“Was your grandpa sad?” Saundra asks.
“I found out he is dead also. I have nobody, except basketball.”
“Except your adopted mother, who sounds like a remarkable woman,” Mrs. Mitchell says.
“Yeah,” I say. “I have Renata and basketball.”
“Man,” Devin says quietly, shaking his head, “we didn’t know what we were doing when we messed with you.”
“Messed with him?” Mr. Mitchell asks.
“Not really messed,” I say. “Just playing basketball.”
Devin laughs, but it is not a happy laugh. Maybe it’s more like a sigh.
“Well, Adam Sobieski, you have an incredible story,” Mrs. Mitchell says.
She says my name that is not my name, and my chest aches. “I’m Adam Reed. Renata’s last name is Reed.”
“Dude, Sobieski is fearsome, though,” Khalil says.
“Reed’s not,” Rashid says.
“You don’t remember Willis Reed, then,” Mr. Mitchell says. “Great NBA player. Hell of a business executive, too.”
But I am not listening. I know Sobieski is badass. I miss my name so much. Renata took it, but she also gave me a life. I miss my real mom. I could fall onto the floor of the Mitchell’s house.
It doesn’t help when Saundra plays a recording of the Chopin nocturne I heard in the park that day Renata found me. I have a hard time holding myself together. It’s good that Mr. Doig has his sixty-fourth birthday. It’s good that we eat cake and ice cream and everybody stops looking at me.
I go and take a few more pics of the big house for Jesse. Then I hide in the bathroom and press my fists into my eyes. Jesse loves the pictures when I get back to the dorm.
I have not thought much about my name in a couple of years. But then Professor Mike brings it up when he cooks for us. Then Regan says it’s a better name than Reed. Then Khalil says it’s a better name. It is a better name, because it’s my name.
I am Adam Sobieski. I am not Adam Reed.
What if I didn’t sit down next to Renata in the park that day?
I would be dead, maybe.
THIRTY-ONE
WE ARE A TEAM
The next morning, there is a final practice before camp breaks. We spend most of the time scrimmaging and our motion offense looks good. The only time the offense grinds to a halt is when I catch the ball outside the block and the defense gets time to sag away to let me take a jumper. Rashid just smiles and nods, because he knows I hate jumpers. I dribble and look. Dribble and look. Someone must get open.
“Pull the dang trigger, Adam!” Coach Cliff shouts.
Then I do, with great hesitance, and the rock is more like a brick crashing against the rim and bouncing away.
It is rare, though, that I hang on to the ball, that I don’t find a good passing lane or drive to the basket very fast.
During the final five minutes, all the Fury teams from all the ages, from girls’ side and dudes’ side, all come to watch us. The presence of this audience makes us all play harder, and I am sad to say that Rashid scores two buckets against me.
He has long arms, and although I jump higher, it seems he is able to jump sometimes twice when I only jump once, so he is good at tipping the ball out from me on rebounds and then scoring the ball before I can do my second jump to block him. He is so good.
But I score, too. On the final play, with only a few seconds left on the clock, Khalil drives, then finds Devin swinging to the three-point line on the far left. Rashid hedges and jumps out to defend, and I think Devin will shoot, so I dive behind Rashid to collect the rebound if necessary. Instead of shooting, Devin sees I am wide open and he lofts the ball sweetly into the air. I leap, catch the ball, and slam it home. Rashid, who cannot stop me after overplaying on defense, screams, “Noooo, Farmer! No way! How do you get so many lobs, dude?”
I shrug. I smile. We high-five.
Mr. Doig uses the air horn to show our game is over, and then Khalil and Rashid come in and hug me tight like I am their long-lost brother. Devin hangs back but fist-bumps me.
“Warm-up games two and three weeks out, boys. Just a month until the Hampton, Virginia Nike Elite Tournament. And you know what?”
“What?” everybody shouts.
“I’m feeling good!” Coach Cliff says. “Real good! We got ourselves more than a showcase for talent. We got ourselves a team. I bet we hand those Owens boys their butts, isn’t that right, Farmer?”
Yes. We are a team.
Carli Anderson is watching. I think she has tears in her eyes. Maybe the beauty of my basketball game has made her cry? Maybe she likes the girls she hangs with here better than the pouty-face girls at home. Those girls seem boring and mean, so I understand. Carli spends a long time hugging these girls here.
Then it is me who wants to cry. The Minneapolis Academy camp was the best. Not just for basketball. Am I Polish? I have been sociable. I have spoken like a Polish guy speaks. I am being me.
THIRTY-TWO
I AM KING
Carli is sad on the car ride home. She disobeyed doctor’s orders and played a scrimmage with her friends. It was not good. She is weak. She is slow. She was fine shooting when no one guarded her, but she has no lift, no shot when someone has a hand in her face.
“I suck. It’s like I’m broken,” she says.
“You are broken. That’s what an injury is,” Coach Anderson says.
“I know.”
We stop so she can get ice. Her knee has swollen up.
I can tell Coach Anderson is not happy with her, so it’s good when he changes the subject and talks about motion offense.
“Motion works best if you’re like a close-knit family. You want to know exactly where each of you are going to go.”
“Khalil and Devin act like brothers already,” Carli says. “You’ll be good.”
I hope they will be my brothers.
When the Andersons drop me off at my house, I am deflated like a balloon. I don’t want this weekend to be over. I don’t want to be home in tiny Northrup. I am not in any mood to tell Renata everything that has happened to me.
I get inside. She asks so many questions. I feel tired. I feel not happy to see her. Maybe because she has taken my name and made me Reed? I answer with yes, no, shrugs.
But then we go to Professor Mike’s for dinner. I don’t know why, but I am very happy to see Regan and Margery. There I talk more than I ever do. I review the whole weekend, tell all about the basketball and about Devin’s house and Jesse’s bleeding nose and even how Carli snuck to my dorm room to give me information to help me survive.
Regan and Margery think Carli would make a good assassin. I agree.
It’s when I report that Devin’s grandma is Jevetta Mitchell, famous jazz singer, that Renata finally reacts.
“What? Are you kidding? Why didn’t you tell me that when you got home? I asked you for . . . you said nothing, Adam! I grew up listening to Jevetta! Papa loves her! I took you to see her perform, and you don’t tell me that you went to her house?”
“Yes, but it wasn’t really her house, so I forgot,” I say.
Renata stands up, looks at me hard, then walks out of the kitchen.
I don’t say I’m sorry, even though I feel wounded in my chest.
I maybe don’t understand myself at all? The next morning at breakfast, I don’t want to talk to Barry, either. He has not taken my name, so what is my problem? I don’t know.
His shin has healed enough that he can go back to his regular workouts in tae kwon do. “My second-degree black belt test is next month? Will you guys come and see it? It’s a pretty big deal. There’s a grand master coming over from Mankato to do the judging.”
Renata smiles. “Of course. Second-degree? That is a very big deal!”
Renata doesn’t know anything about black belts. I roll my eyes at her.
“Yeah,” Barry says. “I’ve thought a lot about being Shinja, and it’s not a good idea, you know?”
“Yeah
, I agree,” Renata says. Then she stares hard at me again. “Do you have something to say, Adam?” she asks.
“Hardening your shins was stupid,” I say.
“Well, yeah, I know?” Barry says.
On the car ride to school, Barry won’t talk to me, which makes me feel bad. “Renata is pissing me off,” I say. “I am in a bad mood with her.”
“She’s the best mom I ever met,” Barry says.
But the truth is, I don’t want to hang out with Barry either, and I feel pissed at him for being around so much. I want to be with the Fury. And I want to be with Carli, who knows basketball.
On Tuesday, I see her in the hall. Even though she is talking to her friends, girls who don’t like to look at me, I walk up and say, “Can we hit the college gym, dude? You have to show me how to shoot a jump shot better.”
“Yeah, man,” she says. “I’ll check with my dad tonight. Maybe tomorrow?” She looks at her friend. This girl is rolling her eyes in her head. This girl is mad? Why doesn’t she like me? I don’t know why. Here I am speaking, not acting like a basketball-playing freak show!
“Dope,” I say.
“Yup,” Carli says. “Okay.”
Her other friend looks away from me.
I don’t care. I am Adam Sobieski in my heart. I can handle their faces.
But I am also aware that Carli was not so happy I approached her.
The next morning, Barry doesn’t show up for breakfast. He doesn’t call, either. That puts Renata in a bad mood, because she’s made food for him. I leave early to walk to school. It’s drizzling. I am mad.
But just as I get to the sidewalk in front of school, Carli pulls into the parking lot. “Farmer!” she calls out. “Wait up!”
Farmer? I am beginning to like the name Farmer.
She jogs across the lot, dodges cars, waves at a couple of people.
“Good jogging,” I say.
“Yeah, my knee feels good today!”
“No swelling?”
“Some swelling. But that’s to be expected. Anyway, Dad says we’re cool tonight. The gym will be empty with spring break. So you in? Do a little ballin’?”
Of course I am in.
After school, I run all the way home and put on warm-ups. I’m about to leave the house when Renata arrives with groceries.
“What are you doing?” she asks.
“Going to the Trinity gym.”
“It’s open?”
“Coach Anderson is letting me and his daughter in for a workout.”
Renata takes a deep breath. “Michael and the girls are coming over for dinner,” she says. “I’m cooking. I could use some help.”
“Um. No. I have to work out. For the Fury, okay? Because you want me to play for them, right?”
“Could you have told me this morning?” she asks. Her face is red.
“I didn’t know this morning. But I have to go.”
“Fine. Okay. Go,” Renata says.
Carli and I meet outside the gym, and she talks and talks about nothing at all and I am happy. Inside we take warm-up shots.
“I lifted hard yesterday. I can feel my knee getting stronger underneath me, dude. That crap scrimmage up in Minneapolis is no big deal. I’m going to be fine, okay? I’m totally going to be a beast next year!” she shouts. “I’m going to be me again!”
I don’t know what she means by “beast.” She is too beautiful. But I do know how basketball can give you back yourself. And it’s so good to see her take real shots. She jumps more today. A little, at least. A week ago she shot more from the balls of her feet.
“I don’t feel pain!” she says. “This is awesome!” She tosses another shot from beyond the three-point line. It swishes. She shoots and shoots. Six straight, one after the other, without missing. Finally one bounces off the back of the cylinder. “Oh my God, I feel good.” She’s not talking to me, just saying the words into the air.
“My turn?” I ask.
“It’s going to be over fast, dude. Shoot till you miss.”
I take a few shots then. Each one rattles off the rim.
“Shoot till you make?” She laughs.
“What’s my problem, okay? That I shoot from the top of my jump, right? But I tried shooting from just after, like when I’m coming down, like double pumping? Made me much worse.”
Carli nods. “You’re so messed up, dude.”
“I know. I can feel it. I am unnatural.”
“Yes.” She laughs. “Very unnatural.”
“Uh-huh.”
“But I can fix you,” she says, like she is a mad scientist. Carli moves to me. She puts her hands on my shoulders. “First, square up, man. You’re leading with your right side too much.” She straightens me. “You do this weird hop thing, too, when you shoot. Just step forward a little bit with your shot-side leg.” She grabs the back of my right leg, above my knee, and pulls it a few inches toward her. I am naturally lowered to her height. We are so close, and I have stopped breathing. Then she lifts my arms up. The ball is in my hand. “Your elbow should be shoulder level, ninety-degree angle over your leg.” She bends my elbow. “Balance the ball in your right hand. You shoot kind of two-handed now, which doesn’t help.” I put all the ball’s weight on my right hand.
She is wearing a large T-shirt with the sleeves rolled. I am staring at her muscular shoulder. I can smell her deodorant, maybe? It’s very fresh. “Are you paying attention?” she asks. Then I am staring in her eyes. She is staring in my eyes. She swallows. She blushes. She says quietly, “Now, without jumping, just extend and follow through. Put the ball in the net.” I shoot without my eyes leaving hers. The ball arches up and down. It goes through the net soft. I know it has happened, but she doesn’t.
Except she does. “That sounded like a swish,” she whispers.
I nod. We stare. We breathe. She swallows.
Then she shoves me away. “See? I can teach you, dude!”
I think I am going to fall over on the floor.
She turns and gets the ball and begins talking in Carli speed. “Okay. I’m going to feed you the ball. Visualize this. You are going to be square to the basket, have your legs under you, your elbow cocked, and you are going to pull the trigger right before you get to the top of your jump. Not at the top. Not after the top. Before. Dad taught me to do it by bending my knees, lifting, shooting, then hopping with your follow-through. Like all in slow motion. Want to try that?”
But I have only half listened. Because I want to try something else. I want to put my arms around Carli and put my face into her neck. I want to breathe her in and then I want to take her for meals and buy her cars and a house and a nice couch and get married and then watch TV and eat some good food on our couch after we come back from our jobs. Then we’ll go to sleep together.
A shock of fear goes through me. Is it good for me to like her so much?
“Hey?” she says. “Okay?”
“Okay,” I say. Just play basketball.
She tosses me a bounce pass. I take a deep breath. She instructs. I do what she says, and in forty-five minutes my jump shot has improved by maybe fifty percent. No, I don’t make a bunch from behind the three-point line. Not even close. But nearer, midrange, the ball goes in more, and if not in, it arches and bounces so much softer than ever before on the rim.
“You’re getting it! You’ll get good at this, dude,” Carli tells me. “Now rebound for me. I’m going to hit marks.”
For the next twenty minutes, she moves from one X to another X, all of them taped on the floor. She doesn’t go fast because she can’t cut. But she is light on her feet. I send her a pass and she catches, lifts, and shoots. Oh boy, Carli is a baller.
No. Baller is too tiny a word. Carli is more than a baller. She is great with the ball and she has swagger, but also she is so much more. She has taken all of this time to help me, even while she needs to be helping herself. She is generous? She is good in her heart? She is a baller plus something.
She takes a
shot from ten feet behind the three-point line. It is a heave, but the ball goes through the air in a perfect arc. It slides onto the side of the rim and rolls around it, like water going down the drain. Hoop. Hoop. Circle. Hooper. Maybe hooper is a better word? The ball drops through.
“You’re a great hooper, okay?” I say.
“Yeah?” Carli stops. The ball bounces on the floor behind me. Her face is red. She glistens with sweat. There are dark patches on her T-shirt.
“Yes. Great hooper.”
Carli flexes her knee. “I’m a very sore hooper, dude. Better go home and ice.”
“I don’t want you to go home,” I say.
“That sounds a little psycho, boy.”
“I’m having a good time,” I say.
“Yeah.” She smiles, and her eyes crinkle. “Me too.”
When I get home, Professor Mike and Renata are slow dancing in one spot in the living room to the song “Blue Moon” playing on our record turntable. Renata waves at me, then puts her head on Professor Mike’s chest. Professor Mike smiles at me, too.
Okay. Okay. This is fine. But my stomach twists at the sight of them.
Margery and Regan roll dice on the dining room table. They are writing down numbers on a piece of notebook paper.
“What do you want your cleric to be named?” Margery asks me.
“I don’t know what you mean,” I say.
“For Dungeons and Dragons. Dad and Renata said you’d play,” Regan says.
“No, uh-uh. I got homework,” I say.
“Well, then for later. What is your name?” Margery asks.
“Hooper,” I say.
“Bad,” Margery says.
“Hooper the Cleric?” Regan says. “Boo.”
“That’s a dragon name,” Margery says.
“Fine, I’m a dragon. I don’t care about no cleric. I don’t even know what one is.”
“No cleric is not proper English,” Margery says.
“I don’t give a shit about English,” I say.
Hooper Page 10
