string in against the second—with the freshmen off to the side just watching. So I have to play spectator while Starks runs the offense.
I have to give Starks credit. He can make that offense hum. He’s fast and crafty and whenever anyone gives him a sliver of daylight he darts into the lane. The difference between us, though, is that even if he’s lighting quick, he’s got no explosion off the floor, so when he hits the paint he either floats up a little runner or has to kick it back out to Bedford or Varney on the perimeter. Sure, those two like the open looks, but I can get the rock to the rim.
Coach Bolden’s praise for Starks never stops, though. “Good look in,” he’ll say, or “Nice decision.” Then he’ll turn to the other players and explain why Starks made the right play. Meanwhile, I’m getting that itch again, like I did at the park while Brownlee was giving me shit, like if I don’t get on that floor soon I’ll bust.
As if he could read my thoughts, Coach says, “Bowen for Starks.”
I pop up and practically bounce onto the floor. Starks, on his way off, drops the ball at my feet, refusing to even look at me. Part of me wants to tell him he better get used to watching me, but I bite my tongue. I’ll let my play speak for itself.
When I get out there, though, it feels like my own teammates are conspiring against me. Devin cuts back-door when I think he’s going to pop out, and when I drive and draw the defense I thread a beautiful pass to Royce only to have him mishandle it—then shake his head at me and say it was low. Put it right in your hands, I want to say, but again I stay quiet.
“Right play, bad pass,” Coach Bolden says, and those words feel like hot little needles in my back. It’s killing me. I know this is my first time on the floor with these guys and I want to put my mark on the gym immediately. I feel shackled by this offense, though. It’s built for another player—Starks—and it’s all back-cuts and cross-screens, when it’d be a hell of a lot easier to have the other guys spread out and just let me work. Worse yet, everyone else’s timing is already built to Starks, and I can’t tell if I’m going too fast for them or too slow. It’s like the time Uncle Kid let me drive his car and he kept telling me to hit the gas every time I slowed down, but then yelled to mash the brakes every time I sped up.
I can feel the coaches watching me again, but now instead of their eyebrows raised with pleasant surprise, I can sense their expectations slowly sinking. Murphy’s blank stare might as well say, Well, this Bowen kid’s okay, but he’s got a long way to go.
Then, at last, Royce zips a pass to me near the top of the key, and I catch it in perfect rhythm just in time to see the lane open up. One dribble. All it takes. Boom! I thunder that thing down and let out a howl. Give a short swing on the rim just to let people know I’ve arrived.
Once I’m back down on earth, the basket support still rocking like there’s been an earthquake, I take one big stride over the kid on the floor, the poor sophomore who thought he’d try to stop me on the way to the rack. I stamp my foot and look around, get a chest bump from Moose that knocks me back a couple steps. Royce and Devin start hollering in approval, but they check that as soon as they take a glance at Starks. Murphy cracks a little smile. But Coach Bolden frowns.
“Man slid over to take away the drive,” he says. He nods at Moose. “You had our best post player wide open underneath.”
This time I can’t contain myself: “Why dump it off when I can do that?”
The players, even Moose, look down at their shoes, and Murphy looks away as if he doesn’t want to witness the crime that’s about to happen. The vein on Coach Bolden’s neck bulges, but he doesn’t scream. Instead, he says, very evenly, “Starks for Bowen.”
Nick hustles back onto the court and pops the ball out of my hand. “Thanks,” he says. He hits just the right tone—not so sarcastic that his contempt is obvious, but just enough of an edge to let me know. And there’s nothing I can do about it but go sit down.
That’s where I stay, on the sideline, for the rest of practice. Until the suicides at the end.
3.
When you’re over-matched on the court, there’s no hiding. When Uncle Kid used to take me down to the park when I was only 13 I’d get in over my head trying to guard some grown man. I couldn’t do it, and everyone knew I couldn’t do it, but I’d get no mercy. They’d single me up every time down.
That doesn’t happen to me anymore, most definitely not between the lines. But when I walk in the house and there’s something I don’t want to talk about with my parents, it feels about the same. Isolated with nowhere to hide. I swear, if I’ve got bad news—a D on a quiz, or, like now, a brutal day at practice—my mom can smell it. Marion East is only about six blocks from our door, and I bet she knows something’s off before I’m halfway home.
“Derrick,” she says, “what’s wrong?” She’s sitting at the kitchen table, where they’ve just finished eating, my plate still there waiting to be microwaved.
“Nothing.”
She repeats the question, this time with a little more concern. My mom has skin as smooth as glass, darker than my dad, and she has these eyes that look almost Asian, so most of the time she’s got a soft, young-looking face. But when she gets serious—or angry—there’s nothing soft.
My dad clears his throat like he’s about to say something, but he knows this is Mom’s show.
“Nothing,” I say again.
She pushes her chair away from the table and folds her arms. “Derrick Bowen,” she says, “you either tell me what’s bothering you or we are going to have one very unfriendly evening.”
With that, my little brother Jayson, who was chilling on the couch watching the Pacers pre-game, snaps off the television and scoots silently to his room. My dad stands, walks across the room to take a seat in his chair, not so he can relax, but so that they’re on either side of me. No escape.
“Coach Bolden,” I say. When it comes out, I know I sound like a whiner. I don’t want to be that player who comes home and moans about how tough coach is, who bellyaches and backstabs until he gets his way. I’m supposed to be the guy who just laces them up and gets back to work. In those summer games a few years ago if I hung my head after a bad game, Uncle Kid would come right over to me, say something like D-Bow, if you don’t like getting beat, you got two choices. Get used to it or get better.
It’s just that, right now, I’d like a little sympathy from my parents.
I explain to them what happened at practice, trying to shade the story a little bit my way. They both react, but neither with what you’d call sympathy.
My mom is all righteous anger. She’s convinced Bolden should be fired. She slams her hand down on the kitchen table and shouts, “That man has to be the most stubborn coach to ever sit on a bench.” So while she’s on my side, it just seems to be an excuse for her to get angry. She’s lived here all her life, moving from place to place in the patch of Indianapolis bordered by 30th, 46th, Meridian and Keystone. She loves it, but she also hates it. She loves the people she grew up with and loves being able to reminisce about her old times at Marion East. She can convince herself into thinking our little three-bedroom house is a better place to live than anywhere else in the city, even better than those mansions on North Meridian. But all of that means she feels free to criticize the area like nobody else. She goes on tirades about store owners who let people
