“Seriously,” I said. “They’ve been there every day since the first time.”
I wanted to say since the first time we played them, but I hadn’t played in that first game. They’d waited until after I left before they agreed to play, just because I was the tallest of our group.
“But they’ll play us, right?” I said.
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure,” said Mike.
“Yeah,” I said, thinking about it. “I guess if they tell you not to come back and you come back with the two of us, they’ve pretty much got to play.”
A thought popped into my head: They have to play, but they don’t have to play fair. I didn’t say it, though. Nerves were always a big part of that Game Day feeling, and they were an even bigger part today. Everything about the game seemed big, and that definitely included the other team. I remembered what Mike and Deuce looked like limping off the court last time, and I bet they remembered what it felt like.
As soon as we got to our seats for math, Mr. O’Neal began passing out sheets of paper. I knew what was on it before it even landed on my desk: It was a pop quiz. I could just tell by the length of the questions that it was going to be a tough one.
I looked over at my friends. Deuce was on my right, and his pencil was already hovering over the paper, ready to attack the first question. Mike was on my left, holding his forehead in both hands and looking at the questions with wide-open eyes. I looked back down at the quiz. I knew today would be a challenge. I just didn’t think it would start so soon.
We headed straight to the court after school. We were hoping to get there first and, you know, establish position. No luck. When we rounded the corner, I could see the older kids were already there.
“What, do these guys live here now or something?” I said.
They were just slinking around and shooting lazy jumpers, so I guess they were still warming up. As we walked toward the court, I saw an iced tea can lying on its side with a sticky brown puddle drying up in front of it. And it had company. More of their junk was scattered around the court and kicked into the corners, with bees and flies buzzing all around it.
Mike and Deuce were both standing up straight with their game faces on, and I did the same. It felt like a war movie, like we were marching into battle.
“This is it,” said Deuce.
“Game on,” I said.
“Let’s do this!” said Mike, a little louder.
We were close enough now, and their biggest guy looked over.
“Well, well, well,” he said. “Look who came back for seconds.”
I decided right then not to play into their trash talk.
“Three-on-three?” I said, all business.
The older kids looked at each other. They knew it wasn’t really a question.
“Be our guests, ladies,” said the first guy. “We’ll even give you the rock first. But it’s make it, take it after that.”
“Sure, no problem,” I said, ignoring his insult. “What are we playing to?”
“Seven,” he said. “Get you three home before your bedtimes.”
I looked over at Mike and Deuce to see what they thought. That was a pretty short game. A lot of times we’d play to eleven or even fifteen. And make it, take it — with the team that scores getting the ball back — it could be over in a flash. These guys were probably just trying to get rid of us. On the other hand, it would only take a few good shots and a couple of lucky bounces to get us to seven, no matter how much older they were.
“Sure,” said Deuce.
“Whatever the score,” said Mike, “we’ll get there.”
“Funny,” said the second-biggest guy. “I don’t remember the last game going that way.”
Without even really thinking about it, we’d already sort of matched up against the other players. I was standing in front of their tallest guy, and Deuce was matched up against their shortest. Up close like this, you could see they had a height advantage in every matchup.
“What’s your name?” I said to my man, Captain Peach Fuzz.
“Carlos,” he said, sizing me up for about the fourth time.
“Amar’e.”
“Armory?” he said, with a little smirk to show how funny he thought he was.
“Amar’e,” I said.
“Whatever,” he said. “I already forgot it. Let me see your ball.”
Deuce bounced it over. It was still pretty new and regulation NBA. Deuce had gotten it for his birthday. As soon as Carlos got his hands on it, just the way he grabbed it, I thought, I don’t know if we’re getting that back.
“We’ll use this one,” said Carlos. He had long fingers that made the ball look small, and he had dirt under his nails. As soon as the game started, I found out that his nails weren’t nearly the dirtiest thing about him.
Deuce took the ball out from the top of the key. His size was a problem when he was shooting, but it worked to his advantage when it came to ballhandling. He stayed low and kept his dribbling under control, even at top speed. It was really hard for anyone to get down there and strip the ball away.
He got around his guy, and I got a little separation from mine. I had an open path to the basket, and Deuce fired a lead pass into the space in front of me. I sprinted forward to grab it out of the air. My eyes were on the ball, so I didn’t see Carlos stick out his leg. I sure felt it, though. His shin banged into mine just above my ankle and I tumbled hard onto the pavement. All I could do was watch the ball sail out-of-bounds as I was going down.
“Foul!” I said, climbing to my feet. I had a scraped-up elbow and a banged-up ankle, and I was lucky it wasn’t any worse.
“Nah,” said Carlos. “You just tripped. In fact, it was probably an offensive foul on you. But I’ll let it slide this time. Our ball.”
So that right there gives you an idea of what we were dealing with. I D’d up Carlos, and I wasn’t shy about it. He kept going to his left, so I figured out pretty quick that he was left-handed. I got right up on him and played hard, but it wasn’t just his fingers that were long. He had long arms and legs. Even his neck was long! When he came at me, it was like some flying collection of elbows and knees. Somewhere in there was the ball.
He scored the first basket of the game on a big, loopy hook shot. The ball came off the tips of his fingers at the top of his outstretched arm. I had good length, too, but watching that release made me feel like I was going to need a ladder to defend him.
I worked hard and managed to stop him on the next drive, but he just passed it off for another bucket. Mike was matched up against a guy they kept calling “Yeti.” It was a pretty good nickname for him, too, because this kid was built like a monster. He wasn’t more than an inch taller than Mike, but his shoulders and hips were so wide and square that it looked like someone had thrown a T-shirt on a footlocker.
Carlos dropped the ball down to him in the post and Yeti dropped his shoulder into Mike.
“Oooooof!” went Mike. He couldn’t help but take a few steps back, and Yeti took advantage of the extra space for an easy layup.
The game had barely started and they were already up 2–0. But they tried the exact same play on the next possession, and Mike saw it coming. He stepped in front of Yeti and deflected the ball straight to Deuce. He dribbled around the perimeter a little, and Mike and I got busy trying to get open.
It wasn’t easy, since my defender was long and Mike’s was wide. Deuce looked around and decided to take the ball himself. His defender was taller than him, which was no major surprise. They called him Ledge or something that sounded like that. I’m just going to say it: Ledge was one greasy dude. He sweated a lot and when he got sweaty he looked sort of oily.
His hands were always moving, too, slapping at the ball, slapping at the air, and sometimes slapping at Deuce. You could see it was bothering him. Would you want some greasy guy slapping at you all game?
“Turn on the jets, D!” I called out.
Deuce gave Ledge that lightning-fast first step and ma
naged to get a little space. I made a move to get in front of Carlos.
“Now!” I raised both hands in front of me, palms up.
But Deuce waited a little too long to make the pass. Ledge recovered and slapped the ball loose. I have to admit, he really did move fast. Must’ve been all that grease. The bullies scored two more points before we got the ball back. When we did, I posted up near the basket and got us on the board with a skyhook of my own.
“Lucky,” said Carlos as the ball rattled in.
“You think you’re the only one who’s ever hit a hook shot?” I said.
There was a little bricklaying by both teams after that, but we managed to get three more points down the stretch. We got it to 6–4, but they kept playing dirty the whole time.
On one play, Yeti clobbered Deuce on a moving pick. It was the biggest player on the court taking out the smallest, and it was hard to miss the foul. But mostly they were trickier than that. They specialized in borderline fouls, things that a real ref would’ve called, but that weren’t obvious enough to get out here on the playground. It really got to us after a while.
“Get off me, man,” Deuce said as Ledge pawed and slapped away.
He passed the ball off to Mike, who had pretty good position to the right of the basket. But as soon as Mike got it, Yeti started grinding his forearm and elbow into Mike’s back.
“Over here!” I called, because I could see he wasn’t going to be able to back in any closer.
Mike fired the ball to me as I flashed into the open. I tried to swing wide as I came around to the left side of the basket. I had to keep an eye out for Carlos’s long arms, so he couldn’t reach in and grab the ball, and I had to keep an eye on his long legs, so he couldn’t trip me again. I guess I just ran out of eyes because I tripped on a crack in the pavement.
The worst thing about it was that I knew there was a big crack there on the left side. Carlos had been going to that side all game because he was a lefty. I’d just gotten so distracted by all of his cheap shots and hacks that I’d forgotten about it.
I didn’t go down, but it didn’t matter. I stumbled and lost control of the ball. Carlos shot forward and took possession. He threw a quick pass back to Ledge at the free throw line. Ledge launched a laser to Yeti under the basket, and he knocked into Mike on his way to another layup. That was it, game over, 7–4.
Being a sore loser is one thing, but being a bad winner? That’s just low.
“Never in doubt,” said Carlos, acting like he’d already forgotten the points I scored against him.
Yeti pulled a can of soda out of his bag. “Too easy,” he said, in between long gulps.
Ledge was licking his lips like a frog and watching Yeti guzzle his warm soda.
The only good thing was we got Deuce’s good ball back. I jumped up and grabbed it as it came through the hoop. It felt weird to rebound a ball that had already gone in, but I knew it was the only way we’d get it back.
“At least this one was close,” said Deuce.
“How many points did you guys score last time?” I said.
“Two,” said Mike.
I’d scored two points myself this time, and Mike and Deuce had one apiece. But it was hard to feel good about the improvement when the rest of us felt so bad.
“Ow, my back,” said Mike as we headed off the court. “I’m going to be feeling those elbows all week!”
“For real,” said Deuce. “I think I need about four showers to get that guy’s slime off me!”
I looked down at my own scrapes and bruises.
“What’s that on your arm there?” said Mike, pointing.
“Scratches,” I said. Just looking at them gave me a queasy feeling.
“You mean …?” said Deuce.
“Yeah,” I said. “Even his fingernails were long.”
We were off the court and on the little path that led to the road when we heard Yeti call out behind us: “Hey, losers!”
I turned around, even though I knew this wasn’t going to be anything good. Yeti had finished his soda and was holding the empty can. As I watched, he twisted it so the metal bent in the middle. Then he smashed it flat between his big meaty hands.
“Catch!” yelled Yeti, and tossed it at us.
I watched the metal disk fly through the air and sail just off to our left. I’d seen a can just like that on Saturday. That’s when I knew: These were the guys who’d been making my dad’s job harder.
I was in a pretty bad mood by the time I made it home. I just wanted to head inside and maybe zone out with some TV. But when I got there, Dad was pulling up from the other direction. The big trailer bounced up and over the curb as it made the wide, slow turn into the driveway. I walked alongside the truck as it eased to a stop. Then I waited for Dad to get out.
“Now that was a full day’s work,” he said, as he stepped down out of the driver’s seat. He swung the door shut behind him, and turned toward me. He was about to say something else, but as soon as he got a good look at me, he stopped.
“Hey, Pops,” I said.
I could see his eyes taking in my scraped-up knee and my scratched-up arm. He was looking at me the way I once saw a guy look at his car after a fender bender downtown, carefully sizing up the damage. The only difference was that my dad wasn’t thinking about the repair costs. He was probably just wondering what had happened to his kid.
“You look worse than I do,” he said, “and I’ve been using a wood chipper all day!”
He was trying to cheer me up. I tried to smile, but I couldn’t get the corners of my mouth to move any way but down.
“I knew it was a mistake to play,” I said.
“What do you mean, STAT?” he said.
Like I said before, STAT stood for Standing Tall And Talented. I usually liked that, but I wasn’t feeling all that Tall or Talented at the moment.
“I should’ve just gone skateboarding or played baseball with Timmy and them,” I said. The words came out in one big blurt.
“You didn’t get those scratches from a hardball,” said Dad.
“I was playing hoops with Mike and Deuce,” I said.
“Nothing wrong with playing ball with your boys,” said Dad.
“No, I know, it’s just …” I was trying to think of how to explain. “There are these kids who’ve been hogging the court. And I knew if I got dragged into it, it would end up being this whole big thing.”
I stopped and ran that back to see if it made any sense or if Dad was going to say anything about it. He was still standing there, though. He was wiping his hands on his work pants, but his eyes were still looking at mine. He was still listening to what I had to say. He knew before I did that there was more coming.
“Those guys are my best friends,” I said. “It’s just that they always want me to be playing hoops with them, but I’m into a bunch of things.”
“Yeah,” said my dad. “You sure don’t have any trouble keeping yourself busy.”
“I like baseball, football, skateboarding, and even reading about history and stuff,” I said. I didn’t even mention the music, movies, bowling, and other things. This was my dad, and he knew me as well as anyone. That’s how he knew that it was his turn to talk.
He put his big hands on his hips and looked back at the truck. Maybe he was checking something and maybe he was just putting his words in order. I think it might have been that second thing, because when he started talking, he seemed to know just what to say.
“Son, we both know that you’ve got a gift for basketball,” he said. “But your greatest gift is just being you. And like you said, that includes a lot of different interests. What you have to understand is that it’s not one or the other. You can play hoops with your friends and still be yourself.”
“I guess,” I said.
He looked back at the trailer again, and this time he pointed to it. “It’s just like you’re part of my crew when you work, but you have your own thing,” he said. “Those big riding mowers can’t tri
m around those little trees and flower bushes. They’d run ’em right over. But you’ve never so much as plucked a petal.”
I thought about all the times I wheeled that little lawn mower around. All the birdbaths and rose bushes I’d ducked and dodged.
“Basketball’s like that,” he said. “You find your own thing out there, and your friends find theirs.” He reached over and put his hand on my shoulder. “But I’ll tell you one thing, son. When you find your place out there, you won’t be any little push mower on the court.”
We stood there on the lawn, and I felt those last words sink in. I appreciated it, but talking about that mower reminded me I had something else to say.
“I think this is the same group that’s been messing up all your lawns,” I said. “They just started coming around here, and they made the same kind of mess on the court.”
I thought Dad would be really mad, but he just shook his head. “Listen, STAT,” he said. “I’ve been around a long time, and I’ve dealt with a lot worse than those kids. Don’t you worry about that. I can take care of the lawns. You just take care of what you need to.”
Right then, I knew what I had to do. My dad could take care of his turf. Now I needed to take care of mine. That smile, the one I was trying to make before, came out on its own now.
“Thanks, Dad,” I said.
After dinner, I thought about what he’d said for a long time. Later that night, I made some phone calls. I got through to Deuce first.
“Yo, D,” I said.
“’Sup, man?” he said.
I got right to the point: “We’re playing them again tomorrow.”
He didn’t say anything at first. Finally he said, “You sure?”
I was.
“Trust me,” I said. “I have a plan.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
He wanted to know what it was, but I couldn’t tell him just yet. I was still working out the details.
“But you’ll be there, right?” I said.
“Amar’e, man, it’s me,” he said. “You know I will.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I know it.”
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