Night Hoops (17 page)

Everybody except Trent. He wasn't intimidated: not by the gym, not by the fans, not by the Garfield players. In the first quarter he single-handedly kept us in the game, scoring six points and pulling down just about every rebound we got. In the last thirty seconds, I knocked down one long three-pointer, and Luke threw up a prayer that banked in as the horn sounded. Those two baskets cut Garfield's lead to six points—we were lucky it wasn't sixteen.

O'Leary rested Trent at the start of the second quarter, and with him out, the six-point lead grew to twelve, then fifteen. The Garfield crowd was going crazy. It felt like an earthquake was ripping through the gym.

O'Leary called time-out to get Trent back in, and to settle the rest of us down. "You can play with these guys," he said as we huddled around him. "All you've got to do is believe in yourselves!"

That was the problem: we didn't. After the time-out, the gym got even louder. On Garfield's next possession my knees were so wobbly that my guy blew by me on a drive to the hoop. It looked like another easy bucket until Trent came flying across the court, blocking the shot but fouling the guy so hard he crumpled to the floor. Instead of reaching down to help him up, Trent turned away. "Cover your guy!" he barked at me. I nodded, then looked to the Garfield player who was just getting to his feet. He was staring wide-eyed at Trent, and so were the other Garfield guys.

Right after that we started chipping at the lead. We didn't go on any big run, but we did play our game. Trent was a force on the glass at both ends of the court, and my passes were crisp and clean. We ran a lot of two-man stuff—inside, outside—and it worked. By the half the Bulldogs' lead was down to nine. If we just kept doing what we were doing, we could win.

I hadn't figured on Garfield changing things.

But they did. First time down the court in the third quarter, I lobbed an entry pass into Trent on the lower blocks. Immediately they hit him with a double-team. Luke broke to the hoop and was wide open for a split second, but Trent lowered his shoulders and tried to spin left and then right. All he managed to do was travel with the ball.

It wasn't a one-time thing, either. On the next four possessions, every time Trent touched the ball Garfield ran a double-team at him, and he either walked or threw the ball away or forced up a bad shot. Garfield's lead soared back into double digits.

It was after Trent's third foul that Luke clapped his hands together and glared at me, his eyes saying,
Get me the ball!
Carver had the same look in his eyes. O'Leary was up shouting at me. "Don't force it, Abbott!"

Garfield's big center missed a sweeping hook, Luke grabbed the rebound and passed to me. There was no fastbreak opportunity, but I pushed the ball up quickly. Trent had hustled down and posted up on the right side. He looked open, which was the beauty of Garfield's double-team. He always looked open, but once I made the entry pass they closed on him. I faked the pass in. Luke's guy bit, taking a step toward Trent. Immediately I whipped a bullet pass to Luke. He caught it and in one motion rose for the open fifteen-footer. It was money in the bank, and he gave me a nod as we hustled down to play defense.

Next time it was Carver's turn. Then I went back to Luke, into McShane. Moving the ball, moving it, always moving it, all through the third quarter and into the fourth. Late in the fourth Trent set up down low. I lobbed the ball in, just to see. The double-team didn't come. Trent gave an up-fake, rolled to the hoop, and powered up a short jumper that banked through.

Garfield's coach called time-out. I looked up at the scoreboard. The score was tied at sixty-two with sixteen seconds left. Garfield's fans were up all through the time-out, but they weren't cheering. They were stunned. O'Leary barked directions at us. "Two-three zone defense! You understand! No penetration! Make them shoot outside, and when they do, hit the boards!" The horn sounded and we were back on the court.

O'Leary's switch to a zone was a brilliant stroke. We'd played man-to-man defense the whole way, and the two-three confused the Garfield guards. As the clock wound down, they looked at each other, unsure what play to run. Ten seconds, then eight, then six.

The Garfield guard panicked, forcing the ball inside where there was no one open. Carver got a hand on it, controlled it. He hit me with a quick outlet, and I was off, leading a three-on-one break with Trent on my right and Luke on my left.

I drove hard into the lane. I faked to Trent's side, the defender bit, and I dished the ball to Luke, a soft pass right in his hands. He caught it in stride, soared upward in the same fluid motion, and gently laid the ball against the backboard. It dropped through the net just as the horn sounded. A tenth of a second later we were jumping all over him.

For the first time, the celebration carried into the locker room. Guys were howling with joy, drumming on the lockers, laughing and laughing. Even Trent joined in. He didn't scream or anything, but he was smiling, and he didn't shower quickly and dress off by himself as if he were a visitor who'd somehow wandered into the wrong locker room.

"Wasn't that great!" I said to him as we came out of the locker room and headed toward my mother's car.

Before he could answer, a police car pulled into the parking light, its lights flashing. We both froze as two policemen got out and walked across the parking lot right toward us, flashlights piercing the darkness. When they went right past us, I breathed of sigh of relief. "For a second there I thought they were after us," I said, trying to make a joke of it.

On the drive back to Bothell I tried to get Trent talking about his game, but his sentences were short and his eyes kept peering into the dark streets.

First thing Sunday morning Luke phoned. "Some of the guys are coming over tonight," he said. "My dad's going to make us some burgers, then we're going to watch the North Carolina-Duke game. Interested?"

"Sure," I said. "Sounds great."

"Really?" he said.

I laughed. "Yeah. Really. Unless you don't want me."

"No, I want you to come. I just didn't think you would."

"Well, I will," I said. "What time?"

"Around six-thirty." He paused. "And Nick, see if you can get Trent to come. It'd be great to get the whole team together."

As soon as I hung up, the phone rang again. This time it was Dad. "You doing anything today?"

An hour later we were at Alderwood Mall checking out basketball shoes. What I wanted was the Gary Payton model, but they were expensive. He saw me eyeing them. "Those," he said to the salesman, "in size eleven, medium width." When the salesman walked away, Dad looked to me. "When you're a star, you dress the part."

After he paid we found our way to the food court. I must have thanked him five times for the shoes while we ate our burritos. "You want to do something to pay me back?" he said after the fifth time.

"Yeah, sure," I replied. "What is it?"

He leaned toward me, his voice not much above a whisper. "Look for your own shot more often. If you do, you'll open the court..." He went on and on, giving me his same old lecture. It was as if our roles had somehow been reversed. He was the little kid rattling on, and I was the adult nodding my head and pretending to listen. There was no way I could do what he wanted me to do. No way.

It was three in the afternoon when he dropped me off in front of my house. I went inside and saw Katya and Scott on the sofa, practicing together. It had been a long time since she'd been around our house. "Hey, how's it going?" I asked.

"Okay," she answered, and she didn't seem angry with me.

I sucked up my courage. "How's Michael doing?"

"He's okay. He gets tired easily, but that's normal. The doctors say he'll make a complete recovery."

"That's great." I almost added that I'd stop by and see him, but I caught myself.

Around six I headed over to Trent's. I knocked on his door, but there was no answer. I waited, then knocked again. Finally the door opened. His mother, wearing a bathrobe and smoking a cigarette, stood before me.

"You want Trent?" she asked.

"Yeah," I answered. "If he's around."

"He's around." She turned and hollered his name into the house. Then she looked back to me. "You're Nick, right?"

I nodded.

"Nick from the basketball team? Nick that he shoots around at night with."

Again I nodded.

She took a drag on her cigarette, blew out the smoke. "Tell me, Nick, is Trent any good at basketball?"

"Yeah, he's good," I said. "Really good. And he's getting better all the time. You should come to a game and see for yourself."

She didn't smile, but she was interested. "And how about this school stuff? How's he doing with that?"

"He's better at math than I am. And he does okay in the other subjects."

She shook her head. "My son, the scholar-athlete. Who'd'a thunk it?" There was sarcasm in her voice, but there was pride too.

Behind her I saw Trent come down the stairs, taking them two at a time. She turned back into the house. In the living room I could see a duffel bag, half-packed, the zippers still open, clothes spilling out. Trent caught me looking at it. He picked it up, slung it to the side of the room, stepped onto the porch, and pulled the door closed behind him. "What's up?"

"Luke is having everybody over for a barbecue. I thought you might want to come."

He shook his head. "Not interested."

"Come on," I persisted, trying to sound casual. "It's a team party. And there's going to be tons of good food. We can't have a team party without our main man."

"I told you. I'm not interested."

A second later I was staring at his front door.

You get a door slammed in your face, and a lot of thoughts come to mind—none of them nice. As I walked to Luke's house, I ran through about fifty things I wanted to say to Trent, and all fifty of them were things I'd never want my mother to hear. Before I knew it I'd reached Luke's. The door popped open. "Hey, Nick. What's up?"

I shrugged.

"No Trent?"

"No Trent."

He grabbed me by the arm and pulled me in. "That's all right. I'm glad you came. Glad you came." He led me to the stairway leading down to his rec room. "Most of the other guys are here already."

I walked down. Carver, McShane, Markey, Fabroa, and the rest were sprawled out on sofas and chairs all through Luke's rec room. They called out to me, smiles on their faces, acting as if we'd all been best friends for years.

Luke's dad was out on the deck, wearing a parka and a ski cap, cooking hamburgers on a huge gas barbecue. I went to the sliding glass door and tapped. He looked up. "Long time no see," he called through the glass.

It had been a long time.

I returned to the main part of the room and claimed the last empty seat on the sofa facing the TV. I pointed to a tray of food in front of Darren Carver. "Pass me some chips and pretzels and one of those Cokes, will you?"

Luke heard. "You probably going to have to grab that stuff yourself," he joked. "Everybody knows Darren can't pass. All he knows how to do is shoot." It was a dumb joke, but the guys howled as if it were the funniest thing they'd ever heard, and I howled along with them.

A few minutes later the door to the deck opened and Luke's dad brought in a platter full of burgers. I loaded up my own plate, then sat down again to watch the game. Guys were stuffing themselves and razzing one another at the same time.

After that I relaxed. I ate three hamburgers and a huge bag of chips while I argued with Fabroa about North Carolina's chances to win the national championship. When the game ended, I shot pool with McShane and Luke, then played poker with Carver and Chang.

The next thing I knew Luke's mom was blinking the lights like an elementary schoolteacher. "I hate to break up the party, but you boys all have school tomorrow. And practice afterwards. And two big games this week."

Everyone groaned. I looked at my watch and saw it was after ten. At the door Luke pulled me aside. "Glad you made it, Nick."

A point guard has to go with the flow of the game. If that means passing the ball five times in a row to the same player, then that's what it means. But he's got to recognize changes in the flow, too, because no game stays the same. It's as if a team is a river spilling down out of the mountains, all the water searching for the easiest path.

That's what I did in the next three games, and we clicked. Luke and Carver ran the court, had good range with the jump shot, and played solid defense. In the low post McShane wasn't a scoring threat, but he didn't have to be. All he had to do was take up space, rebound, and put some hard fouls on anybody trying to drive the key.

Then there was Trent. You'd think with the passes I was making to other guys, his game would suffer. But once I started spreading the ball around, he got his opportunities at the best times—when he was able to operate. If a team put a quick guard on him, Trent would post him up and shoot over him. If a team used a power forward, he'd step back and nail jumper after jumper. No matter who guarded him, he did the dirty work—diving for the loose balls, setting the solid picks, sweeping the glass clean. Those games—against Inglemoor, Edmonds, Roosevelt—went by in a blur. We didn't just win; we dominated.

I should have been on top of the world, but every time I looked at Trent, I got an empty feeling in my gut. Zack hadn't disappeared. He was out there, somewhere. He'd call, sometime. With Trent there was no telling how far we could go. Without him the winning streak and our shot at the league title were gone: buzzer sounds, game over, lights out. The call was coming; I just prayed to God that his phone wouldn't ring until the season had ended.

We had two games left—one against Franklin and then the rematch with Garfield. Win them both and we were league champions, the first title for Bothell High in twenty-seven years.

And it was right then, right when everybody most needed to pull together, that Trent started falling apart. On Monday, before practice, he was snarling at everybody in the locker room. Then, going for a rebound during the shoot-around—the shoot-around!—he went over the back of Brian Chang, sending Chang down hard. "What was that all about?" Chang demanded, pulling himself off the ground.