True Legend (16 page)

THIRTY-THREE

D
rew wanted to know how that was possible and tried to ask, but Legend said enough about him, he wanted to know how Drew had picked this particular night to act dumber than the rocks Legend had been pulling out of the ground at Morrison.

“I told you.”

“You told me about getting behind the wheel, not what put you there.”

“You said you knew I felt like I was gonna pop.”

“But not
why
.”

By three in the morning, Drew had told him all of it, even the part about Callie and the H-O-R-S-E game. Told it as honestly as if he were telling it to himself inside his own head. Told it in a way he'd never told it to anybody else, not even Lee.

Because he wasn't sure even Lee would understand it.

But he knew Legend would.

He even told Legend that he'd kept the secret about him being alive from everybody so far, including Lee.

“You want some kind of trophy for that to put with all the others you've probably won?”

Drew should have known by now to stay on his guard, because Legend could give him a quick elbow to the ribs like that.

“I just wanted you to know I could do what I said I was gonna do,” Drew said.

“Woo hoo!” Legend said.

“Laugh at me if you want,” Drew said. “I didn't know my word meant something to me until it
did.
It would be easier for me to tell, because I got this paper due now, and I need the grade. But I don't know how to do it without calling you out.”

There was another long silence. Drew could see it wasn't something that bothered Legend. Maybe that was because he was alone so much, had lived inside his own head for so long. In this life that he'd made for himself, the one he called his afterlife.

Legend said, “And you can't get your boy Lee to write your paper for you, because you'd have to tell on me.”

“Word,” Drew said.

“So I'll help you,” Legend said.

“You'll help me write my paper . . . about you?”

Legend nodded. “Maybe there's a way we can write it together,” he said. “See if there's a way to do it right. Get the story right. Even if we have to tell your teacher. Let me think on that. But if I'm ever gonna find out if I can handle a real school, it might as well be now.”

“At my school?” Drew said. “Working with my English teacher?”

“You got any better ideas?”

“No,” Drew said, he sure did not, remembering something his mom had told him once, about how once a good idea got inside your head even the United States Marines couldn't get it out.

Then Drew said, “But that would mean trusting somebody besides me.”

Legend actually laughed out loud now. “Hale, boy, you put it that way, I could probably trust anybody after trusting you.”

Drew said, “You ever think about what the worst thing would be, if you did come back to life?”

In the sky there was the sound of a night bird.

“All the time,” he said. “Sometimes I think, ‘Go ahead, Urban. Nobody's even gonna care.' But then I think about the world we live in now, how they'd probably eat up a story like mine. I don't want that spotlight back, even for a day.”

“But if I fix it that you could somehow take courses at Oakley, you'd think about it?”

“They'd probably want to see if I had any dang eligibility left.”

“I mean, for real,” Drew said. “I don't usually have much use for teachers, but Mr. Shockey's one of the good guys. Even I'm smart enough to see that. And probably the only one in the school who'd know who you used to be would be Coach.”

“My old coach knows about me,” Legend said. “Coach Holman. He's the only one besides you. He helped me get myself back on my feet, helped me get this job. Gave me some money at the start when I didn't have any.”

Drew felt his mouth fall open. “Wait a second, he knew all along?”

Legend nodded. “Knew I could trust him,” Legend said. “Came the time when he was the only one in the world I could trust.”

Drew said, “So what name do you use at work?”

“Donald Sellers.”

“So that's who you could be at school.”

There was a long pause. Drew thought he saw the same look he'd seen that night when Legend opened the door to 3G at the hotel. That fear.

“Don't do anything yet,” Legend said finally. “I got to think on this.”

“But you won't run.”

Another pause.

“No,” Legend said “I won't run. You got
my
word. As your friend.”

Drew felt himself smiling then, feeling this dumb smile on his face. But not feeling dumb in that moment. All he'd ever done in his life was look up to basketball players, LeBron and all the rest of them. All the guys with the ball in their hands, the ones who really knew what to do with it.

Maybe he
should
have been looking up to somebody like Lee Atkins. Who really knew how to be a friend.

Or a guy like Donald Sellers, who knew how to come back from the dead.

THIRTY-FOUR

L
ee's parents had called Coach DiGregorio the first thing that morning, after they'd spoken to the principal.

The principal, Mr. Flachsbart, said that while Lee's behavior had been reckless, to say the least, it was also out of character, and that he thought that the Atkinses could handle any punishment they thought should be handed out. Mr. Flachsbart—known as Flax to the Oakley kids and generally considered to be pretty cool—joked that his office took on a lot of different forms, but that he didn't think traffic court was supposed to be one of them.

Lee didn't get off as easily with Coach at the team meeting he called before practice.

It was the old “higher standard” thing for his players.

Wasn't anything they hadn't heard before. How they knew he applied a higher standard to them, even in terms of their grades, than the school did for the rest of its students. Billy DiGregorio said that his high school coach had treated
his
players that way, and his college coach had done the same.

“You're the next in that line,” he said, “when you step out of line. Or cross one.”

Coach didn't raise his voice, but they could all see how hard he was working not to lose it in front of them. The way he'd be during a game when he didn't want a ref to see how much he wanted to strangle the guy.

He'd told them one time about a line an old coach named Jimmy Valvano had used on a ref.

“Can you give me a T for what I'm thinking?” Valvano said to the ref, according to Coach's story.

“No,” the ref said.

Valvano had said, “Well, good, because I think you stink.”

Coach D kept his voice down and said, “This is about the team. And only about the team. Because in the end that's all any of us have: each other. Nothing else means squat.”

Standing there in the middle of their lush-life locker room, best in their league by far. Arms crossed in front of him, not focusing on anybody's face. Mostly just staring straight ahead.

But Drew knew: the cop had been nicer last night after they got Lee to roll down the window of the Maserati.

Coach said, “It was just one other person with Lee when he decided to take a car
that did not belong to him and that he did not have permission to drive
and turn it into the Riverside road race. But the fact of the matter is that he might as well have had the whole team piled in there. Because he took
all
of you for a ride last night.”

Then he got to it, how close they were to the end of the season, how Oakley had never won the regular-season title in their league, much less the league championship. The one he'd been by-God brought here to win. Talked about how there were just three games left in the regular season and how if they won out, they
would
win the regular season and get home court for the playoffs.

“Three games,” he said, “the last one against Park. Park—the team that always wins the gol-dang regular season and every other gol-dang thing.”

Coach's wife had asked him to get through the year without swearing like a rap record.

He stared at Lee now. “Three games you are going to miss, young man.”

“But Coach,” Drew said, before he could stop himself.

Coach wheeled on him and said,
“Don't. Talk.”
In a tone of voice Drew couldn't remember Coach ever using on him.

“Lee and his . . . passenger got lucky,” Coach said. “A couple of yards more the wrong way, and we're having a different conversation today, about something much worse than one of my players missing a few games,” Coach said.

He zeroed in on Lee again and said, “You and everybody else on this team can thank their lucky stars neither of you was injured.”

Drew thought,
If he only knew.

His mind already trying to figure a way to cover up what had really happened—one more thing that had really happened last night—when his knee hit the dash.

A knee that wouldn't stop hurting, even though he'd gotten up early—after having hardly slept—to ice it for an hour.

“I know some of you, maybe all of you, think this punishment is too harsh,” Coach said. “And it doesn't take a mind reader to know most of you are wondering if the punishment would have been
as
harsh if it'd been Drew behind the wheel.”

Drew felt the air come out of him, and wondered if everybody else in the room could
hear
it come out of him.

Could Coach possibly know the truth?

“The answer is yes,” Coach said. “Because nobody is bigger than the team.”

He was done then, telling Lee he could watch practice, even help him out. Drew wondered if that would make it even worse for Lee than being sent home.

But that wasn't the big thing right now. The big thing, Drew knew, was finding a way to get himself sent home—he couldn't practice on his knee the way it was feeling right now. It took all the effort he had not to limp.

He made it through warm-ups all right. Then Coach announced that they were going to practice against the 3–2 match-up zone St. Thomas was going to throw at them in their next game.

Three plays into the scrimmage, Drew made sure to cut way too close to a pick Tyler Brandt had set for him, like cutting too close to a corner in the hall.

Down he went.

Tyler, one of the best guys on the team along with his twin, was kneeling next to him before Drew even had a chance to grab for his left knee, the one he'd hurt in the car.

“Dude,” Tyler said, “I am so sorry. You okay?”

“My bad,” Drew said.

He didn't want to take another teammate down with him, one this week was enough.

“Wasn't watching where I was going,” Drew said. He was rubbing his knee with both hands, thinking that he'd never faked an injury in his life to get out of practice, but this was different. The injury was real—it was the reason that was fake.

Drew was pretty sure that there wasn't anything seriously wrong with his knee, that it was just a bad bruise. He wasn't even thinking about missing the St. Thomas game.

He just knew it wasn't going to get better with him practicing on it.

Now Coach was there, kneeling next to Tyler.

“Just a ding?” Coach said.

“Yeah.”

“Take the rest of the day off,” Coach said. “I'm pretty sure that cracking that 3–2 zone isn't going to be like cracking the Da Vinci code.”

“Who's he play for?” Drew said.

“Go ice,” Coach said.

“Done.”

Ice, Drew thought as Lee walked with him to the locker room. No matter how much you heard about all these medical breakthroughs in sports, and how guys came back from injuries faster than ever, old-school guys like Coach—and even Legend—thought the miracle cure for everything was ice.

When they got to the locker, Ana, the team trainer, was waiting for them, wanting to check the knee out for herself.

“Boy,” she said, “this swelled up fast.”

“You know me,” Drew said, wanting her to change the subject. “I do everything fast.”

She went for ice.

When she was in her trainer's room, Lee said, “You sure that didn't happen last night?”

Drew shook his head. “That's crazy talk,” he said. “I'd rather hit a tree than Tyler Brandt anytime.”

Lee seemed to buy it. A good thing. It would, Drew knew, just make Lee feel worse if he thought he'd caused an injury, too.

It wasn't much, Drew thought.

At least I did something for Lee today.

• • •

The next day, his first free period, Drew went to see Mr. Shockey.

Counting the weekend, his paper was due in four days. Drew had gotten an e-mail from Mr. Shockey that morning before school, gently reminding him of the deadline, saying how important a good grade was and hinting at the possible “consequences” of a bad one.

Drew had spent so much time worrying about Legend lately, even before he'd gotten behind the wheel of the Maserati, that he hadn't spent nearly enough time worrying about the consequences of getting a bad grade from Mr. Shockey. Forget about Coach's higher standards.

Drew had to meet the regular standards at Oakley if he wanted to stay eligible for basketball. He knew he could do it, stay away from a D in English. Just hadn't done it yet.

“So,” Mr. Shockey said once Drew had closed the door to his office behind him, “you got that paper pounded into shape yet?”

“Mr. S,” Drew said, “I swear on my life I've done more research on this than anything I've ever
worked
on in my life.”

“Glad to hear it,” Mr. Shockey said. “But you didn't really answer my question. How close are you to being done?”

“It's comin',” Drew said. He fidgeted a little in his seat, mostly to get his left leg stretched out in front of him. “But that's not what I wanted to talk to you about.”

Without thinking, he rubbed his knee. Mr. Shockey saw that and said, “Did Tyler bang knees with you, or hit you with a baseball bat?”

“Oh, you know,” Drew said. “I'll be
aight.
”

As soon as he used the worldwide hip-hop version of
all right,
he saw Mr. Shockey wince. Like Drew had hit
him
with a bat.

Mr. Shockey didn't say anything, just sighed and let it go. This wasn't one of his classes. “So what do you want to talk about?”

“It's like this,” Drew said.

Then stopped. He'd been thinking hard on how he wanted to present this. Now here it was. Showtime.

“The thing is,” Drew said, “there's this guy I met. Kind of the playground legend who made me want to write about playground legends.”

It was a made-up version of the Legend Sellers story. Like one of those movie versions of a true story. When they'd say, “Based on actual events.”

Drew didn't tell him all of it, where Legend was from, how he was supposed to be dead. Just got right to the part about him wanting a high school diploma.

“How old is this guy?” Mr. Shockey said.

“Forties,” Drew said, “in there.”

“And he wants to go to school . . .
here
?”

“One English credit, one math—I think that's all he needs.”

“A man who's been away from school for, what, maybe thirty years, and now he gets religion about education?”

“You could say.”

“And I don't want to sound like I'm stuck on this . . . but he wants to clear his courses at Oakley?”

“It was my idea,” Drew said. “I figured that you and me and Mr. Gilbert . . .”

Drew knew he really didn't need Mr. Shockey if he had Mr. Gilbert stepping on this, but he was trying to be polite. Be the good Drew.

The pleaser.

Now he wanted to see where Mr. Shockey would take this. He didn't have to wait long to find out.

Mr. S slapped both hands down on his desk, smiling. Happy. Like Drew had surprised him by putting a done-deal paper on that desk.

“I love it!” Mr. Shockey said, something he'd say in practice when Drew would throw some kind of pass like he was a magician pulling a quarter from behind his ear.

“For real?”

“I will work with any high school student who wants to improve, even if they are as old as I am,” he said, then stood up. “Bring him around. And Mr. Nichols will have to meet . . . you haven't even told me his name.”

“Donald.”

Mr. S didn't even bother asking for a last name. “Bring Donald around.” He smiled again and said, “Tell him we're going to kick it old school. Just at this school.”

“Good one,” Drew said.

“He must be a good friend.”

Yeah,
Drew thought.

Yeah, he is.

He couldn't wait to tell Legend, even thought about skipping a few classes to do it. Knowing he could get away with that, as usual. But he waited. There was a late practice today because the girls had the gym early, so after his last class, he took the school bus that dropped kids in town at the train station. He would've run the rest of the way to Legend's hotel if his knee hadn't stiffened up on him again.

But this time when he got to the lobby, Vic, the night manager, stopped him. He was wearing the same T-shirt, watching the same TV, a game show this time.

“Looking for your friend?” Vic said.

“Yeah, but I'm kind of in a hurry, if you don't mind,” he said, heading for the stairs, talking at the guy over his shoulder. “I know which room he's in by now, thanks.”

“Kid.”
Stopping him with his tone.

Drew turned around.

“What I'm trying to tell you is,” he said, “that room is empty.”

“What does that mean?” Drew said. “Empty?”

Vic said, “The guy checked out.” He shrugged and turned back to his set, where Drew could see people jumping up and down and hugging on each other. “He's gone.”