The Falconer

by Dana Czapnik

  “Then where would we put our garbage?” she says. “C’mon, let’s go.”

  * * *

  Coach tells us to change and meet him out in the gym, which is accessible right off the locker-room door. He uses the fact that we’re girls and he can’t be in the room when we change as an excuse to not have to give us one of his pregame pep talks, which the boys have told us are legendary. That’s because he cares about the boys’ team, even though they haven’t had a winning season in six years. He designs plays for the boys. Real ones, adapted from his Kentucky days. But none of that for us. Lucky for him, we don’t need him. With the six-foot twins Jennifer and Jessica anchored in the low court, me and Jamila in the one and two spots, and Alexis as a streaky but potent power forward, the five of us, we’re good on our own. We’re en route to being league champions three years in a row. Nothing can stop us. Maybe that’s why he arranged this scrimmage at a public school where an old teammate of his just took over the basketball program. Either to get us some good competition or to put us in our place.

  I lace up my sneakers, tuck in my jersey.

  Alexis puts her hand on my back as we start to walk out to the gym. “I’m actually kinda nervous. You?”

  “Not really.” Lie.

  We walk into the gym, and it’s like walking into the Grand Central Station of the 1980s before it was cleaned up and restored. Simultaneously awe-inspiring and tragic. The gym is cavernous and has bleachers on either side of the court. At the top of the bleachers are tons of cracked, frosted windows with bars on them. Some shoddily repaired with duct tape. The stands are packed with rowdy students chattering at each other, running up and down to talk with friends, laughing, and cheering for the team warming up on the other side. I stop midstep. Their team is gigantic. Between me, Alexis, and our six-foot twins down low, we’re always the biggest team on the court. Everyone hates playing us. But these girls are a serious physical match. The girl on the lineup sheet listed as their point guard—Michelle Weatherspoon, number 23—she’s about five foot ten, which is my height, but solid muscle. She’s got at least twenty pounds on me, and she looks about nineteen years old. I turn to Jamila, our little five-foot frosh.

  “That’s their point, Jam.”

  “No way,” she says matter-of-factly and curls her lips over her braces, which is what she does when she’s really nervous or about to kick me a no-look pass.

  “A girl that big has got to be slow. Use your speed against her.”

  “Okay. Okay.” Jamila nods and takes a deep breath. Shit. She’s toast.

  Coach walks up to us. “Adler.” He grabs my jersey at my waist and points toward Weatherspoon. “You’re guarding two-three.”

  I breathe in through my nose. Watch her switch hands midair during the lay-up line. “Good.”

  The kids in the stands are getting louder and louder with organized chants. Screaming, “Let’s Go Li-ons, Let’s Go!” Pounding on the bleachers. Even if we were to force the entire population of Pendleton High to attend one of our basketball games, they wouldn’t fill a quarter of the bleachers in this gym. And if they did come, they’d probably yawn and leave early. Nobody at our school comes to the girls’ basketball games except for a few moms and teachers who correct tests in the stands. Certainly no one cheers. All you can hear at our games are the squeaks of sneakers on the gym floor and the talking between us as teammates.

  The double doors open, and Percy walks into the gym. If this were a movie, he’d be in slow motion. He holds the door open for my mom and says, “After you, Carol,” all sweetlike, and winks at me. God, he’s fatal. I half nod at him casual, like “ ’Sup.”

  Alexis notices him too. “He came,” she says, sort of surprised. Even PJ didn’t come out for this game. But I’m not shocked. Percy’s always at my games, and I’m always at his, when our schedules don’t conflict. It’s been a tradition since the girls’ basketball program was started at my school when I was in the seventh grade. Before that, I was playing with Percy on the boys’ team, when he was still a student at Pendleton, and once we weren’t teammates anymore, it just seemed natural for us to keep up being cheerleaders for each other, even after we wound up in different schools for high school. But I’m not sure I want him here for this game. For the first time in a long time, a loss is a distinct possibility, and there’s something about having him here that makes me feel . . . I don’t know. Unstuck.

  * * *

  After warm-ups, we get set for tip-off. The ref blows the whistle and throws the ball up in the air. Jennifer gets the ball directly to Jamila, like she always does. And that’s the highlight of the game for us, unfortunately. We fall into a twelve-zip hole within the first five minutes. We don’t even know how it happens. It’s like: Blink. We’re done.

  Coach calls a time-out. We race back to the bench, and I suck down some Gatorade. He starts reminding us about zone defense, which I’m philosophically against. Zone is for pussies. I’m not about to leave defending that girl Weatherspoon up to someone else who might be sleeping on the job.

  “Coach, no. No zone. We have to trap Jam’s girl in the—”

  “Girls, girls. Listen. This is how it’s going to work.” He pulls out his playboard and starts drawing his Xs and Os, explaining how to slide on D. I grab one of the dry-erase markers from his hand.

  “But Coach, look.” I draw an O in the back court, but he pushes my hand away.

  “Adler. Shut it.” He erases my marks with his finger and continues explaining zone.

  Coach loves me. He told me I have the three most important ingredients to make a good baller: Speed. The Touch. Cockiness. Bet he’s not loving my cockiness now. I throw his dry-erase marker back at him as the whistle blows. It catches him off guard, and he butterfingers it under the bench. I let out a chuckle through my nose.

  “Adler. Watch it.” He gives me a death stare.

  “Coach.” I death stare back at him. “I’m not playin’ zone.”

  I run to the sideline, where the ref is holding the ball out for me. I pass it in to Jamila, and the game restarts.

  Their defense is incredible. Total grinders. They body up on you, give you no space to move. I love a challenge like that, and I’ve had good practice going against someone bigger and stronger than me with years of playing Percy and other guys on the playground. But not everyone on our team can handle it. They’re getting jostled around in a way they’ve never experienced before in our polite private-school games when they call a foul on you if you so much as breathe on a princess. Jamila’s flustered by it. She’s never felt this much pressure playing point. Keeps turning the ball over.

  I pull her off to the side between possessions and tell her to flop. “Every time you feel an elbow dig into you, Jam, just make it look like a foul. You gotta sell it.” She nods at me, but I can tell she’s about to break. Tears are right there under the surface.

  * * *

  Halftime hits like a gasp of air before drowning. It’s a welcome relief. The starting five haven’t had a break all game, and we’re playing a hard-core run-and-gun team. Plus, Weatherspoon is a beast. Totally lethal off the dribble, and she’s been pounding the shit out of me in the post. I’ve had to take a charge twice just to get a couple of good stops. It feels like I’ve been running wind sprints for a solid twenty minutes. The only break I got was when I was fouled and got to the line. Lord, did I milk that. Took my time and waited for my heart rate to slow to a pace that was sort of manageable before I even asked for the ball. One of the girls on the other team wanted the ref to call a delay of game, but the ref shook her off. There’s a word for that: pity. No true baller ever wants to be pitied. On the bench, I am spent. My legs are fine, but my lungs and head are Jell-O.

  I look across the court at Percy, sitting in the stands. He’s signing something to me, I can’t tell what. He makes a shooting motion with his hands and seems to be mouthing, Shoot, shoot! I shrug and mouth back, I’m trying, man. I take a deep breath and shake my head and stare up at th
e scoreboard. 24–6.

  Coach gathers us in a circle on the floor by the bench. He’s got his clipboard out and his mouth is moving. He’s trying to explain to us what’s going on. And maybe I could learn something from it, but I find myself unstuck again, floating in the netherworld of my own internal universe.

  * * *

  The word “disengaged” echoes in my head. It was used by my college counselor, Ms. Adelnaft, when she spoiled my lunch today and made me discuss my college applications with her instead of meeting up with Percy and James in Riverside Park as I usually do.

  “I’m worried about you, Lucy. You seem . . . disengaged,” she said to me. Which may have been teacher speak for “perpetually stoned.” It’s hard to tell. Though I am a little concerned I’m veering into pothead territory, and while there are a couple of Phish songs I’ll listen to here and there, if I end up with white-girl dreads and a Grateful Dead patch on my backpack, good god, I will shoot myself.

  “Senioritis is a real disease, Ms. Adelnaft.”

  She didn’t laugh. “The thing is, Lucy, colleges look at your grades from this semester. Look at these schools you’re applying to.” She pulled out a folder with all my in-progress applications. “CalTech, Harvard, Stanford, MIT. These are all serious reaches for you, no matter what, because of your SATs. Your SAT subject-test scores will help you a little, but only if you have a perfect GPA and straight As in all your Advanced Placement courses. Plus, you have no extracurriculars besides basketball. They want to see internships, volunteer work, school newspaper columns, involvement in student government, peer leadership groups. These schools don’t care that you’re captain of the basketball team. I’m worried you’re not being realistic. Have you thought about Michigan? You know I went to Michigan, right?”

  Of course I know she went to Michigan. Everyone on the fucking planet knows she went to Michigan because she wears blue-and-gold and gold-and-blue Michigan sweatshirts every other day. I wonder if that place is a cult masquerading as a college. Everyone I’ve met who’s gone there swears it’s their personal Shangri-la. Maybe I’ve got too much skeptic in me, but I have a tough time trusting anything that so many people claim to love. That’s one of my problems with both Jesus and Hollywood. The majority of humanity has really bad taste. I don’t trust their opinion on gods or blockbusters.

  Okay, so, I don’t have the extracurriculars. But here’s the thing: If you play the piano just because that will help you get into a certain type of college, which will then get you a certain type of job, well, in my estimation, that’s a pretty messed-up way to go about your life. You should play the piano because what a gift to be able to play music. To make a melody just by touching your fingertips to ivory. But that’s just me. That doesn’t seem to be the guiding principle of my peers. Ms. Adelnaft kept harping on the importance of safety schools. Screw safety schools. Safety schools are like zone defense. All she was telling me is that in order to go to college I have to settle. No way am I settling. Besides, I’ve got the grades. I only have one B because Percy invited me to a Nirvana concert at the last minute this past spring and I had to turn in my final history paper late. I lied and told Adelnaft I had a stomach bug, but then she called my house, and my mom sold me out because she’s “trying to raise an ethical human being.” Whatever. Look, I’ll never remember that final paper. And maybe I won’t be able to get into a good enough school because of it. But I will remember that concert. For the rest of my life. The moment with Percy was what mattered—not the A I would’ve gotten.

  I look over at him in the stands. A girl with long, straight strawberry-blond hair is sitting next to him, and they’re both laughing. I squint. It’s Lauren Moon from school. What is she doing at our basketball game? She’s never come to support us before. She’s got a camera on her lap. Oh, the school newspaper. She’s probably covering the game for the Pioneer Journal.

  Lauren Moon is the kind of student high school administrators and elite colleges cream over. She’s what they like to call “involved.” Editor of the school paper. Head of the yearbook committee. All AP classes. The lead in every school play. A volunteer at the Boys and Girls Club and a soup kitchen dedicated to serving meals to homebound people with AIDS. And on top of all that, she plays the guitar and performs every year at the talent show. This year she got up onstage all by herself and sang “Fast Car” by Tracy Chapman. It brought the house down.

  And she’s still the prettiest girl in school. Even with her scar. She’s gorgeous in the worst way, too. The way some celebrity journalists would say is “approachable.” I can tell Percy thinks so too. Their knees keep “accidentally” touching. And he’s leaning forward with his elbows on his thighs while he’s talking to her. I look forward to telling him later that he hasn’t got a chance. Brian Deed’s been boning her for a solid three months.

  The buzzer sounds, and the game’s back on, and somehow that always manages to get me back in focus. I’ve got a Pavlovian response to it at this point. Buzz means basketball, and that’s it. Life outside turns off, and there’s just the game on the court. At least there’s something within me I can count on.

  * * *

  There are many differences between the Lady Pioneers and the Lady Lions. The Lions are bigger and stronger than us. They’re just plain tougher than us. They play an organized variation of the kind of street ball I love watching up at Rucker Park and down on West Fourth, but trying to play defense against it is next to impossible. But more than anything, we play like we want to win. They play like they want to beat us. There’s a big difference.

  By midway through the second half, all my patience is tested. Every time I pass Alexis the ball, she allows her girl to intercept it. After I’m doubled again at the top of the key and she’s the only one remotely open, I bounce her the ball. Again, her feet don’t move. She just waits for it to float into her hands. Jennifer’s defender shifts left and steals the ball right in front of Alexis’s eyes. Weatherspoon’s got some crazy Spidey sense and anticipates the whole thing. Bolts up court to catch the pass on the break. I don’t even bother using the energy to try to defend it. It’s a done deal. Instead, I decide to stand on our side of the court while the play is unfolding and ream out Alexis.

  “Goddammit,” I scream, way louder than I mean to, and I clap my hands in her face. “Meet your fucking passes.”

  Alexis shoves me. “Don’t talk to me like that.” And she storms off to the bench.

  Of course, it’s just my luck. Weatherspoon misses her lay-up. The only lay-up she misses all game. And I could have easily been there to pick up the gimme rebound. Instead, a garbage player on the Lions gets to it and puts it in the basket, padding their lead by another two points.

  The ref on my side of the court Ts me up for cursing. And while Weatherspoon takes the free throw, Coach pulls me off to the side of the bench. He leans over me, his nostrils flared, his mouth disfigured in an angry frown, and he points his finger in my face. “Adler, don’t you ever yell at your teammate like that again. Ya hear me?”

  The whole gym falls silent. I look him in the eye and don’t acknowledge a single word he says. I just walk past him to the bench and sit down to take a sip of Gatorade. Maybe instead of having us run useless scrimmages at practice, he should’ve taught the other members of our team how to play basketball, so we wouldn’t be losing by more than thirty in an exhibition game. Coach is still fuming. He stands with his back turned for a minute, his hands on his hips, probably counting to ten so he doesn’t bash in my face in front of my mom.

  I take a deep breath and look over at Alexis. She’s staring straight ahead, her mouth slightly open, and I can tell she’s biting her tongue with her back molars, doing everything she can so she won’t cry.

  “Yo, Lex. I’m sorry. Didn’t mean it. I swear.”

  “Whatever. You take this shit too serious.”

  Coach gathers himself and kneels down in front of our bench and starts to draw up a play on his board.

  It’s an iso
lation play for me, and as we get up off the bench to get on the court, Coach pulls me aside and says calmly, “Adler, the leash is off. Do your thing. You got me?”

  “Yeah, I got you.”

  We’ve had to have a few team meetings in the past because I’ve been accused of being a ball hog, and even some whiny parents have complained. I’ve been instructed that I have to pass the ball at least twice during every possession so my teammates have a chance to shoot. But when we’re staring down the barrel of a major point deficit, who do you think they want with the ball in her hands?

  I take over the game as best I can. Whenever the ball reaches my fingertips, I pull out every move I’ve ever practiced on the public courts to get more points on the board. And it’s working. We were playing terrible team ball for most of the game, so the Lions get caught off guard and I’m able to take real advantage. For a second, it gets fun. Weaving around bodies in the paint and laying it up easy. Shutting up the crowd with a sweet off-balance fadeaway no one even knew I had in my arsenal.

  Weatherspoon figures me out, though. Took her long enough. I’m forced to pass, but my teammates might as well be crash test dummies. Useless.

  Two-three may have weight, but I got wheels. I take the ball up from the backcourt in the hopes my momentum will shake her, but it doesn’t. At the top of the key, I do a little hesitation move and make some space for myself and float a jumper, but in the process of trying to block my shot, her forearm collides mightily with my face. The force of it messes with my equilibrium, and I fall backward onto the floor, the whole gym swaying around me like the horizon viewed from the cockpit of a spiraling plane.

  The ref calls a foul and blows the whistle. Reflexive tears flow from my eyes. I lift my hands to my face to touch my nose and feel blood on my fingertips.