“Who knows why coaches do what they do?” I say.
He elbows me in the side. “C’mon Derrick,” he says. “You don’t have to put up some front. Why’d Bolden jump you?”
“Honestly, Wes. All I did was show off my hops. But, you know, coaches have to prove their points.”
Wes laughs but tells me I better not mess around, that he doesn’t want to hear noise for four years about Coach this and Coach that.
We go another block and then he says, “We got time.” He’s got that tone he used to get when we’d search through those old apartments when we were kids. I’d think we were going to get caught, but he’d always egg me on: Nobody’s coming, he’d say, let’s hit one more unit. Bet we find a TV left behind!
“Naw,” I say now. “No time. Place isn’t even open.”
“Hell, yes, we got plenty of time,” Wes says. And with that he’s off, down 34th. Instead of stopping at the Marion East campus, he goes on to Central and up the street. I know where he’s going. 38th. Window shopping. There between the Domino’s and a payday loan place is Ty’s Tower. Not much of a tower, really, just two stories, but it’s the nicest place on 38th, and in that front window Ty’s got all the fresh new kicks on display. Wes might not ball, but he’s a sneakerhead extraordinaire, and when I catch up to him he’s got his hands wrapped on the metal gate, his nose between the bars, checking out the displays.
“Those,” he says, “are butter.” Wes is always looking for something new. He comes down here weekly to stare at the same pair of Lunar Hyperdunks, even though he can’t even dribble with his head up.
“You don’t even play.” I give him a little punch in the arm.
“Doesn’t mean I don’t need new flavor for Christmas,” he says. He points up to some sharp Timberlands. “Those are what I need.” If he had his way, his closet would be waist-high in kicks, a fresh pair for every day of the year, but we both know he’ll be getting just one new pair for Christmas when his dad makes it in from St. Louis and swings up here with Wes—best day of the year for both of them.
I don’t really care about window shopping in near-freezing weather, but it’s just cool hanging with Wes, killing 10 minutes before first bell.
Yes, this is our part of Indianapolis. Like my mom, I love it. It doesn’t matter that those old apartments are boarded up—that’s where Wes and I played when we were kids. And it doesn’t matter that for every house on Patton that’s kept up there’s another that’s beat to hell—that’s my street.
But, like my dad, I know what’s beyond Fall Creek, beyond 38th. How can you not? I mean, you get across Fall Creek on Central now and the first thing you see is a fancy coffee shop and a yoga center. Not that I want to ever set foot in a yoga center, but there are times when I can see my dad’s point: somebody high up decided to care about those blocks. The world doesn’t end at our neighborhood, and what’s outside of it has plenty of promise.
For now, though, even Wes knows it’s time to get back down to school. We run. I lengthen my stride to pull ahead of Wes, who’s hilariously slow with his choppy little steps, so I slow back down so we’re step for step up the stairs to Marion East.
The grip on my shoulder is tight, and I flinch under it, thinking maybe it’s some junior or senior wanting to start some shit. When I turn, though, it’s Coach Bolden, his brow furrowed so deep that grooves form halfway up his bald head.
“This way,” he says, nodding toward the gym.
“I’ll be late to History,” I say.
“I told Mrs. Henderson already,” he says. “She won’t mind.”
I nod to Wes and he gives me this wide-eyed look like I might be in real trouble.
I walk a few paces behind Coach Bolden, trying not to look too much like I care, but inside I’m hoping like hell that nobody sees me, especially not Starks.
We exit the main building and walk across the grounds toward the gym. When we get to Bolden’s office, he just points to a chair across from his desk. His office is pretty bare—a desk with a single lamp and a blank notepad on it, his cushioned chair behind it, and my uncomfortable folding chair on the other side. Behind him there’s a huge equipment locker that seems to hold every sporting good known to man: racks of basketballs, boxes of knee pads, deflated volleyballs, baseball helmets, rackets of varying sizes.
“Look at me, Derrick,” Bolden says. The man is all business. There’s part of me that wants to resist him, to rebel against his strictness. But Wes had a point. I don’t want to be the guy who sulks his way out of a starting spot.
Bolden starts right in: “You’ve got a chance to be the best player I’ve ever had here. The best. Do you know that?” I start to say something, but it’s not a question he wants answered. “I’ve had a dozen players that have gone Division I, but none of them have had the promise you do. I saw some of your games last year. I see how far you are beyond other players your age. I might be a mean old pain in the ass, but I know basketball.” He smiles then, just briefly. “But there are things you can work on. You need to be better at the stripe.” This one stings, as I know I should be better than a coin toss at the free throw line. “And you need to clean up your jumper. Your motion takes too long. It’ll cause you problems down the road. And you need to see the whole floor better, especially as the game gets faster. And it gets a lot faster, believe me. First when we start playing against schools like Lawrence North, then at college, and so on.”
He gives a little pause now, but I know I’m still not supposed to speak. He just wants that so on to linger because it can only mean one thing: the NBA. He knows that’s a real possibility in my life, and he wants me to know he knows. “So here’s the thing, Derrick. You can work on those things and become a really special player. Or you can just keep doing what you do well. You can explode to the hole and dunk on somebody every chance you get. Just like you did yesterday. And that would be nice. We’d win a bunch of games and you’d score a bunch of points and every girl in school will be all over you. Everyone will know D-Bow.
“But we’ll never go to State. And you’ll never become as good as you can be. And you’ll get a scholarship somewhere but never really do all that much. Because Derrick—I hope you can believe me here, because it’s the most important thing I can tell you right now—you can do what you did yesterday against a lot of people, but soon you’re going to step on a court and the opposing team will have a big man who will knock that junk into the fifth row. I swear it. Yesterday that was Tyler Stanford, who can barely crack our starting five. Dunking on him means nothing. So you’ve got to make a decision right now. Do you want to just be D-Bow? Or do you want to be Derrick Bowen, the player nobody can stop?”
He finishes his lecture. Normally, you’d hear noises coming from the gym, which is right down the hall. You’d hear people shouting and shoes on the hardwood and the thump of dribbles. But right now the only noise is the whoosh of heat coming out of the dirty vent in the ceiling. Just me sitting there across from Coach Bolden, who’s staring at me so intently you’d think I just stole something from his house.
“Now,” he says. “Get your ass back to History class before Mrs. Henderson fails you on principle.”
5.
