True Legend (19 page)

FORTY

A
fter school, Drew and Callie got into her Kia and went to pick up Legend for his meeting with Mr. Shockey.

If Legend was waiting for them at the hotel.

If he'd kept his word this time and hadn't run off.

“You look more nervous than you'd be on the line with a couple of free throws to win the game,” she said.

“I never get nervous there.”

“Sor-ry,” she said. But grinning as she did. “That True Robinson talking?”

“Nah, just me.” He grinned back at her, feeling more comfortable with her all the time. Not
having
to be anybody but himself. “Just speaking the truth.”

“He'll be waiting for us,” she said.

“You sure?”

“I'm just going off the vibe I'm getting from the man. And I think he's tired of running.”

Drew put his head back. “You know that TV commercial, where the younger guy turns around, and there's the older version of himself standing right next to him? That's what I think about sometimes when I'm with him.”

“You're not anything like him,” Callie said.

Like she was defending Drew
to
Drew.

Eyes on the road, Callie said, “He sounds like he was a total jerk when he was our age, on top of all the other issues he had. Not that you can't act like a jerk, telling me I was lookin' fine, girl. Or throwing one down at the end of a H-O-R-S-E game.” She gave him a quick, sidelong glance. “Or being in a car you're not supposed to be in.”

Driving that car,
Drew thought. He'd wanted to tell her that because she was making him want to tell her everything, but he'd promised Lee.

And speaking of promises, there was Urban Sellers waiting for them out front. A backpack on him. Wearing what looked like the nicest pair of jeans he owned, a white shirt rolled up at the sleeves. No cap.

He'd even shaved.

Callie said, “Like he's waiting for the bus on his first day of school.”

• • •

If Mr. Shockey had any idea who Legend was—or used to be—he didn't show it when they got to his office.

He just shook Legend's hand, said he admired what he was doing, asked where he'd gone to high school. Legend told him where, and when, and that he'd been a ballplayer in his day.

“A great one,” Drew said. “Off-the-grid great.”

Mr. Shockey nodded, looking at Drew and then Legend.

“This is the player you're writing the paper about?” he said. “The playground legend?”

Urban Sellers said, “The paper
we're
writing.”

“Interesting,” Mr. Shockey said. “Never had a subject walk right off the page and into my office like this.”

Callie was sitting on the edge of Mr. Shockey's desk. “Not sure you know just
how
interesting, Mr. S,” she said.

“And now you're part of the story?”

“I'm just the wheel man,” she said. “Or wheel girl.”

Mr. Shockey focused his attention on Legend now. “You have a job?”

“Working for the town.”

“You're willing to do the classroom work we'll need to do at night?”

“Don't have a choice if I want to do this right. And I do.”

“Every night would be out of the question, with my schedule,” Mr. Shockey said. “How about two two-and-a-half hour sessions per week?”

“Whatever it takes.”

It was as if Drew and Callie weren't even there now, as if Mr. Shockey and Legend were having the kind of teacher-student conference Drew would have in this same room. When Drew would be the one in the chair Legend was in.

“Why are you doing this, really?” Mr. Shockey said. “There's still a lot I'll need to know, and I assume you can put your hands on your old transcripts somehow. You can do that, right?”

“My old coach can help me with the transcripts.”

“Then back to my question: why?”

It was quiet in the office. Legend's big hands were folded in his lap. Backpack was on the floor next to him. Finally he said, “Because it's the right thing to do. Sometimes you can't plan it out, it's just there, and you react.” He took a deep breath. “This is a way for me to start being the person I should have been. The one I hope I still have a chance to be. And that's the truth, sir.”

He was answering Mr. Shockey's question, but Drew heard something else in his answer.

He's talking to me.

“You can spend your whole life hiding from the truth about yourself,” Legend said, “but it will find you sooner or later. I learned that the hard way.”

• • •

Callie waited for Drew after practice, the girls having gotten to go first, and passed the time by doing her homework in the Oakley library. Lee had his car privileges back—“My folks decided that taking my wheels away was like punishing themselves”—and had offered to give Drew a lift home, but Drew told him no, thanks, he had a ride.

“More mystery?” Lee said. “I thought we were past that.”

“Callie.”

It was just the two of them in the locker room; everybody else was gone.

“Reallllllllly,” Lee said. He made the word sound like it went the length of the room. Maybe a whole basketball court.

Drew said, “Don't start busting on me, or I won't tell you stuff.”

“Dude, I'm not busting on you. I'm
happy
for you. Don't know if I'd say the same for Callie, of course—”

“It's gonna be what it's gonna be.”

“Deep,” Lee said. “I never knew you were this deep.” Then he made a motion with his hand, as if he were doing some math on an imaginary blackboard.

“What?” Drew said.

“Just trying to guesstimate how much gas money Callie is going to save me.”

Lee left. Callie was waiting for Drew outside the locker room.

She said, “Before we go, you have to see something.”

She led him out of the arena and into the main classroom building and up the stairs to the second floor, the hallway mostly dark.

One light came from the end of the hall.

Mr. Shockey's classroom.

Class was already in session.

He and Callie walked down there, trying not to make any noise. Saw Legend in a front seat, Mr. S sitting on his desk, facing him, legs dangling over the side, talking away.

Legend taking notes in his Mead Square Deal composition book.

“We have to get him a laptop,” Drew whispered.

Callie put a finger to her lips.

They watched for another minute or so, and then left. Drew thinking that in that moment, he loved school more than he ever thought he would in his life.

FORTY-ONE

T
hey had three regular-season games left, Coach telling them they had to treat them as if the tournament had started already, that they were all the same as knockout games if they wanted to win the regular-season title.

The first of the three was against their old friends, the Conejo Valley Christian Wildcats, the guys who'd upset them at the buzzer the first time they met, the night Drew didn't dive for that loose ball.

His knee was still sore, but not as sore as it had been. In a perfect world—when anyone would use that expression, Drew's mom would say, “Call me when you find one of those perfect worlds”—the Oakley Wolves would already have clinched the regular-season title.

Only they hadn't.

And one of the reasons was that Drew hadn't dived to the floor for that ball. In his mind, it was the same as if he'd lain down. Just given them the game.

But he evened the score at their little gym, even with Lee still parked on the end of the bench. It hadn't been the Wildcats' point guard who'd stopped Drew from going for the loose ball in that first game. Drew had done that all by himself.

Drew made him pay anyway. Not forcing it. Not doing anything on this night that was going to cost his team a single basket. But going after the kid the way he should have the first time, taking him down low and backing him in every chance he got, exploiting his natural advantage, first with his shot, then with passes when they were forced to double-team him, finding the open man, shot after shot.

Oakley was up twenty-three at halftime, and Drew knew already they could win by twice that if they wanted. But Coach finally took him out with nine minutes to go. Even with that, Drew still ended up with a triple double: Twenty-three points, seventeen assists, ten boards.

When it was over, the Wildcats' point guard, Gregg Sutter, came over and shook Drew's hand, shaking his head and grinning as he asked, “Was it something I said?”

“Nah,” Drew said, “but I had to get you back for that shot you made.”

“Figured it was something like that.”

“See you guys in the tournament,” Drew said.

“After tonight?” Sutter said. “I hope not.”

In the locker room, Drew could see how relieved Lee was that they'd won without him, that his being on the bench hadn't cost his team. Even though Drew knew it was killing him, missing one of the handful of high school games he had left.

“Even Legend would have approved of your performance tonight,” Lee said.

By now, Lee knew everything there was to know about Urban Legend Sellers. When Drew was finally able to tell him, he felt like he'd been let out of some kind of jail.

“Don't be so sure,” Drew said. “He would've found something to rag on me about.”

“Dubious,” Lee said. “By the second half, I thought that guy Sutter was gonna have a restraining order taken out on you.”

“You know what they say about payback.”

Lee smiled, looking happy. “I'm almost positive it rhymes with rich,” he said.

Drew knew he should have been happier himself on this night, getting his team a little closer to a championship, one that mattered so much to his teammates. And one that was becoming more important to Drew. Because
he knew how important it was to Lee and the guys. Drew could see it tonight, every time he looked over at Lee. It was on his face, in his body language—as if he was trying to play the game from the bench.

But Drew was quiet on the bus ride back to school, staring out the window, until Lee finally knew enough to stop talking.

The same thing was nagging at Drew that had been nagging for days.

What,
he asked himself,
now you have to go looking for ways to get yourself sideways, just when things are starting to go good for everybody?

The team was winning. Things with Callie were so good they were stupid, especially when he remembered where he'd been with her only weeks before—nowhere.

Legend was with Mr. Shockey.

Drew—with Legend's input, the two of them turning his hotel room into a classroom a few times—had even finished his paper.
Their
paper—Legend had been right about that.

Both of them pulling A's on it.

First A of his life that Drew felt as if he'd actually earned.

So what was eating at him?

He knew.

• • •

Practice over the next day.

The night before the Oakley–Crespi game. Second-to-last game. Five days before the rematch against Park Prep on ESPN2.

Drew didn't like to get ahead of himself, but if they could beat Crespi and then do one of those wrestling smackdowns on Park Prep, they would give themselves a chance to win the league championship without ever leaving the Henry Gilbert Athletic Center.

In a perfect world.

He was going to try finding one of those.

Drew knocked on the half-open door to Coach's office. Coach was on his laptop. He looked at Drew over his reading glasses. “Hey,” he said.

“Talk to you?”

“Sure,” he said. “But what are you still doing here?”

“I wanted to wait until the guys were gone.”

“Sounds serious.”

“Guess you could say.”

“Close the door,” Coach said, “in case there are any stragglers.”

Drew did. Sat down across from him.

Coach said, “How's Legend doing? Still can't get my mind around it, him being alive, you two being boys.”

“He's doing good,” Drew said. “He seems fixed on finding a way to get to college.”

Coach said, “But we're not here to talk about him, are we?”

“No,” Drew said.

He'd waited long enough. No use in waiting any longer.

“It was me driving Mr. Gilbert's car that night,” he said. “It was me speeding. Me behind the wheel when the damage was done.” Drew paused, took a deep breath, staring down at his practice sneaks. “I lied to you and everybody and got Lee to go along.”

Drew paused again and went on. “It was all me. And I let you suspend Lee anyway.”

The only sound in the room was Drew's breathing. Coach took off his reading glasses, folded them, put them next to his laptop. Closed the laptop. Folded his own hands and put them on top of it.

“You tell your mom yet?”

“I did,” he said. “'Fore school this morning. She told me that the truth, even when it's hard, sets you free.” He tried to smile. “Though it probably won't with you.”

“No,” Billy DiGregorio said. “Most certainly not with me.” He moved some papers around, as if he needed something to do with his hands. Or he was collecting his thoughts.

He didn't say anything right away, so Drew kept going. “I told myself it was best for the team, me playing instead of him, justified it that way. Me playing gave
us
our best chance to win it all, hundred percent. But that was just . . . it was like this small truth wrapped up inside the lies I'd already told. And I finally figured out that I was the loser on that one, even if the team did keep winning.”

“Loser how?”

“I was losing myself, I guess.”

There was another long silence between them in the small room.

Until Coach managed a smile. “And they say Lee is the smart one,” he said.

“Coach?”

“You're right,” Coach said. “What you and Lee did was dead wrong. But you're right.”

“Don't punish Lee any more than you did already,” Drew said. “He never should have had to sit in the first place. He was just being my wingman. My friend.”

“Lying for you,” Coach said. “And with you.”

“Yeah.”

“Like I said, you're doing the right thing, telling me.”

“Even though it could be the wrong thing for our team.”

“Doing the right thing is never wrong.”

“What if it costs us the championship?” Drew said.

“You're assuming I'm going to suspend you now?”

That got Drew's attention. “You're not?” he said to Coach.

Coach shook his head, not smiling now. “No, you're suspended,” he said. “Because that's the right thing, too. Because if team rules don't apply to you, then I got no team. I'm just another guy in sports letting his star player do whatever he pleases.”

“How long?” Drew said. “Am I going to be out, I mean.”

“I'll think on that tonight when I get home,” Coach said. “And when I announce it tomorrow, which I will, I'll just say that it's for a violation of team rules and leave it at that. If the reporters press me, I'll tell 'em that when they have a team, they can tell everybody everything. But that I don't talk.”

“Coach,” Drew said, “I'm sorry.”

“Be sorry for what you did taking the car out, driving it without a license. But don't be sorry for what you did here tonight.”

“But you came here to win this title.”

“We'll win,” he said. “Maybe we already did, you and me.”

Coach asked if Drew needed a ride home. Drew said Lee was waiting for him in the parking lot.

One more stop Drew needed to make.