threw the ball in and cleared out, and Cassidy brought the ball up by himself. He had practiced full-court dribbling at the base gym until he was blue in the face, and he could shift directions instantaneously by dribbling behind his back, or between his legs, or by crossing over. He could dribble with either hand without looking at the ball and he could control the ball at nearly full speed. He not only didn't mind pressure, he enjoyed punishing teams that tried it.

But Bickerstaff seemed to interpret this as showing off, the product of individual skill rather than teamwork. During a time-out, he insisted that Cassidy and Morgan work together getting the ball upcourt, which gave Palm Beach's guards—who were very quick—opportunities to trap and double-team. When Morgan got trapped for the third time and they lost the ball on a ten-second violation, Bickerstaff called another time-out. Cassidy was amazed when he had nothing tangible to offer in the huddle. He just said, “Work the ball up together. Set screens for each other. Protect the ball.”
Basketball wisdom as penned by fortune cookie writers
, Cassidy thought.

At that point they were down ten points only two minutes into the second quarter. Walking back to set up, Cassidy grabbed the side of Carroll's jersey and pulled him over.

“Listen, inbound the ball to me and clear out to half-court. If your guy doesn't go with you right away, look for the pass back. Otherwise just clear out and let me bring the ball up. This is ridiculous.”

On the next play, Carroll inbounded the ball to Cassidy and took off down the sidelines. The other guards hadn't seen this before, and his man hesitated before following him. Cassidy hit Carroll immediately with a baseball pass and he sped up the court to take advantage of the four-on-three situation. Stiggs's man left him at the foul line to pick up Morgan, who bounce-passed it quickly to Stiggs, who very nearly dunked it two-handed. The only reason he didn't was that Bickerstaff disapproved of dunking as another example of hotdogging. But the effect was almost the same, as Stiggs held the ball over the rim with both hands for what seemed like several seconds, then simply dropped it straight down. It brought the small Edgewater crowd to life for the first time in the game.

The next time, Carroll's man stuck right to him, so Cassidy began to bring the ball up alone. The smaller guard on him was new, a transfer from Key West named Gonzales, called “Gonzo” by his teammates. Like a lot of guards Cassidy faced, Gonzo assumed that a tall guy playing guard wouldn't be very quick. On Cassidy's third dribble to his right, Gonzo made a lunge for the ball, expecting to get a steal and a quick layup. The ball wasn't there. Cassidy had whipped it behind his back and was now going to his left at full speed, leaving Gonzales flat-footed.

Palm Beach was in a man-to-man, so when Cassidy brought the ball into the front court, several players made lunges at him, but no one wanted to leave his own man completely to pick him up. Gonzales was still scrambling to get back upcourt. Cassidy did a stutter step at the top of the key, and the guard who had halfheartedly picked him up dropped off to pick up his own man, fooled by the stutter step. And there it was, right in front of Cassidy: an open lane to the hoop without a soul on him. Cassidy dribbled straight in and made a plain vanilla, missionary position, right-handed layup whose only distinction was that he was up so high that when he went to slap the backboard on the way down, half of his forearm brushed the glass, too.