Everybody is quiet for a few seconds. Maybe everyone is thinking about this being our last game, maybe they’re worried that they might screw up in front of fourteen thousand screaming fans, maybe they’re not thinking at all.
Finally John-Boy Reich says, “I’d like to dedicate this game to Tim Gunther.” He glances over at me and gives a little smile.
Dedicating our game is something some of the guys always do. But tonight we’re doing it for the last time ever, so it means something special. I think about all the times Tim and I played hoops in my driveway, about the million videos we’ve watched, about that day he held Cindy while Shawn was seizing. And now I think about Shawn, too, back home with Vonda. He’s probably in bed already: Sleeping? Dreaming?
John-Boy interrupts my thoughts, shouting, “For Tim-bo!”
And like we always do, we all yell out together, “For Tim-bo!”
A couple other guys say some things that I only half register. Words are forming inside me and I want to say them just right.
Finally I speak up. “I’m playing tonight for my family, but most of all, more than anybody, for my brother, Shawn.”
Everybody looks at me and nobody says anything. I’ve never dedicated a game to Shawn before. Some of the guys probably didn’t even know I had a brother. But I yell, “For Shawn-bo!”
Everybody shouts out together, loud and strong, “For Shawn-bo!!”
Goose bumps cover my arms as we all stand up.
We’re ready!
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Kennedy is playing unconscious. Their play making is gorgeous, their execution perfect. At the end of the first half they lead us by twenty-two points. I’m having a good game, not great, but good. I’m scoring well, eight for eleven from the floor, three for four from the foul line. I have half a dozen assists, but I’d have a dozen more if the rest of the guys were shooting basketballs rather than throwing up bricks. By all reasoning this game is over. A twenty-two-point deficit is pretty much insurmountable. Pretty much … still …
The second half starts with an ugly little 6–0 run by Kennedy, boosting their lead to twenty-eight and a time-out by our coach. The Kennedy fans are going nuts—screaming and stomping and out of control, as we straggle over to the bench, hanging our heads.
We gather around and Coach says in a calm, quiet voice, “Okay, gentlemen, I think we’ve got them right where we want ’em.” Everybody smiles. Then Coach says, “It’s miracle time.” He turns to me and says, “You ready, captain?”
I’m not sure what he means, but I answer, “Always.”
Coach says, “Okay, guys, here’s the plan—Paul isn’t going to miss any more shots. It’s miracle shoot-around time again, so set your screens, then get out of his way. Hankster, don’t even worry about offensive boards—there are no rebounds when every shot drops. You just step out and clog the lanes, help Paul get some shooting space, okay?”
Huge drops of sweat fall from Hankster’s forehead when he nods. He looks over at me and I smile.
We break the huddle; we’re down twenty-eight with just over fifteen minutes to play. As we start to walk away, Coach calls out once more, “Okay, guys, miracle time!” He says this to all of us, but he’s looking straight at me.
My first three shots, all of them three-pointers, drop, hitting nothing but net. The kid guarding me is an inch taller than I am but not nearly as quick. Even though Kennedy misses their next three shots, and their lead drops to nineteen, my opponent still looks confident.
The next time I have the ball, still in the backcourt, I start to talk to him. “You guys got this game in the bag, you know?” I dribble to my right, cross over, and move quickly to my left. “You might as well go pick up that trophy right now, you know?” I dribble behind my back and, just above the top of the key, I fake a move toward the basket, step back, and launch my jumper. As I release, I’m still talking. “I mean, come on, man, no team has ever blown a twenty-two-point halftime lead in a state final, and …”
The ball swishes through and I say, “Oops, another three-pointer. What’s that, four in a row?”
As we head up court, he mumbles softly, so the ref won’t hear him, “Up yours, ball hog!”
I smile.
We’re working ferociously on defense, but the refs are letting us play, not calling fouls. Even though they’re hitting a few baskets, you can feel Kennedy tightening up; you can see it in their hesitation to shoot, hear it in their heavy breathing; you can almost smell their fear.
With eight minutes left in the game, their lead is down to sixteen points, seventy-six to sixty. I’ve lost track of how many points I have—I don’t even care. I’ve made all our second-half points except for three, a little five-foot bank shot from our forward Brian Hillsdale and one of two foul shots by John-Boy Reich.
As I’m dribbling the ball up court, I can see the frustration on the face of the kid defending me. I don’t know his name, but he’s good—just not good enough to stop me.
“You gettin’ tired?” I ask him as I dribble the ball up court.
He snarls at me.
“I sure am scorin’ a lot, aren’t I … you ever heard of defense?”
When I say this, he rushes up and tries to crowd me, but when he does, it opens an easy lane to the hoop and I break for it before he can get any inside help. I hit an easy layin.
“Wow,” I say as I start to move back past my defender. But suddenly, without warning, he spits straight into my face. It’s a big wad of spit too, hitting my cheek, eye, and nose. I look around to see if any of the refs saw this, but none of them are looking our way. My defender gets this smirking grin and says real softly, “I hear you got a retard for a brother. A real basket case.”
I lift my hand to my face and wipe away the spit. I don’t say anything, but I feel my anger rising.
He says, “Is your brother here so he can see how chicken you are?”
When he says this, I realize that Mom and Cindy probably did see what just happened; they always tell me everything I do in a game, from every shot I hit to when I unconsciously adjust my jock during time-outs.
Kennedy gets the ball back and makes an easy bucket.
It’s our ball again, and I start to bring it up court when the kid who spit in my face comes at me hard. Not even pretending to go for the ball, he crashes into me and throws an elbow into my face. I hear a popping sound as my nose and right cheek take the blow. I lose my balance and fall.
The ref blows his whistle, but before he can get over to us, the kid who just fouled me walks onto and into me, kneeing me in the side of the head. Another whistle. I look up and the kid, his fists clenched, is standing over me.
He whispers viciously, “Come on, chicken—maybe you’re the retard I heard about?”
I put the back of my hand against my nose. Trying to breathe, I swallow a big mouthful of blood.
The ref reaches us and pushes the kid away from me, signaling an intentional, flagrant foul, which means that the kid is gone. Since he’s thrown out anyway, now he really goes ballistic, screaming at me, “You chicken shit! Chicken—” But a couple of his teammates pull him away; they look back at me, smirking too, like I’m a coward.
The thing is, though, I don’t even feel like fighting. I’m not scared, not really hurt; it’s not that I’m worried about getting tossed—I just don’t need to fight. I look at the kid once more and at his teammates who walk with him. I don’t feel angry, or like going after them. He fouled me to get me out of the game. I don’t want to leave, so I suppose I win. But even that doesn’t matter right now. My winning doesn’t mean anything—what matters is that there are four minutes thirty-two seconds left on the clock and we’re down by twelve points.
During the official injury time-out, our trainer jams two huge wads of cotton into my nose to stop the bleeding.
Coach asks, “You okay?”
I smile, even though I’m a little dizzy and my nose feels sore. I answer, “Yeah, I’m fine.”
After the time-out, I take my technical foul shot and then two more free throws. I make all of them. Kennedy’s lead is just nine points.
I’m relaxed and totally calm. Even though Kennedy makes a few of their shots, I’m hitting shots too as we pick away.
With two minutes and twenty seconds left, we’ve cut their lead to only five points. They miss another shot and the Hankster grabs the board, tossing the ball out to me. I bring it down court, but they’ve hustled back on defense, so I have to slow things down. I pass the ball, move to a screen, expecting a pass back, but Wille has an open easy little eight-footer so he takes it. It rims out and they get the board.
They bring the ball back, and their shooting guard hits a clutch three-pointer. Their bench explodes, guys jumping around, hitting each other with towels, leaping into the air, celebrating; their lead is back to eight with under two minutes to go.
I bring the ball up court, and just as I cross the half-court line I see an open lane to the basket. I start to drive but pull up at the three-point line and take my jumper. It ticks the rim but goes through.
My head is in the game, but it’s also outside myself. Although I’m totally present and in the moment, I “see,” in some part of my mind, all kinds of stuff: Mom and Cindy up in the stands; Shawn back in Seattle; Tim-bo and Eddie Farr and even that little girl with her ugly dog—it’s weird, I’m 100 percent here and 100 percent somewhere, everywhere, else. All my life I’ve used sports to run away, but I have nothing left to run away from. As I move back on defense, I realize this is the most fun I’ve ever had playing—in fact, this is the first time in my whole life that I’ve truly been playing. I feel that sensation of flying again, that feeling of almost floating.
After a miss by Kennedy, I grab the rebound, bring it back, and almost unconsciously throw up another three-pointer that hits nothing but net. Their lead is two with under a minute left to play. As soon as their guy gets the ball, we pressure full court and foul.
Their kid hits his first shot but misses the second. The Hankster grabs the board, passes out to me, and I bring the ball back up and hit another shot. My foot was on the line so it’s only a two-pointer. They lead by one with thirty-one seconds left to play. We haven’t led this game for a single second. It’s their ball.
We full-court press again and I manage to get a steal. It’s almost the identical move to that day when I poked the ball away from Tim and gouged his little finger, only I don’t touch the kid from Kennedy.
I dribble the ball back to the top of our key and our guys spread the floor. I’m thinking about the game but I’m also thinking about Shawn—imagining him somehow knowing what’s going on. The kid guarding me, who came in after the flagrant-foul guy was tossed, has quick hands, but he’s shorter than I am and not as strong. I’m dribbling the ball, relaxed, waiting for the clock to go down. I glance at the shot clock; there are seven seconds left. I glance at the game clock; sixteen seconds—this means that after I make my shot, we’ll have to hustle right back on D, because they’ll have almost ten seconds to bring the ball in, get it down, and …
In a flash, the kid guarding me jabs the ball free, catching a lot of my hand as he does. I listen for a whistle, but the refs don’t call it. The kid hurries over and grabs the loose ball. Once he corrals it, he takes off toward his basket.
Everything slows down, almost stops, as I think about what’s happening: the game, Georgetown, my dad, Shawn …
I turn and chase the kid who’s stolen the ball. I’ve got a slight angle on him, and as he reaches his basket, trying for a layin that would clinch the game for them, I time my jump from behind perfectly and block his shot. Even though I don’t touch him, he falls down over the end line, flopping for a call. The ball bounces toward the out-of-bounds line on the right side. There’s no whistle. I manage to grab the ball an instant before it goes out, leaning over the line and barely getting my balance. The game clock reads three seconds. I dribble toward our end. The clock ticks down … two seconds … one second. I’m still way out, not even up to half court yet, but I have to shoot now.
There’s no time to think about it. So I let it go, a high, arching shot. The buzzer sounds while the ball is still soaring through the air. Everything is clear; everything is right here, my whole world, everything wide open—
My release felt good, felt perfect, actually—nice rotation, good height—the buzzer stops, and there’s total silence; fourteen thousand fans, every player and every coach, watch the flight of my desperation shot.
I don’t feel desperate, though, I feel perfectly calm and happy; whatever happens will happen, whatever—
Swish.
It’s funny, you know, how you see guys on ESPN hit the miracle shot, the buzzer beater, then fall to their knees or jump in the air or run around with their arms spread out and their mouths wide open looking for someone to hug. Moments like this don’t come very often in sports or in life. And now it’s happening to me. Maybe I’m not ready for it, or maybe I’m too ready—whatever the reason, I don’t do any of those celebration things. I’m glad that the shot fell. I’m glad that we’ve won the game. Although it’s fun, it doesn’t matter in the same way that so many bigger things matter.
My teammates disagree, mobbing me at center court in a pileup that resembles twenty madmen trying to escape a madhouse.
At the bottom of this crazed, laughing, screaming, smelly, sweating pile of brothers, I think about everybody and everything: Mom, Cindy, Dad, Tim-bo, Seattle, and especially Shawn, my real brother—I think about all of us. And suddenly I realize that I’ve never been so happy. Ready or not, world, here I come!
It takes me longer than any of the other guys to finally make it into the locker room. Recruiters from Gonzaga and Georgetown are waiting for me in the hallway outside right now. I shook their hands and they both said they’d wait until after I showered. We couldn’t talk out there anyway, in all that postgame chaos: cheerleaders, the band, my mom and sister, and about a thousand kids I don’t even know slapping my back and looking crazed. I finally made it in here, where the guys and I celebrated.
Now everyone’s gone except for me. I’m taking my time. I suppose I should feel a little guilty about making people wait for me, but I can’t let go of this moment. All my life I’ve been in sports to escape something. Without even knowing it, I was always looking over my shoulder. Tonight, for the first time ever, I played for the excitement and rush of just playing. I guess it’s like Coach said: This night is a miracle.
I remember that day at shoot-around when I felt like I could fly—and now I know I can!
In fact, right now, I’m already soaring—I feel so good.
Once I step out of this locker room, the rest of my life will begin—college, new friends, big decisions, everything will be different. Almost everything; there’s one thing I can always count on that never changes. I think back to talking with Shawn the other day, telling him how I really felt about him.
I love my brother—finally I can say that and truly mean it; I really do love him.
Before anything else tonight, I’m going to phone our house back in Seattle and have Vonda wake Shawn up. I’m going to tell her to hold the phone next to his ear and I’m going tell my brother about everything that’s happened. But most of all, I’ll tell him how much I love him, whether he understands what I’m saying or not.
I’ll tell him what it feels like to soar!
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This is a tough book for which to offer acknowledgments in that it came so quickly. I wanted to write a sequel to Stuck in Neutral, but a sequel would have “ruined the ending,” as my editor Toni Markiet pointed out; we were walking back from lunch in New York City when Toni suggested, “Why not write a companion novel to Stuck in Neutral, something from some other character’s point of view?” I liked the idea immediately, and thus Cruise Control started to become a reality.
I have already dedicated this book to Toni, so now I have to thank all the usual suspects
: My family: wife, Patti; sons, Jesse and Sheehan; all the Eggers; my dad and his wife; and sister Cindy and Garren. At HarperCollins, Meghan Dietsche, Phoebe Yeh, Colleen Schwartz, cover design artist Cliff Nielsen, and everyone else involved in making this book. At Sterling Lord Literistic Inc., the “great man”: George Nicholson, my agent, and his intrepid partner in crime, Paul “it’s-okay-to-call-me-Pauly” Rodeen, and my movie guy Jody Hotchkiss (formerly with SLL, Inc.). Colleagues who have helped are led by Kelly Milner-Halls, Chris Crutcher, Terry Davis, Michael Gurian, Eddie-Jim Averett, and Mary.
Thanks to everyone who has been involved in the creation of Cruise Control. Thanks to the many critics whose appreciation and thoughtful consideration of my earlier books make this book possible. All the librarians and English teachers who have sponsored/suffered my visits and presentations and kept me from almost certain jail terms by their friendships and protectiveness. All of ALA, most especially YALSA. Most importantly, of course, thank you to all my readers, so many of whom have taken the time to tell me how excited they are to see this book and without whose encouragement and support, again, there would probably be no book. To any of you who have written me and not received a response, please forgive me. Who else? Sorry, I’m drawing a blank—but you know who you are and you know how bad I’ll feel that I’ve left you off this list.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Terry Trueman grew up in the northern suburbs of Seattle, Washington. He attended the University of Washington, where he received his BA in creative writing. He also has an MS in applied psychology and an MFA in creative writing, both from Eastern Washington University.
Terry is also the author of CRUISE CONTROL, a companion novel to STUCK IN NEUTRAL and the sequel LIFE HAPPENS NEXT; HURRICANE; 7 DAYS AT THE HOT CORNER; NO RIGHT TURN; and INSIDE OUT. You can visit Terry online at www.terrytrueman.com, on Twitter, and on the Terry Trueman Fan Page on Facebook.
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