Fast Break

by Mike Lupica

“I’m not, kid. Keep your head low or you’ll end up in the foster care system.”

  Richie said he didn’t have much time, so Jayson had to listen up. He said he’d paid two months of the electric bill and a month of rent. They also had another month’s rent on deposit.

  And that was it. Richie shook Jayson’s hand and walked out the door, Jayson thinking at the time that at least Richie would be the last guy ever to leave his mom.

  3

  JAYSON WAS NEVER THE BEST student. He was plenty smart enough, but school just wasn’t his thing.

  Until this year, at least. It wasn’t some new teacher or subject that made Jayson so excited about seventh grade at Moreland East Middle School—it was basketball. There was a new competition for middle school teams all across the state—public and private schools included. If you won the league tournament at the end of your regular season, you got a chance to play in the county tournament. If you won that, you got a chance to compete in the first-ever middle-grade basketball championship in the basketball-crazed state of North Carolina. The best part? The finals would be played at Cameron Indoor Stadium—the home of the Duke Blue Devils.

  So their coach, Mr. Rankin, had asked the kids he’d picked for the team to focus on school ball this year instead of rec ball or AAU ball. Jayson had gone along.

  “This new league is going to be a huge deal,” Coach Rankin had told the guys, “and I think if we make it to the states, it would be the best chance for you to shine, and for people to see you, including from prep schools all up and down the East Coast.

  “Plus, Cameron Indoor! Doesn’t get better than that in college ball. Might as well check the place out before you play there for real someday,” Mr. Rankin had said, smiling at Jayson.

  In my dreams, Jayson had thought.

  There were four teams in the new league from Moreland: Moreland East; Moreland West; St. Patrick’s, which was a Catholic school; and Belmont Country Day, a private school on the west side of town in the area known as the Hills. Jayson knew all the teams were going to be good, because he’d played against most of the guys on the other teams in rec leagues. There were eight teams in the league, total.

  But Jayson knew something else.

  The Moreland East Mavericks were loaded, and not just because they had Jayson and Tyrese in the backcourt. They also had Shabazz, who was already 5'10" He looked even skinnier than Jayson, just because he was so much taller, but he was strong, could shoot and pass, and run the court. According to Shabazz, his family doctor said he might grow another foot before he was through. For now, though, Shabazz being 5'10" was just fine for Jayson. Jayson had somebody who could keep up with him on the break even when Shabazz was the one who’d start the break with a rebound and outlet pass. And Shabazz was somebody who already understood, just from playing with Jayson so much last season, how they could both make a living off the high pick-and-roll.

  In addition to Shabazz, Ty, and Jayson, the Mavericks had Paul Henderson at power forward, and Raymond Bretton at small forward, who was maybe the best pure shooter on the team. Terry Thompson was their first player off the bench; he could play small forward or come in for Tyrese at shooting guard.

  Right before the team’s first practice, Mr. Rankin passed out their jerseys. He gave Jayson the first pick, his teammates all knowing he would go with number 3, Chris Paul’s number, Paul being his favorite player. Tyrese then took number 4, saying that he wanted that one so nothing could come between him and Jayson, not even a number.

  After each player had a uniform number, it was time to play. Then it was like all the other basketball days and nights in Jayson’s life. For a little while he wouldn’t be tired or hungry or worried about money or Child Protective Services or having to forge his mom’s name on homework papers.

  For the next two hours, he was in charge of the world. He was the one with the ball in his hands, the one who could make things happen the way he wanted them to. It was another day when nobody could get in front of him, or stop him.

  He ran the court on a fast break and kicked it to Tyrese in the places on the wing that Ty liked to call his sweet spots. He lobbed passes to Shabazz and put the ball on the floor and drove into the paint against Ricky Moore, the backup point guard, getting to the rim whenever he wanted to.

  And like always he played mad, showing mercy for no one. He loved attacking the second-teamers in particular, telling himself it wasn’t his job to make them look like first-stringers; that was their job. If he could embarrass them, he would.

  Jayson never doubted he was a good teammate. He knew guys had always wanted to play on his team, not just because of the way he passed the ball, but because he gave them the best chance to win. In his mind, though, the only teammates who mattered were the four he was on the court with at any given moment.

  Someday, basketball was going to be his ticket out of this town, and not in the middle of the night, the way it had been for Richie.

  It was a good, hard practice today, the first team looking as if they didn’t just want to make it to Cameron Indoor, but wanted to try their luck playing the Duke Blue Devils when they got there. When it was over, the guys split up to shoot free throws, and Coach Rankin called Jayson over.

  “I see you’ve been working on your left hand,” Coach Rankin said.

  “I work on my whole game, all the time,” Jayson said, the words having a little bite to them.

  “You know, it wouldn’t kill you to smile once in a while out there,” Coach said. “Let your teammates see that basketball makes you as happy as it does them.”

  “It does make me happy.” Even Jayson heard the edge in his voice.

  Coach nodded, a smile on his face that Jayson couldn’t quite read. Then he looked down at Jayson’s sneakers: dirty low-cut Nikes that Jayson had already grown out of. He’d had to cut a small hole for his right big toe. Sometimes he’d have to soak his feet at night from running around all day in basketball shoes that were at least a size too small.

  “Everything good at home?” Coach asked.

  “Never better.” Jayson forced a smile.

  “Still saving up for new sneakers for the season?”

  “I’ll have ’em by next week,” Jayson said. “Just waiting for the right time to go shopping with my mom. Got my eyes on some Zooms, blue-and-white, like our colors. And same color as the Blue Devils, perfect for when we walk onto the court at Cameron Indoor.”

  The last part was true, at least. The Zooms. The colors.

  “Can’t wait to see them,” Coach said. “Now go knock down some free throws with the guys.”

  Jayson did, taking his turn with Ty and Shabazz, doing what he always did, pretending he had to make the next two to win the game. When they were done shooting, he looked around the gym, saw his teammates, saw them laughing and chasing down balls, still felt all the life in the place even with practice winding down.

  This had always been the best time of the year for Jayson, no matter what was going on at home. Just having a team around him, like his basketball family was his real family, like the gym was his own safe place.

  But Jayson was feeling out of place now.

  He might’ve been the best player out there, might even have been the best twelve-year-old player in the county. Yet he was also the only player who couldn’t afford a pair of new basketball shoes.

  4

  IF YOU WERE TWELVE OR under, you could ride the buses for free in the tri-valley area, even from town to town.

  Jayson needed six buses and nearly two hours to do it, but he finally made it to Percy. He thought about going past Percy, but he figured he’d be safe here, it was far enough away from Moreland.

  He didn’t want anyone to recognize him in the store.

  Of course, it only mattered if he made a mistake. So far he hadn’t made any mistakes stealing food, hadn’t been caught a single time.

 
On the way to Percy he kept telling himself that this was no different, and no harder, than stealing a loaf of bread or a jar of Jif peanut butter. Telling himself he needed new sneaks to get by. That he’d had plenty of practice taking what he needed by now, that he knew how to do it and get away.

  Just pick the right moment. Be cool and do it.

  He remembered something Richie once told him: “It’s only a crime if you get caught.”

  Jayson didn’t plan on getting caught.

  The store he’d picked out was a Foot Locker in the middle of downtown Percy, a Starbucks on one side of it, a Dunkin’ Donuts across the street. He figured they must like their coffee here. He’d gotten off at a bus stop two blocks away on Main Street. The bus stop was next to a small white church, and Jayson could see a playground with a hoop and what looked like a half-court behind the church. He noticed that the hoop had a net attached to it. Nice.

  Nothing in this town reminded him of the Pines.

  He walked up and down Main Street for a while, his eyes taking everything in at once the way they did when he was playing a game, looking at the players in front of him. The steeple on the church, women pushing baby strollers, people smiling at each other, looking happy. He wondered what it would be like to have this world be his world, have this town be his town.

  He passed a kid his age on the street and wondered what there was to be afraid of in Percy, knowing it couldn’t be something as simple as a knock on the door.

  He had worn an old, beat-up pair of black sliders, with socks, knowing how geeked-out socks made you look when you wore them with a pair of flip-flops. But he knew that when he made it out of the Foot Locker with his new sneakers, he didn’t want to be leaving his old Kobes behind. Even though they were too small, he was going to use them until they fell apart, and didn’t want to wear his new ones outside on concrete until he absolutely had to.

  You needed two pairs of sneakers, even if you had to steal one of them.

  Finally he stood outside the Foot Locker, across the street, watching the people go in and out. Kids going in with a parent, sometimes two, then coming out later carrying bags. Sometimes the kids were already wearing their new shoes; Jayson recognized the newness of them all the way across the street, trying to remember what that new-shoe feel was really like.

  He took a deep breath and walked across the street and through the front door, feeling a little bit like he did when a game was about to begin.

  He told himself to keep thinking like that, keep telling himself this was just a game. It was easy, the stuff you could convince yourself of when you wanted, the lies you could tell yourself. So Jayson, all the way over here and through all the waiting, had convinced himself that Foot Locker wasn’t going out of business if they got shorted the cost of one pair of new kicks. No one would even notice.

  There was a lot going on inside the store, all these salespeople wearing their black-and-white striped shirts. They seemed to be moving every which way, running to get boxes of sneakers, talking to customers, some of them wearing little headsets with microphones attached. Music blared with a thumping bass. And, luckily, there were no security scanners by the door. Right away Jayson knew he’d gotten lucky, that by accident he’d picked the perfect store.

  “Something I can help you with?” a voice behind him said, over the music, startling him.

  He turned around and saw a tall, skinny, smiling black kid in one of those striped ref shirts. The badge in front said “De’Ron.”

  “Just looking.”

  “Well, if you need help finding anything, give me a shout,” De’Ron said. “And, dude, I do mean shout,” he added with a smile.

  “Thanks.”

  Jayson wasn’t ready yet. So he walked along the walls, where all the sneakers were displayed by brand, some of them costing as much as $200.

  He realized after a while that he was spending as much time checking out the kids in here and their parents as he was the rows of shoes in front of him, watching them talk and laugh and point, all of them just having a normal Saturday afternoon, just living their lives.

  Jayson thought, And I’m living mine.

  He finally caught De’Ron’s eye and gave him the nod, took him over and showed him the Zooms, told him his size. Then, because he’d planned it out this way, he also asked for some Mad Handle 2s, slightly more expensive, same size.

  “Might end up spending all my birthday money today,” Jayson said, giving De’Ron a fake smile.

  He sat down, waited for De’Ron to come back with both boxes, and tried on the Mad Handle 2s first. He took his time lacing them up, hoping that De’Ron would go help somebody else, a paying customer, and maybe even forget that Jayson was here.

  “How those feel?” De’Ron said when Jayson had both of them on.

  “Real sweet,” Jayson said. “Now let’s try the others.” Then he went through the same slow process with the Zooms.

  “How those feel?” De’Ron said.

  “Just as sweet.”

  “Walk around on them a little bit to make sure.”

  Jayson made sure not to walk toward the door; he walked toward the back of the store instead. It felt even more crowded in here now than when he first came in. Even the music seemed louder. Jayson gave one quick look back, saw De’Ron talking to another customer, smiling and nodding, and told himself that he couldn’t feel bad here the way he did when he was stealing food from Mr. Karlini’s store. Told himself that he was just doing what he had to do to survive. That he needed basketball to survive as much as he needed food.

  He waited until he caught De’Ron’s eye, gave him another fake smile, came back to where he’d been sitting.

  “I’m not sure. They’re a little bit tight now that I walk in them. I’d better try the Handles on one more time,” Jayson said. “Somebody told me once, if they don’t fit in the store, they’ll never fit. And, you know, they’ve got to be just right.”

  “Tell me about it. You a player?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Whereabouts?”

  “Akersville.”

  Lying really was like ball. More you did it, better you got at it.

  Jayson tried the Adidas back on, shook his head, put the Zooms on, and frowned. De’Ron seemed to be losing interest; there were other people waiting to be helped.

  “Can I try the next half-size up?” Jayson asked. “Just so I can make sure?”

  “Lemme make sure we’ve got them,” De’Ron said.

  Now De’Ron was the one walking toward the back of the store. Jayson turned and looked at the front door, saw a man and woman about to come through it with their daughter.

  Now.

  This was like an opening in a game, the daylight you got between defenders, one that opened fast and closed even faster.

  He walked toward the exit, telling himself not to hurry, and held the door open for the little girl. The mom said, “Well, thank you! Maybe manners aren’t dead in our little town after all.”

  “You’re welcome.” Jayson kept his head down and waited for the whole family to enter, then calmly walked out the door, like he was on the court, using them as a screen.

  Not even breathing now.

  He’d scoped out Main Street before entering the store, knew that the closest side street was to his left when he got out on the sidewalk. He’d seen that there was a pretty long block once you turned the corner, with more side streets splitting off from there.

  Jayson walked left, heart pounding, still telling himself not to hurry when what he really wanted to do was run. The one thing he’d stopped to do once he got outside was pull down his sweatpants so they’d cover the white of the new sneakers, which he imagined were brighter than headlights on a car.

  Once he made the left at the corner, then he was going to run, to use his speed when he needed it the most.

  Alm
ost there.

  That’s when he felt a large hand clamp down on his shoulder.

  “Where do you think you’re going, son?” a man’s voice said.

  Jayson turned around to find a tall white-haired man. He wasn’t wearing a striped shirt, just a short-sleeved one that said “Foot Locker” on the front, and underneath that, “Manager.”

  “I was just looking for my mom,” Jayson said. “She was supposed to meet me here.”

  “Look at me,” the man said.

  Jayson looked up.

  “Don’t lie to me,” the man said.

  “It’s the truth!” Jayson said.

  “Don’t make it worse, son.”

  Staring at him now.

  “Do I know you?”

  Jayson looked back down. “No.”

  “Wait . . . I do know you. My team played a game against you in summer ball over in Moreland last year. Nobody forgets a kid who can play like you.”

  Jayson had nothing to say to that.

  “We’re going to take a walk back to the store now,” the man said. “And when we get there, we do need to find your mom and figure out what to do about those sneakers you just tried to steal.”

  Jayson thought about breaking loose, making a run for it. But it was too late for that, especially now that the man knew who he was.

  The man kept his hand on Jayson’s shoulder as they walked back down Main Street. Jayson told himself he wasn’t going to cry in front of this man, even though he felt like crying for the first time since they put his mom in the ground.

  He walked toward the store and knew in his heart that he was being walked right into the Child Protective Services system. He didn’t know how it worked or where he was going, but he was smart enough to know that the game was officially over.

  5

  THE SOCIAL WORKER, MS. MORETTI, sat across the desk from Jayson.

  They were in her office in Moreland’s town hall, on Broad Avenue, early Saturday night. It had been a few hours since Jayson had tried to steal the sneakers, but it seemed like everything that had happened since had happened fast.