by Mike Lupica
“Then I’m not gonna lie,” Bryan said. “I’ve never met anybody who needed a friend more than you do. And if we’re going to be on the same team, might as well have fun doing it.”
Jayson felt blood rushing to his face. “I’m not looking for pity.”
“Nah,” Bryan said. “You’re looking for a friend. You just don’t know how bad.”
Jayson wasn’t so sure, but he knew that he at least needed his teammates in order to win games.
They ate lunch together. Without Zoe and her friends this time. But Marty Samuels joined them, and Brandon Carr, and even Cameron Speeth, whom Jayson nodded at—as good an apology as he knew how to give. Jayson felt that maybe Bryan had asked them to sit with him.
But somehow things were cool at the table. It’s almost like they’d forgotten about what had happened at practice yesterday. Like they’d decided to move past it for the sake of the team. They all talked about the team, even Jayson joining in occasionally, because they all wanted to know what he thought about the other players. Cameron also asked about the team at Moreland East Middle and Jayson said, “We’re loaded.” Then he realized right away what he’d said, and changed it to, “They’re loaded.”
“Yeah,” Marty Samuels said, grinning. “I hear they’re weak at point guard all of a sudden.”
“Not as bad as you think,” Jayson said. “Tyrese can play point if he has to.”
When the bell rang, they all said they’d see each other at practice, which wasn’t starting until five o’clock today because Mr. Rooney had to pick up his wife at the airport.
It meant that when school let out, Jayson had an extra hour to kill. He knew he could have used his new phone to call Mrs. Lawton and ask her to pick him up and take him home for an hour or so, because of how close they lived to the school. He knew if he did, she’d drop what she was doing and come right over.
But he didn’t want to ask her for a favor, because it would make him feel as if he had to do something nice for her in return. He was making amends with his teammates because he wanted to win, but he wasn’t about to open up to the Lawtons. So he hung out by himself in the common room for a while and did most of his English homework. Then he went out and walked around the school campus, took a look at the grounds for the first time.
Football practice was still going on; the school team had one more game left in the season. And boys’ and girls’ soccer practices were about to end—a sport that Jayson had zero interest in when the World Cup wasn’t going on.
When he got tired of walking around, he checked his phone, saw it was four thirty, and decided to circle back and start getting ready for practice, knowing that today had to be better than yesterday, that he couldn’t do anything to lose basketball.
Bryan said he needed friends? He needed basketball, now more than ever.
He was thinking about that, thinking about making it to Cameron Indoor, what it would be like to play a big game there, when a ball hit him in the leg.
A soccer ball.
He looked down at the ball, then looked up and saw four girls in soccer uniforms and spikes walking straight toward him.
One of them was Zoe Montgomery.
Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, no Bryan to do the talking for him.
He’d been wondering what was going to happen the next time he actually had to talk to her. He’d managed to avoid her in the two classes they had together—English and history—by getting out of both of them as fast as he could, with as quick a first step as he’d ever shown on or off the court.
Mostly he’d been wondering what he’d say to her, if he could manage to say something.
Now was his chance.
He reached down, picked up the ball, and tried to throw a perfect bounce pass in her direction. But you couldn’t grip a soccer ball the way you could a basketball. He found out the hard way how slick it was.
The ball slipped out of his hand, badly, and went squirting off to his right. On SportsCenter one time, he’d seen a celebrity trying to throw out the first pitch at a Braves game. The guy was a lefty. But the ball ended up closer to first base than home plate, like he was trying to pick off an imaginary runner.
Zoe stopped. So did the girls with her, all of whom Jayson recognized from lunch the day before. The other girls laughed at his clumsiness, but Zoe didn’t. She just stared at the ball rolling away from them across the grass, eyes wide.
She turned back to Jayson.
“And you’re a basketball player?” she said, giving him that smile again. Jayson saw how great it was, even from a distance.
“It slipped,” he said.
Then he jogged after the ball in his new sneakers; he’d been wearing them to break them in a little before practice. Brought the ball back to her. Happy he’d been able to say something to her this time.
“These are my friends,” she said. “Lizzie. Alex. Ella. Guys, this is Jayson. I’ve heard he’s a really good basketball player. Apparently we’ll have to take that on faith.” That smile again, lighting up her face.
“I’m just not used to the ball,” he said. “Not a soccer guy. But my friends who played, back at my other school, said I’d be good at it.”
“Oh really?” Zoe said. “Because you’re fast?”
“I’m just telling you what they said.”
“Well, it takes more than being fast to be a good soccer player,” Zoe said.
Ella, taller than the rest, said, “A lot more. You’ve got to have moves. And know what to do with the ball on offense and how to take it away on defense.”
“Sounds like basketball,” Jayson said.
“Just without using your hands,” Ella said.
“I always thought that was kind of weird,” he said, turning to look at Zoe. “A sport that doesn’t let you use your hands.”
Zoe raised an eyebrow. “You mean the way you just used your hands so brilliantly?”
“I told you, it slipped.” He took the ball back from her. “Watch this.”
He put the ball on the tip of his right index finger and tried to spin it the way he would a basketball.
Not even close.
The ball just fell off his finger and dropped to the ground like he’d blocked his own shot.
So much for showing off, Jayson thought.
Zoe turned to the other girls. “Maybe that’s his hidden talent,” she said. “He’s got hands that act like feet!”
They all laughed again. As embarrassed as he was, Jayson almost laughed with them. But he stopped himself. Maybe it was pride. The guy who hated to lose more than anything was losing big-time with this girl.
Just like he had at lunch on the first day.
“Stupid ball, stupid sport,” Jayson said.
“So now soccer’s not just weird,” she said. “It’s stupid.”
“I just like real sports,” Jayson said. “You know, the kind where people actually score more than one or two times a game.”
“You think you could score on me?” Zoe said, smiling again, but issuing a challenge, they both knew it. Doing it right in front of her friends.
“You can’t play one-on-one in soccer,” he said.
“Oh yes you can,” she said. “Even a soccer hater like you must know about penalty kicks.”
“I didn’t say I was a soccer hater,” he said.
“Saying soccer isn’t a real sport pretty much means you don’t respect the game. So why don’t you teach us all how easy it is to score?”
He could feel his heart pounding now, being carried along by this. Not just the challenge, but the fact that this was probably the longest conversation with a girl he’d ever had in his life.
“Okay,” he said. “You win. I’ll take you on sometime.”
“Not sometime. Right now.”
“I gotta get to basketball practice.”
/> “What time?”
“Five.”
She reached into her pocket, whipped out her phone, and checked the time. “It’s only four forty. Plenty of time for us to get this done.”
“So it’s on?”
“Soooo on,” Zoe Montgomery said.
They walked back toward the main soccer field, the one Zoe said both the boys and girls used for games.
“Before we start we need to make a bet,” Zoe said. “Just something to make things interesting. You’re going to get a free shot at me in goal. You can put the ball on that line in front of the goal, ten yards away, like they do with a real penalty kick. Or if you want, you can do it like they do in hockey, and dribble in on me and try to beat me head on.”
“How close can I get?”
“Close as you want.”
“And what’s the bet?”
“If you score, I show up for your first basketball game and wear a basketball jersey,” she said. “But if you don’t score on me, you have to come to my next soccer game and stand behind our bench wearing a soccer jersey.”
“I think I’m getting set up,” Jayson said. “Do I at least get to warm up?”
“As much as you need,” Zoe said. “But remember, no hands this time.”
She had some snap to her. He had to give her that.
Jayson and Zoe went out onto the field. All he kept thinking about was how he couldn’t believe he’d let himself get sucked into this, but now that he had, he didn’t want to embarrass himself, again, in front of Zoe.
He practiced dribbling the ball, making sure he could control it once he started running, not getting the ball too far in front of him, telling himself to pretend that he was just passing it to himself.
Then he went over near the goal, and practiced taking some shots, knowing he was going to go with his stronger leg, his right one, when it was time to shoot. He hadn’t watched a whole lot of soccer, but he’d watched enough to know that they came at the ball the way placekickers did in football, from the side, planting their left foot—if they were kicking with their right—then swinging their leg through, sidewinder style.
He missed the goal with his first couple of kicks, but then started to get the hang of it, burying the next four in a row, two in the right corner, two in the left.
Like he was knocking down open jumpers.
“Good to go,” he said to Zoe.
“You sure?”
“Let’s do this,” Jayson said.
“You want to place the ball on the line, or dribble toward the goal to shoot?”
If he wanted this to feel at least a little bit like basketball, he wanted to be moving.
“I want to dribble in.”
“Go back as far as you want,” Zoe said.
He moved back about thirty yards or so, to her right, planning to get to the middle of the field, about the place where you’d take a penalty shot, and then let the shot go.
His plan was to make her commit to defending one side first, and then he’d fire one into the part of the net she left open.
If he could outthink defenders on a basketball court, he could certainly do that with a soccer girl.
“Ready,” she called out to him.
“Ready.”
She put two fingers in her mouth and let out an amazing whistle.
Jayson started off slowly, pushing the ball ahead of him with his right foot, then his left, picking up speed, closing in on her, his eyes on that chalk line ten yards in front of her.
He could dribble a basketball without looking at it, and found himself able to do that now with this soccer ball. But as he got close to the line, he wasn’t taking any chances, knowing exactly where he wanted to stop, knowing he needed to keep his eye on the ball when he was ready to plant and shoot.
That was why he never saw Zoe coming out of the goal like a streak flashing by, kicking the ball away from him just as he was swinging his right leg.
Jayson kicked nothing but air, both of his legs flying like somebody had pulled a rug out from underneath him. He came down hard on the ground.
He turned and saw Zoe running—flying—toward the goal at the other end of the field.
“Hey!” he yelled after her. “You didn’t say you could move!”
Without looking back, she yelled, “You never asked!”
She didn’t even wait until she got close to the goal, didn’t even appear to break stride as she fired a shot from what looked to Jayson like an incredibly long distance away from it, catching the ball cleanly, curving it into the net like a pro.
Only then did she make a slow turn to face him, hands on her hips, smiling wide at him like she’d just won the World Cup.
Jayson sat on the grass, watching her, feeling himself do something he hadn’t done in a long time, certainly not since he’d moved to this side of Moreland.
Smiling.
13
THE THING ABOUT ZOE MONTGOMERY was, she just let him be.
She didn’t seem all that bothered by his mood swings, and she made fun of him when she felt like it, without Jayson ever thinking she was actually trying to be mean. As far as he could tell after a week at Belmont, she didn’t have any interest in changing him. It was a nice break from the adults in his life who kept telling him who he was and how he should act, what he needed, even how he should think.
Jayson didn’t know how much she knew about his past, how he had ended up on this side of town living with the Lawtons, what his life was like before he got here. He figured she had to know at least some of it, but if she had questions, she hadn’t asked them, at least not yet.
That was fine with him. He was just enjoying spending time with this girl.
Even with his limited knowledge of girls, and the limited amount of time he’d spent with them, Jayson could tell that Zoe was different. Of all the new people who’d become part of his life on this side of Moreland—the Lawtons, Ms. Moretti, the guys on the team, his teachers, and his coach—Zoe was the only one whom he really wanted to let in.
Somehow he trusted her, even though she’d never asked him to.
Ms. Moretti and the Lawtons were always talking about trust, how it worked both ways, asking him to trust them, to the point where he’d shut down as soon as he heard the word.
Zoe wasn’t like that.
It didn’t mean he felt comfortable being around her, or talking to her. But when he was with her, he felt like he could be himself. Whatever that meant.
He had said to himself that he wasn’t going to be a phony, wasn’t going to let his new life change him, but he knew he wasn’t completely being himself at school now, or with the guys on the team, because he was making an effort to fit in. Trying to be one of the boys, making the best of the situation, thinking about a chance to play at Cameron Indoor if he could learn to accept his new team.
It wasn’t as if he hated the guys on the team. They were actually all right. He was starting to work well with Cameron, their big guy, somebody Jayson knew would be able to hold his own, no problem, at the Jeff. Cameron could catch, shoot, rebound, defend. He wasn’t afraid to play physical, box out hard, whatever it took to get a rebound or a stop.
The problem was that no matter how hard he tried, he just couldn’t think of the Belmont Bobcats as his team. He felt like he was some NBA player who got traded to a team he didn’t want to play for.
It was weird, when he really thought about it. It took switching schools and switching teams to feel closer to Tyrese and Shabazz than he’d ever felt going to school with them. Hooping with them at the Jeff.
“You’re still gonna chop it up when you start playing games,” Tyrese said to him on the phone.
The season started in three days. Belmont’s first game was against Karsten, and Moreland East was playing Moreland West in its opener.
“Of cours
e,” Tyrese added, “against us, you’re gonna get chopped up.”
“It shouldn’t be this way,” Jayson said. “I should be playing on my team.”
“Things change,” Tyrese said. “You got a new team now; start acting like it. And you know I’ma bring it when we play each other, so I expect nothing less from you, Snap.”
“I never asked for any of this to happen.”
“Yeah, but you were never one to cry about it or feel sorry for yourself. And even though you don’t want to hear it, the way everything turned out, you’re better off than you were living on your own at the Pines, having to steal peanut butter just to have something to eat.”
“But if I was still there, I’d be playing with you guys. This all stinks!”
Jayson knew the Lawtons could probably hear him yelling from all the way downstairs. But as usual, his anger kept on boiling out.
“You got to chill,” Tyrese said.
“Easy for you to say. You don’t have to wear stupid khakis every day, pretending to be someone you’re not.”
“Go do what you do,” Tyrese said. “Get a ball and take it out on the court.”
He’d finished dinner with the Lawtons an hour ago. It had been another night when Mr. Lawton had asked Jayson to watch a basketball game with him, another night when Jayson had told him he had homework to do, even though he’d already finished it at school. Just another night when it felt as though Jayson was only visiting this house instead of living in it.
At least he was being himself.
He told Tyrese he’d talk to him tomorrow, put down the phone, and laced up his new sneakers. He’d broken them in nice by now. He slipped on some long gray sweatpants Mrs. Lawton had gotten him with “Belmont” written down the side, and an old Moreland East hoodie with a hole under the arm.
Wearing clothes from his old school and his new one. Like he was partly there and partly here. Caught in the middle somewhere.
Before he headed downstairs to get a ball out of the garage, he went over to his dresser and picked up his biggest trophy, his rec league MVP trophy from the previous year. There was a basketball player dribbling a ball on top. But you could lift that part up, and the base of the trophy was empty inside.
