by Mike Lupica
How long before he would’ve met Ms. Moretti? Would he ever have at all? Some other social worker could’ve found him and sent him straight to a group home.
He would’ve never come to live with the Lawtons.
Where would I be today? Better yet, who would he have become?
He’d have played a game with the Moreland East Mavericks, been out there with Tyrese and Shabazz and the rest of his boys. But after the game, what then? Back to the court at the Jeff? Back to Tyrese’s apartment?
Back to his own empty apartment? Back to the hunger, and stealing peanut butter and bread to make it through the night?
He was hungry now, but that was all right; he knew he’d be eating one of those burgers soon and ordering himself a chocolate shake. It was a different kind of hunger—a temporary one that didn’t take stealing to satisfy.
He decided to go to the Village Market to get a snack while he waited for Zoe, a bag of chips and a Gatorade, not looking to spoil his lunch.
He walked into the market, and this was another moment that took him back to the life he’d been living on the east side, when he’d walk into corner stores because he had to steal to eat. He pictured himself in one of those stores now, knowing where the cash register was, even knowing where the security camera was in the shops that had one, deciding what would fit under his hoodie or in the pockets of his baggy jeans.
Waiting for the man at the counter to turn his head. Jayson smiling his fake smile, even waving on his way out the door. Hating himself for what he was doing. But telling himself, every single time, that he did what he needed to survive.
Now he walked up the aisle with cookies and a drink in his hand, thinking about how good it felt that he didn’t have to do that anymore.
As he made his way to the cash register, feeling like luck was finally on his side, he spotted Mrs. Montgomery—Zoe’s mom—leaning on her shopping cart, talking to a woman Jayson didn’t recognize.
It was almost like thinking about his luck had made it run out right there and then.
He didn’t want her to see him, didn’t want to talk to her. The one time he’d been in her house he’d gotten the feeling that she didn’t like him being there, felt like she’d looked down on him, even though when he’d mentioned that to Zoe later she said he was being crazy, that her mom was just surprised to see him.
Mrs. Montgomery pushed her cart forward to make room for another woman with a cart. Jayson was reaching for some Doritos, planning to get out of the store before she saw him.
Then he heard his name.
“Have I told you about her new friend, this Jayson boy?” Mrs. Montgomery said.
She wasn’t speaking loudly. But he was only about ten feet away, hidden from her by some kind of display.
“The new boy?”
“The one Tom and Carol took in.”
“It was so generous of them.”
“I suppose.” Mrs. Montgomery dragged out the last word, as if she didn’t think it was so generous. “But that boy comes from dirt.”
“What, because he comes from the other side of town?” her friend said.
“Oh, that’s the least of it,” Mrs. Montgomery said. “I heard he’s a thief.”
Jayson was frozen in place, afraid to even breathe. A brand new kind of being afraid.
“One of Kevin’s friends teaches at Moreland East Middle,” she continued. “And he mentioned to Kevin one day that their best basketball player had ended up at Belmont. This boy, Jayson. And Kevin said he knew him, that he’d been to our house and was friends with Zoe.”
Kevin had to be Zoe’s dad.
“Anyway,” Zoe’s mom continued, “he proceeded to tell Kevin that the boy’s story was like some modern-day Dickens tale. Nobody at the school had been aware that a twelve-year-old boy had been living on his own after his mother died, until he got caught stealing a pair of sneakers over in Percy. That was how he ended up in Child Protective Services.”
“Unbelievable.”
Jayson was afraid to even breathe. Afraid, period. The thing he’d feared most was happening right here and right now. His new world finding out secrets about his old one.
“It makes sense, really.” Zoe’s mom sounded like she was enjoying every minute of her story. “The mother was dirt as well.”
“What do you mean?” her friend asked.
“Well, she died recently. Drugs, apparently. Figures. You know where they were living, right? The Pines.” Mrs. Montgomery sighed and said, “God only knows what his role in the whole mess was.”
“What are you saying?”
“Well, I can’t be certain, of course, but maybe the boy was dealing drugs himself. How else did the family manage to get by? No father figure, a drug-addicted mother, in that environment. Connect the dots.”
Zoe’s mom thought he was a criminal, a drug dealer. She knew about his stealing. And then piled on a made-up crime.
All those times that he had pictured Zoe or his teammates finding out the truth, finding out that he had stolen just to get by, he thought he could at least get them to understand what it’d been like living on his own. But how could he explain away things that hadn’t even happened? Jayson wanted to run away, hide. But he was frozen in place.
The next thing he heard: “Well, once I found out, I had to tell Zoe. Just so she knew the whole story about her new friend. I didn’t tell her to stop seeing him, that’s the wrong approach to take with my daughter, believe me. I’m not looking to hurt the boy. But I certainly don’t have to have him in my house. I mean, really.”
Was that why Zoe hadn’t been around much lately?
Did it matter? He knew this: Enough of what Zoe had been told was true, no getting around it.
Jayson thought about his visit to the Montgomerys’ house, the way Zoe had suddenly changed the way she acted once her mother came around. Maybe it was another part of being Miss Perfect, even though she’d said she hated being treated that way. Maybe Zoe felt trapped in her box just like Jayson did his.
“So do they still see each other away from school?” the friend asked.
“As little as possible,” Mrs. Montgomery said, “though Kevin is bringing Zoe into town so she can have lunch with the boy today.”
The boy thought: Not anymore.
Suddenly, he had someplace he needed to be.
28
AS JAYSON LOOKED AROUND, HE thought, somehow, despite everything that had changed in his life, some things would always stay the same.
The buildings around him looked exactly the same. Buildings that had probably looked old even when they had been brand new. The playground at the far end, closest to the building, was empty in the late afternoon, maybe because the day had gotten a lot colder in the last couple of hours, especially once the sun had gone down. This part of North Carolina didn’t feel like winter all that often, but it did today.
Maybe that’s why nobody was playing ball on the court at the Jeff.
It had never been too cold or too dark for Jayson when he’d played here. But no matter what, no matter how late he’d been out there by himself, he’d never felt afraid. Or lost. Not as long as he had a ball in his hands. Jayson had always known exactly who he was on a basketball court.
Not the person he’d just heard Mrs. Montgomery describe to her friend. The real person he knew he was.
For once in his life, though, he hadn’t come here to play.
Maybe Tyrese or Shabazz would look out a window, spot him, come down and want to know why he’d come back without telling anybody.
Why had he come?
He’d come here with Zoe Montgomery on his mind. What she now knew about him. And what he knew about her. It was all somehow cloudy, like he was trying to make out an image through fog.
Truth and lies.
All this time he had worried about her findi
ng out he’d stolen the shoes. Or that he’d stolen when he didn’t have the money to buy food. But those things seemed like nothing now.
She knew that the reason he had ended up at her school, and in her life, was because he had stolen those shoes. But she and her mom must’ve thought that was nothing compared to the drugs. He’d made mistakes in his life, but never anything like drugs. He’d sworn to himself long ago, after watching his mother during one of her “sick” periods, that he would never ever touch the rotten things. And how could anyone even think that he would have supplied her with that stuff? Drugs stole his mother from him long before Jayson had stolen a thing. He hated even thinking about it.
That wasn’t who he was . . .
Was it? Did stealing to get by mean that he was a bad person?
His mom had told him, at the end, that she didn’t have the strength to protect him any longer. Now Zoe’s mom was doing what she thought she had to do to protect Zoe.
Protecting her from me, he thought. He understood wanting to protect someone.
He’d always known, deep down, that his mom was sad, that she was fighting a monster bigger and stronger than she was. Yet she was still his mother and he’d loved her. He remembered wishing he could fight that monster for her, somehow take the sadness out of her and make it disappear.
He hadn’t been strong enough back then. Hadn’t known what to do, or how.
He checked the time on his phone and wondered if Mrs. Lawton was starting to worry about him, even though it had only been a couple of hours since she’d dropped him off in town. He’d texted her when he’d gotten on the bus to the east side to say that he was going to hang out with some old friends for a while.
Sort of true. This court was his oldest friend in a lot of ways. It never let him down.
On the other side of the playground, he heard the sound of a couple of small kids laughing as they walked ahead of their mom, who was carrying two grocery bags, all of them on their way into the Jeff.
Jayson smiled. Not at the kids, but at a memory. He was remembering when he was their age, when all he worried about was his next game on the court.
This place, it was a part of him.
But it wasn’t all of him. He never would’ve thought it would happen, but he’d grown to like parts of his new life. Liked the stability of the Lawtons, and his new teammates were good guys.
Jayson knew he would always be a kid from East Moreland. Would always be the kid who had stolen to get by, just like he was the kid who never wanted to leave the basketball court. Even he wasn’t fast enough to escape his own past or where he was from.
But that didn’t make him the person Mrs. Montgomery claimed he was. He might never be able to change that part, either.
Maybe that was no big deal.
Maybe all that mattered was that he knew the truth about himself.
Maybe he always had.
29
JAYSON SENT A TEXT TO Mrs. Lawton when he transferred to the bus that would take him back to town, and she picked him up at the Village Market.
He’d come full circle.
He had already decided not to tell her what he had heard inside the market from Mrs. Montgomery. And he definitely didn’t plan to tell Zoe, either.
He had just one thought now, one goal. Move forward. Get himself where he wanted to be: Cameron Indoor Stadium, playing for the North Carolina middle school championship.
When he got into the car, Mrs. Lawton said, “What in the world have you been doing all this time?”
“It was kind of a spur-of-the-moment thing,” he said, “but I decided to go over and hang out at the Jeff for a while.”
“Really,” she said.
“Totally unplanned. Hope you don’t mind I didn’t tell you I was going.”
“Depends. How did it go?”
“It actually went great.”
“Are you being sarcastic?”
He shook his head. “Nope. Being honest. I just needed to see it again. Remember where I came from.”
“Where we came from.”
Jayson smiled at that.
When they pulled into the driveway, Mrs. Lawton said that dinner would be ready in about fifteen minutes. Jayson went upstairs, took out his phone, and saw that he had two missed calls from Zoe, to go with all the texts he’d started getting from her about ten minutes after he was supposed to show up at the diner.
He knew he was going to have to respond, even if he didn’t know what to say. He remembered the fear he’d felt listening to Zoe’s mom in the supermarket and thought about not facing Zoe again until school on Monday, but he knew that putting off his explanation would only make things worse.
So he texted her now.
So sorry. Phone died. Had to do something really important.
It didn’t take long for her to hit him back.
That’s it? I waited for you for an hour.
I’m sorry. I know I messed up . . .
U messed up? That’s your excuse?
Something came up. Don’t know what else to say.
He knew he had come up with a lame excuse. But he was sorry. He just didn’t see the point in telling her the whole big story right then. Even if he knew the truth about himself, that didn’t mean that Zoe would believe it.
Yet he wanted her to. Eventually.
Call you later?
She wasn’t having it.
Maybe MY phone will die.
He knew he deserved that. And would wear it.
• • •
After dinner was over, Jayson went upstairs to check the NBA scores on his computer. Still thinking about what had happened at the Village Market, he couldn’t get up the nerve to call Zoe. And she didn’t call him.
He didn’t call or text her on Sunday, either. They didn’t get a chance to talk until they were coming out of English together on Monday morning.
“I thought you were going to call,” she said.
“I got the feeling you were still mad at me.”
“Well, you were right,” she said. “But you still should have called.”
“Sorry.” It was getting to be a habit, using that word.
They walked in silence down the hall until she said, “So?”
“So what?”
“Are you going to tell me what was so important that you left me hanging without saying anything?”
“It’s a long, boring story,” he said.
“I’ve got time.”
“Something happened that afternoon. But I’d really rather not talk about it.”
They arrived at their lockers. Zoe remained silent.
“I said I’m sorry and I meant it. Are you gonna accept my apology?” Jayson asked.
“You’re really not going to tell me?”
Jayson wanted to. But the words just wouldn’t come.
“Fine, then,” Zoe said. “Be that way.”
As she walked away, another boy from their English class joined her. Jayson recognized him right away. Eric Kelly, the kid he’d seen practicing his moves at Zoe’s soccer game. Jayson couldn’t hear what he said to her, but whatever it was, it made her laugh.
• • •
Friday afternoon, after practice had ended, Bryan walked up to Jayson, big smile on his face. “Do you ever get tired of being in the gym? Sometimes I’m convinced that you sleep here.”
Jayson grinned back at him. “What do you mean sometimes?”
“It does seem to be working for you.”
“The harder I work, the better I get,” Jayson said. “And the harder we work the better we get.”
Practice had ended a half hour ago, but the Bobcats were just getting ready to leave the court now because they’d decided to stay and scrimmage among themselves, working on a few new plays Coach had come up with. The next day t
hey were playing the Percy Central Hawks away.
They were all sitting on the floor in front of their bench. Cameron had a towel over his head, sucking down some water. Brandon was doing the same. Cameron picked his head up and said to Jayson, “You’ve been even more crazed on the court than ever this week, you know that, right?”
Jayson shrugged. “Now that the end of the season is getting closer, I want it even more.”
“We all want it,” Brandon said. “We’re talking Coach K’s house. It doesn’t get much bigger than Cameron Indoor.”
“Or much better.”
Bryan drank the last of the red Gatorade in his bottle. “You believe we’re good enough to go all the way?”
Jayson looked at him. “Where else would we be going?”
He had decided that was the only way his story could end, at least for now. He kept telling himself there had to be a reason that he had ended up in this particular gym, playing with this team. He would never say that everything he’d gone through to get here was worth it. Or that it had been easy on him, because it hadn’t. But he knew it had made him stronger. And he believed it had made him a better basketball player.
He knew so many of the stories about the greatest players in basketball. He’d heard that amazing speech Kevin Durant had given after he’d won his first MVP Award in 2014, talking about how his mom had been the real MVP in his life, all the jobs she’d held and all the sacrifices she’d made to give him his chance.
Maybe Debbie Barnes could have been that kind of mom if life hadn’t crushed her the way it had. Or if she had just been a little stronger herself, if she’d been as strong as Jayson had become.
But no matter what, she’d helped him to become the person he was today. Mrs. Montgomery could say what she wanted, but that didn’t change the fact that Jayson’s mom had tried her best.
The NBA was filled with players whose mothers had done their best. He knew about how difficult LeBron’s life had been growing up in Akron, Ohio, until basketball had been his ticket out.