Free In the Paint by Jeff Rud Page B

the season. The Stingers had eight wins and two losses and still had a shot at first place over their last six games.
    â€œYou’ve got a bit of a problem with that one kid, though,” Mark said. “He was drunk tonight. I walked by those guys on the way to the concession before the game and you could smell it fifteen feet away.”
    For a second, Matt didn’t follow what his brother was saying. Then it clicked. Mark was talking about Grant Jackson. So that’s why Jackson had seemed different tonight, thought Matt. He hadn’t had a lot of experience with alcohol — just a brief taste of leftover beers when he did the coat check with the Boy Scouts at a New Year’s Eve dance the previous year — and this was the first time somebody at his school had been drunk, at least the first time he’d known about it.
    Matt explained the background with Jackson, rehashing the night of the tagging at Phil’s store. He told Mark that Jackson had seemed to have it in for him since the incident in Anderson Park last summer.
    â€œYou have to keep your eye on that kid,” Mark said. “He’s trouble. Just make sure that you don’t get sucked into fighting with him. He just wants to take as many people down with him as he can. Stay away from him and make sure your real friends are around you most of the time.”
    Matt thought it sounded like good advice. He didn’t plan on being anywhere around Grant Jackson if he could help it.
    Matt and Andrew McTavish returned for the Stingers’ next game, a rematch with the Central Wildcats, whom they had beaten in their season-opener.
    With the two starters back in the lineup, South Side had no problem with the Wildcats even though Central’s crowded, humid gym could at times be a hostile place to play. McTavish scored the game’s first basket on an assist from Matt, and South Side never trailed, rolling their way to a fifty-six to forty win.
    It marked the first time that Matt, Jake, Phil and Amar had played together in a varsity middle school game, and it was memorable. During garbage time at the end of the second half, Coach Stephens had put the four grade sevens on the floor all at once. And on one fast-break play, the ball had ping-ponged between the friends all the way upcourt before ending in a power lay-up by Amar that was so close to being an actual dunk that it seemed to stun the Central crowd into submission. It felt just like one of those dreamy summer days at Anderson Park.
    Without Jackson and White in the lineup, the Stingers had also become a much less star-centered and a much more team-oriented bunch. Their best player now was steady grade nine center Dave Tanner, who was averaging fifteen points and eight rebounds a game and who had proven to be a terrific, even-tempered leader. But everybody else was contributing too, right down to Andrea Thomas, the team manager, who had practically become one of the guys as the season wore on.
    South Side rolled off four more wins in a row, to run up a thirteen-and-two record heading into the final game of the regular season, a first-place showdown with Churchill, this time on the Bulldogs’ home court in the northeast end of the city. Churchill and South Side had emerged as the top two teams in the league after Middleton faltered during the second half of the season because of an ankle injury to Tommy Layne.
    Churchill, named after the leader of Great Britain during World War II, was the oldest middle school in the city and the Bulldogs were a traditional powerhouse. Their gymnasium was nicknamed The Dawg Pound and was typically jammed. For this showdown with South Side, people were actually lined up outside a half hour before tip-off, waiting to get a good seat. As the Stingers passed the lineup on their way into the locker room, Matt felt a surge of excitement. This would be the kind of atmosphere he and his friends had always dreamed about playing basketball in.
    Matt