LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

not fat, but to see a belly starting to poke out on a guy once as rail-thin as Kid is a surprise. We give him never-ending grief about it, but he just laughs it off. He’ll just pat his stomach and tell us some extra poundage is proof he’s living right.

      We zip downtown. The buildings seem to rise up around us, all those windows reflecting the sun. It makes me wonder sometimes what’s going on inside them—people making high finance deals or having late afternoon drinks or scheming white-collar crimes? I don’t know—the life inside of them is a total mystery to me.

      Kid takes us straight down to the city center, circling around the monument, before kicking us a couple blocks east—right smack at the entrance to Banker’s Life Fieldhouse. He points as we roll past. “There’s the dream, D-Bow,” he says. “Suiting up in that Pacer uni someday. Ballin’ out on the biggest stage.”

      I nod, pretend like I’m into it. Sure, I have my NBA dreams. And, yeah, I fantasize about getting drafted by the Pacers. But I’ve been on enough of these drives around town with Kid to know that he’s up to something else.

      “You think about where you’ll go in between now and then?” he asks.

      “College?”

      “What else?” he says. While we’re idling at a light, he leans over like he’s letting me in on a secret. “And, man, you know your mom is gonna get all up in that decision. You know she’s not gonna let you go somewhere you can just skip classes for a year before bolting.”

      I have to laugh a little at that. It’s as true as anything Kid’s ever said. Then I tell him what I’m thinking—namely, I have no idea about where I want to play in college. Indiana’s pushing hard, and I’m most definitely interested. They’ve got the history, they’ve got Big Ten competition, they’ve got an energetic coach who knows his stuff. It’s where about 80 percent of Indiana high school players dream of going—but I can’t shake the feeling that maybe I should do something different. Like maybe I should see some other part of the country and play where I won’t get compared to every other point guard in Indiana history. I don’t get into all the details with Kid, but he feels me.

      “It’s a tough call,” he says. “I remember when I was your age—had everyone begging me to come to their campus. But, man, they all say the same things. Gets to the point where you can’t tell West Lafayette from West Virginia after a while.”

      It’s strange to hear Kid talk about this. Now, he’ll talk your ear off about what a baller he was way back when. But he usually doesn’t get into what happened at the end of his high school career. In fact, I only know the basics—run-ins with Coach Bolden, suspensions, more trouble, until all that heavy recruiting he’s talking about dried up.

      We turn left on Delaware, but Kid gets into the far right lane and creeps. “Problem is I spent more time there—” he jabs his index finger violently toward my window—“than I did at any college.” I look and see the county courthouse. Damn. He got me talking about hoops and I almost forgot what was going on—it’s another lecture. Maybe Kid senses my disappointment, because he steps on the gas and raises his voice. “Listen, D. Nobody’s ever scored a bucket while they’re sitting in lock-up.”

      With Kid, I know I can fight back a little. “Man, everyone’s acting like I killed somebody. It was weed. The stuff’s legal most places. And it wasn’t even my weed. All I got in the end was a traffic citation. People need to chill the hell out.”

      Kid nods. He changes lanes and picks up more speed, racing to beat a light. “I know it, D,” he says. “But that’s how it starts, how it was with me.”

      “What you mean?” I ask. Everyone still talks around what happened with Kid, always stopping short of coming out with the details.

      He holds up his hand to cut me off. “Ah, I’m not getting into all that again. Not twenty years later. All I’m saying is that I might not know as much as I let on about basketball—but I know a thing or two about derailing a career. So listen. You might think Wes is your boy, but you try dragging him along with you, it’s gonna be like trying to dunk with sandbags tied to your ankles. If that kid’s dead weight, you got to cut him loose.”

      This—more than the fear the cops tried to put in me, more than my mom’s righteous anger, more than Coach’s warnings—sinks in. I still don’t think I did anything that wrong, but I realize Kid’s got a point. At the same time, I don’t see how I can drop Wes without tearing off a part of myself. We ride for a while in silence, all that static filling the air. Finally, we cross over Michigan and Kid’s had enough serious time. He puts down the windows and starts some beats on his crack sound system. No more old CDs like he used to roll with—now he’s got an iPod in the jack, like he’s finally joined life in the twenty-first century.

       3.

      The only event that shook things up was when the calendar hit September 9. Open season for recruiting a junior. And, man, the phone flat blew up. I didn’t even think that many people in the world had our number. But it rang off the hook. And then it shifted to my cell phone.

      Everyone warned me, but I didn’t realize how relentless coaches can be. The big names are putting their assistants after me, so I haven’t talked to guys like Calipari or Pitino or Krzyzewski yet. Maybe they think they’re above it all. But at places like Clemson and VCU and Iowa State, the head man himself has been on with me. And Indiana—Coach Crean called me personally, but I bet that’s just because I’m in-state.

      For now, I’m just hearing them all out, telling them I’m a long way off from making a decision. And that’s the truth. I’m taking everything slow. When I have news for schools, it’s coming through Coach or my folks. That’s the way we set it up in the summer. I even squashed my Twitter and Facebook so I wouldn’t send out something that got taken the wrong way. Besides, like my mom said, when’s the last time something good came out of a young athlete being on Twitter? And we decided—all of us together—that we’re playing things the right way. No freebies, no payouts, no kickbacks. I know that’s not how the game’s played these days, but that’s how it gets played when your parents are Tom and Kaylene Bowen.

      But tonight’s the first practice, so I’m that’s all that’s on my mind when I hit the cafeteria. Then I see Wes. It’s not that he’s just a friend. That makes it sound like we hang sometimes on weekends, catch each other at parties, and say ‘sup when we pass in the halls. He is the friend in my life. I mean, I can’t remember a time when Wes and I weren’t tight. Mom tells me that even before we could walk, we were hanging together. Wes’ mom would drop him off at our place and we’d crawl around the living room getting into trouble. To me, Wes is more blood than friend.

      So it kills me—just kills me—to see him catch my eye in the lunch room and then look away. He spins on his heel and makes tracks for a far table. Watching him do that makes me feel like a bone is breaking. It hurts worse than when he didn’t own up to the weed. Around me, Marion East churns on—students shuffle through the lunch line with their trays in their hands, teachers hover around the edges of the cafeteria on the lookout for trouble, and the whole room swells with the fast chatter of people spreading gossip. Meanwhile, I’m standing there like my feet are made of stone while I watch Wes bail on me.

      “D-Bow!” Someone shouts, calling me by my nickname. “Over here,” another voice calls. I turn and see our two bigs—Chris Jones and Tyler Stanford—waving to me. They’re all amped for tonight. They’ve got some space cleared out for me at a table with a few cheerleaders. That’s where I belong. I head that way. But then something stops me, like there’s a hook lodged in the fabric of my shirt. My parents have banned me from hanging with Wes on our own time. If I walk away now, maybe that’s it. If he doesn’t want to hash it out, then I’ve got to be the man in the situation. Otherwise, what? Wes and I are through? No deal.

      I stride across the cafeteria, confident as if I’m walking to the stripe to ice a game. I get to Wes and stand over him. Below me, he

Скачать книгу