After the grand master speaks to him and then ties his new belt on him, all the kids in the crowd mob Barry. He high-fives everyone, including Regan and Margery. Finally, I think he will come talk to me and Renata, but he doesn’t. Instead he walks quickly past to where Kase and his dad are standing.
I watch. He talks only to Kase.
Kase turns red in the face. Is he mad? I can’t tell.
He and Barry shake hands. Barry and Kase’s dad shake hands. Kase’s dad spots me watching. He nods at me. He, Carli, and Kase leave.
Barry comes over.
“What happened?” I ask.
“I told Kase I was sorry that I kicked him last week? I told him I acted from anger? I told him I deserved to get kicked out of school because I broke my vows when I kicked him? I told him I love dogs and I would never hurt a dog? I told him that what happened with Barney scared me so much and made me so sad that I came to tae kwon do to be a better man and person and that has changed my life forever, then I said I hope he can forgive me for everything I did wrong.”
“But . . . but Kase has been a bad bully, bro,” I whisper.
“Yeah. He just said in front of me and his dad that he was the real bad guy. Not me. I think Kase Kinshaw cried? It was pretty weird.”
Then we all go to Patrick’s to celebrate Barry. We get the biggest table in the whole place, because my family is now six and if you add Bob, his wife, their daughter, and the grand master Santa Claus—his name is Jerry—there is ten. It’s almost like a Polish wedding party going on in Patrick’s, because we are so loud and making so many good jokes.
While I eat pizza, I get a text from Carli. This is what she says:
You did it. Mr. Kinshaw called the school board president on the way home. Barry won’t hear officially until tomorrow, but it’s done. You’re a superhero, dude.
Barry Roland may not be Shinja, but he is the real superhero.
But I do know I am something more than just me. I know what injustice feels like. I know I will fight injustice, and sometimes that means a protest and a battle, like what Devin did, but I think many times that means just being a good, kind person in the world.
For instance, Barry Roland can fight. He knows how.
But more, Barry Roland is gentle and kind. I believe that’s why so many people came to see him break wood and spin and kick. I believe that’s why he will never be abandoned when things get tough for him.
We should all learn from Barry Roland.
At home, before I go to sleep in my bed, Renata comes in and says, “I’m so proud of you, Adam. I always worried that your trouble . . . the trouble you had when you were younger . . . would define you. But look what you’ve become.”
“I have so much advantages,” I say.
“You have so many advantages,” she says.
“Yes. So I will, I promise. I’ll do good.”
Renata, my mom, kisses me on the forehead.
SIXTY-ONE
WE ARE HOOPERS
But that’s not the end. Don’t be fooled. Just because I am Polish and a friend and a son and a boyfriend—an official fact in the minds of the school, because we went to the dumb prom together—and a brother, you might get lost about what this is. But don’t get lost.
I am a hooper.
Devin, Khalil, and Rashid come with me to the Anderson Center at Saint Thomas University. We have been playing together so well. The D-I Fury 17U team competed in four Nike Elite Tournaments. We played on the coast of Virginia, in Indianapolis, Atlanta, and Los Angeles, and guess what? We motion our competition into the floorboards, and then we fly through the air and dunk the ball on their sad heads.
Four total tournament victories.
These guys and me? I think we can beat anyone in the country.
Here’s some reality, though. I am a good part of this team. But I am not Devin. I am not Khalil. They have minds that are connected through the whole game. When one hedges on D, the other helps and destroys any easy lane. When one cuts to the basket, the other has already launched a pass that will land softly in the cutter’s hands. Although sometimes I become part of the ocean with them and flow, often they are in a different part of the world from me.
Next year, when I am their age? I will be in that part of the basketball world, I promise.
But today we aren’t playing. We have time off before the Nike Elite Championship Tournament, the Peach Jam, in South Carolina. Right now I am wearing a Minnesota Timberwolves number twenty-two jersey, not my Fury number thirty-four. Today we are fans. I follow Khalil into the stands.
We climb.
The game is about to begin. The All Iowa Attack looks like a good team while they warm up. They are quick. They speed to the rim. They leap high for rebounds. Their passes are zipped on a rope. I’m a little afraid.
But you know what? Katy Vargas and Tasha Tolliver are amazing players. Katy is a point guard with eyes in the back of her head. Tasha has all the smooth moves in the post. And, finally, they get their two-guard back. Carli Anderson received the doctor’s permission, and she’s going to play her first real game since the AAU season finale eleven months ago. Her hair is in two braids. Her muscles fire as she shoots warm-up threes.
Whoa. I have never seen her in her uniform. She is the most beautiful person to me. I trip on the stands while climbing and have to catch myself because I’m only looking at her, not looking where I’m going. She is perfection. Her stroke is so easy. She almost doesn’t miss.
Me and Carli have practiced so much together. Last week her dad ran us through cutting drills, made her go 100 percent, and the next day she wasn’t even sore. “You’re ready. Might have something to do with how much time you two spend working out,” Coach Anderson said.
Me and Carli also train in tae kwon do. We take a weekly class from Barry, who is now the number one employee at Bob’s Championship Tae Kwon Do Studio. Maybe I will become Shinja?
Devin, Rashid, and Khalil sit down and watch over the court. I stay standing, so excited to see Carli out there.
“Dude,” Devin says, “Carli should give you some more shooting lessons.”
“She’s so much better than you,” Khalil says.
“She’s the best shot ever,” I say back.
“I can’t hit like that,” Khalil says.
The girls huddle. The buzzer sounds. Here I am, Adam Sobieski Reed. My friends stand, too. The girls walk around the center circle. Katy gets in position on one side. Carli gets in position on the other. Tasha moves to the center. She is greeted there by a giant girl with black hair tied back. They bump fists. The ref walks between them holding the ball. Katy and the Iowa girl next to her elbow each other, push against each other. Carli is crouched. The girl next to her seems to hold her breath.
The ref blows her whistle. She tosses the ball up.
Tasha leaps above, swats the ball to Katy. She catches and spins from her defender, dribbles, sprinting toward the basket. Her girl goes with her, bumping against her hip. Carli’s defender sprints to protect the basket, too. Carli, so light on her feet, runs unseen to the right wing. She gets to the three-point line as defenders converge on Katy, and Katy leaps and lofts the ball out from under the basket. It lands in Carli’s hands.
And I know what’s coming. I’ve seen her practice it again and again.
Carli squares, pauses for a breath, jumps, and releases the ball a moment before she reaches the pinnacle. The ball rotates, arches, begins its fall . . . accelerates and swoosh . . . it slides through the net, barely making a ripple.
Khalil and Devin leap and shout. Rashid spreads his arms in victory. I sit down and put my hands on my head. It took her all of five seconds.
Carli jogs back on defense. She points at me. She smiles so wide.
I have never seen anything so beautiful.
Yes. We are hoopers.
Now. That’s it.
That’s how we end.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First of all, thank you to my agent,
Jim McCarthy. It feels like I’ve grown up with you, Jim. Thanks to my editor, Ben Rosenthal. There aren’t exactly truckloads of Midwestern sports fans in this business. I’m so, so lucky to be with you. Thank you to Jason Darcy for reading an early draft and for knowing way too much about basketball (someone needs to publish your eighty-page screed on the history and societal implications of moving screens in today’s professional game). Thank you to Nicole Overton for reading a draft in the middle of the process, for catching what I couldn’t see well. For catching what I should’ve clearly seen, but didn’t. For just generally helping Hooper so much.
Thanks to my maternal grandpa, Oscar, for leaving Eastern Europe when people were getting killed. He farmed in Minnesota. Worked in factories in Iowa. He and Grandma Elinor made a good life for their family. They made my amazing, adventurous mom. Thanks to my paternal grandma, Yvonne, for fleeing Belgium right ahead of the Nazis. She went first to Brazil. She ended up in New York, where she made a good life working as a translator for everything from cookbooks to bank contracts. She learned a lot of languages while moving across the globe. Thanks to my dad, Max, who, as a baby, sat in the arms of the SS while my grandparents were interrogated. He got to Brazil, flunked math in eighth grade, went to an American school, and ended up immigrating to the United States when he was eighteen. Thank you to everyone who welcomed my family with open arms.
For Hooper, I feel especially indebted to the following authors and their books. Sherman Alexie for The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely for All American Boys. Tamika Catchings for Catch a Star. Alice Goffman for On the Run. J. D. Vance for Hillbilly Elegy. Ta-Nehisi Coates for Between the World and Me.
Read many books and you will see deeply into many lives. You will be a better person for it. That’s a pretty good reason to read books.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo credit Katherine Warde
GEOFF HERBACH is the author of the award-winning Stupid Fast series as well as Fat Boy vs. the Cheerleaders. His books have been given the Cybils Award for Best Young Adult Fiction and the Minnesota Book Award, selected for the Junior Library Guild, and listed among the year’s best by the American Library Association, the American Booksellers Association, and many state library associations. In the past, he produced radio comedy shows and toured rock clubs telling weird stories. Geoff teaches creative writing at Minnesota State University, Mankato. He lives in a log cabin with a tall wife. You can find him online at www.geoffherbach.com.
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CREDITS
Cover design by David Curtis
Basketball by Francisco Martin Gonzalez / 500px
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COPYRIGHT
Katherine Tegen Books is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
HOOPER. Copyright © 2018 by Geoff Herbach. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2017943389
ISBN 978-0-06-245311-2
EPub Edition © February 2018 ISBN 9780062453136
17 18 19 20 21 PC/LSCH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
FIRST EDITION
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