Swagger (13 page)

For the next few minutes, we played perfect basketball. Nick got a lay-up on a perfectly threaded bounce pass. Levi hit a bank shot after I'd penetrated and then passed the ball out. Cash hit two three-pointers from the corner—the second one tying the game with three minutes left.

Garfield's coach called another time-out, and then another, but we were an express train going full speed. Levi brought down a dunk on an offensive rebound to give us our first lead; DeShawn made a steal and a lay-up at the end to seal the deal. When 00:00 showed on the scoreboard, guys exploded off the bench; Hartwell leaped into the air, and for a minute we jumped around at center court, high-fiving and chest bumping one another. Then we realized we were being jerks, and we lined up and shook the Garfield players' hands.

Once I'd acknowledged every Garfield player, I looked for my dad. He was pumping his fist and shouting, “Great game, Jonas! Great game!”

I gave him a thumbs-up before Hartwell grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me, a huge smile on his face. “That's how to play basketball,” he shouted.

I don't know about the other guys, but I'd completely forgotten Knecht. Once I did remember him, I felt guilty. What if he was really sick? Then I spotted him standing at the locker room door, pale but taking everything in.

The locker room was a wild scene. We were energized by the win, amazed at what we'd pulled off. In the middle of it all, Hartwell slipped me a piece of paper. “It's the stat sheet. You've finally got some numbers you can be proud to send to your coach at Monitor College.”

I
FIGURED KNECHT WOULD BE OUT
for at least a week, but at the next practice he was sitting in his regular chair. He looked weaker, though he'd never looked strong. After we'd loosened up, Knecht called us to him. “I want you to know that I'm doing fine. Dehydration. Nothing else. That Garfield gym was hot, and I didn't drink enough water. I appreciate the way you played. That win meant a lot to me.”

It was hard to know how to respond. Knecht believed we'd dug down deep and won the game
for
him. No one would ever say it, but we'd won
in spite of
him.

Practice began in earnest, and it was as if nothing had changed. Hartwell supervised the drills, but if Knecht saw something he didn't like, he blew his whistle and tottered onto the court, pointing his finger and jawing on about what we'd done wrong. I felt deflated. My fourth-quarter heroics didn't matter; Knecht's return had put me back on the bench.

I assumed Brindle was happy to have Knecht back, but before we took the court for Thursday night's game, he approached me in the locker room. “You should be starting, not me. You deserve to start after the way you played against Garfield.”

I was so startled that for a moment I didn't answer. “Coach Knecht wasn't on the bench, Donny,” I said, finally. “He doesn't know.”

Brindle waved that off. “He must have seen the stat sheet. He has to know how well you played. And they know too.” He nodded toward the other guys.

I looked around the locker room . . . at Levi, Cash, DeShawn, Nick. They were quick and athletic, all of them. The running game fit them. I fit them. With me directing an up-tempo, fast-break style of play, there was no telling how far we could go. Only I wouldn't get a chance to play the point, and the team wouldn't get a chance to play up-tempo. I looked back to Brindle. “It's not your fault.”

 

We played two games that week. Coach Knecht sipped water throughout both of them, and he kept a wet towel nearby to wipe his face. When he stood, he rose slowly, never jumping to his feet, and he didn't scream at all.

We beat Ballard High, 36–30, on Tuesday night in what had to be the most boring game in high school basketball history. Two nights later we had an away game against Franklin High. Knecht threw me my usual crumbs—a couple of minutes at the end of the first and second quarters. By the beginning of the fourth quarter, we were down eleven, and Hartwell turned to Knecht. “Jonas could push the tempo, change things up. It worked against Garfield.”

Hartwell's tone had been mild, but Knecht stiffened. “We're not playing helter-skelter, not as long as I'm coach. We'll win or lose playing Harding Hawks basketball.”

Lose is what we did.

In the locker room afterward, Knecht told us we would have the first week of Christmas break off. “Rest, relax, do things with your family. Clear your minds. After Christmas we'll get back to work.”

On
THE FRIDAY BEFORE THE
break, there was an assembly during sixth period. The band played, some academic awards were passed out, and then Mr. Diaz, the principal, lectured us about drinking and driving over the holidays. “Bad things can happen to good people,” he said.

After the assembly, Levi and I had started across the parking lot heading toward home when we heard Hartwell's voice. “Levi, can I talk to you for a second?” Hartwell was standing by the double doors, motioning for Levi. Levi walked back; they talked for a while, and then Levi returned.

“What did he want?” I asked.

“He was setting up tutoring times over the break.”

“I didn't think the school was even open.”

“We'll meet at the public library, or I'll go to his apartment. I don't want to lose ground.” His voice lowered. “Have you noticed?”

“Noticed what?” I asked.

“Nobody calls me ‘Double D' anymore. Not even Cash. That's because of Mr. Hartwell and you.”

I was about to say something like
You're the one who did the work
, but it sounded too much like teacher talk, so I stayed silent.

As we walked toward Tangletown, we talked over what we'd do during the time off. He had doors to varnish at his father's church, tutoring sessions with Hartwell, and his usual time with his sisters.

“I've got nothing going,” I said. “So if you feel like shooting around, give me a call.”

After that neither of us said much for five or six blocks. When we reached Levi's house, he turned and faced me. “I'm sorry this season isn't working out for you. I know sitting on the bench must be eating you up.”

It felt like a dagger, but I didn't let him know. “There are lots of games left to play. Things could still break my way.”

He nodded. “You probably think this is stupid, but I pray for you.”

That startled me. “You pray for me?”

Levi nodded. “Not just you. There are lots of people I pray for, but you're one of them.”

His voice was so honest; his face was so honest; every single thing about him was so honest that for a split second my throat tightened. Then I made myself smile. “I'll take help from anywhere.”

We bumped knuckles, and Levi opened the door to his beaten-down home. As soon as he did, one of his little sisters—I think it was Maddie—started squealing his name. I looked back to see him holding her above his head while she kicked with delight.

A couple minutes later, I opened my own front door and stepped into an empty house. I microwaved a pizza for dinner and ate it while watching a Cal-Wisconsin basketball game I'd recorded the night before. My mom came home around seven thirty, and we talked a little. She knew I wasn't having a good season and so did my dad, though neither said anything. My name had sometimes been in the headlines of the
Redwood City Tribune
. In Seattle, with the exception of the Garfield game, my name wasn't even making the newspaper. I didn't bring up basketball, and she didn't, either. Instead, we discussed vacation. “If you don't have practices, what are you going to do with yourself?” she asked.

“I'll be okay,” I said. “There's stuff I can do.”

After that she went down into the basement to do laundry, and I headed to my room, where I watched
The Fast and the Furious
on my laptop. It was a nonstop action film, but before it had ended, I somehow managed to fall asleep.

T
HE NEXT DAY MY DAD
knocked on my door around nine. I was playing a video game, and I quickly shut it down. “You want to earn some money this week?” he asked as he stepped inside.

“Sure.”

“Okay. Follow me.”

I traipsed behind him down into the basement. He pointed at the insulation in the unfinished ceiling. “See how it's sagging? I want you to shove it back up between the joists. Once it's in nice and tight, nail slats of wood—crisscross style—into the joists. That'll keep the insulation in place. You'll need to hammer a slat every foot or so, or the insulation will sag again. Wear a mask and wear gloves—this stuff is no fun. If you finish here, you can do the crawl space. Same pay as in the summer; you keep track of your hours.”

I was glad to be making some money, but it was horrible work. Rats had gotten into the insulation and made nests, so the first thing I did was to bang on the pipes so if any were still around, they'd scamper away. Coming face-to-face with a rat was not something I wanted to experience.

Even though I was working for my dad, the days crawled by. The Blue Jay was busy so my dad was never around; Great Clips was also busy so my mom wasn't home much. Levi was either working with his dad or helping his mom, and when he wasn't doing that, he was studying at Hartwell's apartment.

Neither of my parents had to work on Christmas, so it was sort of an okay day. We ate dinner with Uncle Frank and his wife and their two middle school girls at their waterfront house on Mercer Island. Grandpa and Grandma Dolan had flown up from Arizona. I don't know why, but my dad doesn't get along with his father, so that's why the afternoon was only
sort of
okay. I could feel the tension between them.

Uncle Frank's daughters, Andrea and Alice, showed me around their huge house. There was an entertainment room, an exercise room, a swimming pool, a library, a deck upstairs, a deck downstairs, and about fifty bathrooms and bedrooms. Uncle Frank is a good guy and so is Aunt Clare, and I've got nothing against my cousins, but there was something about all that money that made me happy to get back to my own home in Tangletown. I know my parents were glad to get away, too.

I
WAS RELIEVED TO GET BACK
to basketball on Monday. With a Christmas tournament coming up, I expected a long, tough practice, but after only eighty minutes, Knecht blew his whistle and told us we were done for the day. The other guys were also surprised by the short session, but nobody cared much. As a team, we'd given up on being great, and with as much talent as we had, we'd never fall below mediocre. As I was walking off the gym floor, I saw Coach Knecht lean forward in his chair and breathe slowly and deeply, like a man who has just climbed twenty flights of stairs.

This would be his last season; I was certain of it. Still, there was no way he'd turn the team over to Hartwell during the season. He wouldn't quit, not Knecht. I admired him for that. A few times I'd thought about quitting. Why keep torturing myself? I wasn't going to play real minutes, which meant I had no chance to get the scholarship to Monitor College. But quitting isn't in my DNA, just as it wasn't in Knecht's. We had completely different ideas on how basketball should be played, but we had that in common.

Our team was entered in a Christmas tournament down in Burien beginning on the twenty-seventh: three games in three days at Kennedy High School. We won the first game and then lost the next two. Combined, for the three games, I had ten points, three assists, three rebounds, and zero turnovers in twenty minutes of playing time. I e-mailed the stats to Richter, but I'd stopped writing notes to explain anything. The numbers were what they were.

When the tournament ended, Knecht called us together. “Enjoy New Year's Eve, but don't do anything stupid,” he said, sounding just like Mr. Diaz. “You drink and I hear about it, and you're off the team.”

I
N EVERY CLASS AT HARDING
High, I had a couple of people I talked to. I joked with Gokul every time I saw him. Still, I wasn't connected with anyone but Levi. The other kids had their groups set; they didn't need or want any new friends. I was just a face.

I didn't expect to get invited to a New Year's Eve party, but I did get an invitation. It wasn't for a party, though—Levi asked me if I wanted to go backpacking up on Mount Rainier on New Year's Eve. “It's Coach Hartwell's idea. We'll hike a few miles, spend the night up there, and then hike back the next day. It'll be great—just the mountain, the stars, the snow, and us.”

Levi seemed to vibrate at the thought. For him, a hike like that would be a religious experience, but to me it just sounded cold. I'd never backpacked in the snow in my life, and my California coat was barely warm enough for Seattle's winter. I'd definitely need something warmer for Mount Rainier.

“What about storms?” I asked.

“The forecast is good, but if it changes we won't go. Mountains have no mercy.”

“Let me think about it.”

Levi looked disappointed, but then his face cheered up. “Is it equipment? Because I've got extra clothes and an extra winter sleeping bag. I'll be glad to lend them to you.”

“No, it's not that, or not entirely that, though I would need to borrow stuff. I have to check with my dad first. He's been having me do some insulation work. He might want me to finish before school starts up again.” That little lie gave me some breathing space—Levi would always finish work for his father before he did anything with me.

The more I thought about the camping trip, the less I liked it. Backpacking on a warm day in the summer had been fine, but trudging in the freezing cold through the snow sounded miserable. Besides, Levi and Hartwell were far more at home in the mountains than I was, so I'd slow them down. I hate being bad at anything athletic.