Fadeaway by E. Vickers (ebook smartphone TXT) 📗

“You know what I see on this court today?” I ask Kolt, loud enough that the rest of the chatter stops.

“What?” Kolt asks, playing along.

“A team that’s worked their asses off all season.”

The guys murmur their agreement.

“You know what I see?” asks Kolt. “A team that’s ready to dissect the Panthers like frogs in bio lab.”

Louder cheers.

“You know what I see?” Jake asks, coming up from behind us. “A team I’m proud to play on.” The guys whoop their agreement, and I try to hold in my hate as he keeps going, his back to me as he claims this moment that Kolt and I built. “A team that knows the three keys to winning a game: head, hands, heart.”

They shout it back at him. “Head, hands, heart!”

“You know what I see here, gentlemen?” Jake shouts, and the guys are all on their feet, ready to follow him anywhere. “A team that’s going to take state tonight!”

Coach takes his turn trying to pump us up as we stretch, but I don’t hear a word of it. I see Jake in my peripheral vision, trying to get my attention. I ignore him until I can’t anymore, until the speech is over and everybody starts for the locker room and he’s pulling me by the elbow back to center court.

“Seth, I have to tell you something.”

Six years I’ve been listening to Jake call the plays as we come down the court, and I’ve run exactly what he’s called, every single time. I’ll do it again tonight—for the team, for Coach, for the dream they keep telling me we all share—but I won’t do it right now. It’s all I can do not to deck him.

“Let’s focus on the game, okay?” I try to turn away, but he grabs my elbow again and spins me back.

“Please. Let me explain.”

When he puts his hand on me a third time in the hallway—right next to that damn training room—I lose it.

“Explain what? I see you so clearly, Foster. I know every single thing about you that I need to know. You’re a crap friend. You’re a crap boyfriend. I mean, if Daphne picks you, I’m going to step aside. But know this: she deserves better than me, but she deserves a hell of a lot better than you.” I steady my fists at my side, even though he looks like I’ve already decked him.

Good. He’s scared. He’s sweating, shaking. And then I see all the shaking and sweating for what it is.

“Oh, and you’re a crap captain. Because we’re about to play the most important game of our lives and you’re hopped up on painkillers. Aren’t you? Are you high right now?”

Jake looks away, and there’s my answer.

I shove him, hard as I can, right into the wall.

“I hate you, Foster. I freaking hate you.”

Good thing he doesn’t try to stop me this time, because I would lay him out. I walk outside to the parking lot and lean against the cold, rough brick. The snow soaks into my expensive new basketball shoes, but I don’t give one single shit what Coach will say about it.

I swear, I almost walk away right then, Jordans and all.

But a junky old Jeep pulls up, rattling and sputtering like it must have done all the way from Ashland. The door swings open, and Coach B eases himself out, then circles around to open the door for Mrs. B. Arm in arm, they move through the slush with tiny steps, pausing here and there to share some little bit of information that makes them both smile.

Then Coach B slips and Mrs. B struggles, pulling me out of my own mind and back to the moment. I hurry over and offer an arm to each of them.

“Why, thank you, Seth,” Coach B says.

I know Coach B follows the team, that he and Mrs. B are not the kind of fans who just show up for the championship. Still, it surprises me that he knows me. There is something warm in the way he speaks my name.

Inside the gym, Mrs. B settles herself into the bleachers. “You’d better get in there with your team,” she says to me. “And find yourself some dry socks. It’ll be hard to get many rebounds with your feet soggy, now, won’t it?”

I nod. “Yes, ma’am.”

She laughs and pulls needles and yarn from her bag. “Wallace, will you buy me some of those Dots from the concession stand before the game starts?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he echoes.

I walk with him across the gym, and somehow, instinctively, we both pause before parting ways. “It’s quite a game, isn’t it?” Coach B asks. When I look over, he’s watching the court with pure joy carved across his face.

The Panthers have taken the floor and begun their warm-ups, dribbling down, laying it up, passing the ball to the next player in an endless figure eight. It’s hard to judge how we’ll match up with them by layups and warm-ups, but all at once, it doesn’t matter. In that moment, I see the game through Coach B’s eyes and even think of it in his words: the fluid beauty of it all, the effortlessness that comes at the culmination of all those years of effort.

“It’s quite a game,” I agree. “Like poetry.”

Then he starts reciting in his gravelly voice.

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too…

He trails off, like he only just realized he was speaking the words aloud. I know the poem—we studied it in AP English a few weeks ago, and Daphne said something about the poet’s sexism and imperialism and rewrote the ending with her own feminist twist. But now I remember the ending the way Kipling wrote it, like I need it to face this game.

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,

Yours is the