Free Swagger by Carl Deuker Page B

good?”
    Another wave of heat burned through me. “Yes, sir, the team was good.”
    He looked at Brindle. “Looks like you’ve got competition, Donny.”
    Then Knecht turned to another new guy and started over with the questions.
    â€œHere’s how it will work,” he said, after he’d heard from every player. “You’ll have this side gym every day from two thirty to four, and the weight room from four to four thirty. If you can make the sessions, great. If you need the time to study, then study.”
    Knecht left, and DeShawn sidled over to me. “Sorry I didn’t tell you about the ‘Yes, sir’ stuff.” Then he nodded toward Brindle. “Word is he didn’t get many minutes on that fancy-ass select team he played for all summer. His parents paid a ton of money for nothing. If you ask me, you’re better than he is.”

4
    C ASH CHOSE THE TEAMS THAT day and every day. I don’t know why he was the one to do it, but nobody objected. There are people like that—people who run things—and Cash was one of them. He put himself with Brindle, which irked me until I remembered that Brindle had spent the previous season feeding Cash. It would have been pretty cold for Cash to choose me as point guard for his team. I did end up with Levi and DeShawn on my team, so I wasn’t stuck with a team of total strangers.
    Early in that first game, Brindle got right up into my space, his butt low, slapping his hands on the gym floor to show me he meant business, bumping me whenever he could. It was 50 percent good defense and 50 percent attempted intimidation.
    I didn’t react to any of the showboat antics; I simply played my game. If he was overly aggressive, reaching in too far, I’d turn on the burners and take him to the hoop. But I did that only when he guarded me closely. A point guard’s job is to run the team, and that means getting teammates involved, not getting caught up in one-on-one competition.
    Brindle could play, so it wasn’t as if we were in a dumb movie where I stole the ball from him all the time and scored at will. I held my own, though. The games went to eleven, just like the games at Green Lake, and my team won more than we lost, despite the fact that Cash was on fire from long range.
    It was closing on four—which was when Knecht had told us we had to leave the gym—and I could feel Brindle wearing down. That’s when I did make it one-on-one. My best moment came on the last play. Brindle brought the ball into the forecourt, directing traffic. When his dribble got a little high and a bit sloppy, my left hand slapped the ball loose. I pounced on it and then raced up-court. Brindle was backpedaling, totally out of position. At the free-throw line, I crossed over. I was by him in the blink of an eye, so I didn’t see him go down, but when I looked back after making the gimme, he was on his butt, and the guys were laughing.
    At precisely four o’clock, the girls on the JV volleyball team took the court. I hated to stop, and I didn’t look forward to what came next—the weight room. I’ve never liked weightlifting, but something Hartwell had said in the summer had stuck.
“If you’re strong enough to shoot through a foul, you’ve got a chance for a three-point play. If the foul stops your shot, the best you’re looking at is two free throws.”
I forced myself to put in a solid thirty minutes of lifting, working with Levi as my partner.
    At four thirty Levi and I picked up our backpacks and duffle bags from the locker room. I was hungry and wanted to get home to eat, but as soon as we stepped into the gym lobby, Hartwell appeared from around a corner. “Can I talk to you two for a minute?”
    We followed him into the coaches’ office in the back of the main gym. Through the glass, I could see the girls’ varsity volleyball team finishing up their practice. Celia