Hooper

by Geoff Herbach

  The dorm at Minneapolis Academy is very pretty on its outside, but its inside is smelly and dark and the room I will stay in looks like a hospital room in an old Polish horror movie.

  My roommate is only thirteen. Jesse is so white he is like a sickly ghost. He is also as tall as me, but he weighs maybe a hundred and twenty pounds. This boy has the biggest feet I have ever seen—big, floppy dolphin flippers—and he has a nosebleed for the whole first hour we are in the room together.

  “Sorry,” he says with his voice that sounds like a sad goose honking. “I have a bad nose.” He bleeds on his pillow, on the floor, on his own chin, on ten thousand Kleenex, which he drops on the floor after he fills our whole garbage can.

  “Excuse me,” I say, making my bed. “But are you dying?”

  “No. Ha-ha. This happens a lot,” he says, tipping his head way back to stop the blood. “Especially with stress.”

  “But maybe you need to see a doctor?” I ask.

  “Nobody wants to room with me because they think I’m gross,” he says.

  I look at blood on Kleenex everywhere. “Oh really?” I say.

  “How come you got stuck with me?” he asks.

  It doesn’t matter. I will soon be playing basketball and everything will be good. That’s what I think.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  BAD REACTIONS

  Very soon we are due to the first practice. My gut’s nervous, but I am ready. I will be a good teammate. No one will think I’m an ass. I have a joke ready about a lonely cookie and his mom, who has been “a wafer so long.” Get it, a wafer? Away for?

  My bleeding roommate and I head to the boys’ gym together. Girls are practicing in the academy’s nice gymnasium. We are in the ice arena, which is made back to a basketball and tennis court area after the first week of March and the end of the high school hockey season. Jesse has twenty-five Kleenex jammed in the left side of his nose.

  We enter and are the last boys to arrive. There are basketballs bouncing everywhere. I love the sound. Cement arches of the arena echo with this beautiful noise. Then the whistle blows. All motion stops. “Over here, Adam,” Coach Cliff shouts from the court farthest from door. I jog to Coach Cliff, and the basketballs begin their bouncing once more.

  But not at 17U. No basketballs bouncing.

  Eleven other boys await me. All of them have crossed arms. I wave, which is my stupid nervousness, like saying, “Duh.” And in return, they glare harder, like I am not welcome among them. This is not the right time for my cookie joke.

  I slow down my jog. I swallow hard.

  Coach Cliff slaps me on the back, then says, “Glad you’re here, buddy.” He turns to another boy, the one who has muscles like a big man. “Devin. You lead warm-ups. Paired with Adam.”

  “Come on, Coach,” he says. “I’m with Khalil.”

  “Not today.” Coach Cliff turns to me. “Adam. You remember Devin from last week?”

  I nod.

  “He’s your partner. Just do what he does.”

  I nod again.

  Devin shakes his head.

  Why? I’m good at basketball. Why would he not want to be paired with me? Heat grows in my heart. Devin dribbles the ball away from me. I follow him to a spot on the floor. Other boys get paired and line up near us.

  Then Devin fires passes at me. Hard. Chest, bounce, overhead chucks that hurt my hands to catch them. He doesn’t even look like he’s trying. The ball pops from his hands. I copy what he does. I can throw hard, too.

  After a minute, Devin shouts, “Read and react.” The smaller, guard-like boys go to the top of the key. Me, Devin, and few others—taller ones—stay down under the basket. “Just make a move,” Devin says without looking at me, because I’m nobody to him. “Like you’re committing to defending one side or the other. Like this.” The guard dribbles down. Devin leaps to his left. The guard reacts to Devin and drops in a layup. “Then rebound,” Devin says. He grabs the ball and dribbles up to the top of the key. The shooter remains below the basket waiting to pretend to play defense. I get it (except maybe I don’t).

  A boy with the ball is coming up to me. I slide left, and the boy makes his move to shoot a layup. But I can’t help it. Defense is fun. I leap back and hit the ball out of the air. “No, dude,” the kid says. “Come on. Let me warm up.”

  “Don’t block him, Adam,” Coach Cliff shouts. “Not now.”

  “Oh,” I say. “Okay.” I chase the ball and go to the top of the key behind Devin. He shakes his head at me like I’m an idiot. The heat grows more.

  Does he think I care if he is happy to play with me? I am used to all the bad people. I have lived with my dad. I have fought boys in Poland and Philly. I exist with Kase Kinshaw always trying to be in my head. I don’t care about this muscle guy!

  We repeat the drill for some time. No defense. The defender rebounds and soon gets a chance to shoot. Teammates keep stopping and popping shots from farther out from the hoop. At the elbow by the side of the free-throw line, I have hit the end of my range. My shots look dumb and dumber, like I am whipping the ball. But Devin, who is big as I am in height and more of a man in muscles, keeps moving backward, farther and farther, beyond the three-point line.

  And he does not miss. The ball takes wing from his hand and slides through the net silent and perfect.

  And I see, for the first time since my growth spurt and my arrival in Minnesota, a boy about my age who is far better at this game than me.

  My stomach tightens.

  He doesn’t like me? Screw him. I don’t like him.

  But, shit, he is too good. He is better. He is bigger. He jumps high easily. He runs light on his feet—I am not even faster. He shoots the ball better than the best of the guys I saw in the playoffs.

  Devin Mitchell fires from five feet beyond the three-point line. The ball slides through the net. I fire a brick into the front of the rim. He is not just a tiny bit better than me. Devin Mitchell belongs on a different planet.

  He doesn’t like me?

  The heat in my heart grows stronger. I feel it burn down my arms and legs. I am different everywhere. I stick out like a sore thumb. I am the sore thumb. In Northrup, at least I am the best. But here, I am not even the best. I am just different. Weird. Awkward. Fumbling.

  The team moves to a passing drill where the dribbler reacts to a defender by passing to another guy, who crashes to the rim for a layup, and I am a head case, confused. I throw the ball out of bounds. All of these boys laugh and shake their heads like I am stupid. They all hate me, huh? Then we move to what Devin calls back-door cuts and I am lost again, but I end up with Devin slam-dunking over me, bouncing the ball off my shoulder. The whole Fury team shouts and woots.

  I burn in every part of my body. This makes me focus.

  On my next back-door cut (I run to the right wing, then quick turn back to basket, fly in), the boy who handles the ball gives me a lob. I leap, take it from the air well above the rim, and smash it through the hole. Then, before I am thinking, I hang on the rim and shout loudly.

  When I drop to the floor, I am surrounded by the Fury team. They are shouting, not good things.

  Coach Cliff blows his whistle.

  Devin shoves me. “You want to show us up, Farmer?” he spits. “You get on our team for a minute and you front?”

  Coach Cliff blows his whistle louder and longer.

  I know Devin could destroy me. It takes everything I have not to punch his big face. I lean toward him. I remember that I could lose everything if I act . . .

  Then Devin shoves me so hard I fall back onto the floor.

  There are suddenly many loud whistles blowing from everywhere. Five coaches come in and surround us.

  “Devin Mitchell, what in the hell are you doing, son?” Coach Cliff shouts.

  “D-Mitch, you get off my court right now,” another man yells. It is the short old white man in his Fury baseball cap. Mr. Doig is what Carli called him. “No brawlers, no thugs!”

  Devin st
ands over me, swears under his breath, shakes his head, and walks off the court.

  “Everybody go clean yourselves up,” Coach Cliff says. “No more practice until we have this issue sorted out. Shower, then a meeting in forty-five at the fourth-floor lounge.”

  I push myself off the floor. Everyone stares at Coach Cliff.

  “Adam Reed, you stay behind. The rest of you, get out of here,” Coach Cliff says.

  As they leave, Coach Cliff says, “Now you listen up, son. These guys don’t think you belong here. You’re not doing yourself any favors by showboating.”

  “That’s right. Show you belong with your play,” Mr. Doig says.

  I nod. But it wasn’t my fault. Devin is the ass.

  All the way back to the dorm room, I grumble and mumble. So many people are shit. I don’t like bad people in Warsaw or Philadelphia. I don’t like them in Northrup. And I don’t like these stupid Minneapolis ballers.

  I stop walking for a second. That’s every place I’ve lived since I was little.

  Maybe I don’t like people? Is there something wrong with me?

  Then I imagine big Devin busting a dunk on my face and terrible Kase tripping me as I walk by. Why do they all do it?

  I don’t care about people. I hate people.

  I walk fast.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  GUIDANCE, PART I

  Forty minutes later, I sit on my bed in the dorm room. I have punched the bed many times and am exhausted. It’s good that Jesse has not yet returned from his practice to see me crazy. At the end of the punching, it occurs to me once again that I have problems and maybe I myself am one of them.

  Why did I get angry that Devin is better at basketball? Isn’t it just a fact, not something he did to me? I can be angry about him being nasty, but what made me slam-dunk the basketball and hang on the rim is that he is better.

  Just then, a knock lands on my door. I expect it is Coach Cliff, but it is Carli Anderson.

  I am not wearing a shirt.

  She pauses and looks down at my chest. She says, “Oh. Whoa.” I fold my arms because I am embarrassed. Her face blushes. Her eyes come back up to mine.

  “Uh?” I say.

  “Okay. I have to concentrate,” she whispers.

  “What?” I say.

  She shuts her eyes for a moment, takes a deep breath, then opens her eyes wide. “Uh, holy shit, dumbass. You already got in a fight?”

  “Yes,” I say. “Okay.”

  “Well, great job.”

  “No. Not good.”

  She shakes her head, and I can smell her shampoo. I become a little drunk in my brain. “Listen,” she says, “I know you only have, like, two minutes before you have to meet with the team, or whatever, but you need to know a couple of things, okay?”

  I nod, still drunk. “Yeah?”

  “I’m coming in, which breaks team rules, by the way, so don’t let me do it again.”

  I step out of her way. She looks at my chest as she passes, but then she finds many bloody Kleenexes on the floor. “What’s with this mess? Did you get punched?”

  “The Kleenex is from my bleeding roommate,” I say.

  “Did you punch him?” she asks.

  “He bleeds all by himself.”

  “Good.” Carli nods. Then she crinkles up her eyes. “Adam, my dad thinks you have huge potential.”

  “I know,” I say.

  “But you aren’t that good yet.”

  “But . . .”

  “Shut up! You’re not that good yet, okay? And Dad thinks you should be on the 16U team. He couldn’t believe they moved you up. No way you belong on the same court with Khalil Williams.”

  “Who?” I ask.

  “That point guard? He’s awesome.”

  I know who she is talking about. “He’s pretty good,” I say.

  “No, he’s really, really good. And Devin Mitchell? Why would you fight him?”

  “Because,” I say.

  “Have you watched him at all? Have you looked him up on YouTube? There’s, like, hours of Devin Mitchell highlights out there,” Carli says.

  I nod. “I know. I saw today. Devin is a hundred percent better than me, okay? He jumps as good. He shoots way better. I do not belong on court with him.”

  “Then why’d you fight him?” Carli asks.

  “I didn’t really fight,” I say. “He shoved me.”

  “Because you tried to show him up.”

  “I don’t know.”

  Carli nods slowly. “Adam . . . I know you’re smart.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You are. You’re actually cool.”

  “No,” I say.

  She nods more. “But you are not easy, okay?”

  “I know,” I say. “But I’m trying. Listen, I learned some jokes.”

  Carli laughs a little. “Really?” she asks.

  “Yeah.”

  She takes another deep breath, then says quietly, “Man, nobody knows you, but everyone thinks they know you.”

  “Why do they think that?”

  “Because you let them make up who you are.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Everybody in Northrup thinks you’re some kind of mute, basketball-playing freak show.”

  “Not everybody. Kase Kinshaw, yes. But not everybody.”

  “Yeah, Kase Kinshaw.”

  “He’s a bad jerk.”

  “He’s not. He’s my friend.” Carli pauses for a moment. Then she says, “Let’s just talk about these dudes here.”

  “What about them?”

  “They think you’re something you’re not, too. They think they know exactly who you are. And if you act weird or angry or if you stay silent, they will keep thinking you’re just some stuck-up, rich blond kid from southern Minnesota.”

  “I am not that,” I say.

  “No,” she says. “So you have to speak.”

  I stand back up. “But I don’t speak right when I try.”

  “You speak fine.”

  “I got jokes. Should I tell jokes?”

  Carli shakes her head. “Try this, please. Try, okay?” She looks at the ceiling for a moment, then back at me. “In the meeting, tell them you’re from a different country. Tell them you’re really stressed out about getting moved up to 17U and the dunk was a release. Tell them you cannot believe you’re playing with such giants of Minnesota basketball . . . well, you don’t have to say that exactly, but let them know that you know they’re really, really good and it’s a privilege to play with them. And you really want to be a part of their team.”

  “Then my jokes?” I ask.

  “No, dude. Jesus!” Carli says.

  “I was joking about that,” I say. “I’m not dumb.”

  “I know,” she says.

  “I’m not a mute freak show,” I say.

  “Dude, I know,” she says.

  There’s a knock on the door.

  “Is it really against the rules for you to be here?” I say.

  “Coach Cliff sent me to talk to you. It’s okay this time,” she says.

  TWENTY-SIX

  GIANTS OF BASKETBALL

  I have seen rooms like this at colleges where Renata has worked. We lived for two months in a graduate student apartment when I first came to America. There are chairs of faded red color that are low to the ground and they look cushy and comfy, but don’t be fooled. They are not comfortable. These chairs are strewn about on dirty gray carpet. There is an old TV in the corner and a crusty fridge. This place is a student lounge.

  All the D-I Fury 17U team has once again beaten me to the spot. I enter right before Coach Cliff. All the players are very low in those chairs. No talking. They all glare at me as I enter, and I feel sick and I want to give them the middle finger, but I want to play basketball with them more. Remember they are giants of basketball.

  Mr. Doig leans on a table at the front of the room. “Sit down, Adam,” he says.

  There is one open chair in the fron
t row. I go and sink into it.

  Mr. Doig begins walking back and forth in front of us. “Do you know why I started this organization?” he asks.

  No one says a word.

  “Because,” he says, looking at the ceiling, “I love this game and I believe kids are the future. And so I wanted to merge these loves, basketball and kids, with my personal understanding of what makes an individual successful.” He stops and looks to me. “Have you had a chance to read the materials in your folder yet, Adam?”

  “Not too much,” I say.

  He shakes his head at me. Glares. “No, sir. That is the appropriate response to my question, son. Show respect.”

  I am confused for a moment, but in Poland there is more respect shown for old guys than there is here usually. I think I understand. “Okay,” I say. “No, sir.”

  Then Mr. Doig looks to Devin Mitchell, who is also in the front row.

  “Stand up,” Mr. Doig says.

  Devin Mitchell pushes himself up from his chair. He makes Mr. Doig look like a little toy fat man.

  “What do we learn on the Fury? What are the six factors of success?” Mr. Doig asks.

  Devin takes in a deep breath, then says in a quiet voice, “One, work hard. Two, dream big. Three, prep particularly. Four, respect your coaches. Five, no excuses. Six, never give up.”

  “Good. Now, who brought Adam Reed onto this team?” Mr. Doig asks.

  “You and Coach Cliff,” Devin says.

  Mr. Doig’s face turns a shade of red. His voice gets low and gravelly. “How are you to refer to me, son?”

  “Sorry, sir. You brought Adam Reed onto this team. Sir.”

  Mr. Doig nods. “And who am I?”

  “You are a coach. You also lead this organization, sir,” Devin says.

  Mr. Doig nods again and returns to his walking. “Now, if I see any one of you treat Adam Reed in a fashion that is anything but respectful, I’ll call it like I see it. And that is that you are disrespecting the wishes of your organization’s CEO and the wishes of your coach. Does that violate team rules, Devin?” Mr. Doig asks.