Fast Break

by Mike Lupica

  The ball ended up out of bounds. But no one else on the team was worried about the ball; they were worried about Bryan Campbell, sitting on the ground, head in his hands.

  He didn’t stay down long. Not even wanting any help, he popped up himself, the side of his face already swollen, and told Coach Rooney he wanted to stay in the game. Coach told him he should get some ice on his face, but Bryan said that could wait until after practice was over. Coach patted him on the shoulder, telling him to run to the other end of the court and get a stop.

  As Bryan ran alongside Jayson, he said, “No worries, dude. I’m good.”

  He put out his fist.

  Jayson left it hanging in the air between them. “Next time, pay attention.”

  10

  THE RED TEAM SCORED THE last basket, Marty Samuels making a long jumper even though Bryan had a hand in his face.

  The white team had to run the gut busters. Exhausted from practice, anger filling up his lungs, Jason still ran as hard as he could to blow off some steam, barely glancing around at the rest of the players from the losing white team running alongside him. He was still steamed about losing a game his team should’ve won.

  The other kids hit the showers when practice was over. Jayson just threw his school clothes into his bag and got out of the locker room as quickly as he could. As unhappy as he was with the way the scrimmage had ended, he was just relieved that his first day at Belmont was finally over.

  Only it wasn’t over just yet.

  Coach Rooney was waiting for him in the hall.

  “Mind if I walk out with you?” he said to Jayson.

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “Nope.”

  They walked past the common room and the cafeteria, Jayson’s long day stretching even longer.

  “I talked to your coach at your old school,” Coach Rooney said. “And I know some of the coaches from your rec leagues. I didn’t ask them what kind of player you are; you’re going to get the chance to show me that yourself. I asked them what kind of teammate you are. And they all said you were a great one. A team player who loves to run the fast break and find the open man. They said other kids don’t like playing against you, but just about all of them love playing with you.”

  Jayson didn’t say anything. He wasn’t going to respond to another adult who thought he knew stuff about Jayson’s life without really knowing him.

  “Jayson, I’m not going to blow smoke at you; that’s not me,” Coach said. “I can’t change your past, and I’m not going to try. As far as I’m concerned, you and I are starting with a clean slate. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “But what is not okay,” Coach Rooney said, “is the way you acted today.”

  Jayson didn’t say anything, just bit his lip to fight back the anger taking hold of him, the anger he could never stop when someone challenged him. On anything.

  “I want you on my team, make no mistake about that. And so do the kids back in that room, despite the way you treated them. But if you’re going to play on this team, you need to respect your teammates and your coach.”

  “I played the way I play,” Jayson said. “That’s just who I am. Always playing at full speed.”

  “No,” Coach Rooney said. “You played mad. But what you’ve got to get straight is that when you show up for practice tomorrow, you cannot take out your anger on your teammates or on me. That’s not allowed in my gym.”

  “Or what?”

  Coach Rooney tilted his head now, frowning, like Jayson had confused him.

  “Really?” he said. “That’s how you want to play this?”

  “I don’t know what you want me to say,” Jayson said. “I didn’t ask to have this conversation any more than I asked to be at this school.”

  “But you are here, that’s the thing. And you’re stuck with me as long as you’re at this school, and on this team, which looks like it’s going to have a shot to win big. So you need to decide if you’d rather stay mad and lose a spot on this team, or if you want to act like a team player.”

  “I play mad,” Jayson said. “I’ve always played mad. Doesn’t mean I’m not a team player.”

  “Well, I’m asking—no, telling—you to keep it under control,” Coach Rooney said. “What you need to do, starting tomorrow, is make the best of this situation or risk losing your spot on this team.”

  Coach Rooney paused, looking right at Jayson. “Am I making myself clear?”

  Jayson nodded.

  “Have a good night,” Coach said, and walked back down the hallway to the locker room.

  Jayson watched him go, then turned and walked toward the front door.

  Not just wanting to get away from Belmont Khaki Day—wanting to get away from his new life.

  • • •

  Mrs. Lawton handed him the cell phone from his bedroom when they got home.

  “I noticed you didn’t take this with you. It may not be the latest update, but it’ll more than do. It has some bells and whistles, like they all do these days,” Mrs. Lawton said. “You want me to show you how to work it?”

  “I’ll figure it out.”

  “You didn’t say much on the way home about how your day went,” Mrs. Lawton said.

  “Great,” Jayson said, not caring whether she picked up on the sarcasm in his voice or not.

  He left her standing there, went upstairs, and showered so quickly it was like somebody was timing him. He changed into a T-shirt and the worn-out jeans he’d brought with him from the Pines, sat down at the desk in his room, and fired up his laptop, a really old model handed down to him from his mom. He searched for Tyrese’s phone number in the small list he had in his contacts.

  He punched out the number on his new cell phone, the first cell phone call he’d ever made.

  Went straight to voice mail: “This is Tyrese. Leave a message and I’ll hit you back.”

  He left his number and told Tyrese to call him as soon as he could because they needed to talk.

  He went down to dinner, but he didn’t say very much while eating. Mr. and Mrs. Lawton tried to ask him about his first day at Belmont, like they wanted him to take them through it minute by minute.

  Finally they gave up on asking about school, and focused on basketball practice instead.

  “How’s the team look?” Mr. Lawton said.

  “Okay, I guess.”

  “Just okay?”

  “We scrimmaged. I learned a couple of plays. Met the guys and the coach.” Jayson wasn’t about to tell them about his blowup.

  “Wade Rooney,” Mr. Lawton said. “I hear good things about him.”

  Jayson shrugged.

  Then he said: “May I be excused?”

  “You don’t even know what we’ve got for dessert,” Mrs. Lawton said.

  “I’m kind of full.”

  “Do you have much homework?” she asked.

  “A little. I got some done between school and practice.”

  “Well, have at it,” Mr. Lawton said. “Duke is playing Michigan State in that Coaches vs. Cancer tournament on ESPN later. Maybe we can catch some of it before you go to bed?”

  “Maybe,” Jayson said.

  As he stood up, Mrs. Lawton said, “Jayson?”

  “What?”

  “I just want you to know that we’re going to do this at your pace.”

  “Do what?”

  “All of this,” she said. “Getting to know each other. There’s no pressure. Okay?”

  Jayson nearly laughed. “No pressure, huh?”

  Mrs. Lawton looked him in the eyes. “If there’s anything you need, or anything you’re not getting from Tom or me, or anything we’re doing that’s making this harder for you, I want you to let us know. We want you to feel at home here, Jayson.”

  He excused himself from dinner, j
ust wanting to go to his room after a day of being hounded by his coach, his teammates, and now the Lawtons. When he was almost out of the dining room, he turned back around. “There is one thing.”

  “Yes?” Mrs. Lawton almost sounded excited.

  “Please stop trying to act like you’re my new parents and everything’s okay,” he said. “Because everything is not okay.”

  Jayson turned around and walked up the stairs to his room.

  He took out his cell phone. This time, Tyrese answered his call.

  11

  MRS. LAWTON WAS BANGING ON the door. For the first time since he’d met the Lawtons, it sounded as though one of them was getting angry. Something about that felt good to Jayson.

  “Jayson,” Mrs. Lawton said. “If you don’t open the door right now, I’ll be forced to call someone who can. Easier to just open it yourself.”

  Tyrese spoke in a scared whisper. “At least talk to her.”

  Jayson was looking at Tyrese, but he spoke to Mrs. Lawton. “I’ve got nothing to say to you!”

  “I get it, Jayson,” she said from behind the door. “I get it. You don’t want to talk, you don’t want to be in foster care, you don’t want to be at your new school. But this isn’t solving anything.”

  Jayson just stared at the locked door.

  “What’s happening here,” Mrs. Lawton said, “is a normal reaction.”

  There it was again. Another adult who thought she knew all about him.

  “Open it, Jayson. Now.”

  “Dawg,” Tyrese said, “you got to give it up now.”

  Jayson stood there for a moment, wanting to be anywhere else in the world, far away from the Lawtons. But he had played in enough games to know when he was beat. He sighed, got up, walked over to the door, and let Mrs. Lawton into his apartment at the Pines.

  • • •

  “How’d you find me so fast?” Tyrese had left as soon as Mrs. Lawton came inside. It was just the two of them now.

  It made her smile. “Kid, you’ve got a lot to learn about cell phones.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “The funny thing about GPS,” she said, “is that you can use it to find directions, or it can be used to find you.”

  Mrs. Lawton stood up and told Jayson to carry the bike belonging to Isaiah Lawton down the stairs, and strap it to the bike rack on top of her car.

  “Lucky I don’t strap you up there along with it,” she said.

  • • •

  Earlier that night, he’d waited until Mr. and Mrs. Lawton were in the den watching television, then quietly made his way down the back stairs and took the bike he’d seen in the garage the other day. Then he’d walked the bike out through a side door of the garage and rode it into the night all the way across town, heading straight to the Pines, having told Tyrese to meet him there.

  Tyrese had been waiting for him in front of the Pines. They decided that Jayson would sleep at Tyrese’s tonight, just calling it a sleepover. Tomorrow he’d come up with a plan and make his next move. Take back control of his life.

  But first he’d wanted to chill with Tyrese, just the two of them. Talk to someone who actually knew about where he came from.

  “You know you’re like my brother,” Tyrese said when they were in the apartment. “But even if there was room for you to live with us, it’s not like you could just go back to our school like nothing happened. Not like they wouldn’t find you in a snap.” He smiled at his own joke.

  “I wasn’t asking you to do that,” Jayson said. “I just need a night to figure things out. I can’t stay there.”

  “Don’t jump ugly with me,” Tyrese said. “But it sounds to me like your setup there is pretty sweet.”

  “But I don’t belong there! I should be with you, Shabazz, and the rest of the boys at Moreland East getting ready to win the county championship. I should be at the Jeff.”

  “But things have changed,” Tyrese said in a soft voice. “You can’t live your whole life on a basketball court. Maybe you just need to give it all a chance.”

  • • •

  Now Jayson was sitting in the Lawtons’ living room like it was his first night there all over again. Mr. and Mrs. Lawton were telling him that, as difficult as this was, for everybody, he couldn’t just up and run away like that.

  “You told me that already,” Jayson said. “That this is normal.” He put air quotes around “normal.”

  “Yes I did,” Mrs. Lawton said.

  She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt tonight, hair pulled back into a ponytail, making her look more like some young girl than a woman trying to play the role of his new mom. She even wore some pink Nike Free sneakers. She was sitting next to a table that had a sculpture of a horse that she’d made resting on it. She’d told him once that she was an artist in her spare time; there were pieces of hers all around the house. But the horse, she said, was her favorite. Mr. Lawton said it was her best piece of work. Said that his wife had as much artistic ability in her as she had kindness.

  “You scared us tonight, Jayson,” Mrs. Lawton said. “We were so worried that something might happen to you while you were off on your own.”

  “Did fine on my own before you came into the picture.”

  “We care about you,” Mr. Lawton said. “And we’re trying our best to do right by you.”

  “I don’t care!” he said. “Why can’t you get that?”

  “But we care, Jayson,” Mrs. Lawton said. “We care that you give yourself the chance to be happy.”

  “The only time I’m happy in my whole life is when I’m playing ball.”

  Mr. Lawton said, “Your coach told us you didn’t seem all that happy at practice today.”

  “You called him?”

  “Yeah, I did. Carol called your teachers to find out how the day had gone. I called your coach.”

  “I’m not a five-year-old,” Jayson said.

  “Then maybe, and I’m just throwing this out there, you could think about not acting like one,” Mrs. Lawton said.

  She didn’t say it in a mean way, and Jayson knew it. And she was smiling as she said the words.

  “What do you want me to do, act happy so you can feel better about yourselves?” he said. “I’m not happy!”

  “We know you’re not,” Mrs. Lawton said. “But you could be if you can find a way to give us a chance. And I have to tell you, because you need to know this, that if you run away again, Child Protective Services might be forced to relocate you. It would be out of our control—and yours. And that might mean you end up in a group home.”

  Jayson had heard horrible stories about group homes from other kids around the old neighborhood. From what he’d heard, they made the Pines sound like a luxury hotel.

  Jayson felt tired all of a sudden. Boxed in. Trapped.

  “I won’t run again,” he said.

  “Good,” Mrs. Lawton said. “Then that’s settled. And from now on, Ms. Moretti has requested that you spend at least an hour a week together.”

  Jayson groaned. “More talking. Great.”

  “Remember what I told you,” Mrs. Lawton said. “It’s your choice whether or not you make the most of this situation.”

  Same thing all the adults in his life had been telling him lately. That he had a choice.

  “Whatever you say. Anything else?”

  Mrs. Lawton shook her head.

  Jayson went up to his room, stood at the window, and looked out at the Lawtons’ basketball court, its lights turned off now. He sat back, lying in his new, comfortable bed, thinking about all those nights at the Pines, worrying about getting the knock on the door that would ruin his life. Thinking how, now that the knock had come, he’d gotten off pretty lucky, even if he didn’t feel like he belonged here with the Lawtons. Then Jayson remembered the terrible stories he’d heard about group ho
mes.

  Thought about how he wouldn’t let himself end up living in one.

  The next morning Jayson took the new sneakers out of their box, put them in his gym bag, and left for school.

  12

  HE HADN’T BEEN LYING TO the Lawtons; he wasn’t going to run again and end up in a group home.

  It didn’t mean he was going to trust them. It didn’t mean he was going to let them in. He didn’t have to let anybody in if he didn’t want to, didn’t have to let anybody get close to him.

  Why would he? So they could die like his mother had? Or leave like Richie and every other guy had in the middle of the night?

  He would focus on one thing, from now until the end of the basketball season: winning.

  He was going to come out ahead in something. He was going to help the team from Belmont Khaki Day win the league championship and make it to the middle-grade tournament at Cameron Indoor. He wasn’t going to let anybody or anything get in his way. But to do that, he knew he had to stop getting in his own way.

  He’d made every team he’d ever played on in his life better. He was determined to make this team better, too. Everyone kept saying he had a choice. But he didn’t look at it that way—he had no choice but to make the best of things.

  The next day at school, Jayson saw Bryan Campbell by his locker before lunch. Jayson could see that the side of Bryan’s face was still swollen from where the ball had hit him.

  “Sorry about yesterday,” Jayson said. “Hope your face is okay.” It sounded kind of lame, but it was the best he could do.

  “All good,” Bryan replied. “Really was my fault not keeping my head up to catch that pass.”

  Bryan closed his locker.

  Jayson was about to leave for class when he called out to Bryan. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “Why are you still being nice to me? Especially after the way I acted at practice.”

  “You want the truth?”

  “Always,” Jayson said.