than I’ve weighed in the past, but no surprise. The one thing I could do while injured was add some bulk. If there’s any extra fat, it’ll burn off with a week or two of practice. Then she has me stand straight to measure my height. I’m not even really paying attention—just hoping to get this over with and get a green light from the doc—but when she reads it off I ask her to repeat herself.
“Six-four,” she says, narrowing her eyes at me. It’s like she thinks I called her a liar or something. Then she relents. “Okay. Six-four-and-a-half. That better?”
I nod, but she’s misreading me. I didn’t think she was cheating me of an inch. It’s just that I topped out at 6’3" before freshman year and haven’t grown a millimeter since. No wonder my kicks have felt tight. But, hey, I’ll take it. An extra inch and a half? That’s another board per game. Another bucket or two among the bigs. Maybe a dozen more blocks over the course of a year.
Provided I get to wear a uni at all.
After that, she ushers me to a smaller room and tells me the doctor will be right with me. Right. That means I sit there in silence for half an hour. I thumb through an SI and a SLAM, but even they can’t distract me. I look at pictures on the wall, some signed photos of semi-famous athletes this doctor’s put back between the lines.
Finally, the door swooshes open and in he comes. He’s young, thin. His skin is honey-colored, but it’s impossible to figure out what ethnicity he is. He speaks in a clipped but cheery tone—the kind of thing that usually bothers me, but he’s been a pretty steadying force through this whole journey with my knee.
“How we doing today, Derrick?” he asks. He extends his hand.
I rise, shake his hand. “I guess how I’m doing depends on what you tell me.”
No more small talk then. He knows I need him to get down to business. He measures the circumference of my leg and writes it down. He quizzes me on my workouts. Any swelling? Soreness? Am I hitting full speed running? Any problems after downhill running?
It’s a little weird. I mean, I know what the right answers are. But I try to be honest with myself and the doctor—the last thing anyone wants is another injury. So I give him the truth. I haven’t had any soreness or swelling in over a month. Everything feels good. Except one thing. “I hit top speed,” I tell him, “but I don’t feel like I get there as fast as I used to.”
The doctor nods. Then he frowns a little and scans a chart in front of him. He flips a page. Then another. It’s like he’s on the beach, browsing some summer read while I’m in deep water in need of saving.
He looks up at me again. He smiles, but I can tell there’s something lurking behind it—the way a parent might smile right before they drop the hammer on you, like I hate to do this to you, but your ass is grounded.
“What you’re experiencing is normal,” he says. “I could count on one hand the number of athletes I’ve had who felt they had the same power. For most of them, it takes at least a full year from their injury. And yours was in”—he double-checks his chart—“late January. So, like I said, totally normal. You’ll get that power back as your knee returns to form.” Then he taps his temple with his finger a few times. “But some of it’s in here, too. Tearing your ACL isn’t like stubbing a toe, Derrick. Sometimes our mind holds us back a little longer until we feel safe.” I stare at him, still waiting on the verdict. I didn’t come to the doctor for some psychology lesson. He must sense it because he waves his hand in the air, as if to say Forget all that nonsense. “You’re good to go, Derrick.”
“For real?” As badly as I want to believe it, the thought almost scares me somehow. Like any second, a camera crew’s going to pop out and let me know the doc was punking me.
“You check out,” he says. “Every test up and down the line. We’re going to want a brace on you for a good while longer, but you can resume full basketball activities.”
“Right away?”
“Derrick, as far as I’m concerned, if there’s a court on the other side of that door, you can start a pick-up game.”
First, the kicks. Fresh out of the box. I went to Ty’s Tower to buy them this weekend. My mom forked over the cash, but this time—more than all the times in the past—it seemed to cause her physical pain to hand that stack to me just so I could put something on my feet. But you don’t tell a musical phenom to go buy a used instrument, and you don’t tell a baller to skimp on kicks.
Now I have to deal with Wes at Ty’s Tower. We don’t hang too much anymore. Last year, he got himself tangled up with some for real bad people. He’s still paying off some debt he owes those guys, scrubbing floors at the same seedy bar where Uncle Kid works. It’s not the kind of place that puts him in contact with good influences. Hell, it’s illegal for him to even be working there, but they can just give him some cash off the books and he works cheap. So after all that, I keep pretty clear of my boy, even if he does still live right up the street. Still, the guy’s the biggest sneakerhead I know. It would just feel like a betrayal if I bought my senior kicks without him as wing man.
First thing I do is point to the LeBron XIIIs. Used to be I’d rock the D Roses, but after his sexual assault case my mom said she’d cut off my feet if I put his shoes on. But here, I get all told from Wes instead. “Gotta step up your sneaker game for senior year,” he says. He practically begs me until I try on some Hyperdunks and some Melos. Even some funky Brandblack Raptors. “That’s what I’m talking about,” he says. “Some real flavor.” As he points to the shoes, I see fresh ink on his arms—namely a dollar sign on the inside of his wrist. Tats don’t come cheap, I know, and I shudder to think about where he’s getting that extra flow. But I don’t press it. Not now.
In the end I come right back to the LeBrons. “Come on, D,” Wes pleads. But I’m not here for anything new, other than a jump in size for proper fit.
Wes knows it too. The whole time he was pointing out other shoes, he knew it. Him changing my mind isn’t the point. The two of us hanging a little is. It’ll never be like when we were pups again. Too much has changed. And it’ll be a long time before I can trust him again. When it all went down last year, I had to put myself on the line for him—and I damn near got popped doing it.
We head out to the street. Wes immediately digs a pack of smokes from his pocket and starts packing them. Then he sees me watching him and tucks them back away. Not that I care. He’s smoked a lot more than a few Marlboros in his day. But anything like that is just this little reminder that we’ve hit different paths in our lives.
“How’s work?” I ask.
He laughs. There’s no joy in it—it’s the laugh of someone bitter. “I mop puke off the floor three days a week,” he says. “And every dime I get goes to JaQuentin Peggs.”
JaQuentin. That was the guy. I still seem him around now and then, and every time he just looks more dangerous. “Well,” I say, but I just let it trail off.
“Yeah, I know,” Wes says. “Nobody’s fault but mine.” But the way he says it sounds like he’s accusing someone else.
“Wanna grab a Coke somewhere?” I ask. For some reason, I don’t want my time with Wes to be over yet. Truth is, I miss the kid, even if I know I’m better off without him dragging
