don’t expect to be getting minutes when the season rolls around.”
“Okay,” he says. He rolls his eyes a little bit and gives a whatever shrug.
“Hey!” I yell and start marching toward him.
That’s when Murphy cuts me off. He grabs me by the elbow and gets in my ear. “Easy,” he says. “You don’t have to be the coach, too. Let me handle this.”
I stare at him for a second, but he doesn’t blink. He still doesn’t seem angry, and that lack of anger infuriates me. Hell, I don’t know what practice is without somebody screaming. “Fine,” I say, and I turn back to our end of the court.
Murphy starts us in another drill—one-on-one at the top of the key, offensive player only gets three dribbles—and then heads back to the bigs. As he goes, he calls to Green—“Hey, now, X-Man, let’s get with it”—like they’re long lost pals.
A bad start.
And it gets worse. I’m up first against Rider, my back-up from last year. Easy pickings. I give him a shot fake, lean right, and then just duck past him left. I don’t even have to explode too hard, just get my shoulders past and scoop to the rim. Then I turn to see who’s on deck for me. It’s Gibson, straight out of the gate. He’s got a little sneer when I bounce him the rock.
He waits for me to come out to check him. Then he tucks the ball into a triple-threat position and I lower into my crouch. He takes a lazy dribble to his left—death in this drill, where you can’t waste any motion. I hop to cut him off.
Then boom. He’s vapor. Hits me with a simple cross-over, but it’s so quick—violent, really—that I don’t have time to recover before he’s to the rim. He can’t dunk it. Just a lay-in. But his point’s made. A few of my teammates murmur and whistle.
As I walk past him to the end of the line, Gibson gives me a parting shot. “D-Train’s comin’ down the tracks, old man. Best step out the way.”
We’re hanging at Lia’s place. Her dad’s gone. That ought to mean taking things back to her bedroom. But it’s been ten full minutes since either of us said a word. I made some snarky little comment about Gibson, Lia told me to let it go, I told her I wasn’t just gonna “let go” of my senior season. And that puts us here. Watching a movie on her couch—but both of us kind of eyeing the other, waiting for an apology that isn’t coming.
Then, at a commercial, Lia stretches her leg over and jabs my calf with her toe. I don’t react, so she does it again. “Come on, Derrick,” she says. “We don’t have to give each other the silent treatment just because the night got off to a bad start.”
That’s all it takes for me to thaw. For whatever reason it’s like I want us to be mad at each other sometimes. But as soon as she gives an inch I cave. “Awww, I’m just being a pain in the ass,” I say.
“No,” she says, “I know how much ball means to you.” She’s letting me off the hook easy, I know. But right now I’ll take it. “But, D, this kid Gibson can’t be all that, right?”
I nod. It’s the same stuff I’ve been telling myself. But then every day at practice it’s the same old—we get iso’d on the perimeter and he rips it past me. “I guess,” I say, trying to sound more confident than I am.
“I’ve been to your bedroom, D,” she says. I smile. A little too big. “Okay, big man,” she goes on, “you just enjoy that one. But I’m not talking about that. I mean the stack of recruiting letters in your room. You think Darryl Gibson has that kind of notice? You think anyone’s gonna have a press conference for him when he announces where he’s going to school?”
It’s a nice ego boost. And I know I should be a lot more grateful than I am to have a girlfriend like Lia.
She jabs me with her toe again. Playful. “Come on, boy,” she says. “Lighten up.”
I glance at her and grin. “How much longer your dad gone?”
She smiles right back, and I know it’s on again. But as I follow her to her room, I still can’t shake the knowledge—I flat-out can’t keep Gibson in front of me. The only other point I’ve ever had trouble with like that is Dexter Kernantz down at Evansville Harrison, and they’ve won State twice in a row. I think—I know—I’m a better all-around player than Gibson. But every time Gibson goes by me I feel an extra ounce of that thing no baller can stand—doubt.
We’re in Lia’s room now, lights dimmed. “Look, Derrick. You want to mope out there”—she points to the living room—“fine. But in here you better be with me a hundred percent. Got it?”
“Oh, I got it,” I say. And when she kisses me I’m not lying.
“For the love of God, just clean up your room!”
I hear that all the way from the other side of the front door. Makes me want to turn right around and speed back to Lia’s. We called it a night after her dad came home, but still—ten o’clock is late to be arguing about cleaning the house.
I turn my key and go on in. Mom—her finger in mid-air while she hollers at Jayson—freezes and then points that finger at me instead. “There he is,” she says.
I run a quick inventory of things that could have made her mad. I’ve steered clear of real trouble since last year with Wes. I bombed a history quiz, but it didn’t kill my mid-term. There’s what Lia and I just finished up an hour ago, but it’s not like that would be some shocker to my mom. “What?” I finally ask.
“The deal was you had the kitchen this week and Jayson had the room,” Mom snaps.
A quick glance at the kitchen reveals that all the dishes are cleaned and put away. All the pots scrubbed spotless. I open my mouth to point this out, but Dad leaps in. “Son, you’ll want to clean the counters like you promised,” he says. He loops his arm around my shoulder and leads me to the kitchen. Behind us, I hear Jayson’s footsteps thump toward our room as he finally obeys Mom.
When she turns the television volume up, I lean toward Dad. “How long is she gonna be so crazy?” I ask.
Dad leaps back like I just rolled a grenade at his feet. “Son, how stupid are you? Your mom’s pregnant. There are rules to follow.” He starts clicking them off on his fingers. “First, whatever she asks, do it. She wants an ice cream sundae at three in the morning, make it. She wants the kitchen cleaned, do it. Second, we do not complain. Any man who complains about a pregnant woman isn’t a real man. And finally—most importantly—you never ever refer to a pregnant woman as crazy. You might think she’s crazy, but really she’s just been made acutely aware of all of our shortcomings. She’s saner than she’s ever been, okay?”
I nod, then laugh a little, but even that gets the spooky eye from my dad. I mean, he’s right. As I scrub down those counters, I think that it can’t be an easy draw—pushing forty and pregnant, crowded into a house with Dad and me and Jayson and Kid? I guess Mom can be however she wants to be.
In my room, Jayson hasn’t even
