Fast Break (9 page)

JAYSON FELT AS THOUGH THE
room was shaking. He hadn't wanted to break the horse, he just hadn't expected to lose control of the ball. He never lost control of a basketball.

But he was still so angry that Mrs. Lawton had gone behind his back and talked to Zoe's mother, told her who knows what about his life back at the Pines, that he wasn't about to apologize for breaking the horse.

Now's the time to tell me,
Jayson thought.
Tell me I'm not good enough to be here.
But Mr. and Mrs. Lawton clearly knew that what happened was an accident. He could see them struggling, but they both stayed calm. It only made Jayson feel worse.

He slammed his hand against the wall and turned his back on the mess on the floor.

“Jayson,” Mr. Lawton said.

Jayson glanced over his shoulder. He stood still, waiting.

Mr. Lawton continued. “Perhaps it would be best if you went to your room for now.”

Mrs. Lawton had gotten down on her hands and knees and
was picking up the broken pieces, staring at them as though remembering having made each one. Mr. Lawton brought a garbage bag from the kitchen and held it open for her, his expression more sad than angry.

The ball was over at the foot of one of their bookcases. Jayson wanted to go get it. Wanted to turn back time and undo what had happened. Since he couldn't do that, he just went up to his room.

• • •

Later on in the night, Jayson sat on his bed, checking his phone for NBA scores just to have something to do, looking at some of the box scores, anything to take his mind off of the broken horse.

Despite all that had happened, Mrs. Lawton came in to say good night.

He put down the phone.

Jayson looked Carol Lawton in the eyes. He'd had some time to think about what had happened, leaving him with a sick feeling. “I just want you to know that I know how I'd feel if you came in here and broke one of my trophies,” he said. “That horse was like a trophy to you, wasn't it?”

“I guess it was,” she said. “But I can make another.”

“You don't have to be nice about it.”

“I'm not trying to be nice,” she said. “I
can
make another. Somebody once told me not to miss anything that doesn't miss you.” She sat on the end of his bed. “It was an accident, Jayson. Don't try to make it out to be something more than it was.”

“I'm the accident.”

“No, you're not.”

“Yes, I am,” he said. “You've got about as much chance of fixing me as you do that horse.”

“You're not broken,” Mrs. Lawton said. “You just need a chance to be whole. To be happy. To have a family. We want to give you that chance, Jayson.”

“I proved all over again tonight that I don't belong here.”

“You're wrong about that, too.”

Mrs. Lawton got up now, reached over, picked up his phone. “It's late now,” she said. “You should try to get some sleep.”

Maybe on another night he would have argued. Not tonight. He was too tired to start another fight.

She put the phone on his desk and turned off the light. “We're stuck with each other, Jayson. And I promise that I will give you your space. But if you ever do need me, I'll be down the hall.”

She closed the door behind her. All he wanted was to go to sleep and let the night come to an end.

Only he didn't sleep, couldn't sleep, not for a long time. He kept picturing the horse in the air, right before it hit the floor, trying to understand how—after everything that had happened to him—it was somebody else's trophy that finally made him cry.

FIRST GAME OF THE SEASON
, gym at Belmont Country Day, Saturday afternoon, the Bobcats against the Karsten Kings.

First time in Jayson's life that the opening game had felt like some sort of finish line he was about to cross, just because of everything he'd gone through to get to it. Coach had told him that he was proud of the way Jayson had made a big effort at practice to get along with his teammates and be part of the team. Told Jayson he'd earned his starting point guard role.

Ten minutes before the game, Jayson went over to the home bench to take a swig out of his Gatorade bottle. It gave him a chance to look around. The Lawtons were in their seats up in the parents' section and, even though she'd won the bet, Zoe was sitting with her friends one section over. His teammates were shooting around, and then they formed two lines to take practice layups, wearing their white jerseys and shorts with red trim. The Karsten Kings wore Carolina-blue jerseys and white shorts of their own.

The only player that Jayson recognized from Karsten was
their point guard, Pokie Best, whose cousin lived at the Jeff, and who'd showed up a few times last summer to show off his game.

He nodded at Jayson when Karsten took the court, and Jayson nodded back. He figured Pokie remembered the two of them going up against each other at the Jeff as well as Jayson did.

As Jayson jogged back to the court, taking his place behind Bryan Campbell in the line, he saw Ms. Moretti making her way up through the stands to where the Lawtons were sitting.

As Jayson watched her take her seat, he thought about all the basketball games in his life when nobody had been in the stands to watch him play. But today he had three grownups watching him, plus Zoe, almost like he had his own cheering section.

He felt a hand on his shoulder and heard Brandon Carr say, “You just gonna keep staring up in the seats or you gonna keep the dang line moving?”

“Sorry,” Jayson said. Then he broke for the basket, caught a pass from Cameron, took one dribble, released the ball, put it off the backboard in exactly the right spot, and didn't wait to see it hit the net. Just heard that sound as he walked away from the hoop.

He looked up at the clock. Five minutes to tip-off.

• • •

Coach Rooney went with the starting five they'd been using all week in practice: Jayson at point and Marty Samuels at shooting guard in the backcourt, Cameron at center, Phil Hecht at small forward, and Rashard Walsh at power forward.

Coach gathered the team around him. “What we're gonna
do today is play
our
game. Man up on defense. Remember on offense that the ball always needs to move faster than anybody trying to guard it. Pass, pass, pass, and find the open man. We're gonna play team ball because we
are
a team. Five guys on the court, one ball, one goal: to be the best team we can be each and every game.”

He put his right hand out, his way of telling them to bring it in. They reached in and put their hands on top of his.

“One more thing,” Coach said. “Hustle every single play. Every stinking loose ball in this game is ours.”

Karsten won the coin flip. Their ball to start the game. When Jayson went over to match up with Pokie, Pokie said, “Heard you were with these guys now.”

He was the same size as Jayson, wore his hair in cornrows, and smiled a lot on the court, though Jayson thought it was just part of his act, like he was the only one having fun.

Jayson shrugged. “Things change.”

Pokie smiled his smile. “Long way from the Jeff.”

Jayson answered by putting out a fist so Pokie could pound it. “Have a good game.”

“Always do,” Pokie said.

Jayson never tried to force anything early. He'd always watched LeBron let the game come to him in the first quarter, when he was with the Heat and now that he was back with the Cavs. That was his plan today, in the first official game with his new team, wanting to look sharper than he had in his first practice in this gym.

So he didn't take his first shot—a driving layup past Pokie on a crossover dribble, Pokie nearly tripping over his own feet—until there was a minute left in the quarter, his basket making the score 8–8.

Instead of playing like a ball stopper, Jayson was doing what he did best: running the fast break, finding the open man for a score. He had fed Cameron twice for easy buckets.

Then, Jayson drove through the lane, drew traffic to himself, and dished it to Marty Samuels for a wide-open jumper on the wing. But Jayson also had two turnovers, trying to do too much in his debut for the Bobcats, first forcing a pass to Cameron through a pack of Karsten defenders that was snatched up, then overthrowing the ball to Rashard by a mile when he tried to hit him with a long football pass on the break.

As soon as he'd seen the ball sail out of Rashard's reach and out of bounds, he'd looked over at Coach to see his reaction.

But all Coach Rooney said was, “Right idea. Less air under the ball next time.”

Jayson had shaken his head, not at Coach, but at the pass, knowing Coach was right. Rashard had been wide open and he'd just missed him. Jayson was always focused on great passes, no matter where he was playing: the Jeff, Moreland East, or here with the Bobcats.

Anywhere there was a court, Jayson wanted to hit the open man.

He patted his chest, letting Marty and everybody else know
that it had been his fault. Not trying to let everybody else see how mad he was at himself, even after only one bad pass in the first quarter of the first game.

It had only taken him a few minutes to figure something out: You didn't have to love the school or even your new teammates to still hate making mistakes. Or love the game as much as you always had.

Coach Rooney sat him down at the start of the next quarter. Alex Ahmad went in for him at point guard, Bryan in at two guard, and Brandon Carr replaced Cameron at center.

“Sit next to me,” Coach said to Jayson. “Let's watch the action together for a few minutes.”

Coach Rooney didn't get up from the bench much, and he never yelled. When he did stand up, it was to say something positive, tell somebody they had made a good pass or stop or hustle play.

The rest of the time, he just talked to Jayson in a quiet voice about the game being played in front of them, seeing plays as they were developing, the way Jayson did sometimes on the court, thinking a move or two ahead, leaving his opponents a step behind.

Meanwhile, Pokie was
schooling
Alex Ahmad. Making it look like he was filming one of those AND1 mixtapes where the guys did trick plays, out-dribbling, out-shooting, and out-defending Alex. Pokie shot a J right in Alex's face, Alex barely getting a hand up, and the Kings were suddenly up eight points.

“Relax,” Coach said to him at one point. “We'll be fine.”

“I didn't say anything,” Jayson said.

“You didn't have to.”

“Were you a point guard when you played?”

“You can tell, huh?”

“You watch the game like you're playing it.”

“Old habits die hard,” Coach said.

Jayson sat longer than he wanted to, or thought he should have. By the time he got back in the game, the Karsten lead was twelve points, mostly because Pokie had been torching Alex Ahmad the way he had.

Then, when Coach moved Bryan over to defend Pokie, the Kings' point guard torched him, too.

Maybe that's why Jayson started forcing things when he stepped back onto the court, wanting to make things happen right away, overworking himself to make sure that Karsten's lead wasn't twenty points by halftime, and the first game of the season didn't turn into a blowout.

Karsten was ahead 28–14 when Pokie read a crosscourt pass Jayson tried to throw to Marty Samuels all the way, caught it as if Jayson were trying to send it his way, and took off for what looked like an easy breakaway layup.

Only, as fast as Pokie Best was, Jayson was faster. He didn't hang his head because of the turnover, or give up on the play. He could see that Pokie thought he was in the clear, didn't even think anybody was chasing him. But just as he pushed off for his layup, Jayson came around and blocked the shot cleanly out of bounds.

But Pokie went down as if Jayson had flagrant-fouled him, and the ref trailing the play blew his whistle. Fell for Pokie's blatant flop.

Jayson wheeled around, grabbed his head with both hands, and yelled,
“C'mon, ref!”

The ref looked at him sternly. “You got him on the arm, son.”

“I got all ball!”

“Not the way I saw it. Two shots.”

“But you
didn't
see it,” Jayson said. “You had a bad angle. All you saw was Pokie flopping.”

He knew what Pokie was doing, begging for a call this way, especially after Jayson had chased him down and swatted the ball cleanly.

“You get fined in the pros for flopping like that,” Jayson said.

Behind him, he heard Coach Rooney say, “Drop it, Jayson.”

But Jayson wasn't dropping it; he was way too far into the moment now to turn back.

He said to the ref, “Next time try hustling back on the play like I did, so you can see what really happened.”

That was it. The ref glared at Jayson, blew his whistle, gave the classic signal for a technical foul, palm on top of his fingers. Bang. Then he looked past Jayson and said to Coach Rooney, “One more word and he's out of the game.”

Jayson felt Coach's hand on his shoulder then, spun around in anger, still hot, and said, “It wasn't a foul and you know it.”

“It's a foul if he calls a foul,” Coach Rooney said. He looked at Jayson hard, like he had at that first practice after Jayson had elbowed Cameron.

Then Coach signaled to Alex Ahmad to check back into the game.

THIS TIME, JAYSON WENT TO
the end of the bench, far away from Coach, and stayed there, not talking to anybody, not looking at Coach or up into the stands. He wondered what the Lawtons were thinking, watching him turn into a lit fuse here the same way he had when he'd broken Mrs. Lawton's horse.

At least the Bobcats made a run before the half, almost all of it Cameron Speeth's doing. Cameron refused to let the game get away from Belmont even with Jayson on the bench, playing great at both ends of the court, scoring and defending like a one-man team, cutting Karsten's lead to eight, 32–24.

Coach Rooney pulled Jayson aside before he went into the locker room with the rest of the Bobcats. “Just so you know, I think it was an awful call.”

“Why didn't you tell the ref?”

“Because he wasn't going to change it, and it wasn't going to do any good,” he said. “And by the way? The coach who yells at refs? I'm never gonna be that guy.”

“All I was trying to tell him was what you just said to me.”

“Next time, don't tell him anything.”

Jayson started to say something, but Coach put a finger to his lips. “Listen to what I just said, Jayson. You're allowed to think it's a bad call, because nobody ever gets T'ed up for what they think. But I don't want you to say another word to a ref the rest of the season, other than ‘Yes, sir' and ‘No, sir.' Because if you do, I will sit you down for the rest of the game. Understood?”

He'd heard an announcer say one time on television that the way coaches controlled players the best was with playing time. Thinking about sitting another minute on that bench, he understood why.

Jayson nodded.

“Be smarter in the second half,” Coach said.

Marty Samuels picked up his third foul halfway through the third quarter, and Coach subbed in Bryan to play with the first team.

And Bryan Campbell came out hot, hitting four straight shots from the outside, two of them threes. The Kings, on the other hand, were missing shot after shot, and by the time the quarter ended, the Bobcats had the lead for the first time all game, 39–38.

As they came to the bench when the quarter ended, Bryan got close to Jayson and grinned at him. “I had a feeling good things might happen when I started catching your passes.”

But Jayson wasn't ready for a victory celebration. “Still a long way to go.”

He was worried Coach might sit him at the start of the fourth quarter the way he had at the start of the second, give Alex Ahmad a little more burn. But Coach stayed with the five that had ended the quarter, Bryan still in there for Marty.

As they broke their huddle, Coach said to Jayson, “I believe we have identified the one player they've got who can beat us today.”

Pokie.

“I could have told you that before we started warming up,” Jayson said. “But don't worry, I'm not letting that flopper beat us.”

“Let it go,” Coach said.

“I'll let it go when we win.”

Pokie tried to get in Jayson's head the rest of the way, talking into his ear even more than he had over the first three quarters. But Jayson ignored him. He kept his focus on the game, telling himself that he'd made his last dumb decision of the day, and his last turnover, too.

With four minutes to go, Pokie, who wasn't a great outside shooter, stepped back to make a couple of jumpers even with Jayson up on him, tying the game at 48. And maybe if this had been a playground game, Jayson would have gone down to the other end and tried to match, put a couple in Pokie's face, like they were playing a game of H-O-R-S-E.

But this wasn't the Jeff. This was a game he was trying to win, his first game for the Bobcats, and that meant doing what he was supposed to do, making the guys around him
better. Defend, run the ball down the court on a fast break, do what he did best. He felt like everyone, especially his teammates, was watching him more closely now than ever, every move he made, to see if he could close the deal.

But he'd felt all eyes on him since he'd shown up at Belmont, like they were waiting for him to mess up.

Jayson wasn't about to do that. Not today. Just over two minutes to go, the game tied, the Kings' center shooting free throws, he allowed himself a quick look up into the stands to the spot where the Lawtons and Ms. Moretti were sitting.

Ms. Moretti saw him, smiled, and pumped her fist at him. He nodded.

Let's do this.

Jayson took an outlet pass from Rashard Walsh when the Kings' center missed his second free throw, pushed the ball on the break, eyeballed Bryan the whole time on the left wing before turning at the last second and hitting Cameron, in stride, with a perfect bounce pass.

Bobcats up by two.

But then on the next play Phil Hecht lost his man, a skinny blond kid, in a switch, and the kid hit the first three he'd made all day. Kings by one.

The game seemed to speed up. The Bobcats came right back, barely taking any time off the clock, and Cameron made a short jumper just inside the foul line. Bobcats back up by one.

That wasn't enough to get Phil's head back in the game,
though. Right after Cameron's jumper, Phil committed a dumb foul on his man. The Karsten forward made both free throws. Kings by a point.

Forty seconds left.

Jayson took his time at the other end of the court, Pokie hounding him, but Jayson did a great job protecting the ball. He finally got into the lane and fed Cameron like he'd been doing all game, left side of the hoop. But Cameron missed a baby hook for the first time all day. Then Pokie beat everybody to the rebound.

Thirty seconds left. The Kings' coach called time-out with a one-point lead. There was a thirty-five-second shot clock in their league, which meant that Karsten didn't have to shoot. They could let the time run out and win the game, if they didn't lose the ball or draw a foul.

In front of the Bobcats' bench, Coach said, “Play them straight up and try to get a steal. If they've still got possession with around fifteen seconds left, foul somebody, even if it's Pokie. Even if he makes both free throws, we've still got a chance to tie with a three.”

The other players nodded. Jayson said, “We're gonna get the ball before we have to foul.”

“And when we do get it, no time-outs,” Coach said. “I'd always rather push it than give them a chance to set the defense. Agreed?”

He addressed all of them, but he was looking straight at Jayson, like he was talking only to him. Like it was just the
two of them in that moment, speaking point guard to point guard.

“Agreed,” Jayson said.

Jayson pulled Bryan aside. “If I do yell at you to double Pokie, don't wait and don't worry about leaving your guy; run at him like a crazy man.”

Bryan Campbell said, “I can do that.”

Even before they were out of the huddle, Jayson was thinking one move ahead.

The Kings inbounded the ball. Jayson didn't wait to pick Pokie up in the backcourt; he employed a full-court press, attacking him all the way up in the frontcourt. Feeling the pressure, Pokie passed the ball off to his shooting guard, and then got it back with twenty seconds left.

Jayson yelled, “Double!”

Bryan played it the way Jayson had told him to, running at Pokie Best like an outside linebacker blitzing a quarterback. As soon as he did, Pokie did exactly what Jayson had hoped he would do: took his eyes off Jayson just long enough to make it count.

Jayson moved even faster than a basketball could, like a blur streaking by, tipping the ball away from Pokie, knocking it to the side, picking it up on a left-hand dribble, turning the play around, turning defense into offense in a flash.

He could see Cameron Speeth running like a madman down the right side of the court, Rashard Walsh cutting behind him, like they were both ready, like they knew Jayson would make something happen.

Jayson wasn't going to make the same mistake Pokie had made on the flop play. He turned his head just slightly, saw Pokie chasing him, trying somehow to get back in the play. Get the ball back and keep the Kings in the game.

No chance.

Jayson angled to his right, cutting Pokie off, forcing him to put on the brakes or risk committing a foul and sending Jayson to the line to win the game, Jayson having made all four of his free throw attempts.

He checked the clock now. Ten seconds.

With Pokie behind him, he thought he could beat anybody the Kings had off the dribble, get himself a layup or at least an easy shot.

But this wasn't the day to try to make a hero shot. This was a game to win with a pass.

Bryan, also trailing the play, was wide open on his left, having beaten his own man to one of his favorite spots on the court. Rashard and Phil had spread out to the corners. Lots of options.

But not his best option.

As Jayson dribbled into the lane, Pokie still at his back, having cut him off on the right, Cameron's defender was forced to come over to double Jayson and block his path to the basket.

Jayson let the ball go. The motion looked like the kind of teardrop shot he'd made in the first half, which was another time the kid guarding Cameron had switched off to double Jayson.

Only it wasn't a shot. Cameron knew it, too. The Karsten center put a long arm in the air, thinking he could get a piece of the ball.

But the ball wasn't floating toward the rim—it was heading into Cameron Speeth's hands, a perfect lob pass. Cameron caught it in stride and laid the ball in two ticks before the horn sounded in the Belmont gym.

The Bobcats had won by a point.

Maybe nothing else in Jayson's life worked out the way he wanted it to. But basketball still did.