Swagger (8 page)

I'd arranged to stop by Levi's house on the first day. He must have been looking out his window for me, because he came tumbling out of his house when I was still twenty-five yards away. He seemed tense, stopping three times to check his backpack for supplies as we walked along. You'd have thought he was the new student at Harding.

As we neared the school, the sidewalks started filling with kids. Some would see Levi and holler, “Hey, Double D, what's up?” I hated the easy way kids used that nickname. Every single guy who called him that—and it was all guys—was smaller than Levi. I don't know much about the Bible, but I know Christ once threw moneylenders out of the temple. Levi needed to throw some of these “Double D” jokers onto their asses. Do that to a few of them, and the rest would stop.

Once we'd stepped inside the big double doors, Levi and I separated. The one class we had together was health, which came at the end of the day. As soon as he was gone, I felt an ache in my stomach. During the summer, I'd worried about what Coach Richter expected from me on the basketball court. Once I stepped inside Harding High, it was his academic requirements that came flooding at me.

In my first two classes—English and Algebra II—the teachers passed out a syllabus, warned everyone not to fall behind, and promised that we'd learn a lot if we studied hard. The other kids leaned back in their chairs and rolled their eyes; they'd heard the same lecture for years. I'd heard it too, but I felt as if it were Richter in the front of the classroom, his intense eyes warning me not to blow my chance. Both Mrs. Miller and Mr. Wunderlich had kind smiles. Maybe I'd be okay with them.

Chemistry, my third-period class, wasn't okay. Mr. Butler was an old-school, no-nonsense type, with a receding hairline and a shiny scalp. He wore a brown suit and a skinny brown tie.

Once the bell rang, Butler strode up and down the rows. “I'm not like most teachers. I won't give you a C for breathing. A C in my class means you have an average knowledge of chemistry. If you have a below-average knowledge of chemistry, you can expect a D or an F.”

He growled on like that for a while before he sat down behind his desk, which was front and center, and stared out at us. For a long minute, the silence was heavy. Then a thick, short finger was pointed like a gun at my forehead. “Name?”

“Jonas Dolan,” I managed.

“Okay, Jonas Dolan, tell me something about the periodic table.”

A roaring filled my ears. Every kid in the class was staring at me. What could I say? I didn't know anything about the periodic table.

“Come on, come on,” Butler spat the words at me like bullets. “You must know something about the periodic table.”

Kids around me laughed, nervous laughs,
Thank God I'm not him
laughs. When I felt like I was about to fall apart, a dark-haired girl looked over at me. She mouthed a word.

“Oxygen,” I said. “Oxygen is on the periodic table.”

Butler clapped slowly and maliciously. “Brilliant, Jonas Dolan. Absolutely brilliant. Taxpayers will be delighted to know that the money they have coughed up for your education has not been wasted. You've heard of oxygen. Amazing.” He turned from me and honed in on Edward Yang, a bright-eyed Asian kid in the first row who knew about uranium, plutonium, and everything else on the periodic table. The praise Butler gave him wasn't sarcastic.

I
HAD LUNCH AFTER MRS. CLEMENTS'S
fourth-period American government class, but instead of going to the cafeteria, I went to see Mrs. Stone, my counselor. When I told her I wanted out of Butler's chemistry class, a smile crept across her face. “You're not the first student who has said that to me.”

She spun around in her chair to face her computer. Screens came up and screens went down. After about two minutes she turned back to me. “Keyboarding. Or you could be a library assistant.”

“I need a lab science.”

“You've already taken biology.”

“Doesn't somebody else teach chemistry?”

She raised her eyes. “At Harding chemistry means Mr. Butler.”

“What about physics? Could I take physics?”

“Chemistry is a prerequisite.” She paused. “Should I switch you to keyboarding?”

I took a deep breath and exhaled. “No, I'll stick with Butler.”

She looked surprised. “Okay. But if you decide to switch later, it'll be harder.”

I had Spanish fifth period with Mr. Contreras, and as my classmates struggled to introduce themselves in Spanish, I half considered slipping out of the classroom to phone Coach Richter to tell him I had a crazy man for a chemistry teacher and to plead with him to drop the laboratory-science part of the deal. But the other kid Richter was considering for the scholarship—whoever and wherever he was—that kid wasn't going to drop classes. He was probably going to get straight As.

I was thoroughly depressed as I headed to health. When I stepped into the classroom, I scanned the room, finally spotting Levi way in the back. “Hey,” I said, when I closed in on him, “how's your day going?”

He shook his head and frowned. “My classes look tough.”

“Teachers always try to scare you on the first day.”

The bell rang, and Ms. Fleming, the only one of my teachers who was under thirty, ran through her version of the opening statement. I took no notes, because there was absolutely nothing important said, but Levi filled three pages of binder paper. A couple of times I looked over to see what he could possibly be writing.
Quizzes every few weeks . . . Keep up with new medical developments . . . Healthy life choices are important
.

I wondered if that was why he had trouble passing his classes. Maybe he studied the same way he drew animals and trees, looking at everything from every angle. Maybe he needed to learn what to ignore.

O
NCE CLASS ENDED, LEVI AND
I headed over to the gym for unofficial basketball practices. As we walked down the long hall, I grew more worried about Coach Knecht. “Does Knecht watch these games?” I asked.

Levi shook his head. “That's against the rules. Coach Knecht will stop by only to say hello.

When we turned the final corner leading to the gym, I spotted Cash joking with a tall man wearing a coat and jacket. The man had his back to me, but he stood straight—nothing bent over about him—so I knew he couldn't be Knecht. Cash saw Levi and me and called out, his voice excited. “Double D, Jonas—look who's teaching here.”

The man turned around.

It was Ryan Hartwell.

Smiling ear to ear, Hartwell strode toward us, his hand raised so we could high-five him. “Good to see you again, Levi. Good to see you, Jonas. What am I saying? It's great to see you. It's fantastic.”

“Are you a teacher here?” I asked.

“Social studies and PE,” he answered, his eyes alive.

“Why didn't you tell us in the summer?”

“Because I got hired yesterday.”

“It gets better,” Cash broke in. “He's our basketball coach too.”

“Assistant coach,” Hartwell quickly added, looking at Levi. “Mr. Knecht is still your head coach.”

Within minutes DeShawn and Nick came up, and Hartwell told his story again. Then he pointed to the locker room. “Get in there and get changed. You guys need work. Remember, I saw how bad you were all summer.”

 

The girls' varsity volleyball team had the main gym, but Coach Knecht had arranged for us to use a side gym so small that there was hardly any space between the out-of-bounds line and the wall. I was the first guy out on the court and immediately started to shoot around. The other guys came onto the floor soon after me. I recognized Brindle, my competition, because he dribbled the ball with the confidence of a point guard. His shooting form was not bad—the guy had obviously gotten a lot of good coaching—but the results were just okay. The same thing was true with his speed and quickness: good, not great.

We'd been on the court about ten minutes when Coach Knecht came in. His back was bent exactly as Levi had described, but he had a strong jaw, a grizzled beard, and hawkish eyes that seemed to look right through you. He said hello to the guys he knew, and then he had us new guys tell him about our basketball backgrounds.

“So you played point guard in California?” he asked when I finished. “Did you start?”

“Yeah, I did.”

“‘Yes, sir,' would sound better.”

My face turned bright red. Knecht let me squirm a little and then continued. “Were you any good?”

“Yes, sir. I was good. I was second-team all-league.”

“I meant your team, Jonas. Was your team good?”

Another wave of heat burned through me. “Yes, sir, the team was good.”

He looked at Brindle. “Looks like you've got competition, Donny.”

Then Knecht turned to another new guy and started over with the questions.

“Here's how it will work,” he said, after he'd heard from every player. “You'll have this side gym every day from two thirty to four, and the weight room from four to four thirty. If you can make the sessions, great. If you need the time to study, then study.”

Knecht left, and DeShawn sidled over to me. “Sorry I didn't tell you about the ‘Yes, sir' stuff.” Then he nodded toward Brindle. “Word is he didn't get many minutes on that fancy-ass select team he played for all summer. His parents paid a ton of money for nothing. If you ask me, you're better than he is.”

C
ASH CHOSE THE TEAMS THAT
day and every day. I don't know why he was the one to do it, but nobody objected. There are people like that—people who run things—and Cash was one of them. He put himself with Brindle, which irked me until I remembered that Brindle had spent the previous season feeding Cash. It would have been pretty cold for Cash to choose me as point guard for his team. I did end up with Levi and DeShawn on my team, so I wasn't stuck with a team of total strangers.

Early in that first game, Brindle got right up into my space, his butt low, slapping his hands on the gym floor to show me he meant business, bumping me whenever he could. It was 50 percent good defense and 50 percent attempted intimidation.

I didn't react to any of the showboat antics; I simply played my game. If he was overly aggressive, reaching in too far, I'd turn on the burners and take him to the hoop. But I did that only when he guarded me closely. A point guard's job is to run the team, and that means getting teammates involved, not getting caught up in one-on-one competition.

Brindle could play, so it wasn't as if we were in a dumb movie where I stole the ball from him all the time and scored at will. I held my own, though. The games went to eleven, just like the games at Green Lake, and my team won more than we lost, despite the fact that Cash was on fire from long range.

It was closing on four—which was when Knecht had told us we had to leave the gym—and I could feel Brindle wearing down. That's when I did make it one-on-one. My best moment came on the last play. Brindle brought the ball into the forecourt, directing traffic. When his dribble got a little high and a bit sloppy, my left hand slapped the ball loose. I pounced on it and then raced up-court. Brindle was backpedaling, totally out of position. At the free-throw line, I crossed over. I was by him in the blink of an eye, so I didn't see him go down, but when I looked back after making the gimme, he was on his butt, and the guys were laughing.

At precisely four o'clock, the girls on the JV volleyball team took the court. I hated to stop, and I didn't look forward to what came next—the weight room. I've never liked weightlifting, but something Hartwell had said in the summer had stuck.
“If you're strong enough to shoot through a foul, you've got a chance for a three-point play. If the foul stops your shot, the best you're looking at is two free throws.”
I forced myself to put in a solid thirty minutes of lifting, working with Levi as my partner.

At four thirty Levi and I picked up our backpacks and duffle bags from the locker room. I was hungry and wanted to get home to eat, but as soon as we stepped into the gym lobby, Hartwell appeared from around a corner. “Can I talk to you two for a minute?”

We followed him into the coaches' office in the back of the main gym. Through the glass, I could see the girls' varsity volleyball team finishing up their practice. Celia Chavez—the girl who'd helped me come up with the word
oxygen
in chemistry class—caught my eye. I gave her a wave, and she waved back.

“Sit,” Hartwell said, so Levi and I plopped down in plastic blue chairs. Hartwell positioned himself behind a big oak desk. “I spoke with Cash and those guys earlier,” he said, leaning forward. “They're on board; I'm hoping you will be too.”

“On board with what?” I asked.

Hartwell tapped his fingertips together and then resumed. “When I gave that party at the end of summer, I hadn't been hired by Harding High. Had I known I'd be hired, I wouldn't have done what I did.” He shook his head slowly. “If word ever got out about the beer and those movies, my career would be over before it even started.”

“I won't tell anyone,” I said.

“Neither will I,” Levi put in.

Hartwell gave a sigh of relief. “I was hoping you'd say that.” He paused. “One more thing. I'd appreciate it if you didn't mention to Coach Knecht that I worked with you guys at Green Lake. A coach can't run practices in the summer. There was nothing wrong with what I did. I hadn't yet been hired and those weren't really practices—but if Coach Knecht were to find out, he'd feel honor bound to report it. That would trigger an investigation. I'd be cleared, but it would take a long time, and who needs the hassle? I'm not asking you to lie; I'm just asking you not to mention it.”

Again I nodded, and Levi did too.