El Paso . Texas
NEXT: D-Bow’s High School Hoops. Copyright © 2013 by Kevin Waltman. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written consent from the publisher, except for brief quotations for reviews. For further information, write Cinco Puntos Press, 701 Texas Avenue, El Paso, TX 79901; or call 1-915-838-1625.
FIRST EDITION
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Waltman, Kevin.
Next / by Kevin Waltman—First edition.
pages cm. — (D-Bow’s high school hoops ; [1])
Summary: Indiana basketball prodigy Derrick Bowen—D-Bow to his friends—is impatient to start his freshman year, but his old-school coach favors a senior for a guard spot; meanwhile, pressure at home builds for D-Bow to transfer from his neighborhood school to an exclusive prep school.
ISBN 978-1-935955-64-1 (hardback); ISBN 978-1-935955-65-8 (paperback);
ISBN 9781935955665 (E-book)
[1. Basketball—Fiction. 2. High schools—Fiction. 3. Schools—Fiction. 4. African Americans—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.W1728Ne 2013
[Fic] dc—23
2013026452
Book and cover design by Anne M. Giangiulio
with b-ball advice from Bubba, as always.
Many thanks to Ben Osborne, editor of SLAM Magazine,
for connecting Cinco Puntos to Kevin Waltman.
For Jessica. For Calla. My dearest darlings.
PART I
1.
“Ball,” I shout, but just get ignored. Instead, I watch some thirty-year-old chump with gray in his goatee and a belly hanging down over his shorts dribble and dribble and then jack one up from twenty-five feet. Barely scrapes iron.
Two possessions later my Uncle Kid backs his man down to hit the game-winner, and my five is run off. Someone’s left an empty water bottle by the court and I chuck it in disgust. It clears the chain link and clatters into Fall Creek Parkway, gets
