For the next three days I come to the college before their practice begins. Coach Anderson watches what I am doing, plays fake defense, gives me instructions about the angles I should take with my footwork (it makes me think of geometry class), and every day I get better at being like Hakeem. Carli Anderson, who is now off her crutches, takes short shots on another court. She whoops once when I pivot, shot fake, then leap and jam. And even though I don’t shoot the ball soft, the Trinity team has a hard time defending me.
On Saturday morning, Coach Anderson yells at his players for being out of position. But to me he says, “That’s amazing work. Just so good, son. My gosh, you’re a natural, aren’t you?”
“I can’t shoot, but my feet can move.”
“We can improve that shot. You release at your peak. Carli used to shoot that way, too, and now look at her.”
I nod, because she shoots like feathers on a breeze. But then we are done, because the playoff game is the next day.
“We sure appreciate your help,” Coach Anderson says.
He does not even know how much I appreciate his help. I hope he invites me back for the next week.
But maybe I didn’t help so much. On Sunday, the Trinity College team goes to Moorhead, Minnesota, to play their game. They lose by ten. Lawrence Rivers doesn’t score many, but the rest of Concordia does.
So there is no practice the next week.
SEVENTEEN
BARRY’S DOOR
There is too much time on my hands. There are too many people in my house. There is Kase Kinshaw in my school. There is no basketball for a week.
Without basketball, it seems Kase is everywhere. He gives me the evil eye during lunches. He stops across the hall from chemistry to give me the finger and mouth the f-word. He blocks the exit from the commons, and I almost fight him, but breathe and hold back. I can’t lose basketball. Worst of all, I see Carli Anderson and her friends walking with him, eating lunch with him, laughing with him, and I get sick deep in my guts. What good person could laugh at his jokes?
At night, I practice my Hakeem “the Dream” post footwork in the basement. Professor Mike and the girls are often upstairs. They are always sitting on my couch.
Monday and Tuesday, Barry Roland comes over for breakfast. He is limping worse every day. On Wednesday, Renata says, “Barry, maybe you should take a break from breaking your shins all the time. I really don’t think you’re healing.”
“Oh, I’m not kicking trees now,” he says.
I look up from my omelet. “Why? What about Shinja?”
His face turns red. “I told you yesterday. I have a contusion that turned into an infection and I have to take antibiotics, but Tiffany’s insurance is bad, so I have to pay all this money . . .”
“Insurance isn’t covering everything?” Renata asks.
“There was a fifty-dollar deductible, and Tiffany says we don’t have fifty dollars, so I have to work extra shifts this week.”
Renata stares at Barry, then says, “I’ll give you fifty dollars.”
At first there is silence. Then Barry speaks. “No,” he says. “Indomitable spirit,” he whispers.
On the way to school, I apologize for not listening the day before, but Barry says it’s okay, because he talks too much, so people don’t listen. “Tiffany tells me to shut up all the time, so . . . ,” Barry says. I can see he is unhappy.
Then on Thursday things get better. Carli Anderson walks up to me in the lunch room and says, “Tonight. Trinity College gym. You and me shooting a game of H-O-R-S-E. Are we on, dude, or what?”
I look around. No Kase Kinshaw.
“Uh,” I say. I smell honey, and I drown in her eyes.
“Uh?” she asks.
“Uh,” I say.
“Duh?” she says.
I have no power against her, even if she laughs at Kase Kinshaw’s jokes. “You bet, bro,” I say.
She destroys me in H-O-R-S-E. Her shot is so much better than mine, even though she’s not going through her whole shooting motion yet. She wins four games before her knee begins to get too sore. This makes her worried—she pulls off the brace, rubs her knee, talks to it like it’s a child that behaves badly. Then she spends a lot of time stretching on the gym floor. I shoot and shoot and miss, which makes her laugh.
“I will get a better shot and you will be in deep trouble,” I say.
“Oh, I am so far out of your league, dude!” she shouts. She is filled with glee.
Barry is not.
On the way to school Friday, Barry asks, “Do you love Carli Anderson, because even if she’s really mean, I get it, she’s handsome and she’s tall, so you match?”
“Handsome?” I say.
“Yes,” Barry says, looking at the road, not at me.
“I don’t love,” I say. “Also, she’s not mean.”
“Well, she’s not very nice,” he says. He drives on. His mustache gets small under his nose. “It’s okay, Adam. It’s okay if you think she’s nice.”
“Oh, okay. Thanks for that,” I say.
We stop at QuikTrip so Barry can buy some wiper fluid. While he is filling the fluid container, I sit in the passenger seat and wonder what exactly his problem is? I can have another friend, right?
Right as I have this thought, the top hinge on the driver-side door, which is hanging open letting cold air in while he fills his wiper fluid, breaks. The corner of the door hits the pavement.
“Uh-oh!” Barry shouts. “Oh crap!”
I get out. We try to lift the door back on, but it will not close. Then Barry says we better just go to school.
“I can hold the door while I drive,” he says.
But he’s wrong. He drops the door while driving and then the door rips off the car. I turn and watch it spinning on the road behind us. I watch another car swerve so as not to hit it.
“Uh-oh,” I say.
“The door caused an accident?” Barry shouts like a question.
“Not yet,” I say.
He pulls over. We run behind the car into traffic and pick up the door from the street. Cars honk at us. I want to give the finger, but I don’t. We jam the door in his trunk, but the trunk won’t close. Then we get back in the car. It is very cold. Wind blows in where there should be a door.
“What do I do?” Barry asks.
“Do we go to school?” I ask.
A cop car pulls up behind us and puts on his lights.
“Uh-oh,” Barry says.
The cop sits for a few moments, then gets out of his car. I remember my dad in our shit car in Poland and how a cop stopped us and Dad jumped out of the car and tried to run down the street. I watched through the windshield. The cop leapt on Dad’s back and pounded his head to the ground. Dad kept fighting. I leapt from the car to fight the cop, too. I was eight years old.
The Northrup cop doesn’t beat us up, but he won’t let Barry drive to school. “You have to get this hunk of crap towed, Barry,” he says.
“Where?”
“Wherever you get it fixed.”
“Merle fixes it?” Barry says.
“Well, then, get it towed back to your trailer,” the cop says. “Let Merle do his magic.” Small towns are strange. The cop knows Barry and he knows who Merle is, the boyfriend of Tiffany, the loser man who drinks too much and gets in fights downtown or sleeps on the kitchen floor.
“Okay?” Barry says.
The cop then drives me to school. Before I get out, he tells me I should be more choosy about the people I spend time with.
“No, I don’t see Merle ever,” I say.
“I’m not talking about Merle.”
Only later do I realize the cop means Barry.
What’s wrong with Barry? I wonder. But I only think about this for a minute. Carli comes up to me in the hall and says, “Your Fury tryout is tomorrow!”
What if I do love her?
EIGHTEEN
ASKING FOR MYSELF, RECEIVING
Barry’s car door is a bigger problem than I thought. It is
Saturday morning, and I need to go to Chaska for the D-I Fury tryout in an hour. Renata and I sit in the kitchen. Barry has just called with the bad news. Merle won’t help him with the door, and he has no car. I am panicking.
Renata exhales hard. “I can’t take you to Chaska, Adam. You know that. We made arrangements,” she says.
Renata has duties at the college, because it is Trinity Parents’ Weekend, where all the parents of students show up and tour classrooms and go to the chapel and go to big concerts by choirs and bands and donate money to the school. Professors are required to attend.
“Barry’s car is dead,” I say. “There are no arrangements. He’s going to the horse stable now to work to pay for his door.”
Renata shakes her head. She stares down at her steaming cup of coffee on the kitchen table. “He can’t drive my car?”
“He has to work!”
“I’m sorry.” Renata shuts her eyes. “You’ll have to skip today. That coach really wants you involved. I’m sure he’ll help you get caught up.”
What if I lose this opportunity? What if this ends my passport?
“Do you know anyone else who could drive you?” Renata asks.
I take in a short breath. I think. “Oh,” I say. “Yeah, maybe.”
Carli. I know where Carli lives. I saw her go into a house with a basketball hoop in front of it two days after we moved to Northrup. This is probably her house. I stand and begin to shove my giant shoes in a bag. I put my water bottle in there.
“What are you doing?” Renata asks.
“I will go ask for a ride.”
“Who? Why don’t you just call?”
“I don’t know her number.”
“Her? Do I know this person?” Renata asks.
“No,” I say, even though Renata probably does know her dad.
“I think I need to get you a cell phone.”
I stand up straight. “Why?” I ask.
“Because you have people to call,” she says.
Then I am out the door. I cut across the street and jog across the campus. It is getting mushy, springlike. There is fog in the air. There are puddles from snow melting. I am terrified deep in my heart to knock on Carli’s door. But I want to play basketball, basketball is my passport, basketball is my only true desire. I will knock. I will ring.
It takes me perhaps seven minutes to arrive at the house.
I ring the doorbell.
I ring it again.
There is no answer. There is no answer.
I ring the doorbell one more time.
There are creaking noises on the floor and footsteps. Someone is looking through the door’s little window! A kid! From inside I hear a little-girl voice say, “Carli?”
There is more creaking. Then Carli looks through the window. “You?” she asks.
“Yes!” I shout. “Me!”
The door swings open. Carli stands in an old wrinkled tank top and giant pajama pants with crocodiles all over them. She is very sleepy. She has some sort of metal brace thing stuck in her mouth. The little girl, her sister, stares at me from a few steps behind Carli.
“What are you doing, dude?” she asks. “You have to go to Chaska this morning.”
“Yes,” I say.
“So why are you here? Do you want to talk to my dad or something? He’s already on campus for Parents’ Weekend.”
“No. I . . . I . . . Barry Roland’s car door fell off.”
“What?” she says, and laughs.
“It’s not funny,” I say.
“Did he karate kick it?”
“No. The car is a piece of shit.”
“Yeah, it is!” she says. She looks like she is being tickled by little elves in her insides. “Oh man!” she says. “That is so crazy! Was he driving when it happened?”
I nod. I picture the door spinning on the street behind us. “That’s Barry Roland. He’s unlucky at life,” I say.
“He is,” she says. “So?”
“So? He was going to give me a ride to Chaska.”
She sniffs and leans toward me. Her eyes become smiling daggers. “So, I’m next man up? You got no one else? No family? No friends? No acquaintances?”
“No,” I say. Maybe this is what Barry means when he calls Carli mean? “Nobody.”
“That’s a sad story, dude.”
“Yes.”
“Guess I’m your girl, then. Come on in.” She smiles big and lets me in her house.
She smells so good.
Ten minutes later she has received permission from her mom, told her little sister she cannot come along, and we are riding in her SUV, which is much better than Barry’s shit show Pontiac (for instance, it has all its doors) and much better than Renata’s Toyota (I fit in here without my knees hitting my chest). Like Barry, Carli talks and talks (she asks me once if she talks too much, but I say, “No way. You talk good,” which makes me feel dumb). She also sings loudly to pop music.
She is a very bad singer. But I like her singing. It all makes me happy.
NINETEEN
MY REAL HOME
I want to puke like Regan’s elementary school friend who puked milk through her nose, which is a gross story Regan told me recently. I am breathing heavy, but no one can know. There is too much noise.
The gym at Chaska High School is large. The whole place is made of glass and metal like a spaceship in the movies. There are three courts with nets that go from the floor to the ceiling separating each. Carli and I have followed the sound of bouncing balls from the building’s entrance to here. And now I am glued in place and must seem in love with staring at these tall nets, because I am staring and staring. I am scared of looking at the basketball players who are all on courts across the gym floor, doing drills, shooting, while old men in basketball warm-ups watch and scribble on clipboards.
“Where are you supposed to go?” Carli asks. “Did they tell you which court?”
“I don’t know,” I mumble.
The oldest team—I believe they are the top team, because they are filled with boys who look like men—is on the court closest to me. I try not to look.
“Hey,” Carli shouts. “Hey there, Devin Mitchell!” She waves at a black kid who is easily my height but with many more muscles.
“What’s up, Carli?” he shouts back. “What you doing here? Girls don’t do tryouts until next week.”
She points at me and shrugs. He turns his eyes to me. They land heavy.
I look up and stare at the top of nets. They are some pretty tall nets.
“Devin used to come down to Dad’s camp every summer,” Carli says. “He’s the best player in the state. Plays for the Junior National Team, too. Bet he goes to Duke.”
“No,” I say quietly.
“No? You don’t think Duke?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are you okay?”
“No,” I say.
Basketball is your passport, basketball is your passport, basketball is your passport, I repeat in my head.
An older black guy with a clipboard comes into the gym at that moment. He has big shoulders and wears coaching shorts. He scans the room until his eyes hit me and Carli. A big smile breaks on his face. “Well, hello, Ms. Carli,” he says. “You provide some transportation this morning?”
“Yes I did, Coach Cliff,” she says, also smiling big. They do a little funny handshake. They act like they are old friends. He turns to me. “So glad you’re here, my man. I’m Coach Cliff.” He extends his hand. We shake.
“Yes,” I say. “Good.” My heart is thumping hard from nerves.
“16U is on the middle court,” he says. “We think you’ll fit there. Coach Kalland is leading the tryouts. They’re expecting you.”
“Go get ’em, Adam. I’m going to hang with the big boys,” Carli says.
“Just have some fun, son,” Coach Cliff says.
I nod, then run toward the middle court, into the middle of the net where I poke around, then I have to find my way back to
the outside, because there is no hole to get through. The boys on the middle court stop bouncing balls and watch me trying to find my way in.
Basketball is your passport. Basketball is your passport, I think.
It takes me ten seconds that feel more like several days. I look back at Carli, whose face has broken into a giant smile. This, of course, is funny to her. Then I find my way around the side and the boys start running drills. I stand and watch. I already feel better, my feet on the hardwood, my eyes scanning the competition.
There are two boys at 16U tryouts who are as tall or taller than me. One is a white kid, Sean, who is slow as molasses in January (Coach Jenson used to call Greg Day “slow as molasses in January” back in our practices). Sean can’t move his big feet and he can’t jump, but he has muscles and is good at shooting the ball. The other is kid is skinny. His name is Mohammed. He is long like he’s made of rubber bands that can stretch across the floor. He has a good touch when he shoots. Good for him. He is a better shooter than me. Sadly, I would break him in half if I played against him in a game, because I am explosive. I say this not to brag, but only because it’s true.
The other boys are much smaller but are pretty good at basketball.
After some time, Coach Kalland, who is running the drills, points to me. He says, “Adam Reed, right? Come over here. I’d like to test out Sean and Mohammed on defense a little.”
I would prefer to stretch, shoot some drills to get ready, but what can I do? I pull off the top part of my warm-up and drop it on the floor. I realize I have not even changed into my new shoes (I only wear basketball shoes, but the ones I have on are kind of worn-out). I still have on my pants.
I jog on the court, and the coach tosses me the ball and points me to go to the right wing. Sean lines up in front of me, spreads his long boy arms, and settles back on his heels. I head fake left. His knees lock. I dribble past him on the right and slam-dunk the ball. He has not even moved.
“Shit,” he says.
The smaller boys standing around the baseline all whoop and make a whole bunch of noise.
“Dang, kid,” Coach Kalland says. “That’s fast.”
“Yes,” I say. “No. Maybe,” I say.
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