Swagger (6 page)

We talked about other things, and then split apart. Back in my own house, I made myself a ham and cheese sandwich, stuck it on a plate with a half-dozen Oreos, grabbed a carton of milk and an apple, and carried it all into the backyard. I ate in a big chair in the center of the yard, the sun shining down on me, a breeze cooling the air. Once I'd finished eating, I closed my eyes and soaked up the rays.

Pictures started flickering through my mind, like the slides in a PowerPoint. I saw Levi playing Candy Land with his little sisters, his eyes fixed on the next card in the draw. I saw him in his backyard twirling the girls by their arms, the smile on his face as broad as the smile on theirs. I remembered the way Rachel looked at him, as if she were the older sister and he were a nerdy younger brother.

Something was different about Levi.
Dumb
is a cruel word, and it was the wrong word, and
Dumb-Dumb
was doubly cruel and doubly wrong. But what was the right word? Telling me that tackling someone was a sin . . . insisting on always calling Knecht
Mr
. Knecht or
Coach
Knecht . . . playing board games on the floor like a child.

Simple
.

Maybe that was the right word.

Levi was simple, like a child. It was the best thing about him, and it was the worst, too.

A
FTER THAT, WE PLAYED FULL-COURT
basketball every day at Green Lake. They were pickup games, but they were hard fought. We won more than we lost, which made everybody happy except Cash, who always wanted the ball more. Neither Cash nor I said anything, but we both felt the tension simmering.

And then it boiled over.

We were losing 10–9 to some Ballard High guys in our last game of the day. They missed a shot, Levi rebounded, hit me with a great outlet pass, and the fast break was on. I drove the middle; Cash filled the lane on my left; Nick was racing up on my right.

My guy held his position, forcing me to pass. I faked to Cash and then delivered the ball to Nick. But my pass was a little too hard, and Nick fumbled it out-of-bounds. The Ballard guys inbounded quickly, pushed the ball up the court, and their best player hit a jump shot from the free-throw line to seal their victory and send us home as losers.

Cash glared at me as we walked off. I could read his eyes:
You should have passed to me
. He was right—he had stronger hands and the cold blood of a scorer, but instead of apologizing, I stared right back.

I want to say he looked away first, but it was me. Some guys are like that; you just can't stare them down. I headed to the water fountain to get away from him, but there was no escaping his voice. I heard him talking about how he and Nick and DeShawn were going to Golden Gardens beach to meet some hot girls. “Come with us Double D,” Nick said. “Carolyn Murphy will be there. She likes you, you know.”

I turned around to hear Levi say. “I have to help my mother.”

Cash shook his head. “Hanging out with your momma when you could be with a girl whose body is almost as hot as the body of that sister of yours—Dumb-Dumb, you really are dumb.”

Levi paled; the other guys snickered.

“Don't talk trash about his sister,” I snapped. “And stop calling him Dumb-Dumb.” My voice was shaky and my body was trembling. I was ready to fight, if that's what it came to.

Cash looked at me, and then turned to Levi, a mean smile on his face. “Dumb-Dumb, you don't care if I call you Dumb-Dumb, do you?”

“I care,” I said, not waiting for Levi to answer.

Cash's eyes flashed. “Was I talking to you, Joan-ass? I don't think so.”

My hands clenched into fists; his did the same. That's when Levi stepped between us. “It is okay, Jonas,” he said, pushing me back. “I don't mind. Really, I don't. He doesn't mean anything. He's just joking around.”

Cash's face relaxed, and a smug I-told-you-so smile came to his lips. I raged inside, but before I could say or do anything, Cash strode off, Nick and DeShawn in tow. When they reached the door, Cash turned back. “See you tomorrow, Leeeeeee-vi.”

As we walked home, neither of us said anything about Cash or the near fight. When he reached his house, Levi stopped. “It's my birthday today,” he said. “I'm seventeen.”

I smiled and pretended to punch him in the stomach. “Happy birthday. You doing anything special?”

He shook his head. “No, my dad doesn't believe in celebrating birthdays much. We'll just have dinner.” With that, he turned and disappeared into his beater house.

 

That night my grades from Redwood High finally arrived in the mail—nearly a month late. I had an A in printmaking, a C+ in geometry, and Bs in everything else. My SAT scores had come in a week earlier, and they were fine. I e-mailed Coach Richter. Five minutes after I hit Send
his answer came.

“Those are two big steps in the right direction, Jonas. Keep it up. Coach R.”

P
ART OF ME WANTED TO
stay away from Green Lake, but that would have been a coward's move. So Levi and I showed up the next day at the regular time. Cash and the other two guys were already there. Cash nodded at me, and then said: “How you doing, Double D?” It wasn't an accident; for the whole time we shot around waiting for a court, he never once used “Dumb-Dumb.”

“Double D” wasn't great, but it wasn't as vicious as “Dumb-Dumb.” People could hear “Double D” and not know what the nickname meant. Maybe I should have pushed harder with Cash—with all of them—but I didn't. Cash had backed off, so I backed off. Our truce carried over to the court too. That day I made sure I got him the ball when he was open. The guy did have good hands and a shooter's touch, even if he was a jerk.

Cash and Nick and DeShawn left early—they were headed back to the beach and the girls. When they were gone, Levi and I found a side court and shot hoops, neither of us ready to go home. We'd been shooting for a couple of minutes when a twenty-something guy wearing a muscle T-shirt stepped onto the court. “Mind if I join you?” he asked. “Name is Ryan. Ryan Hartwell.”

Right away I knew he was—or had been—a basketball player. He was taller than me, but not as tall as Levi. He had sky blue eyes, dark brown hair, and just the hint of a beard. He'd clearly spent some time pumping iron, but he'd built basketball muscles, not weightlifter muscles. He looked lean and strong.

We told him our names and then went back to shooting. Hartwell had spring in his step and could knock down jumpers. He was cocky too, with the way he almost palmed the ball when he dribbled and the
What else would you expect?
look he got on his face when he swished a long jumper.

We shared the ball for five minutes or so. It felt awkward shooting with a guy that much older, so I didn't say much. Then, after I'd missed a long shot, Hartwell grabbed the rebound and held it. “I don't want to push in where I'm not wanted,” he said, “but I've been watching your games these past few days. You're good players, but there are some times—especially with the pick and roll—when your positioning is off. I could help if you'd like.”

I glanced at Levi. In that split second, Hartwell dribbled once and then fired up a twenty-foot jumper. His effortless release resulted in a perfect swish. I looked at Levi, and he nodded. “If you've got something to teach us,” I said, “we're ready to learn.”

Hartwell started with basic plays—pick and roll, pick and pop—but then he'd show us subtle variations, stepping in to take one of our places when he needed to make a point. “Plant your foot hard before you go up for a jumper. Do that and you won't drift. How high you jump is unimportant. Great shooters release the ball before the guys guarding them know they're even thinking about shooting—fast like a hummingbird.”

Eventually Levi and I wore down. Hartwell noticed, and he nodded toward the drinking fountain. A few minutes later, we were sprawled out on the gym floor, too tired to go home.

“Did I hear you say you're Harding guys?” Hartwell said.

I nodded toward Levi. “He plays for Harding. I just moved to Seattle, but I started for my high school in California, and I'm hoping to play for Harding too.”

Hartwell questioned Levi about his family, and Levi recited stuff I already knew. Then Hartwell looked back to me. “What city in California are you from?”

“Redwood City. It's south of San Francisco.”

“Oh, yeah, I know where that is. My college roommate was from Palo Alto. Did your parents work for Apple or Google or one of those high-tech firms?”

I laughed. “No way.”

Hartwell smiled. “So you're not a billionaire's son?”

“Not even close.”

Silence followed, and then Levi stood. “I've got to get home,” he said.

I climbed to my feet and followed him. As we were leaving the gym, I called back to Hartwell. “Hey, are you a coach?”

“Not yet,” he said. “But someday.”

E
VEN BEFORE ALL THE MOVING
boxes were unpacked, my dad had started working at the Blue Jay restaurant in the Northgate Mall. He left the house each day around noon and didn't return home until after midnight. You'd think that much work would wear him out, but on the rare times when I did see him, he looked better. He was losing weight, his eyes were alive, and the recycling bin wasn't filled with empty beer bottles.

My mom was hired at Great Clips in Greenwood, a hair salon that was close to the house. She was working part-time, but she said that she was sure it would go to full-time in a matter of months. I wanted a job too, but when I'd asked my dad about working for him at the Blue Jay, he'd screwed up his face. “I can't hire you, Jonas. The other workers will see you as some sort of spy, and I need them to trust me. But here's what I can do. This house needs a lot of work. I won't have time to do any of it, so I'll pay you a buck over minimum wage to work for me. The first thing on the list is clearing out the weeds from the flower beds. What do you say?”

I agreed to work for him, and I drifted into a good routine. I'd get up late, eat a little breakfast, and then kill the morning doing nothing. After an early lunch, I'd stop by Levi's house. We'd walk down to Green Lake, hook up with the Harding guys, and play until three. I'd hustle home, eat something fast, and then work in the yard or paint or clean something—whatever my dad had laid out for me. Then it was a shower, another meal—either with my mom or alone—and up to my room. I'd log on to Facebook to check for messages from Lisa Yee or Mark Westwood. Or I'd play Halo
or watch a baseball game on the computer. A couple of times I asked Levi if he wanted to catch a movie somewhere, but both times he said no. Maybe movies were against his religion, or maybe he didn't have any money.

Ryan Hartwell would sit up in the stands every day and watch our games, shouting out encouragement. If we lost, he'd come down and shoot around with us on a side court. He worked mainly with Levi and me, but he spent time with Cash and the other guys too. I never saw him spend any time with guys from the other high schools. That puzzled me then, but now I get it. Nothing Hartwell did was by accident.

During our sessions on the side court, Hartwell taught Levi how to do a reverse jam, how to go up and under, how to pinwheel the ball down. “A rim-rattling dunk intimidates an opponent,” Hartwell said. He paused, and a smile came to his face. His eyes took in both of us. “Get a little swagger in your game, and other teams will back off. Even the refs will back off. If you play it right, you can make the rules.”

Levi picked up Hartwell's lessons quickly, and both Hartwell and I tried to get him to dunk more in the actual games. Every once in a while, Levi would throw one down, but not often. It was as if he was afraid that at any minute Coach Knecht would come bursting through the doors of the gym and yell at him to knock it off. The fun parts of basketball—of anything—made Levi uncomfortable.

One afternoon, as we were shooting around after Cash and the other guys had left, I told Hartwell about my hopes for a basketball scholarship to Monitor College. He'd gone to college somewhere in the East, and he grew interested as I spoke. “I've never actually been to Monitor College,” he said, “but I've heard nothing but good things about it. You keep playing hard, and you'll get that scholarship. I played Division Two college ball myself, and you've got enough game. Trust me—I know.”

Hartwell's words gave my confidence a huge boost. Still, who knew if I'd even get enough playing time to show Richter what I could do? I needed to see Brindle play the point so I could measure myself against him, but that matchup was months away.

T
OWARD THE END OF AUGUST
, Cash went to St. Louis to visit his brother, and Nick took off for Missoula to visit grandparents. I don't know if DeShawn went anywhere, but he stopped coming. Guys from other teams were also gone, so the games at Green Lake became raggedy. Levi and I kept going because we had nothing else to do.

When I returned home one afternoon, an eight-year-old Subaru Outback, a little scraped and a little dented, sat in the driveway. My mom's new car didn't look like much, but my dad said it was mechanically sound. “I'll need it for work sometimes,” my mom said, “but you'll be able to use it quite a bit. In fact, why don't you take it and go camping up in the mountains this weekend? Ask your friend Levi. School starts soon, and you haven't had any sort of vacation.”

 

Levi and I left two days later. He could only go for two days and one night—his mother needed his help with the little girls, and he was still working with his dad to turn the store into a church, but two days worked for me too. My dad had half a dozen projects around the house that he wanted me to do.

The Cascade Mountains are close to Seattle. We got an early start so we reached Kachess Lake in the morning. As we drove through the campground, I saw girls our age on the lake roaring about on Jet Skis. It would have been fine by me to skip the backpacking and instead spend the next couple of days hanging out on the beach.