by Mike Lupica
“Even Legend would have approved of your performance tonight,” Lee said.
By now, Lee knew everything there was to know about Urban Legend Sellers. When Drew was finally able to tell him, he felt like he’d been let out of some kind of jail.
“Don’t be so sure,” Drew said. “He would’ve found something to rag on me about.”
“Dubious,” Lee said. “By the second half, I thought that guy Sutter was gonna have a restraining order taken out on you.”
“You know what they say about payback.”
Lee smiled, looking happy. “I’m almost positive it rhymes with rich,” he said.
Drew knew he should have been happier himself on this night, getting his team a little closer to a championship, one that mattered so much to his teammates. And one that was becoming more important to Drew. Because he knew how important it was to Lee and the guys. Drew could see it tonight, every time he looked over at Lee. It was on his face, in his body language—as if he was trying to play the game from the bench.
But Drew was quiet on the bus ride back to school, staring out the window, until Lee finally knew enough to stop talking.
The same thing was nagging at Drew that had been nagging for days.
What, he asked himself, now you have to go looking for ways to get yourself sideways, just when things are starting to go good for everybody?
The team was winning. Things with Callie were so good they were stupid, especially when he remembered where he’d been with her only weeks before—nowhere.
Legend was with Mr. Shockey.
Drew—with Legend’s input, the two of them turning his hotel room into a classroom a few times—had even finished his paper. Their paper—Legend had been right about that.
Both of them pulling A’s on it.
First A of his life that Drew felt as if he’d actually earned.
So what was eating at him?
He knew.
• • •
Practice over the next day.
The night before the Oakley–Crespi game. Second-to-last game. Five days before the rematch against Park Prep on ESPN2.
Drew didn’t like to get ahead of himself, but if they could beat Crespi and then do one of those wrestling smackdowns on Park Prep, they would give themselves a chance to win the league championship without ever leaving the Henry Gilbert Athletic Center.
In a perfect world.
He was going to try finding one of those.
Drew knocked on the half-open door to Coach’s office. Coach was on his laptop. He looked at Drew over his reading glasses. “Hey,” he said.
“Talk to you?”
“Sure,” he said. “But what are you still doing here?”
“I wanted to wait until the guys were gone.”
“Sounds serious.”
“Guess you could say.”
“Close the door,” Coach said, “in case there are any stragglers.”
Drew did. Sat down across from him.
Coach said, “How’s Legend doing? Still can’t get my mind around it, him being alive, you two being boys.”
“He’s doing good,” Drew said. “He seems fixed on finding a way to get to college.”
Coach said, “But we’re not here to talk about him, are we?”
“No,” Drew said.
He’d waited long enough. No use in waiting any longer.
“It was me driving Mr. Gilbert’s car that night,” he said. “It was me speeding. Me behind the wheel when the damage was done.” Drew paused, took a deep breath, staring down at his practice sneaks. “I lied to you and everybody and got Lee to go along.”
Drew paused again and went on. “It was all me. And I let you suspend Lee anyway.”
The only sound in the room was Drew’s breathing. Coach took off his reading glasses, folded them, put them next to his laptop. Closed the laptop. Folded his own hands and put them on top of it.
“You tell your mom yet?”
“I did,” he said. “’Fore school this morning. She told me that the truth, even when it’s hard, sets you free.” He tried to smile. “Though it probably won’t with you.”
“No,” Billy DiGregorio said. “Most certainly not with me.” He moved some papers around, as if he needed something to do with his hands. Or he was collecting his thoughts.
He didn’t say anything right away, so Drew kept going. “I told myself it was best for the team, me playing instead of him, justified it that way. Me playing gave us our best chance to win it all, hundred percent. But that was just . . . it was like this small truth wrapped up inside the lies I’d already told. And I finally figured out that I was the loser on that one, even if the team did keep winning.”
“Loser how?”
“I was losing myself, I guess.”
There was another long silence between them in the small room.
Until Coach managed a smile. “And they say Lee is the smart one,” he said.
“Coach?”
“You’re right,” Coach said. “What you and Lee did was dead wrong. But you’re right.”
“Don’t punish Lee any more than you did already,” Drew said. “He never should have had to sit in the first place. He was just being my wingman. My friend.”
“Lying for you,” Coach said. “And with you.”
“Yeah.”
“Like I said, you’re doing the right thing, telling me.”
“Even though it could be the wrong thing for our team.”
“Doing the right thing is never wrong.”
“What if it costs us the championship?” Drew said.
“You’re assuming I’m going to suspend you now?”
That got Drew’s attention. “You’re not?” he said to Coach.
Coach shook his head, not smiling now. “No, you’re suspended,” he said. “Because that’s the right thing, too. Because if team rules don’t apply to you, then I got no team. I’m just another guy in sports letting his star player do whatever he pleases.”
“How long?” Drew said. “Am I going to be out, I mean.”
“I’ll think on that tonight when I get home,” Coach said. “And when I announce it tomorrow, which I will, I’ll just say that it’s for a violation of team rules and leave it at that. If the reporters press me, I’ll tell ’em that when they have a team, they can tell everybody everything. But that I don’t talk.”
“Coach,” Drew said, “I’m sorry.”
“Be sorry for what you did taking the car out, driving it without a license. But don’t be sorry for what you did here tonight.”
“But you came here to win this title.”
“We’ll win,” he said. “Maybe we already did, you and me.”
Coach asked if Drew needed a ride home. Drew said Lee was waiting for him in the parking lot.
One more stop Drew needed to make.
FORTY-TWO
Seth Gilbert was still shouting.
“He’s not suspending anybody!” he said. “Unless Mr. Billy DiGregorio is under the impression he hired himself!”
They were in his living room. Or one of his living rooms. Lee had dropped Drew off. Lee only lived a few minutes away and told Drew to text him when he was ready to be picked up.
Drew had said he didn’t think he’d be long.
“Don’t be so sure,” Lee said. “That guy can talk the way Michael Phelps can swim.”
Then Lee had wished him luck, saying Drew was going to need it.
He’d been right. Drew hadn’t moved from the couch, watching Mr. Gilbert pace. Listening to him yell.
“Suspend you?” he said now, dialing it down a notch. “With the Park Prep game about to be on national TV? Where I put it, by the way? I . . . don’t . . . think . . .
so.”
Drew said, “This isn’t about Coach.”
“No? Who’s suspending you, then?” Mr. Gilbert said. “The Board of Ed?” He was red-faced, out of breath, like he’d been running sprints in this room, which was big enough for that. Chest heaving underneath a T-shirt that had the picture of a pit bull on it and read, “Alpha Dog.”
Drew, trying to calm him down even though he knew he had no chance, said, “I’m the one who took the car.”
“Forget the stupid car! You want the car? Take it. Take five more just like it.”
“Mr. G, you’re not hearing me. None of this happens if I don’t drive the car and lie about it.”
“Your buddy lied right along with you.”
Now Drew shouted at him. First time ever. “To take care of me! It’s what everybody does! Takes care of me!”
Now Drew was the one who felt like he was out of breath, just like that.
“It’s about time I started taking care of myself,” he said.
“No,” Seth Gilbert said. “That’s my job. I take care of you.” Standing over Drew now, looking down at him. Like this was some kind of mismatch.
Doing what he did, talking down to people without even thinking, without hearing himself.
“When did you start thinking for yourself?” Mr. Gilbert said.
Drew slowly stood up, giving the man a chance to move back, to give him room. “Today,” he said. “I started doing it today.”
“You know what I mean,” Mr. Gilbert said. Backing up in all ways.
“I know exactly what you mean, Mr. G,” Drew said.
“How am I gonna look, you getting suspended before the biggest game of the year?”
Still not hearing himself, still making it all about him. Still thinking he was the big player here.
Drew wanted to tell him, Figgeritout. But Mr. Gilbert was still his mom’s boss. One more time, he heard her inside his head, telling him the same old thing, mind his manners.
In a quiet voice he just said, “All due respect, Mr. G? This isn’t about you. It’s about me.”
Then he was walking past him, toward the front door. He’d wait until he was outside to text Lee, because he needed to be outside, get himself some air.
When his hand was on the doorknob, he turned around.
“You’re always calling me the man,” Drew said. “Maybe I finally figured out how to act like one.”
FORTY-THREE
He should be here by now,” Drew said to Lee in the layup line.
Talking about Legend, who was still nowhere to be seen in the gym.
“He’ll be here,” Lee said. “But we’re already here. With sort of a big game to play.”
“Maybe he ran away again.”
“That’s crazy talk,” Lee said.
He repositioned Drew so he wasn’t looking into the stands, so he was facing their basket.
“The game,” Lee said.
The championship game.
Oakley versus Park Prep.
Park Prep’s gym.
Coach had given Drew a two-game suspension. The Crespi game and the Park Prep game to end the regular season. Oakley had lost them both. Lost to Crespi by a basket. Lost to Park Prep by twenty in this gym, got hammered on ESPN2, national television, Lee saying afterward when they made themselves watch on TiVo that Drew had gotten more face time on TV watching the game than King Gadsen had gotten playing it.
Now they were back in the Park Prep gym, having won their first two tournament games at home, against Conejo Valley and Crespi. They were back for the best kind of game there was in sports:
The big game.
The kind of big game Drew had convinced himself—or let Mr. Gilbert convince him—wasn’t really coming for him until he got to the pros.
But now here they were against Park Prep, against King Gadsen, for a game that mattered more to Drew than he ever thought it could.
He wanted this game as much for himself now as he did for Coach and Lee and the guys. He’d found out that Coach had been right all along, even if it had taken Drew such a long time to hear him—that if you didn’t have a team, you had nothing.
Now, where is Legend?
Ten minutes to the tip. The Park Prep gym, not as big as the Henry Gilbert Athletic Center, but big enough, was insane with noise and excitement, not just because of the home crowd, but because a lot of Oakley fans were here, too.
Just not the fans Drew’s eyes kept searching for in the stands.
His mom, Callie.
Legend.
Lee actually shoved him toward the basket now, and Drew took a bounce pass from Tyler, laying the ball in, running to the end of the line on the other side of the court.
He saw them then.
Saw his mom and Legend coming through the double doors at the other end of the gym. Callie right behind them.
And one more surprise guest walking with her: Coach Fred Holman.
Drew caught Callie’s eyes. Pointed to his wrist, to an imaginary watch, like asking her where she’d been. She mouthed, Traffic. Then she was the one pointing.
Toward the court.
Telling him the same thing Lee had been telling him: the game.
Lee clapped Drew on the back now, seeing what he was seeing, that Drew’s real cheering section had arrived.
“Now can we do this?” Lee said.
“True that,” True Robinson said.
Didn’t matter if this was a road game or not.
Drew felt more at home than he ever had.
FORTY-FOUR
King Gadsen kept trying to get Drew to engage, all the way through the pregame introductions, eyeballing him hard, nodding his head, talking to Drew, even though he knew Drew couldn’t hear.
Then, when they were lined up for the tip, King on the other side from Drew because he was guarding Lee, King came over to him, like he wanted to be a good sport, shake Drew’s hand.
Right.
“I know I know you from somewhere,” he said.
Drew looked off.
“Wait,” King said, “now I remember. You’re that True-or-False Robinson guy can’t get a game off me. Couldn’t even get on the court last time, I’m remembering right.”
“Have a good one,” Drew said. Wanting to add, if you can.
“By the time this one’s over tonight,” King said, “you’re gonna wish you were still suspended.”
Drew looked past him, wondering what the holdup was, and saw the refs at the table talking to the guy doing the clock.
Now he couldn’t help himself—he turned back to King.
“Ask you something?”
“Why not?” King said. “I’m gonna have all the answers, all night long.”
Drew said, “Talking as much as you do . . . you ever run out of spit?”
Drew didn’t hear his answer. He went over and bumped chests with Tyler.
The two-game rest had done his knee good. What Sellers liked to call the law of unintended consequences. This one a good consequence.
If he wasn’t at full speed, he was close enough. That meant close enough to being his bad self.
Park got the tip. Ball went to King. First time down, right out of the blocks, he took Lee down to the low blocks, posted him up. So focused on that he didn’t even notice Drew coming from his blind side, didn’t hear his teammates yelling at him to look out as Drew knocked the ball away, beat everybody down court for a layup, floating to the iron.
Imagining himself flying in that moment.
Gave a quick look to where his mom and Callie and Legend were sitting. Saw Legend leaning forward. Like he was back in the game himself.
King came out firing. But Drew doubled on him every chance he could. Coach had decided
that was the best way, not having one of Oakley’s bigs come over to help, not worried about Park’s point guard beating them tonight from the outside. Tonight or any night.
So Drew would get right up on King, as close as he could without making contact or drawing a foul, not just trying to make it harder for him to get his shot, doing something even more important than that: trying to annoy him.
With eight minutes to go in the half, it finally worked. Oakley was ahead by four, having just gone on a 10–0 run. Drew doubled down again, King missed, then shocked everybody by actually following his shot, going for his own rebound.
But Drew had him boxed in. Frustrated, not making everything he looked at tonight, behind in the game, King shoved Drew with two hands, into the basket support.
Hard.
Foul.
And technical foul.
It would have been a dream moment if Drew’s knee hadn’t hit the floor when he fell.
He tried to get up, but quickly sat back down. He was limping when Brandon pulled him up. Lee started to go for King before Tyler Brandt grabbed him, held him back. Then Coach was moving all the Oakley players back, and they were all around Drew, asking him if he was all right.
He smiled at Coach and his teammates.
“Oh, yeah,” he said, “look at Number One, boarding up like that.”
Lee wasn’t buying it. “You sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine,” he said.
He’d promised himself no more lies.
But this was the championship game. And good enough was fine.
• • •
They were tied at halftime.
King finally found his shot right before the half. Lee, who’d come out hot, had finally started missing. So had Ricky, who’d hit his first four shots when his man tried to help out on Lee.
When they got to the visitors’ locker room, Drew asked Mr. Shockey for some ice, saying it was just a precaution, he didn’t want his knee to stiffen up.
Another championship-game lie.
The knee was throbbing.
I really have turned into Legend, he thought, because now I feel like I’m the one fell down a flight of steps.
But with all that? He felt good. Sore knee and all. Looked at a stat sheet while Mr. Shockey got the ice pack, didn’t look at his points—he’d seen from the scoreboard he had fourteen—but at his assists.