I picked them up and tossed them back at her. She sat on the edge of the bed and wiped my face with the palm of her hand.
“You must get that boohoo stuff from Mama, because she’s in there crying her little heart out,” she said.
We had what Mr. Barker called Graduate Day, which consisted of some local schools setting up tables in the gym, handing out brochures, and answering questions about financial aid. All seniors had the morning off so we could talk to them if we wanted, and the gym was filled.
“Drew, let’s get a soda.” Tomas hadn’t been hanging out that much, and he had told Ernie that he didn’t want to play any ball until he reached college.
We dodged the traffic getting across the street, picked up our sodas at the counter, and settled in a booth.
“How’s your mom?” I asked. “She still fighting the system?”
“Most of the time she’s talking about me going off to college,” Tomas said, trying to straighten his legs out under the table. “I think she misses her college days.”
“She’s got to be thinking about you going off,” I said. “She’s going to be home by herself, right?”
“I didn’t think about that,” he said. “This will be the first time she’s been alone in America. Your mother talking about college, too?”
“I’ll be the first in the family to go,” I said. “But she’ll have my pops and little sister home, so she’ll be okay.”
We talked about what we thought college would be like and making the change from high school. Tomas seemed confident, and I tried to act more confident than I felt.
I wondered if I would ever play against him in college or the pros. In a way I liked him. He had reached out and tried to be friendly. His mom had, too. But I felt that we would never be close enough to hang together, to be real friends. That was okay, too. I didn’t need to be close to everybody. Life didn’t have the same neat boxes I imagined would be waiting for me. They didn’t have them for Tomas or his family, either. He had his game to play out, and I had mine. I thought that he would get better chances than me, more attention, but I had learned something more about the set, and how deep my game could be.
I got two more offers. One of them, Towson State in Maryland, sent a brochure, and they even had a photograph of me in a Towson State uniform. The magazine was slick and I dug it. A school from Iowa sent a small package of clippings from their local newspaper along with a DVD showing kids sitting around the campus, the ball team, and a really sincere-looking black girl staring into the camera telling me why I should consider their school.
The last part of the DVD was a picture of a clock, ticking off the seconds, and a voice-over.
“All eyes are on Lawson as he brings the ball down the left side. He fakes right and then makes a quick move across the middle. Now he stops and goes straight up. The ball is in the air! He scores! He scores!”
I wanted to go to DePaul so bad I could taste it. Mr. Barker helped me write the letter of intent and laughed when my hand was shaking as I signed it.
House congratulated me, and so did Fletch. When I got a moment with Fletch alone, I apologized for some of the things I had said along the way.
“Drew, your enemies can mess your life up,” he said. “Or they can make it easy for you to do it to yourself. You need to congratulate yourself for not blowing your chances. Go on to college, represent the way you’re supposed to, and then maybe we can talk about it again one day.”
I knew I could represent. I would do it for Mom and Jocelyn, who were going to be in my corner no matter what. I would do it for Pops and all the dreams he had looked at from a distance. I was even representing, in a strange kind of way, for the brother in Chicago who had serious game but who had been cut down in a drive-by.
And somewhere, in a dark part of my mind, I was representing for coach Burns’s list of guards. He told me I was number three, but how many guys had been on the list and couldn’t deal with the SAT or had messed up their averages? How many would spend the next ten years busting butt on a hundred playgrounds around the country and not getting squat out of it? If I hadn’t made it through high school, if I had been arrested or shot up, how many more dudes with serious game could have taken my place? It was something to think about, something to deal with. My moment had come, but I knew that what mattered was what I did with it.
The hardest thing going down was being around Ruffy. I didn’t want to think of him standing on the corner waiting for whatever came his way. I thought it would have been different if the thing with Tony hadn’t happened. Maybe later Ruffy would be able to go to college. I hoped so. I think he deserved more than he was getting, but so did a lot of people.
But for me the sun was shining, clouds were doing their floating thing, birds were making their little bird circles, and life was kicking. I thought of the brother me and Ruffy had met on the elevator in the court building. “Not guilty.”
I was in my room when Jocelyn came to the door, leaned against the jamb, and asked me was I scared to go off to college.
“You can tell me,” she said. “I won’t tell anyone.”
“I’m a little nervous about it,” I said.
“And ain’t that cool?” she asked.
It was.
About the Author
WALTER DEAN MYERS is the renowned author of AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MY DEAD BROTHER, a National Book Award Finalist; SHOOTER, an ALA Quick Pick for Young Adult Readers; MONSTER, the first winner of the Michael L. Printz Award; THE DREAM BEARER and HANDBOOK FOR BOYS: A Novel, both New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age; BAD BOY: A Memoir, a Parents' Choice Gold Award winner; and the Newbery Honor Books SCORPIONS and SOMEWHERE IN THE DARKNESS. He wrote THE HARLEM HELLFIGHTERS: When Pride Met Courage, a Book Sense Pick; PATROL: An American Soldier in Vietnam, illustrated by Ann Grifalconi; I'VE SEEN THE PROMISED LAND: The Ufe of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and MALCOLM X: A Fire Burning Brightly, both illustrated by Leonard Jenkins; and HARLEM, a Caldecott Honor Book, and JAZZ, both illustrated by Christopher Myers. He makes frequent appearances with the National Basketball Association's "Read to Achieve" program. Mr. Myers lives with his family in Jersey City, New Jersey.
You can visit him online at www.walterdeanmyers.net.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
ALSO BY WALTER DEAN MYERS
FICTION
Autobiography of My Dead Brother
National Book Award Finalist
Crystal
The Dream Bearer
Handbook For Boys: A Novel
It Ain’t All for Nothin’
Monster
Michael L. Printz Award
Coretta Scott King Honor Book
National Book Award Finalist
The Mouse Rap
Patrol: An American Soldier in Vietnam
Jane Addams Children’s Book Award
The Righteous Revenge of Artemis Bonner
Scorpions
Newbery Honor Book
Shooter
Street Love
The Story of the Three Kingdoms
NONFICTION
Angel to Angel: A Mother’s Gift of Love
Bad Boy: A Memoir
Brown Angels: An Album of Pictures and Verse
I’ve Seen the Promised Land: The Life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Malcolm X: A Fire Burning Brightly
Now Is Your Time!: The African-American Struggle for Freedom Coretta Scott King Award (Author)
The Harlem Hellfighters: When Pride Met Courage
Copyright
GAME. Copyright © 2008 by Walter Dean Myers. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval syste
m, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub © Edition DECEMBER 2008 ISBN: 9780061985591
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