by Carl Deuker
I laughed. "I didn't know I was going to."
"Well, how about against Roosevelt? That idiot coach isn't going to stick you back on the bench again, is he?"
"I'm not starting," I answered, "but at practice today I did get moved to second team. I should see some real minutes."
"I'll be there, and that's a promise." He paused, and his voice became serious. "I knew you could make it, Nick. I always believed in you."
When I hung up, I was smiling ear-to-ear. Then I turned and saw Scott. "Was that Dad?"
"Yeah."
"I knew he'd call once he saw your name in the paper."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"You know what it means."
"No, I don't," I said.
He laughed mockingly as he pushed past me. "Fine, Nick. Have it your way."
It was different sitting on the bench during the first quarter of the Roosevelt game. I tried to stay cool and calm, but it was hard. O'Leary wasn't going to mess around; I was sure of it. If the first-stringers fell behind, Trent and I were going in.
And fall behind they did. The Roughriders' point guard buried a three-pointer on his first shot, made a pull-up fifteen-foot jumper on his second, and then was perfect with another three-pointer a minute later. The last shot was unreal. Fabroa had his hand in the guy's face, but it was still dead center. We were down 11–2 when O'Leary popped off the bench.
"Nick, Trent!"
It's different going into a game in the first quarter rather than the fourth. No need to rush, I told myself as I stepped on the court. Slow and easy. Roosevelt couldn't keep up their hot shooting. No team could, not even an NBA team. All we had to do was play our game and we'd reel them in.
Sure enough, they went into a little funk. The guy I was guarding, who hadn't missed with Fabroa hanging all over him, suddenly couldn't sink anything, even when he juked me and was wide open from ten feet. Luke knocked down two jumpers and the nine-point lead had shrunk to five by the end of the quarter. Neither Trent nor I had done much of anything, but O'Leary left us out there.
For the first few minutes of the second quarter, we kept on doing nothing. Roosevelt's lead grew back to eleven. I felt as if I was running in mud—working hard but not getting anywhere. I knew Trent felt the same way; I could see the frustration in his eyes.
It was a fast break off a missed three-pointer that got us untracked. Trent snagged the long rebound, hit me with a quick outlet, and then filled the lane on the left. I took the ball up the center of the court, faked to Luke on the right, then gave a no-look pass to Trent. He caught the ball and in one motion laid the ball off the glass. The lone Roughrider back was totally spun around, but he still managed to foul Trent. I gave Trent a hard high-five, and his eyes were scary. I knew the Roughriders were in for it.
After that fast break he dominated them. It wasn't just his strength either; it was his will. He wanted the rebounds more than anybody else, and he got them. And once he got them, he whistled outlet passes to me and I drove the ball down Roosevelt's throat. I was the point guard, which meant I was supposed to distribute the ball to everybody. Luke got it sometimes, and so did Carver. But whenever there was a choice, I fed the ball to Trent. By the half we'd taken a five-point lead, and by the end of the third quarter we'd stretched it to sixteen.
When the lead hit twenty-two O'Leary took us both out. As we left the court, cheers poured down from the bleachers. Trent returned to the bench and pulled a towel over his head. But I looked up into the stands and pumped my fist into the air.
Chapter 10
At the next practice O'Leary moved Trent and me to the first team, and the up-tempo style that suited us was back, too.
There is nothing I like more than creating in the open court, and Trent had become a dream finisher. I fed him the ball again and again. Everything was working for him: the drives, the jumper, even the three-pointer.
At the end of practice, O'Leary had me wait on the court until all the guys were in the locker room. "That was solid, Nick. Real solid," he said. "I like the way you and Trent play. You have a feel for each other, and that's something you can't coach."
"We've been practicing together," I explained. "I know where and when he likes the ball."
"Yeah? Well, that's good. That's real good. Only don't forget about Luke and Darren. Those guys can score too, and they get itchy when they're not getting their shots."
"Trent was hot today," I said, defending myself. "So I got him the ball. I'll get them the ball when they're hot."
He nodded. "Fair enough. Find the hot hand and feed it—you do that and you'll be starting at point guard for the next three years. Guaranteed. Now go shower up."
I started off the court, my spirits soaring, when he called out to me again. "Hey, Nick, have they caught Trent's crazy brother?"
"No," I answered. "They haven't."
He frowned. "Well, I hope they do. And soon."
The victory over Roosevelt was just the beginning. Against Woodinville Trent had ten rebounds and twenty-two points, while I added eight points and dished out eight assists. The Juanita Rebels were next. Again Trent had a double double—twenty-four points and eleven rebounds. I handed out nine assists, seven of them to him. After that we avenged our earlier loss to the Eastlake Wolves, then beat the two dogs of our league, Redmond and Lake Washington. Our overall record was a mediocre 8–6, but in the league we were 8–3, and we still had two games left against first-place Garfield.
You put together a winning streak like that, and the locker room should be a wild place. Guys singing, towels snapping, water splashing everywhere. But the energy in our locker room wasn't that much greater than when we'd been losing. Sure, guys congratulated each other, said "Good game" and all that. But they dressed quickly and left in little groups of two and three.
On the day of our first game against Garfield, I was sitting alone eating a grilled cheese sandwich and soup in the cafeteria. Luke spotted me and came over. "You mind if I sit here?"
"No problem," I said, glad for the company.
We talked about the food, the game coming up, school. I wanted to relax, have it be the way it was early in the year, but there was a tightness to his jaw that made me uncomfortable. He had something to say, something I wasn't going to like. He finished off his milk shake and put the cup down on the table. "We can't keep winning this way, you know."
"What do you mean?" I asked, even though I knew.
He tipped the empty cup back and forth. "Come on, Nick. The other coaches aren't stupid. They read the papers, check the box scores, scout the games. It's Trent and you, and the rest of us just run up and down the court. That works against lousy teams, but a great team like Garfield will shut one or both of you down, and that'll be that."
"It hasn't happened yet," I said.
"It will. We're not a real team, Nick."
His words hung there for a moment, like a ball hanging on the rim. I swallowed. "Okay. If you get open, I'll get you the ball. The same thing with Darren, with everybody."
Luke stuck his hand out across the table. I reached out and shook it. Then he left.
I finished my lunch alone. The tomato soup was watery, the milk was warm, and the grilled cheese looked and tasted like yellow rubber. It was the best-tasting lunch I'd had in weeks.
Chapter 11
Garfield. You just say the name around Seattle and people think basketball. That's how good they are. We'd originally been scheduled to play them in December, but then they'd been invited to some super-tournament tournament in Washington, D.C. So now we were going to face them twice inside three weeks.
The first game was at their school, which is in the heart of the Central District in Seattle. No Bothell Cougar team had ever won there. As soon as we pulled into the parking lot, I knew why.
Everything about inner-city high schools is different from schools in the suburbs. At Bothell our buildings are all one story. The campus roams around for blocks. There are baseball fields and foot
ball fields west of the school, tennis courts on the north, garden spaces and grassy picnic areas in between the buildings. Fancy murals decorate the walls; tile pavers edge the walkways.
All of Garfield High was squeezed into one city block. The main building consisted of three stories of tired-looking brick and wood. The halls had a musty smell; the ceilings and walls had holes where plaster had fallen down and stains where rain had leaked through the roof. The porcelain sinks in the locker room were yellow with age. You wouldn't think stuff like that would matter to a basketball game. A court is a court. But little things can throw you out of your comfort zone, make you nervous and edgy.
When we took the court, it only got worse. Bothell High has about twenty black kids in the whole school; Garfield has more like a thousand. Right behind our bench was our band, and then clustered around them were Bothell parents and students—though not too many had actually come. Almost all of those faces were white. The rest of the gym was a sea of black and brown faces, with a few white faces here and there. I know it shouldn't matter, that people are people and all that. But you can't tell me that the Garfield guys feel at home when they're playing in a gym packed with white people.
I looked around at my teammates and their faces were pasty. Even Luke looked scared. That surprised me—I figured he'd be the one guy who'd be okay. Then I remembered what he told me about his fancy house in Atlanta, and I thought about the big house he had in Bothell. He was as much of a stranger to the inner city as I was.
We started the game scared, which means we started soft. We got up on them on defense, but not all the way up. We went after rebounds, but not with every ounce of energy. It was as if we were pitching pennies for some big prize at the fair. We expected to come close; but we didn't expect to win. We would have been satisfied to keep the score close, lose by eight or ten, just so long as we weren't blown out.
Everybody except Trent. He wasn't intimidated: not by the gym, not by the fans, not by the Garfield players. In the first quarter he single-handedly kept us in the game, scoring six points and pulling down just about every rebound we got. In the last thirty seconds, I knocked down one long three-pointer, and Luke threw up a prayer that banked in as the horn sounded. Those two baskets cut Garfield's lead to six points—we were lucky it wasn't sixteen.
O'Leary rested Trent at the start of the second quarter, and with him out, the six-point lead grew to twelve, then fifteen. The Garfield crowd was going crazy. It felt like an earthquake was ripping through the gym.
O'Leary called time-out to get Trent back in, and to settle the rest of us down. "You can play with these guys," he said as we huddled around him. "All you've got to do is believe in yourselves!"
That was the problem: we didn't. After the time-out, the gym got even louder. On Garfield's next possession my knees were so wobbly that my guy blew by me on a drive to the hoop. It looked like another easy bucket until Trent came flying across the court, blocking the shot but fouling the guy so hard he crumpled to the floor. Instead of reaching down to help him up, Trent turned away. "Cover your guy!" he barked at me. I nodded, then looked to the Garfield player who was just getting to his feet. He was staring wide-eyed at Trent, and so were the other Garfield guys.
Right after that we started chipping at the lead. We didn't go on any big run, but we did play our game. Trent was a force on the glass at both ends of the court, and my passes were crisp and clean. We ran a lot of two-man stuff—inside, outside—and it worked. By the half the Bulldogs' lead was down to nine. If we just kept doing what we were doing, we could win.
I hadn't figured on Garfield changing things.
But they did. First time down the court in the third quarter, I lobbed an entry pass into Trent on the lower blocks. Immediately they hit him with a double-team. Luke broke to the hoop and was wide open for a split second, but Trent lowered his shoulders and tried to spin left and then right. All he managed to do was travel with the ball.
It wasn't a one-time thing, either. On the next four possessions, every time Trent touched the ball Garfield ran a double-team at him, and he either walked or threw the ball away or forced up a bad shot. Garfield's lead soared back into double digits.
It was after Trent's third foul that Luke clapped his hands together and glared at me, his eyes saying, Get me the ball! Carver had the same look in his eyes. O'Leary was up shouting at me. "Don't force it, Abbott!"
Garfield's big center missed a sweeping hook, Luke grabbed the rebound and passed to me. There was no fastbreak opportunity, but I pushed the ball up quickly. Trent had hustled down and posted up on the right side. He looked open, which was the beauty of Garfield's double-team. He always looked open, but once I made the entry pass they closed on him. I faked the pass in. Luke's guy bit, taking a step toward Trent. Immediately I whipped a bullet pass to Luke. He caught it and in one motion rose for the open fifteen-footer. It was money in the bank, and he gave me a nod as we hustled down to play defense.
Next time it was Carver's turn. Then I went back to Luke, into McShane. Moving the ball, moving it, always moving it, all through the third quarter and into the fourth. Late in the fourth Trent set up down low. I lobbed the ball in, just to see. The double-team didn't come. Trent gave an up-fake, rolled to the hoop, and powered up a short jumper that banked through.
Garfield's coach called time-out. I looked up at the scoreboard. The score was tied at sixty-two with sixteen seconds left. Garfield's fans were up all through the time-out, but they weren't cheering. They were stunned. O'Leary barked directions at us. "Two-three zone defense! You understand! No penetration! Make them shoot outside, and when they do, hit the boards!" The horn sounded and we were back on the court.
O'Leary's switch to a zone was a brilliant stroke. We'd played man-to-man defense the whole way, and the two-three confused the Garfield guards. As the clock wound down, they looked at each other, unsure what play to run. Ten seconds, then eight, then six.
The Garfield guard panicked, forcing the ball inside where there was no one open. Carver got a hand on it, controlled it. He hit me with a quick outlet, and I was off, leading a three-on-one break with Trent on my right and Luke on my left.
I drove hard into the lane. I faked to Trent's side, the defender bit, and I dished the ball to Luke, a soft pass right in his hands. He caught it in stride, soared upward in the same fluid motion, and gently laid the ball against the backboard. It dropped through the net just as the horn sounded. A tenth of a second later we were jumping all over him.
For the first time, the celebration carried into the locker room. Guys were howling with joy, drumming on the lockers, laughing and laughing. Even Trent joined in. He didn't scream or anything, but he was smiling, and he didn't shower quickly and dress off by himself as if he were a visitor who'd somehow wandered into the wrong locker room.
"Wasn't that great!" I said to him as we came out of the locker room and headed toward my mother's car.
Before he could answer, a police car pulled into the parking light, its lights flashing. We both froze as two policemen got out and walked across the parking lot right toward us, flashlights piercing the darkness. When they went right past us, I breathed of sigh of relief. "For a second there I thought they were after us," I said, trying to make a joke of it.
On the drive back to Bothell I tried to get Trent talking about his game, but his sentences were short and his eyes kept peering into the dark streets.
Chapter 12
First thing Sunday morning Luke phoned. "Some of the guys are coming over tonight," he said. "My dad's going to make us some burgers, then we're going to watch the North Carolina-Duke game. Interested?"
"Sure," I said. "Sounds great."
"Really?" he said.
I laughed. "Yeah. Really. Unless you don't want me."
"No, I want you to come. I just didn't think you would."
"Well, I will," I said. "What time?"
"Around six-thirty." He paused. "And Nick, see if you can get Trent to come. It'd be gr
eat to get the whole team together."
As soon as I hung up, the phone rang again. This time it was Dad. "You doing anything today?"
An hour later we were at Alderwood Mall checking out basketball shoes. What I wanted was the Gary Payton model, but they were expensive. He saw me eyeing them. "Those," he said to the salesman, "in size eleven, medium width." When the salesman walked away, Dad looked to me. "When you're a star, you dress the part."
After he paid we found our way to the food court. I must have thanked him five times for the shoes while we ate our burritos. "You want to do something to pay me back?" he said after the fifth time.
"Yeah, sure," I replied. "What is it?"
He leaned toward me, his voice not much above a whisper. "Look for your own shot more often. If you do, you'll open the court..." He went on and on, giving me his same old lecture. It was as if our roles had somehow been reversed. He was the little kid rattling on, and I was the adult nodding my head and pretending to listen. There was no way I could do what he wanted me to do. No way.
It was three in the afternoon when he dropped me off in front of my house. I went inside and saw Katya and Scott on the sofa, practicing together. It had been a long time since she'd been around our house. "Hey, how's it going?" I asked.
"Okay," she answered, and she didn't seem angry with me.
I sucked up my courage. "How's Michael doing?"
"He's okay. He gets tired easily, but that's normal. The doctors say he'll make a complete recovery."
"That's great." I almost added that I'd stop by and see him, but I caught myself.