Fast Break (12 page)

IT WASN'T JUST THAT CAMERON
had been open on the last play, Jayson knew. Bryan had been open, too, about ten feet from the basket with nobody near him, because all the Moreland East players had been chasing Jayson and Cameron.

It bothered Jayson as much as losing the game: The play had worked exactly the way it was supposed to. But he'd been the one to blow it up.

The kid who prided himself on always making the right play, always finding the open man on a fast break, had picked that moment to throw up a hero shot. One that barely left his hand.

He made a good show of being happy for Tyrese, Shabazz, and the others, not wanting to show weakness, even now. As weak as his shot had been.

“You got me good,” he said to Shabazz.

“Got lucky, is all,” Shabazz said, ducking his head. He'd always been more comfortable talking about anybody's game except his own.

“How'd you know I was shooting and not passing?” Jayson said, curious, really wanting to know.

“I didn't know for sure,” Shabazz said. “But you were feelin' it down the stretch, pretty much took over the game. And I thought you'd want to be the one that sealed the deal against your old boys.”

Jayson could see his teammates watching him from their bench while he gave props to his old friends—and former team.

“I should've passed,” Jayson said to Tyrese and Shabazz. “My center was wide open.”

“Even LeBron makes the wrong play sometimes,” Ty said.

“Usually it's because he's being too unselfish,” Jayson said. “With me just now, it was the other way around.”

Tyrese asked if he wanted to come back to the east side with him and Shabazz, and Jayson knew it would have been the first time back there since Mrs. Lawton had tracked him down at the Pines. Tyrese said they could get a game going at the Jeff later.

“Be like old times,” he said.

“I can't,” Jayson said.

“Can't or don't want to?” Tyrese said.

He put on his smile as he said it, but Jayson could tell he wasn't joking. He could always tell with Tyrese by checking his eyes, to see if they were smiling, too.

“It's not like that,” Jayson said. “I'm just tired, is all.”

“Never used to get tired before,” Tyrese said.

Behind Tyrese, up in the stands, Jayson could see Zoe waving at him to come over.

“Sorry, man, but I gotta bounce right now,” Jayson said. “I'll check you later.”

Shabazz turned to Tyrese and said, “First time in history the boy passed up a game at the Jeff.”

Tyrese was watching Jayson's eyes, the way he did during a game. He turned and followed them all the way over to Zoe.

Tyrese said, “Maybe it's not as bad over here as you've been letting on.”

“C'mon, man,” Jayson said. “You know I'm being straight with you.”

“Nah, I think I get it now,” Tyrese said.

Without another word, they turned their backs on him and headed for the door, Jayson feeling one last time as if he were caught between his old team and his new one.

• • •

When Jayson walked over to Zoe, she said, “That guy swatted you away like that Weston goalie kept doing to me.”

“Thanks,” he said. “That makes me feel a lot better.”

“C'mon, you know I'm just joking,” she said. “You nearly won the game for your team.”

“Tried to win it for
myself
, but lost it for my team in the end,” he said. “The difference between our games is that you were supposed to take the final shot, but I should've passed.”

“It was one game,” she said.

“Every game matters. Some more than others.”

“You'll get them next time.”

He kept quiet, mostly because he didn't know what to say.

“I'm getting nowhere with my pep talk.”

“I'm not in the mood,” he said.

“Listen,” she said. “I've got to go to the mall with my mom.”

“You're telling me this . . . why?”

“Because, Dr. Doom, I thought that if I got back in time, we could hang out at my house later.”

“Call me when you're done.”

“Only if you promise to be in a better mood.”

“No promises.”

“I don't know,” she said, fun in her eyes. “I think it's hard for you to stay in a bad mood around me.”

At that moment, Mrs. Montgomery walked into the gym and gave Zoe a look that said it was time to go, not even looking at Jayson.

“I better get going,” Zoe said.

She never called. Jayson was actually glad. He didn't want to be with anybody today, not even her. He wanted to be alone.

It was always easier that way.

• • •

It was near dinnertime at the Lawtons', but Jayson was out on their basketball court, where he'd been since he'd gotten home.

Working on his game. Still thinking about the one he'd just played, breaking it down possession by possession. Almost like he was playing against Moreland East all over again.

Trying to find one more bucket for his team.

He knew he should've passed the ball in that situation. That was his game. It was who he was, the player he prided himself on being. But by the time the Bobcats got the ball at the end, he'd turned into somebody else: a point guard who'd made the whole game about himself and not his team, someone who'd tried to prove some kind of point, lost sight of the bigger picture in the process.

But
who
had he been trying to prove a point to?

His old team? His new one? Himself?

He banged a line-drive shot off the side of the rim and started to chase after the ball, until he saw that Mrs. Lawton had already picked it up for him. He'd been so focused on his shooting—and replaying the game in his mind—that he hadn't even noticed her walk outside.

She stepped onto the court and threw him a perfect two-handed bounce pass, the ball spinning into his hands with some nice topspin.

It was a pass from somebody who knew what she was doing with a basketball in her hands.

“You
played
?” he said.

“Don't sound so shocked.”

“You never said anything.”

“You never asked,” she said. “And I figured that basketball was something you wanted to work on alone.”

She was right about that, but he was still surprised that she'd never told him she'd been a player. “Did you play on school teams?”

“I was a tall east-side girl who was a decent athlete,” she said. “It was practically my duty.” She grinned. “Ended up being a starter at Moreland East in high school.”

“I can't believe you never told me.”

“You never seem to want to watch Duke games with Tom,” she said, “so I didn't think you'd be interested in an old lady's basketball past.”

Jayson cocked his head. “Were you any good?”

“Good enough to be a starter, but I was never a star like you.”

“Yeah,” he said, “I was a
total
star
at the end of the game today.”

“My high school coach used to tell me it's never just one play that decides a basketball game.”

“Well, it felt like that to me. And it'll be the play that everyone remembers.”

“It was a hard day for you,” she said. “You put too much pressure on yourself to show your new teammates that you belonged on that court. That you could be the leader of the Bobcats.”

“Well, I don't know that I belong anywhere. My teammates probably don't want to speak to me right now, and Tyrese and Shabazz think I big-timed them.” He sighed loudly. “I wanted that win so badly.”

“Wanting to win that badly,” she said, “is part of what makes you the great player you are. Part of what makes you deserve to be on that court.”

He didn't feel so great at that moment, standing there with
Mrs. Lawton. But at least he always had basketball to distract him. Even if he needed to use it to distract himself from
more
basketball.

“You want to take a couple of shots?” he said. “Show me what you've got?”

“My playing days are over,” she said, smiling at him. “Why don't I just feed the ball to you?”

“Isn't it getting close to supper?”

“Supper can wait.”

She rebounded for him over the next few minutes while he moved around the perimeter and took outside shots. After each shot, Jayson watched her and thought that she did have the instincts of a good athlete. She made left-handed passes and right-handed passes, and just about all of them seemed to hit him in stride, so all he had to do was catch and shoot. Nothing fancy, just good old mechanics. She kept dishing him the ball while neither one of them said anything.

But through the silence, for some reason he was starting to feel more relaxed than when he'd been out here by himself.

“I used to do this with Isaiah when he'd let me. He'd come out here after a tough loss and do exactly what you've been doing, sometimes into the night. Almost like he was trying to
sweat
the bad plays out of himself.”

“I understand that. Basketball has always been the only thing that I could really depend on.”

Mrs. Lawton gave him a sad smile. “Well, you can depend on Tom and me, too. Even if we don't always see eye to eye.
Sometimes, kids want to live their life one way, but their parents see differently.”

“Did that happen with Isaiah?” Jayson asked. Whatever was going on between the Lawtons and their son wasn't really any of his business, he knew, but Mrs. Lawton had already started the conversation.

“Something like that.”

“Where is he, anyway?”

“He's taking some time away. Trying to figure out his life. I think about him every day. Hope beyond hope that he's okay, and that once he's done with all that figuring out, he'll come back home. Home is important. Sometimes we figure that out later rather than sooner.”

Mrs. Lawton didn't seem to want to say any more about the situation, so Jayson dropped it.

He knew he had been out on the Lawtons' court for hours, and felt like he'd been winding down before Mrs. Lawton came outside. But now he was in no rush to go back into the house. Mrs. Lawton didn't seem to be, either.

“C'mon,” he said finally, “you've got to take a couple of shots. I played ball with you, now it's your turn.”

She shrugged and held her hands out, calling for a pass. He tossed the ball to her and she took a couple of dribbles.

“Take a few from the outside,” he said.

“What, a sister can't warm up?”

She hit a couple layups and then ran out to the right of the foul line, clapped her hands, and said, “Feed me, I'm open.”

Now Jayson threw her a perfect bounce pass, one she caught chest-high. Then she let her shot go. He thought for a moment that she'd released it too low, almost like she was shooting the ball off her right hip.

But the shot dropped softly through the hoop. Nothing but net.

“Great,” he said. “
Now
I get my last assist of the day.”

“Better late than never,” she said.

When he made a motion like he was going to pass her the ball again, she shook her head.

“Nope, I'm quitting while I'm ahead. One and done. But you can shoot a little more if you want to. I'm happy to keep feeding you.”

“I'll bet you never expected this to be part of your job when you took me in,” he said.

She shook her head. “It's not a job, Jayson. Tom and I couldn't be happier to have you in our lives.”

“Even when I break your stuff?”

Mrs. Lawton sighed. “Well, now that you mention it, maybe we
should
send you back.”

She caught Jayson's eye and winked.

They sat down in the cool grass, facing each other, as the sun went down and the fall day began to turn into night. Mrs. Lawton sat cross-legged. Jayson sat with the basketball in the grass between his legs.

“Today was a disaster,” he said to her. “I could've at least played my game, played smart. I was the reason we lost.”

“You could look at it that way. But you were also the
reason your team came back and had a chance to win with the last shot,” she said. “And this was on a day when you had to feel like you were playing on both teams. Trying to prove something to both teams. And prove to yourself that you could take all that on and still come out a winner. That's an awful lot to handle, even for someone who can play basketball the way you can.”

“I still should've passed,” Jayson said to her.

She smiled. “Heck, even people in outer space know that.”

Jayson couldn't help himself or stop himself. He laughed.

THERE WERE TWO GAMES THE
next week, one against Moreland West, and a rematch against Karsten, both away games.

Belmont won them both. Put the loss against Moreland East in the past. At least for now.

If anything, Jayson over-passed in both games, as if wanting to show his teammates—maybe
needing
to show them—that he wasn't the selfish player he'd been at the end of the Moreland East game.

He took just six shots against Moreland West and made four of them. Then he took seven against Karsten and hit four. He scored less than ten points in both games. Instead, he played to his strengths, handing off the ball to Cameron Speeth, who carried the scoring load, scoring twenty points in both games, hitting his shots from inside, outside, and on the break. Jayson would never say it to him, because he couldn't think of a way to say it without the words coming out wrong, but he'd found himself a brand new Shabazz on the court.

He didn't ignore the other guys, either. He found open looks for Bryan and Brandon and Rashard, too. But his go-to guy was his big man. Cameron was a point guard's dream. He was a finisher. And Jayson was letting Cameron know that
he
knew.

After the Karsten game, Coach Rooney came over to talk to Jayson. “I get what you're doing. And I know why you're doing it. I respect that. But you can't pass up open looks for the rest of the season.”

“My job is to find the open man.”

They had come back from Karsten in one of Belmont's small buses and were standing in front of the gym. Jayson could see the Lawtons waiting for him in their car.

“And you're doing a real good job of finding the open man,” Coach said. “But when
you
are the open man, take the shot.”

Somehow, Jayson had been throwing himself into basketball more than ever, especially now that he could see his team's potential. He really believed that they could make it all the way to Cameron Indoor. He was spending as much time as he could on the Lawtons' court. Mrs. Lawton even came back out to help him sometimes, but she always waited for him to ask.

It wasn't as if somebody had turned a switch and suddenly he was happy, suddenly he'd decided that he belonged at Belmont and with the Lawtons. Jayson still wasn't even sure what it meant to be happy a lot of the time.

But at least these days he wasn't going around looking to pick a fight with the world every chance he got.

“You seem . . . more relaxed,” Ms. Moretti said to him during her weekly visit.

“Don't get used to it.”

“Why not? Isn't that better than the way things were before?”

“It's only a matter of time until I mess up again. Or until the kids at school, their parents, my teammates and Coach find out why I
really
ended up living here.”

Jayson thought about the way Mrs. Montgomery had treated him, and could only imagine what she would think if she found out the truth.

“What about your friends at school? Do you think they would look at you differently if you told them about your past?”

“I don't know,” Jayson said. “Maybe. Not about to find out, though.”

“I think if you ever explained it to someone like your friend Zoe, she'd understand,” Ms. Moretti said.

“No way I would ever tell Zoe about that.”

“If she ever did have to hear it, wouldn't you rather it come from you?”

“Zoe likes me for who I am now,” he said. “Who she
thinks
I've always been. I don't see any reason to change that.”

Later that day, Bryan called and asked him to meet up in town for pizza along with Cameron and Brandon. Jayson
thought,
Why not?
It would be the first time he'd hung out with the guys on the team away from games or practice.

They were at a front booth at Joe's Pizza. He felt a little awkward, though the rest of the guys acted like being together outside of practice was normal. Which, he knew, it was. Somehow, after all the time they'd spent together on the court, he still didn't know how to act with his teammates off the court.

They had ordered two pepperoni pizzas, Brandon joking that one of them was for him, and were waiting for their number to be called. Jayson couldn't help it, but this was another time when he thought back to the Pines, and how many times he had to make one large pizza last for days when he was living by himself.

Cameron looked like he had something he wanted to ask, but didn't quite know how to do it. So he just came out with it straight. “Is it getting less weird for you, living with the Lawtons?”

“It's still weird,” Jayson said. “But everybody's trying real hard. Even me.”

“Mr. and Mrs. Lawton seem to be doing their best, showing up to all your games,” Bryan said.

“Yeah, can't say they aren't doing whatever they can,” Jayson said. “Now it's on me to do the same.”

For some reason he didn't feel as if the guys were pressing him; they could just as easily have been recapping the Karsten game. Maybe because they were slowly becoming his boys.

“Not to be nosy here,” Brandon said, grinning, “but how
did you even end up with the Lawtons? We've heard some stuff, but never from you.”

He gave Brandon a fake smile. He'd been getting good at that lately. “Long story, but the short version is that someone found out that I was living by myself after my mom died. And then this woman from Child Services got involved, and she was the one who brought me to Mr. and Mrs. Lawton.”

He raised his shoulders, dropped them, and said, “And now here we are.”

It was at that moment that the front door to Joe's opened and a familiar-looking man walked in. Jayson couldn't remember who it was at first. But then the man turned his head, and Jayson got a good look at him.

It was Pete. The guy from Foot Locker.