Hooper

by Geoff Herbach

  DEDICATION

  To this whole great nation of ballers.

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  One: I Am a Hooper

  Two: Talk More

  Three: En Vee Pee

  Four: Hate Victory

  Five: The Ink

  Six: But Sometimes . . .

  Seven: Passport

  Eight: Surprise Return

  Nine: I Hide Me

  Ten: The Past Like Dirt

  Eleven: Losing My Mind to the Owenses

  Twelve: I Choose This

  Thirteen: Kase and Carli

  Fourteen: This Noise

  Fifteen: The Fury

  Sixteen: Pivot in the Post

  Seventeen: Barry’s Door

  Eighteen: Asking for Myself, Receiving

  Nineteen: My Real Home

  Twenty: More Skills

  Twenty-One: Great Jokes

  Twenty-Two: To the City

  Twenty-Three: Young Bloody Boy

  Twenty-Four: Bad Reactions

  Twenty-Five: Guidance, Part I

  Twenty-Six: Giants of Basketball

  Twenty-Seven: Guidance, Part II

  Twenty-Eight: Mr. Calmness

  Twenty-Nine: The F-W-B

  Thirty: Telling No Jokes

  Thirty-One: We Are a Team

  Thirty-Two: I Am King

  Thirty-Three: At Patrick’s

  Thirty-Four: Chasing the Ocean

  Thirty-Five: Cooked in a Hot Tub

  Thirty-Six: Bad Version of Me

  Thirty-Seven: Hooper the Dragon

  Thirty-Eight: I Like Barry

  Thirty-Nine: Making out with a Hot Girl

  Forty: Eating Twin Ports Pride for Lunch

  Forty-One: The Perfect Life

  Forty-Two: Here It Comes Again

  Forty-Three: Not Okay

  Forty-Four: Trying to Handle

  Forty-Five: Bad Beef

  Forty-Six: Barney Was a Dog

  Forty-Seven: The Last Monday

  Forty-Eight: 3:17 A.M.

  Forty-Nine: The Last Tuesday

  Fifty: 11:26 P.M.

  Fifty-One: The Last Wednesday

  Fifty-Two: 7:21 P.M.

  Fifty-Three: The Last Thursday

  Fifty-Four: 5:47 P.M.

  Fifty-Five: The Last Friday

  Fifty-Six: I Am Not Alone, Part I

  Fifty-Seven: I Am Not Alone, Part II

  Fifty-Eight: I Am Not Alone, Part III

  Fifty-Nine: Devin Is Not Alone

  Sixty: Barry Is Not Alone

  Sixty-One: We Are Hoopers

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Books by Geoff Herbach

  Back Ad

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  ONE

  I AM A HOOPER

  This is where I first found happiness in America. I am a hooper.

  I leap high, grab the rebound over all the Wauzeka boys. I drop the rock to the point guard, Caleb Olson, then jog down the court.

  Shoes squeak. The pep band drummer drums. Cheerleaders cheer. The air smells like popcorn and nachos and the heat of all these people, a packed gym full of Northrup Polar Bear fans.

  This is February. Sophomore year.

  I jog underneath the hoop. The defender tries to push me out. I am already too big. He is six foot one, maybe. I am six foot six and all bony arms and legs. I back him down just for fun. Caleb Olson, a senior, takes his time coming down the court. He is so good with the ball in his hand. He is such a fine shooter, too.

  We are far ahead. No need to rush things.

  I swing outside the paint to the left wing.

  The drum drums. The crowd cheers.

  Our offense runs through me and Caleb and no one else.

  Caleb moves into the frontcourt. The Wauzeka defense sets. I cut again underneath the basket, then explode from the post to the top of the key, where I set a pick on Caleb’s defender.

  Caleb drives.

  I roll.

  Caleb lobs the ball high at the rim.

  I leap. I catch. I throw it down.

  It’s like water breaking through a dam.

  The crowd goes crazy, even a kid at the end of our opponent’s bench. He looks like me when I was a little boy, or like my little brother would look if I had one. Blond hair spiked up. Long arms. Long legs. So skinny. He wears a red T-shirt with a big yellow corncob on it. “Fear the Cob” is written in big letters.

  That boy is so happy to see me dunk the basketball, and I do not fear the Cob.

  Wauzeka, known as “the Cobbers,” won the Minnesota Valley Conference three years in a row, but this victory claims the crown for us.

  Northrup Polar Bears reign supreme. We are the champions.

  Me and Caleb high-five.

  But I don’t like him.

  You would think this victory makes me a popular guy. You would be wrong. After the game, no girls come to kiss my cheek. No teammates want to meet me for pizza at Patrick’s. And I don’t want to be with any of them. Instead, I leave the gym fast. I don’t shower. I grab my bag of clothes from my locker and fire out the door into the night air.

  In the parking lot, Barry Roland waits for me. Nobody in school likes him, but he is a good person. Barry Roland takes me to McDonald’s down on the highway. I eat two quarter pounders and a large order of french fries.

  While I eat, Barry talks about tae kwon do. Although he is small, he is good at this martial art, the star pupil at Bob’s Champion Tae Kwon Do Studio. He is so good, in fact, he helps teach the little kid classes and old people classes. Sometimes when we’re at McDonald’s a little kid or old person will come to say hi. He may not be popular in high school, but little kids and old people love him.

  This February night he is excited because he has just begun to kick trees with his shins. He thinks he can have the most powerful shins in all of Minnesota by the time he attempts his second-degree black belt test in April.

  “I saw it on YouTube? If you micro-splinter the bone on your shins it grows back harder? You can turn your shins into steel?”

  I stop eating the quarter pounder. “Your shin grows metal?” I ask.

  “No, it grows more bone. Strong bone! It just gets as hard as metal, okay?”

  “Okay,” I say. “Sounds good.” I take another bite of my quarter pounder.

  Barry Roland ends many sentences with the sound of a question, even if there is not a question. I once thought he was asking many questions, but I learned that this is just his conversation style.

  He has much style. He often wears his karate-style headband on his head, and he has thick glasses that make his eyes look big and surprised. He has puffy blond hair and a fluffy blond mustache.

  Food also fires from his mouth while he talks. It’s only because he is so excited about life.

  “Maybe, if my shins get hard enough, I can get on TV for breaking logs?”

  “Yes. Dope,” I say. I make my voice deep to sound like a TV announcer. “Mr. Strong Man can kick down your house.”

  “That’s right, dude!” he says. “I thought of my TV name, too. Do you want to hear it?”

  “Yes.”

  He lowers his head and whispers like a snake. “The Shinja.”

  “The Shinja? Like a ninja with great shins?”

  He nods.

  I nod. “That is very, very dope, bro.”

  When we finish with the burgers, Barry Roland drives. He talks all the way to my dark home on the edge of a small college campus, on the outskirts of a tiny Minnesota town. In the house, Renata, my adopted mom, is fast asleep. Barry gives me a high five when he parks. “See you for breakfast,” he says, because he will come to eat breakfast with me and Renata in the morning.
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br />   I point and say, “Catch you in the morning light.”

  He smiles in his piece-of-shit Pontiac. This car has rust holes in its bottom. When there is rain or snow, there is rain or snow in the car. Barry doesn’t mind. He is happy for what he has.

  He drives away, and I go into the dark house across from the darkened college buildings, on the edge of all those dark farms.

  TWO

  TALK MORE

  A girl named Carli Anderson says I should talk more. So here.

  I come from Poland. My name was Adam Sobieski, but I changed it to Adam Reed, because my adopted mom, Renata, has the last name Reed. I have been in America for four and a half years. I just moved to Minnesota last summer. I like basketball. I sound funny when I talk in English, but that’s not my fault. I work on it a lot. But I’m bad at school, even when I was in Poland and could do school in Polish.

  That’s me.

  Is that enough, Carli Anderson?

  THREE

  EN VEE PEE

  A week after we defeat the Wauzeka Cobbers, the playoffs come. Because Northrup is the conference champion, the first round is in Northrup High School’s gymnasium (small and old, but okay).

  Like it has been the last couple of games, the gym is filled. The old farmers and businessmen and hairdressers and dental assistants and the guys who hang out in bars, they all pack the stands to cheer us on. Cheerleaders shout and kick higher than ever. So many fans cannot find seats, they have to stand at the doorways. Almost everyone in Northrup attends, except Renata. She did not come to any game all season, which is okay. She did not attend games in Philadelphia when we lived there, either. Big crowds and noise give her migraines in her eyes and temples. I don’t mind who is in the stands, because all I do is play basketball.

  Caleb Olson lobs a pass. I dunk so hard and shout and raise my arms above my head like a warrior.

  That morning, a newspaper wrote how I make more dunks than anyone in all of Minnesota. The chemistry teacher, Mr. Burton, taped the article to the door of his room.

  “Did you know you were so good, Adam?” he asked.

  “No,” I said. I ducked and looked around because I didn’t want people to make shit of me.

  No one I could see made shit.

  The coach from New Ulm screams, “Watch for thirty-four! Watch out!” We are on defense and that coach is right: they should watch out for me. As he shouts, I peel off the center and steal the ball from the shooting guard and explode across midcourt. Nobody from New Ulm’s team can catch up. I sky into the air and throw the ball down and pound on my chest.

  We are up by fifteen points.

  The wild drummer, Derrick Oppegaard, pounds his drum, and the crowd begins shouts of “En Vee Pee!”

  Coach high-fives me, brings me off the court so subs can get some minutes. The crowd stands and continues to chant. I try not to look over my shoulder at them, but I don’t like them making a chant.

  In the “good game” line, the center from New Ulm, who is as tall as me, but not an athlete, says, “You’re too good, dog. En Vee Pee for sure.”

  “Okay,” I say.

  Then I leave school fast. Barry Roland waits for me in the parking lot. It is icy and below zero. The wind cuts through my warm-up, but Barry’s shit Pontiac, even with the holes in the floor, is warm and toasty.

  “Hey, dude!” he says. “Ready for some grub?”

  At McDonald’s, I ask Barry Roland what En Vee Pee means.

  He scrunches up his nose so his fluffy mustache gets small underneath. This is what his face does when he thinks. “Maybe it’s like when people envy your skills so much they have to pee their pants?”

  I do not trust Barry in matters of fact, but this seems like a possible explanation. “Okay. Maybe,” I say.

  “Yeah. Uh-huh,” Barry says, nodding. “I’d be willing to bet on it.”

  Then I am sure he is wrong.

  The next morning, during breakfast, I forget to ask Renata what she knows about envy pee. We always listen to jazz (because Renata’s dad, Papa, loves jazz). But Renata is not humming along as she usually does. Barry is there. She is staring at him. He explains to her why he is limping, why he has blood on the shins of his blue jeans.

  “I don’t know if that’s a good idea, Barry,” she says to him about his tree kicking. “You could permanently injure yourself.”

  “It’s worth it, Mrs. Renata,” he says. “I can feel the steel growing in my shins already.” He always calls her Mrs. Renata, even though Renata is her first name.

  I forget about envy pee.

  But at school, before class begins, a tall girl with thick, shiny brown hair, who walks on crutches, says, “Look who’s here. It’s the envy pee.” She smiles as we pass in the hall. I recognize her from being around, but I don’t know yet that her name is Carli Anderson. And I don’t say nothing in reply. I mean anything.

  First hour, I motion to the gym teacher, Ms. Hader, to come speak. She is a very nice woman who doesn’t make shit of dumb people. “Excuse me,” I say. Other students stand by the volleyball net. They stare at me while I ask my question. I don’t want them to hear. “What does envy pee mean?” I whisper.

  She smiles very big across her whole face. “M, Adam. Not N.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “The M stands for Most. The V stands for Valuable. The P stands for Player. The crowd was chanting Most Valuable Player at you last night. That’s pretty cool, huh?”

  “Oh,” I say. “It’s okay.”

  “Just okay?” she asks.

  I shrug. The other students are smiling now.

  I don’t smile back, because I don’t like people and I don’t like to be stupid, but inside I am getting warm. I know in my heart it is more than okay to be MVP, because now I know what MVP means, only I never imagined American kids would shout about me like that.

  LeBron James is MVP. Steph Curry is MVP. Kevin Durant is MVP. Michael Jordan was MVP before I was even born.

  I walk through the halls of the school. There is a bounce in my step. How did I become MVP?

  I was not the very best basketball player back in Philadelphia. In fact, I didn’t want to play any basketball. Renata made me go. She was worried I didn’t make friends at my school.

  She was right to worry. I didn’t want friends. I wanted to be home, where there was always food and always the TV and the couch and a blanket.

  But my gym teacher told her I was a natural athlete and that I was a good player in my class. So Renata said, “Adam, you need to do this. I’d be a bad mother if I didn’t encourage you to get involved. Do you want me to feel like a bad mother?”

  “No,” I mumbled.

  “That doesn’t mean I don’t like having you around, okay? I really do.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  I didn’t believe that she liked having me around, even though she had to work for almost two years to adopt me. I went to basketball because for most of the time I’ve known her, I do whatever Renata tells me to do. I need a mom.

  And I knew right away that Renata had made a good parent decision. Although I sucked at first, I loved playing this game.

  My teammates were mostly new from Nigeria, and we ran and ran and ran and I got better at layups and passing and defense and then I worked on basketball all the time and went to three camps at Temple University and did drills in the hallway of our apartment building and on the sidewalk even when there was snow falling and on the park courts in the sun and in lightning and in sleet, and I got much, much better, and me and my team were far superior by the next year, and my growth has taken me from average-size to quite tall over a couple years. By the time the Minnesota kids shouted MVP at me, I was dribbling so well, crossing over, breaking ankles, and dunking like a crazy man. I played killer defense. Even though I didn’t shoot great all the time, I knew I was good at this game. And the competition in Northrup was not as good as in Philadelphia. So I seemed very good.

  But MVP? Me? Adam Reed, who was born Sobieski on
a small Polish dairy farm a million miles from anyplace? Why would my classmates cheer and call me MVP? Also, don’t all these kids hate me?

  Some kids do.

  I walk past Kase Kinshaw, who leans against his locker. Other students are smiling now, saying “good game” to me. But he glares and shakes his head like I am shit on the ground. My heart accelerates. I feel adrenaline rise. Kase Kinshaw has hated my guts from the moment he noticed me. His hate is getting worse.

  I go fast to get past him.

  I don’t understand some things. Kase Kinshaw is a large football player, but he never messes with people big like him, only those smaller or dumber or weaker. This behavior does not make everybody hate him. Most kids act like he is a dope dude. They get quiet and listen when he talks. They smile at him. They laugh at his jokes, which are not jokes but shocking things that no one else would say out loud. He calls Barry Roland the r-word and he calls me “Duh” because I have pauses in my speech. When he learned I was from Poland, he started to call me “the Refugee,” too. Poland is troubled, maybe, but not at war. His meanness got worse. “Don’t breathe,” Kase Kinshaw said at his lunch table as I walked by one time. “You could catch AIDS.”

  He was talking to Caleb Olson. Caleb laughed. Why would I like Caleb even if he is good at basketball?

  In Philadelphia, there were a million people. I played basketball against boys with tattoos on the playground who liked to shove me.

  Okay. Basketball is rough.

  I played against a team who were in a juvenile home because they committed violent crimes.

  No problems with those guys.

  The worst were some guys from a public school who called me Forrest Gump and who flipped hand signals at me that my teammate Mobo Bell said were gang signs (I don’t know why they would flash gang signs at me). I was thrown from that game because I elbowed a boy in his nose and then we brawled so bad he got a dislocated shoulder. The cops talked to me after and the other boy’s coach begged there to be no charges, because that kid had already had bad troubles and he didn’t need any new ones. My coach called Renata about the fight, and she was so shocked and scared and troubled. She grabbed my shoulders and yelled at me, and I thought she might throw me out onto the streets. Luckily it was the last game of the season, or I maybe would have a suspension. My Philly coach met with me later and said I have to learn to control my emotions or I will have future suspensions.