with my hand but keep my feet balanced. He’s smart too. Doesn’t force. They run offense instead, which means I get pinballed off screen after screen. I keep contact, helped by my teammates hedging into passing lanes.
Finally I get a face full of shoulder from their center. Probably a moving screen, but not a call you get down the stretch. It gives Upchurch room on the right baseline, a place he likes to work. I close fast, and he passes on a catch-and-shoot. Maybe that swat from early in the game is still on his mind. Instead, he tries driving baseline. When I cut him off, he backs out to the wing to solo me up—and makes one bad mistake. He turns his back. Maybe he’s trying to set me up, but it gives me a clean look at the orange. Just a tap is all it takes. The rock ricochets off his knee and bounces toward open court. Their other guard dives after it, but I get there first. I tap it again, pushing it out toward mid-court. I leap over their sprawling guard. Then I’m all alone.
Corral. Push. Feel the energy of the crowd swell as I race to the rack. And then when I rise up, it’s all blocked out for the briefest of moments. There’s no crowd, no scouts, no coaches. Hell, there’s not even a game on. Just me attacking the rim. I break out a big tomahawk, throwing the thing down as hard as I can.
When I land, it all comes rushing back. The crowd is a mob, a rocking sea of red and green. My teammates are howling as our coaches urge us to race back on D. Upchurch turns to the ref and signals for time, his squad down seven again, chances dashed. And all those scouts from the blue chip schools have their answer: Derrick Bowen’s the king on this court.
Fuller just wants to talk hoops. Perfect. That’s why I hit him up after the game to go get some grub—I know Fuller is the one guy who won’t get up to any nonsense.
“We got to get Jones involved,” he says. “I’m not saying take shots away from you or Stanford, but we make him into a threat and teams won’t know what to do with us.”
“I hear it. Right now the only looks he gets are put-backs. But in practice he buries that J from the elbow.”
Fuller’s chuckles and shakes his head. He looks away like a wistful old man. “There’s no greater distance than the one between practice shots and game shots,” he says.
“Preach it,” I say. My agreement makes Fuller smile. All the kid wants, really, is to belong. He transferred here last year. As much as he’s found his fit on the court, he’s a tough fit off it. He’s so eager it kills him, so sincere he makes people roll their eyes. He falls in love with any girl who looks his way and—even worse—professes it to them right off the bat. And then there was his “party” the other weekend, which made everyone feel like they were back in sixth grade. But the kid’s steady. And right now, I can use steady.
So here we are, at Sure Burger on 38th. It’s a new place, opened last month, but it doesn’t look it. The booths look so old and grimy, it’s like they pre-date the building. In the hall to the bathroom there’s a small mountain of wreckage—old aprons, a broken space heater, busted crates—and in the men’s room the window is clapped shut with plywood. And then there’s the grease—everything within 50 feet of the kitchen has a slick coat on it, like someone busted in one night and just doused the place in the oil from the fryer. But, hey, it’s got the good eats. That’s all we care.
I make the mistake of checking my phone. The scroll of texts is longer than the Constitution. On one hand, it makes me feel good. I mean, that’s part of the point, right? Ball out and get a ride to college. Then own it there and make it to the L. But already the voices are blurring. Good game! and Way to tear it up! and Saw your line, D. Way to be! and We need a scorer like that at Creighton! They all start to look the same after a while. The names of the schools change, but it’s all the same. I need to narrow them down. Fast.
Fuller points at me with his fork, a mess of stabbed fries on the end—I mean, the guy eats his fries with a fork! “More questions from Whitfield?” he asks. It’s a loaded comment. More snark than usual from a guy like Fuller. But I know I deserve it. The interview with Whitfield did not go over well in the locker room. Nobody was truly falling out, but Stanford and Reynolds both made sure to give me some static on it. Then again, I basically proved myself right on the court tonight. Maybe that’s why Fuller backs off when I don’t answer right away. “Probably schools, huh?” he says. “Where you thinking?”
I sigh. “I wish I knew. Indiana, maybe,” I tell him, but even that I can’t say with conviction. It’s just my default response.
“Playing it close to the vest,” Fuller says. He says it like we’re conspiring on something. Then he nods in approval, like he’s been down that road before.
“I’m just telling you how it is,” I say. “I’m not trying to hold back some secret.”
“Oh, I hear you.” But he has that look like he knows I mean something else. Whatever. Let him think what he wants to think. “But if you need to hash it out with someone,” he says, “I’m here.” On that I’ve got to fight back the urge to roll my eyes. It’s like he wants to sound like a pathetic guidance counselor. He must read my thoughts because he puts his fork down and bugs his eyes. “What? What’d I say?”
I shake my head. “Nothing, man. Just take it easy. It’s cool.” But when I look past him, now I’m the one bugging. What I see up at the front is the very last thing I’d expect late-night at a grimy place like Sure Burger: Jasmine Winters, a stack of books clutched under her arm. Her eyes look a little bleary, and she’s got her hair bunched up under a baseball cap, but she still looks good.
I don’t want to just rush up on her. But Fuller sees me looking and wheels around so hard that his chair scrapes on the floor. Jasmine turns, sees us gawking. She smiles and shrugs her shoulders. “Hey, Derrick,” she says. “What can I say? I needed to re-fuel.”
I figured Jasmine would head downtown, hit up some dimly lit coffee shop, instead of cracking her books next to a pile of chili-cheese fries.
“Come sit with us,” Fuller blurts before I can respond. Makes me cringe. If the guy had any subtlety, he’d wait to see what Jasmine wanted. Or, even better, hit the pavement so she and I could kick it alone. But that doesn’t seem to bother Jasmine—she jumps at the offer.
She comes over and slings her stack of books down to the floor. I know she came here with the intention of more studies, but she thuds those things down like they weigh five-hundred pounds each. There’s an ACT prep book, a thick novel for her English class, and then a little pamphlet. It’s got pictures of kids of all races, their eyes eager, all of them looking forward like they’re listening to some lecture. It’s got the IUPUI logo on it, but I know Jasmine hasn’t studied herself crazy for four years to go there. Jasmine catches me looking at it. She kicks the novel over to cover the pamphlet.
“Heard you won tonight,” she says.
“Ah, we put it down,” Fuller says. “Dropped Warren Central.” If I didn’t know better, I’d swear Fuller was trying to act the big man for Jasmine. Crazy move. She might not be my girl, but she’s not exactly nothing to me.
“Well, that’s good, I guess,” she says, a little ice in her voice. Fuller sits back, realizing just how unimpressed Jasmine Winters is by a high school basketball game.
Fuller checks his phone. It’s probably just a way of pretending like he doesn’t care that Jasmine dogged him out, but then he purses his lips. “Three missed calls from Mom,” he says. “I better bolt.”
He wads his napkins and
