and nap. Mason never blinked.
Now some people actually study. What’s the point of acting out if you can’t get a teacher to notice?
I check the clock, see there’s only twenty minutes left in the period. “Do I need to come back here before next bell?” I ask.
Mason shrugs. He opens his desk and pulls out a bag of chips, opens them with a loud crinkle. “No point, I guess.”
Then I’m gone. As I walk down the hall, I check all the slogans.
Belief Efficiency Schoolwork Tenacity = B.E.S.T.
We Are the Hornets. Our Strength is in the Hive.
Always Aiming Upward!
They’ve been there forever. Same slogans and signs since the first day I set foot in Marion East. Every school has them—constant attempts to keep kids motivated. When you’re young, they seem to mean something. Like a little life instruction manual written on the walls. Then you hit junior year. Senior year. Things change. You see kids who had promise spiral down. You see kids who graduated full of hope stuck in their parents’ house, no better prospects than minimum wage jobs. Over and over and over.
Then again, what’s the choice? To not believe in possibilities? To just give up? No way. And whenever I get that kind of feeling, I’ve got something to save me—hoops. There the rules make sense. Nobody’s going to change them on you mid-game either. Give me the rock. Get me between the lines. Then I’ll show you what’s B.E.S.T.
I hover outside of Coach Bolden’s door before I knock. I’ve been called down here so many times over the years that I don’t even worry. Sometimes it’s been a pep talk. Sometimes a brutal lecture. Sometimes it’s been to take a long look at my mid-term grades.
I knock.
“It’s open,” a voice says.
Then, when I duck my head in, there’s no Bolden. Instead, the other two seniors on the squad—Fuller and Chris Jones, our big who spent all summer bulking up—sit silently in folding chairs. Across from them, behind Bolden’s big old desk, sits Lou Murphy, Bolden’s longtime assistant. He points at one last chair that leans against the brick wall. “Grab a seat, Derrick,” he says.
I do as I’m told, but my senses are on high alert.
Once I sit and face Murphy, he clears his throat. He clasps his hands in front of him and sits them on the desk, then decides against it and lays them palms-down as he leans forward. Murphy’s always been our go-to guy, that players’ coach who strokes our egos when Bolden comes down too hard. But now he just looks too young. Instead of his smooth, copper-colored face and that nervous smile behind the desk, there should be Bolden’s hawkish scowl—dark, wrinkled, ready to attack.
Finally, Murphy just pops up, like the seat’s full of thorns. He claps his hands. “Let’s just get to it,” he says. “I wanted to let the seniors know first. Coach Bolden isn’t coming back this year.” As he says it, he motions back to the chair. Maybe he meant it as a sign of respect—like it’ll always be Bolden’s seat—but it makes it feel like the old man’s dead.
“What’s wrong?” Fuller asks. He’s a senior in high school whose forehead wrinkles up like a senior citizen’s. He’s a bull, always moving straight ahead, on the court and off. “Something happened to him, right?” he says, as much an accusation as a question.
“No, no,” Murphy says. “It’s nothing like that. He just decided it was time to retire.”
I don’t say anything, but I’m angry. I’m not sure why, but it seems like a betrayal. Jones must feel the same way, and he doesn’t hold back. “Just like that?” he yells. “The old man said forget it right before my senior year? After all the work? After all the damn suicides I’ve run for him, he just walks?”
Murphy nods, understanding. “I hear you,” he says. Then he catches himself and takes a harder tone. “But Jones, it is what it is. Man up about it. Coach was getting up there. If he wants to spend his days doing the crossword and watching cable, he’s earned it.”
Nobody says anything after that. We just let the news settle over us the way a January snow silences the city as it falls. There’s just the wheeze and rattle of the air conditioning unit. I start remembering all my go-rounds with Bolden—the fight over playing time my freshman year, his crazy lineups that put me at the four-spot, the heart-to-hearts during my sophomore slump, his fire-breathing lectures when I let my head get too swole as a junior. And then his patience and counsel through my recruitment and my injuries. It’s hard to imagine Marion East hoops without him prowling the sideline, chewing out officials, stomping his foot on the hardwood. Gone. Retirement isn’t death, I guess, but it kind of feels like it to the people left behind.
“So?” Jones asks at last.
“What?” Murphy says.
“So who’s the new coach?”
Murphy widens his eyes. “I am,” he says, a little too defensively. Then he softens, remembering that he didn’t exactly explain that part to us. And finally, he lets a little smile creep in. He shakes his head. “The old man didn’t really give the school much of a choice to do anything else,” he says. “He just dropped the news on them yesterday. Probably knew it all summer long, but held out so they’d have to let me have a crack at it.”
Then he cuts us loose. We’re under orders not to tell anyone until the other players hear in person from him. The three of us walk together down the halls. Right now they’re empty, but any second that bell will ring and the whole school will spill out. Noise. Clamor. Chaos.
“Well, what do you guys think?” Fuller asks.
“I think it’s some bullshit,” Jones says. He’s a hulking 6’8", but when he acts this way his face sags into a mope. It makes him look soft, not menacing. “My senior year.”
“Our senior year,” I remind him. But I don’t say anything else. Truth is, I’m as sad as I am angry. But ballers aren’t gonna sit around and cry for the dearly departed. Next man up.
“Whatever,” Jones says. “I spent all summer banging weights and this is what I get.” He storms off, leaving Fuller and me standing under that big red sign: We Are the Hornets. Our Strength is in the Hive.
Then the bell rings and everyone swarms out around us.
Those slogans are flat-out lies.
There’s no time to sulk. After school, it was just a quick Catch you later to Lia, and then I hopped in my car to trek here: the doctor’s office. One last check-in before the season starts. Lia offered. My parents offered. Hell, even Jayson offered. But I didn’t want company on this one. Some things you have to do solo. If I get a bad report now, I don’t want to have to face anyone to talk about it.
Hanging in the waiting room about kills me. It’s worse than watching another player step to the line with the game in the balance. Nothing you can do but hope. Thing is, I should be more confident. The knee doesn’t give me any problems anymore. Not even tightness after workouts. But I don’t get to turn it loose without the doctor’s say-so.
“Bowen. Derrick.” I look up to see a nurse with a clipboard.
