Swagger (3 page)

The first paragraph was about basketball. He wrote that his offense required a smart point guard to run a fast-break offense, and that he liked what he saw of me on the DVD, both on offense and defense. He thought I could be his guy.

That was the good part. The not-so-good part took up the rest of the letter.

 

I'm going to be straight with you, Jonas. Your academic record worries me. My basketball players are student-athletes, with the emphasis on
student
. There is another high school point guard with whom I'm in contact. Right now, you hold the edge on the basketball court, and I have told him so. I have also told him that he has the edge in the classroom. Before I can offer you a scholarship, I will need to see clear evidence that you will be able to meet the high academic standards of Monitor College.

To be specific: you will need to complete your current junior-year classes with a minimum 3.0 grade point average. Listed below are the classes Monitor College requires you to complete—again with a minimum 3.0 grade point average—during your senior year.

 

•Chemistry

•Algebra II/Trigonometry

•Language Arts

•Social Studies

•Spanish

 

You will also need to score at least five hundred on each section of the SAT. I do not need to tell you that this is a much more difficult course of study than you have undertaken in the past. To succeed, you will need to put forth the kind of effort in the classroom that you have put forth on the basketball court. It is up to you.

 

Sincerely,

Gregory Richter

Men's Head Basketball Coach

Monitor College

I
T HAD BEEN ONE THING
to talk about becoming a better student, but seeing in black-and-white Richter's list of requirements was overwhelming. In the previous weeks, I'd actually raised my hand in class a few times. The kids around me were surprised; the teachers nodded with pleasure.

But raising your hand in class a few times isn't the same as studying hard for tough classes for an entire year. Could I do that? And if I did somehow get into Monitor College, was I smart enough to succeed? What would be the point of going all the way to New England only to flunk out?

My mind went in circles for a while, until I thought of Lisa Yee. Lisa lived right down the block, and she was one of the smartest kids at Redwood High. When we were little, we'd played together at Stambaugh Park, and we were still good friends. Lisa knew all about colleges, and she also knew what I could and couldn't do. Most importantly, she'd be straight with me.

My dad wasn't home for dinner, which was typical. When we finished eating, I asked my mom if I could borrow her car, and she said yes. I took out my cell and phoned Lisa. “How about we go to Starbucks?” I asked.

“Sorry, Jonas. I've got homework.”

“Come on, Lisa. You can bring your laptop. I need to talk to you.”

“Why can't we just talk now, on the phone?”

“Because I have to show you something. Please, Lisa. It won't take long.”

 

Twenty minutes later we were drinking hot chocolate at a corner table inside the Starbucks by the Redwood City train station. “So?” Lisa said, pushing her long hair back over her shoulders. “What's the big mystery?”

I unfolded Coach Richter's letter and handed it to her.

As she read, the impatience in her eyes was replaced by excitement. When she was halfway through, she reached over, took hold of my arm, and squeezed. “Jonas, this is fantastic.”

“Have you heard of Monitor College?” I asked when she'd finished reading.

“No, but that doesn't mean anything,” she said as she opened her laptop. “There are a thousand schools in the East I've never heard of.”

I looked over her shoulder and watched as she typed
Monitor College
into the Google search box. Within seconds, she was jumping from webpage to webpage. At each stop, she found something new to like about Monitor. After about five minutes, she closed her laptop and looked at me. “It's a perfect fit for you.”

“And you think I can do what Richter wants me to do?”

A quizzical look came over her face. “Is that what you wanted to talk to me about?”

I nodded. “I've never been much of a student.”

“Jonas, trust me. You'll have no trouble with the SAT, and you can get Bs if you study.”

I shook my head. “In some classes, yeah. But I got a D in biology last year, and I barely got a C− in geometry first semester this year. How am I going to get Bs in chemistry and Algebra II?”

Lisa's brows knit. “Okay, those will be difficult, but I'll help you. I've taken both of those classes already, so I know what you'll need to study.” She reached over and squeezed my arm again. “You can do it, Jonas. I know you can.”

 

I was feeling pumped up by Lisa's confidence in me when I opened my front door, but that feeling vanished the instant I saw my parents. They were sitting at the kitchen table, papers spread out in front of them, their faces grim. They barely looked at me as I came in.

I'd planned on showing them Richter's letter; instead, I went to my room and read it over a few more times. I'd put it away when my mom tapped on my door, opened it, and then stepped inside. She didn't usually do that—once I closed my door at night, they both left me alone.

“What happened?” I asked, even though I knew the answer.

Her eyes were sad. “Two weeks.”

Neither of us said anything for a while. Then my mom smiled. “The good news is that he's going to start a new chapter in his life. He never liked that dispatch job, anyway. We're going through a rough patch, but in the long run everything will work out.”

O
NCE MY DAD LOST HIS
job, coming home from school was awkward. He had no place to go and nothing to do, so he was always hanging around the house. Little by little he changed too—and not for the better. First, he stopped shaving. He's got a heavy beard, and within a week it looked wild, like the beard of a mass murderer in a horror film. Next, he stopped paying attention to his clothes. He'd wear the same old Mount Shasta sweatshirt and the same old ripped blue jeans day after day. But the worst thing was the drinking—every afternoon he'd polish off a six-pack of beer, and sometimes he drank more.

My mom was working extra hours at the hairdresser, so most afternoons and evenings, it was just my dad and me at home. We'd microwave frozen dinners and eat them with plastic knives and forks so we wouldn't have to wash up. When my mom came home, her blue eyes seemed paler and so did her skin. She hardly ate, so every day she looked thinner.

Those weeks were miserable, but one good thing did happen: I taught myself how to study. I can play basketball for hours, but after ten minutes of looking at a book, I had to fight the urge to play a video game or turn on ESPN. Slowly, though, I trained myself to concentrate.

Lisa was right about my grades, at least for history and English. By reading everything twice, checking answers, and asking questions in class, I was earning Bs. Teachers I thought I hated, like Mr. Whitten, turned out to be okay once I started acting differently.

The tough class was geometry. I'd blown off math for so long that I had all kinds of holes in my knowledge. I wasn't entirely sure what the slope of a line was and had only the haziest idea how to find it. While all my other grades were going up, my C− in geometry was drifting toward a D.

In mid-March I got myself switched to Mr. Nutting's math class. Nutting was known as a hard-ass, but he also had the reputation of helping anyone who asked. I spent lunch periods in his room working through the problem sets, slowly filling in the holes in my knowledge. Nutting was honest. “You might not be a math whiz, Jonas, but you're smart enough. Just stay with it.”

With Nutting's help, my geometry grade slowly rose. I wouldn't say using the point-slope formula ever came as easily to me as shooting a free throw, but it wasn't like climbing Mount Everest, either. When I went online to check my grades after quarter finals,
I had a B− in geometry and a B or better in everything else.

I
TOOK THE SAT AT SCHOOL
one afternoon. Lisa had been right—it wasn't that hard. When I got home that day, I spotted a Lexus with a Hertz rental car license frame in our driveway. When I opened the front door, I saw a strange man sitting across the kitchen table from my dad. They were deep in conversation. I looked, and then looked again. It was my uncle Frank.

If you look at photos of Uncle Frank and my dad from when they were in high school, you can see immediately that they're brothers, and it's hard to tell who is older. That makes sense because they were born only eighteen months apart. But sitting across from one another at the kitchen table that day, they didn't look like brothers—and they didn't look the same age.

My dad had started working at the sand and gravel company right out of high school, but Uncle Frank went to the University of Washington, where he earned a business degree. Uncle Frank now owns about twenty fancy hamburger places up in Seattle. The Blue Jay restaurants have made him rich—millionaire rich.

Uncle Frank looked like he could have been my older brother. His face was smooth, his blond hair perfectly combed, and his clothes crisply pressed. He was gym-club muscular and had what looked like a diamond ring on his little finger. My dad—with his sweatshirt, stubble, and extra forty pounds—looked ten years older.

Uncle Frank smiled when he saw me, came out to the living room, and shook my hand as if I were an adult. “You have really grown, Jonas. How long has it been since I've seen you? It must be four years.”

“Good to see you, Uncle Frank,” I said, embarrassed and confused. Why was he visiting now?

We both stood awkwardly, neither of us knowing what to say next. Then my dad's voice came from the kitchen. “Your uncle Frank and I have some business to talk over, Jonas. We'll all go out to dinner later when your mom comes home.”

I went into the den and turned on the television, but I kept the sound low so I could hear what they were saying. Uncle Frank did all the talking. I couldn't follow everything he said, but I picked up stray sentences here and there.
Right now the place is failing . . . Sure you could . . . You'd be doing me the favor . . . I'm going to have to move on this soon
.

My mom came home a little later, and we went to dinner at a fancy restaurant up in Woodside. It was the first time in a long while
that we'd gone anywhere. Uncle Frank ordered a couple of bottles of wine and then told stories about how great Seattle was. “There are mountains and lakes, golf courses and ski resorts. It's got everything, including rain. You'd love it up there, Jonas.” My mom was smiling and talked some, but my dad stayed mostly quiet all through the evening. When the bill came, Uncle Frank insisted on paying. I could tell my dad didn't like that, but he let him.

Uncle Frank left early the next morning. Once he was gone, my dad explained. “He's offered me a job. He wants me to manage one of his restaurants up in Seattle.”

“You? Manage a restaurant?” I said, without thinking. “Could you do that?”

My father laughed. “That's exactly what I said to him. He seems to think I can.”

My head was spinning. All that talk about how much I'd love Seattle suddenly made sense. “That's great,” I said, forcing the words out.

My dad shrugged. “It is and it isn't. I'll have a job, but if we moved to Seattle, you'd have to start over with new teachers, a new coach, and new teammates. I don't want to ruin your chance for that scholarship, especially since I'm not sure I can even do the work. So this is your call.”

I sat absolutely still. He'd said exactly what I'd been thinking.

A long moment passed. Then he picked up his glass and drank some of his beer. “You don't have to decide now, Jonas,” he said as he put his glass down. “Tomorrow or the next day is fine. Frank can wait that long.”

“No,” I said, and my voice sounded strange to me. “I don't need to think about it. Guys transfer to new schools all the time. It'll be okay.”

“You're sure?”

“I'm sure,” I insisted, even though I wasn't sure at all.

The next day was May 10—my seventeenth birthday. When I came home from school, a For Sale sign was in front of the house.

O
NCE MY DAD KNEW HE'D
be working again, he shaved and changed his clothes every day. Instead of drinking beer in front of the television, he spent his afternoons at the kitchen table reading library books on restaurant management. My mom's eyes regained their normal blue color, and the worry was gone from them. She still worked extra hours, but she was eating more. Our situations had reversed. Now I was the one who had trouble eating; now I was the one who was afraid of the future.

I had school every day and homework every night and final exams coming up fast. I had Coach Russell telling me that I would do fine in Seattle, and Mr. Nutting telling me that if I studied hard I could pass Algebra II, and Lisa telling me that chemistry was more memorization than anything else.

The thing that kept me from going crazy with worry was basketball. I was playing on a spring rec league team that had two games a week. Rec basketball was far easier on the mind than high school ball. Our coach just rolled the ball onto the floor and let us play. Only a few parents bothered to attend the games, which was great.