manned up before I had to turn on him. All I got was a charge of Unsafe Lane Movement, plus a couple lectures. As we walked out of that station, Dad practically shook with anger. “Derrick, your mother,” he seethed at me, “is about—.” And he trailed off, unable to even finish the sentence.
I climbed in the backseat, right behind my mom. Squeezing in back there pushes my knees up near my chest, but I knew that ride wasn’t designed for my comfort. We cruised a couple blocks in silence. Then my mom slowly turned in her seat to look at me. Even in the dark, I could tell she’d been crying—but I could also tell she was ready to kill.
Now it’s super late. Last I looked at my watch it was 1:00, but even that glance got Mom mad. “Pay attention, Derrick,” she said. So I don’t dare look again. We’re at the kitchen table, still hashing it out. There’s a single lamp on. My parents pace through the shadows.
“What were you thinking?” Mom asks. It’s now about the fifth time she’s hit me with it. She stares at me intently, her face like a sphinx.
Again, I try to explain. “It wasn’t mine. Wes even told the police.”
“Oh, I know that,” Mom snaps. “Believe me, if it was yours, you’d be in for a lot rougher night than this one. But there were drugs in your car, Derrick. That’s on you.”
I’ve had about enough. My shoulders get tighter and tighter each time we go around the same conversation. Finally, I just put my head down on the table. I turn it to the side, staring across the kitchen at the refrigerator. It used to be decorated with drawings from Jayson or report cards from me. “How is it on me?” I ask. “I can’t be in charge of what Wes does.”
Mom flips. “You’re in charge of who gets in your car!” she shouts. “You’ve been raised to have enough sense to know what your friends are up to! And you should know that if Wes is fooling around with drugs then he’s not your friend.”
“Mom,” I say, “Wes is the best friend I’ve got.”
“Not anymore!” she shouts.
This draws Jayson out from his room. He rubs his eyes to give the impression that he just woke up, but I bet he’s been eavesdropping for a while. It’s not like our house holds back sound that well. He doesn’t say anything, but when he sits on the recliner there’s a little squeak from the springs.
Both our parents turn. Dad points toward the hallway. “You’ve got about three seconds to get back down to your room,” he says.
Jayson’s eyes widen. He looks genuinely worried. He’s usually one to aggravate things further, but this time he does as he’s told. He pops off that chair and slinks back toward his room. Now both Mom and Dad shake their heads. I realize the look instantly—they’re sorry for having jumped Jayson when he didn’t really do anything wrong.
“I’ll go talk to him,” Dad says to Mom. They both cut their eyes at me, like this is my fault too. At this point, I’m pretty sure that if a tornado ripped through downtown Indy, my parents would blame it on the fact that I let Wes into my car with pot.
“Get to bed,” Mom snaps at me. As I stand, she gives me a parting shot. “This isn’t over,” she says.
First, no car. Not until Christmas. Mom slapped that one on me first thing this morning. So I’m back to bumming rides or hoofing it, like I’m a freshman again.
Second, no Wes. That was my dad’s order. He didn’t give a timetable, but it’s not like I’m in some hurry to kick it with Wes anyway.
But now, it’s Coach Bolden’s turn. On the first day of school, I’m already in his office. Getting called in is starting to seem like an annual ritual. He doesn’t waste any time. “I’ve already heard about what happened last night,” he says. “I just want to see if you have any explanation.”
It’s the kind of opening my parents never gave me—some room to tell my side of things. Then again, this is Coach Bolden we’re talking about. There’s no easy road here. He listens patiently while I tell him that I had no idea that Wes had weed on him. Then he even nods along while I explain that the only thing I did wrong was swerve a little bit while a cop was watching. But when I’m done, he leans forward and jabs his index finger down on his desktop. “One game,” he says. He raises that finger and points it at me. “You sit.”
I flop back in my chair and turn my palms up. “What?” I ask. “I didn’t even do anything.” I know that tone will work about as well on Coach Bolden as it did on my parents, but at this point I don’t care. I really can’t believe people are crashing down on me this hard for something someone else got busted for.
To my surprise, Bolden doesn’t lose it on me. Instead, he shakes his head patiently. He runs his hand across his bald dome and then squeezes the back of his neck, like he’s trying to rein himself in. Then he leans forward again. No finger jabs. No raising his voice. “Derrick,” he starts, “there are a bunch of coaches in this state who wouldn’t care that you wound up in jail last night. They wouldn’t care if the drugs were yours. Hell, they’d barely care if you were selling. They’d only care about getting you in uniform for the season.” I cross my arms and look away. I want to say, Well, yeah. That’s what a good coach does. But instead I just take what’s coming. “I care more about this school, about the way we want to do things, than I care about that first game,” he says. Then he narrows his eyes, digging into me just a little. “And I sure as hell care about those things more than I care if your feelings get hurt.”
I scan the wall behind him. Bare. Most coaches would have plaques or trophies or some kind of mementos from their best seasons. For Bolden the reminder of his best seasons is right in front of him. I’m the one that gave him two straight sectional titles and a regional title. And I’m the one who can get him a big, fat state championship ring this year. Still, I had my chance to get out from under his wing. I could have transferred, but I didn’t. So now getting mad at Coach Bolden’s discipline would be like getting mad at the winter for being cold. “Okay, Coach,” I say. “I’m sorry.” Really, what else can I say at this point?
Bolden flashes a brief smile and then yanks open a desk drawer. “I want you to understand something,” he says. Out comes a folder. He slaps it on the desk and opens it. Inside are a few pages with my name at the top. I can tell right away they’re game logs—full stats for every game I played my first two years at Marion East. Bolden drags his finger across the page like he’s reading a medical chart. “There’s so much to like here,” he says. “Probably why you’ve got a big stack of mail from schools all over the country. But you know what it tells me?”
He eyeballs me, but I don’t answer. He keeps looking at me now, even though his finger is still trailing across the page.
“It tells me your high school career is halfway over,” he says. “That means two things, Derrick. The first is that now you’re an upperclassmen and a leader. I can’t take it easy on you. I have to come down on you or every other player on the team will test me. But the second is more important to you. Being a junior means the word potential no longer applies. As a freshman, everyone looked past it when you had a bad night. Last year, when you struggled for a month, nobody recruiting you blinked. Get a technical? Cough up six turnovers? Didn’t matter—because you had potential. Well, you hit junior year and nobody talks about potential anymore. They want to see results. So listen.” He leans forward a few inches further, like
