by Steven James
The game becomes the center of everything.
Tonight, despite the nightmarish dream of that girl, despite how things were starting to get weird again, Daniel was in the zone.
But the rest of the starters were not.
Coach tried different combinations of bringing in guys off the bench, but at halftime Beldon was down by eight.
In the locker room he didn’t yell at them—not his style—but instead he told them they were too tense. “Pressure them in the back court. Set good picks. Don’t get rattled. Execute your plays and we’ll catch these guys.”
The second half got off to a good start for Beldon.
They came back and even went ahead, extending their lead to six.
But Coulee played hard and powered past them again, until with one minute to go, Beldon trailed by four.
Daniel nailed a three-pointer from just above the top of the key to bring them within one, but Coulee scored on a lob to their post player.
Down by three.
Twenty seconds to go.
Daniel brought the ball up the court, faked left, drove the lane and when the defense collapsed, he kicked the ball out to Stephen who fired but missed, clanging a rushed fifteen footer off the rim.
Coulee snagged the rebound and was trying to eat up some time bringing the ball up the court, but Beldon pressured them. Raymond Keillor, Beldon’s off guard, fouled their ball handler, putting him on the line—one and one.
Beldon’s side of the gym went silent as Coulee’s crowd erupted with cheers.
Twelve seconds to go.
The guy sank the first, but missed the second.
Stephen launched the rebound to Daniel who pushed up the ball.
Down by four.
Eight seconds.
Unless he could get fouled shooting a three, it was a two possession game so they needed to score.
Now.
A Coulee player who liked to try to block shots was guarding Daniel a little too closely and he decided to go for it, to try and draw the foul and stop the clock. With five seconds left he pulled up to shoot and, as the guy went for the block, Daniel fired, drew the foul, and managed to bury the three.
The foul meant he would be shooting one free throw, giving him a chance to tie the game.
The roar of the crowd edged in on his attention, but he closed his eyes and slid it aside.
Two seconds on the clock.
He just needed to sink this free throw, send the game into overtime and take things from there.
Daniel positioned himself with his toe an inch behind the nail that they put in the middle of the free throw line in every gym to let players know where the center of it is.
Eyed the basket.
The ref handed him the ball and started to count off the seconds—Daniel had ten to take the shot.
As he was taking a couple dribbles to get into his rhythm, out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed the girl who’d been burned alive.
She was standing beside the end of the bleachers, a scorched, living corpse. She had one hand raised and was pointing at Daniel like she’d done in the field.
Somehow he heard her voice cut through the noise of the Coulee fans who were shouting to try to distract him from his shot: “You can’t let him get away with it.”
His heart squirmed inside him and he turned toward her to get a better look—he couldn’t help it—but when he did, she was gone. He scanned that side of the gym, but everything looked fine. No dead girl.
You’re imagining it.
She’s not real.
Focus!
You need to hit this free throw.
He’d lost track and didn’t know how many seconds had elapsed, but he figured he had less than five left.
He lined up his shot, but found himself thinking about the mechanics of it—keeping his elbow in, arch, rotation, palm off the ball, left hand there to guide the shot . . .
And thinking about the girl.
Letting out a deep breath, he brought the ball up just past his face and released the same way he’d done so many thousands of times in practice.
Even before the ball reached the rim he knew it wasn’t going to go in.
As he watched it arc toward the hoop it was as if time slowed. He needed to wait until it hit the rim before he could go for the rebound, but as he tracked the ball’s trajectory, something clicked in that hidden part of his brain, that math part, that part that calculated things—so many things—instantaneously, subconsciously. Instinct took over and he anticipated the trajectory the ball was going to take when it bounced off the rim.
It hit and he went for it. The Coulee player in front of him didn’t box him out like he should have, and Daniel spun past him, found his way to the left side of the crowded lane, leapt, caught the ball just outside the block and, twisting in the air, put it up again before landing.
The buzzer sounded.
The ball glanced gently off the glass.
And went in.
Final score: 61 to 60.
Beldon on top.
Their side of the gym went crazy and the guys on Daniel’s team rushed him, slapped him on the shoulder or fist-bumped him, congratulating him.
But he was only half paying attention because he was also scrutinizing the gym to see if the girl would appear again.
She wasn’t real. Just like Emily wasn’t real at that Homecoming football game.
She’s not here.
But even if that were true, it didn’t mean he wouldn’t see her again. When he had these blurs, reality had very little to do with what he was experiencing.
He wasn’t certain of it, but at least it’d seemed like he was asleep when he saw her on the bus ride to the game. He could write that off as a nightmare, but now, here in the gym, things were different because he’d seen her while he was awake.
Very awake.
Yeah. Things were getting worse.
Daniel had always been more concerned with putting hash marks in the win column than with worrying about stats, but his mind couldn’t help but keep track of numbers and he knew, even without looking at the stat sheet, that he’d ended the game with eight assists, thirty-two points and three rebounds.
He’d definitely been in the zone—that is, until the girl who’d burned up alive had appeared to him.
Before heading to the locker room, he touched base with Kyle, Nicole, and Mia and they agreed to meet at Kyle’s house at ten. Since Kyle didn’t live too far from school, where Daniel had left his car, that sounded doable.
Curfew wasn’t a major deal to Daniel’s dad when there was no school the next day, but still, he typically wanted him home by midnight and Daniel did his best not to push things.
So, when he texted his dad the score, he also let him know he was planning to hang out with his friends, but that he would be home by twelve.
After showering and changing, Daniel was on his way down the hall from the locker room when he saw a man leaning against the wall near the school’s trophy case. As he approached him, the guy looked his way, took a step toward him, and extended his hand.
“Nice game, Daniel.”
Daniel shook his hand. “Thanks.”
He couldn’t remember ever meeting this man before and it was a little weird that he’d called him by name, but on the other hand, anyone watching the game could’ve found out who he was just by listening to the announcer.
He looked like he might be in his early thirties, had black, carefully combed hair, and a fiercely strong handshake.
Then the meeting was over. That was it. The guy was turning to go and Daniel was on his way, but a few seconds later he glanced back to get another look at him.
The man was gone.
Daniel paused.
It was possible that he might have slipped out another
door, or hurried down the hallway and gone back to the gym, but it seemed unlikely. He would have had to really be moving.
A troubling thought hit Daniel: What if that man hadn’t actually been there?
It wouldn’t be the first time you’ve had a conversation with someone who wasn’t real.
No—you shook his hand. If he was just in your mind you wouldn’t have been able to touch him.
Outside the school, Daniel and the rest of the team piled into the bus.
He made sure he didn’t fall asleep on the ride back to Beldon.
CHAPTER
SIX
Daniel picked up his car from the parking lot and cruised over to Kyle’s house.
Nicole hadn’t arrived yet, but Mia had.
Tonight she wore torn skinny jeans and a faded Kurt Cobain T-shirt. Lank and willowy, she made it work. With her studded tongue and pierced lip she had an edgy look to her, but it was more emo than goth.
She pointed at him. “You, son, were smokin’ tonight.”
“Thanks.”
“Yeah.” Kyle was shaking some Tabasco sauce onto a bowl of cheese curls sitting on the coffee table. “You have mad skills, my friend.”
“I should’ve hit that free throw, though. And I think that’s enough Tabasco sauce.”
Kyle gave the bottle one more hefty shake, set it down—then picked it up and dolloped a little more on before setting it down for good. “It was better this way—didn’t go into overtime.”
“That is true.”
He offered Daniel some of the cheese curls.
“I’m good.”
Mia declined as well, and Kyle shrugged and dug into them by himself.
Daniel assumed that Kyle’s four-year-old sister, Michelle, was asleep down the hall. His mom had the TV on softly in her own bedroom, but came to the living room to say hi to Daniel. “I couldn’t make it to the game, but Kyle said you played great.”
“I’m just glad we won.”
“Of course.”
Kyle’s dad had been killed in a car accident a couple years ago. Recently, his mom had started dating someone from the real estate company she worked at. Daniel didn’t know how serious it was, but she seemed genuinely happy for the first time since her husband died, and he was glad she’d found someone.
Mrs. Goessel returned to her room and while Daniel and his friends waited for Nicole, Kyle noted that the curlazoids were much better with the Tabasco sauce.
“Curlazoids?” Daniel said.
“It’s a new linguistics thing I’ve been working on. Just add ‘azoid’ to any noun or ‘ify’ to any verb. Voilà. Instant avant-garde word.”
“So, you’re saying that in basketball you could shootify a shotazoid?”
“Precisely.”
“That’s weird.”
“Who knows. It might just catch on.”
“Also,” Mia added, “you could add ‘anate,’ or ‘ification’—like, ‘disqualifyanate,’ or ‘disqualifyification.’”
“So”—Daniel was thinking aloud—“digestify, digestanate, or digestification.”
She nodded. “But not digestazoid.”
“Definitely not,” Kyle agreed.
“You two were meant for each other,” Daniel said.
The conversation wandered briefly toward school and how glad they were that vacation was finally here. Mia mentioned Christmasazoid, which was just around the corner, and Daniel asked them what they were doing. Kyle replied, “Michelle, Mom and I are sticking around here. I guess Glenn is coming over.”
“Is that the guy your mom’s seeing?”
“Yeah. Glenn Kramer.”
Daniel couldn’t tell from his friend’s tone of voice if he was excited about the prospect of spending Christmas with Glenn or not. “What is it?”
“Nothing. It’s just . . . Well, I’m sick of him talking about his gun collection. I get it. He’s into collecting antique firearms. It’s this huge deal to him. Anyway.” He waved his hand through the air as if he were erasing what he’d just said. “Whatever.”
Mia said, “We’re taking off to visit my grandma and grandpa in Eau Claire. I guess we’re leaving Monday morning and coming back Wednesday around noon. Should be alright—as long as there’s no more snow.”
“I still can’t believe you don’t like snow.” Kyle was working his way through the bowl of cheese curls. Halfway gone.
“Believe it.”
“I’m just saying, living up here in the Great White North you gotta love snow. How can you not love snow? Inuit people, Eskimos, you know, they have dozens of words for snow.”
“I heard that was just an urban legend sort of thing.”
“One way to find out.” Kyle pulled out his phone and did a quick search. “Okay. This one anthropologist figured out that different branches of their language really do have dozens of different words for snow. Even better: one group of people in Russia, the Sami, they have more than a hundred words for snow. So, there you go.”
“Well, I have one word for it,” Mia said.
“What’s that?”
“Annoying. If God had wanted people to be outside in the winter he would’ve covered us with fur.”
Kyle licked some cheese granules off his orange fingers. “You ever see Jason Berring’s back? I saw him in the locker room after PE and I think God definitely made him for playing in the snow.”
“Ew. Now see, that’s just wrong.”
A car pulled into the driveway.
While Daniel had been listening to Kyle and Mia, the nightmare of the girl bursting into flames hadn’t left him alone.
Last fall, when the blurs started, he’d found that his subconscious was remembering things, piecing together what his conscious mind wasn’t even aware of.
It was almost like an untapped part of his brain was rifling through the vast amount of information that sweeps past us each day, noticing things that no one else was noticing and then revealing them to him through the blurs.
He tried to figure out what the girl in the nightgown had been referring to when she said, “You have to stop him before it happens again,” and “You can’t let him get away with it.”
Stop who?
Get away with what?
“You okay?” Kyle said.
Daniel looked up to see both of his friends staring at him. “Huh?”
“You zoned out there for a minute.”
“I’m good.” He went for some of the remaining cheese curls, carefully choosing ones that were not quite so Tabasco-sauceafied.
A car door closed and a few seconds later Nicole appeared in the living room doorway and motioned for Daniel to join her outside. “There’s something I want to show you.”
“What is it?”
“It’s a surprise, silly. C’mon.”
CHAPTER
SEVEN
The night sky was clear of clouds, and even with the moonlight, this far out in the country the stars were bright. From where they stood he could see the sky in three directions but north was hidden from view by the house.
“What do you want to show me?”
By the light of the porch nearby, his breath was visible.
“Come here.” She took his hand and led him around the side of the house where they had a clear view of the northern sky. “Look up.”
He did.
Flickering green streaks shifted and shimmered high above them in the silent sky as the Northern Lights danced across the heavens. Elegant.
Mysterious.
Beautiful.
In this part of the state, especially without light pollution from being near a bigger city, you could see the aurora borealis pretty well, and the best time to check them out was in the winter.
Faint bluish and yellowish streaks flicked briefly before disappearing, but
the rolling ribbons of green light remained there, whipping and curling through the sky as if they were alive.
“They’re stunning,” Nicole said softly. She was still holding Daniel’s hand.
Which was okay by him.
“You know what causes them?” he asked.
“Doesn’t it have something to do with the earth’s magnetic poles?”
“That might be part of it, but from what my dad said, they’re caused by electrically charged particles colliding. They come from the sun and hit particles in the earth’s atmosphere.”
Nicole eased closer to him. It was barely noticeable. Barely—but he could tell.
Also not a problem.
“So, when the two of them come together,” she said, “sparks fly.”
“Yes.”
Okay, some more symbolism there that no one needed to point out to him.
The night embraced them and time meant nothing as they stood there beneath the ethereal beauty of the Northern Lights.
At last, the shivering braids of light faded away and the stars and the moon had the sky to themselves.
For a long moment neither Daniel nor Nicole said anything, then finally, still holding his hand, she led him out onto the lawn. “Make a snow angel with me.”
“Well, you know, I’m not really a snow angel kind of guy. I’m more into snow snakes.”
“Snow snakes? How do you make them?”
“I’ll show you in a sec. First, you go ahead with the angel.”
Nicole laid on her back on the blanket of snow covering the yard, with her feet together and her arms out to the side, then flared her legs out and drew her arms above her head and back down to brush the snow aside.
Then, she pushed herself to her feet and the two of them looked at the impression she’d left in the snow. Where she’d moved her arms it looked like wings; where she’d moved her legs it looked like a dress or gown.
“Okay,” she said. “Let’s see your snow snake.”
“It’s not just any snow snake. It’s a snow anaconda.”
“Oh.” She was acting impressed. “Now you’ve got me curious.”
