Going the Distance (11 page)

“I get it,” I said, my voice sounding to me as if it were from very far away. “It won’t happen again, sir.” The “sir” was a throwback to when I was far younger and still practiced the rule that politeness trumped everything.

“I’m not implying anything, Danny. I’m just…. If that boy ended up saying something….”

The fact Cody had left hit me again, and the elation of the past few hours disappeared completely. “He’s gone,” I mumbled just as our doorbell rang. “He moved away.”

My dad got up, pulling his wallet out. “Well, it’s for the best, right?”

I didn’t answer. Instead I stood up and stumbled off to my room like a zombie while my dad paid for the pizza. I heard the front door close, and he called my name. I fell down on my bed face-first, wanting more than I ever had in my entire life for the world to swallow me up. He knocked on my door and cracked it open. “The pizza is here.”

“I’m not hungry,” I said, my voice muffled in my pillow.

He was silent for a long time. I wasn’t sure if he was still there or not and at that moment I didn’t care. I had honestly thought we’d moved past this point in our life where he assumed I was going to grope random strangers while they slept. I really never imagined us ever coming back to this impasse in our relationship, but here we were. Him judging me and me feeling like absolute shit about it.

I knew I was crying again but I refused to let anyone else see my tears. It has been one of the few promises I’ve made to myself I’ve kept.

The next few days passed in a blur. My sadness seemed to bottom out and became a constant state of background misery that began to morph into numbness. The school year ended not with a bang but with a whimper. I told no one about my invitation to the camp, partly because it would have sounded like bragging but more because I didn’t have anyone to tell the news to anymore. Tommy invited me to his graduation party, but I refused, not sure what I’d do at a party full of guys who were three years older than me and heading off to college.

I even felt guilty for being so excited when the registration came in the mail and the dance of joy began anew, this time in the kitchen.

However, from that moment on I didn’t have time to be sad. From the second I filled out the top line of the first form to the moment I stepped off the plane in Florida, it was as if only a few hours had passed instead of a week and a half. My dad took me to get new clothes, since I had already outgrown the ones I started school with. I bought new sneakers, an actual gym bag since I usually carried my stuff in a backpack, and to my surprise a brand-new electric razor of my own. My dad seemed to get a little weird about this, saying as the lady ran his credit card, “I still remember buying diapers for you.”

I was two inches taller than him by then. Patting him on the shoulder, I said, in as reassuring a voice as I could, “And one day I’ll be buying them for you.”

He elbowed me in the gut when I burst out laughing.

We sat at the airport terminal waiting for my plane to board, neither one of us knowing what to say. “So you have money, right?” Dad asked, breaking the silence. I nodded. “And you brought your cell charger?” Another nod. “Remember, no matter how much someone may rag you on the court, do not lose your temper with—”

“Dad,” I said, cutting him off. “I’ll be okay, I promise.”

He shook his head when he realized he was rambling. “This is the first time we’ve ever been apart. Give me a break, Danny.”

I saw the worry in his expression and realized in shock that I wasn’t worried at all.

I reached over and hugged him tight. “I’ll be fine, Dad.” He hugged me back, and I could sense he didn’t want to stop. Thankfully they called my flight, and we had to let go.

I didn’t feel worried until I turned around at the gate and waved good-bye to him. The reality hit me then. Dad wasn’t going to be five minutes away in case something went wrong. This was going to be the first time I had ever flown without an adult. I knew rationally that Dad was just thirty-two, but for some reason he looked older to me. Out of nowhere, I felt the little kid in me completely freak. I dropped my bag and raced over to him. This time I was the one who didn’t want to let go until he said quietly to me, “I’m proud of you, Danny. You’re going to be fine.”

I really had believed I was going to get out of the state without crying.

I sat on the plane and looked out the window and imagined I could see my dad looking out of the terminal at me, and it made me feel better. By the time we took off, I was okay again. This was an opportunity of a lifetime, and I wasn’t going to let being all weepy because I was a daddy’s boy screw it up.

I fell asleep as I usually did during a flight and woke up in another stage of my life.

It was the first time I was met at the gate by a guy holding up a card with my name on it. I felt instantly more important. The man led me to a small pizza place in the middle of the airport, where he told me I’d be waiting for the rest of the people showing up today to arrive. There were already four other giant people sitting at a table; one was watching the TV as the other three fiddled with their cell phones. “We have forty-five minutes before our last person arrives. Try not to wander off,” the man informed me just before he walked off.

I was unsure if I should go and sit with the other guys or order pizza first, but, as it did most of the time, food won out. I ordered two slices of pizza, each one as big as my head, and a bottle of water before I joined the other guys at the table. Four pairs of eyes looked over at me, three guys went back to their phones, and the fourth smiled and held out his hand. “You have to be one of us,” he stated as I put my food down.

I smiled back instantly. I’d never been one of anyone before.

“Depends,” I said, shaking back. “Is this the table for ridiculously good-looking guys?” I tried my best
Zoolander
impression and earned a half glare from the cell phone guys plus a barking laugh from the nice one.

“Classic movie!” he said, slapping his leg.

“Right?” I said, sitting down. “I’m Danny.”

He nodded and began pointing at the other guys. “That’s John, Levon, Ricky, and I’m Nathan.”

“What high school you guys go to?” I asked before taking a bite.

You could hear a record scratching somewhere in the background.

After a few seconds of silence, Nate asked, “
You’re
in high school?”

I nodded around the bite.

“What year?” Levon called over, putting his cell phone down for the first time.

“Um, just finished freshman year,” I replied, now completely self-aware, since the entire crew of guys was looking at me.

The other two guys stopped texting.

Nathan’s eyes were wide as he exclaimed, “Wait, you’re a fucking freshman?” I nodded again, trying to swallow. He burst out laughing and announced to Levon, “He’s on
my
team!” When the rest of them began laughing as well, I realized they were laughing with me, not at me.

It was the coolest feeling of my life.

We spent the next hour shooting the shit, talking about basketball in a way I’d never talked about it before. They were easily as in love with the game as I was, so the level of discussion was intense. I learned that Ricky and Nathan were both starting college in Texas, which was incredible to me since I hadn’t quite grasped how big Texas really was. Levon played for Kansas State, and this was his second invitation to the camp, which made him kind of a celebrity since being asked only once was a feat in itself.

The fifth guy was a high school senior who had committed to ASU, and it was obvious he was one of the younger guys who had been invited to the camp. Nate took great pride in telling him I was a high school freshman and that I was from Texas also. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I wasn’t from Texas; it just felt awesome to be part of a group for once.

We all piled into a stretch minivan just barely big enough to hold us all. I felt slightly out of place since the rest of the guys were dressed in training sweats in their school colors with zippers up the legs, making them look like they were ready to step onto the court and play at any second. I was in jeans with a pullover that made me feel like I had showed up for a formal party way underdressed.

As soon as we left the airport, the other guys slipped their iPods on, obviously trying to seem like this was old game to them. I, on the other hand, looked around like a seven-year-old on the way to Disneyland. Nathan, who had sat next to me, elbowed me and whispered, “We seem to be the only ones who thinks this is badass.”

“I know!” I hissed back, obviously talking way too loudly to be whispering. Levon sent us a withering glare and then went back to his cool game. We both burst out laughing. I knew I was going to enjoy myself immensely this summer.

We were assigned rooms once we got to the complex. Nathan and I were given different rooms, but we quickly found our respective roommates and switched things around so we could share a room. Once we found our floor, we raced to the room after he called out from the elevator that the last one there had to sleep on the floor. We pounded down the hallway. He was taller than me by a few inches, but it was obvious he was as unsteady with his legs as I was. I don’t know how it is for normal people, but let me give you some wisdom from those of us whose legs are too long for their own good. The human body can balance well enough when everything is the right size, but when you make legs as long as we had, they become ungainly over long distances. Short bursts across a court, piece of cake; down a hall as fast as you can, train wreck. We tripped over each other as we stumbled to the door. We both hit it at the same time, laughing like loons as we fought to shove our key cards into the slot.

The door next to us opened up and an older boy stuck his head out. He shot us an angry look. “Will you two fools keep it down?”

Nate and I tried to swallow our laughs like two kids getting caught by their grumpy father. Both of us were about to explode when Nathan finally got the key card to work. He opened the door, and we fell inside. Once the door was closed, we let out roaring bursts of laughter as we threw our bags on the two beds assigned us. We found the outraged neighbor so funny, it took us minutes to compose ourselves and take stock of the room.

The room was completely epic.

The beds were huge, which we appreciated given the fact that each of us was tall enough to have altitude instead of height. Mounted against the far wall was a wide-screen TV that scrolled information for the hotel and basketball camp. It was bigger than any three TVs my dad had ever owned and probably had better resolution than all of them combined as well. Nike had obviously spared no expense for the room, which made me wonder again how much my dad had paid for me to have this privilege.

“You hungry?” Nate asked, looking over the room service menu.

“I am never not hungry,” I informed him as I peeked over his shoulder.

“Burgers?” he asked, picking up the phone.

“Hell yeah!” I answered, looking for the remote.

“Man after my own heart,” he said as he waited for them to pick up.

I felt something inside me react, and it was instantly followed by a mental voice that sounded a lot like my dad screaming, “
Do not start to have feelings for Nathan!
”

I’d given myself a mental face full of cold water, and all the mirth and enjoyment I had just been feeling drained away slowly. I found the remote and fell back onto my bed, quietly looking through the channels to see what sports channels they had. Nate ordered us dinner and pushed his bag off his bed to lie down also. “They have ESPN4?” he asked, marveling.

“I didn’t even know ESPN
had
a 4,” I said, switching over to see what was on.

I stayed distant for the rest of the night.

Nate said he went to high school in Houston and had just signed to A&M after being named MVP two years in a row on his high school team. He said he had been approached by schools in Tennessee, Florida, and Kansas before settling on A&M. I asked him why, and he just grinned as he answered, “Because they’re the best school in the nation.”

I didn’t know it at the time, but he had just delivered the best pitch for the school anyone would say to me.

We went to bed and woke up hip deep in work. The camp wasn’t a course in how to play basketball—the assumption was that everyone already knew that. Basketball camp was focused on playing basketball well. A series of drills was set up, at first to gauge each person’s level of expertise and then to refine it. Those first two days were the hardest days of my life. My dad had fed me horror stories about boot camp and each night as I fell into bed, almost unable to walk myself into the shower, I wondered if he had felt anything like this. The only saving grace was that Nate was as beat as I was, and he had been playing four years of high school ball already.

I was the youngest person at the camp, and that put me in a difficult position.

On one hand, I knew the least about playing of anyone else there. I had accumulated the shortest amount of time on court, which meant I had the most to learn. Yet, since I was on the verge of sixteen, it meant the professionals expected me to do something amazing to justify my being there. I don’t know what that was, but I do know the first week or so, I didn’t produce. I got yelled at constantly by the coaches, by the trainers, and by the other players. I was so tripped up that I literally fell one day trying to follow the directions of two different people. The entire time I refused to let it get to me. Gone were the days of getting frustrated and throwing a fit. I couldn’t afford to cry and beat my fists on the boards. Instead I kept my game face on, making sure no emotion slipped through while on the court.

As we became adjusted to the grueling workload, we began to have more and more conscious time at night, which meant socializing. I had never been good at the socializing game. Again I found myself surrounded by a pack of guys who were so obviously alpha males, it was comical. The lengths they went through to show their dominance over each other in one form or another was at best hilarious and at worst daunting. The more I watched, the more I became aware I wasn’t like them. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t girly or anything. I just didn’t feel the need to prove myself outside of a basketball court.