I hadn’t seen much of Liza over the summer, and she had assumed I was caught up in becoming a basketball star and the trappings of budding celebrity.
After clinching the CHSAA championship and winning
MVP, as well as completing a productive summer circuit, I was on the brink of becoming the biggest high school basketball star in New York City. My stock was soaring, recruiters came calling at all hours, and the attention I received from women increased tenfold. And it wasn’t just girls at school or on the train. I’m talking about women like the kind you see in clubs or on the block who would roll with the shot callers. I was six feet ten, so they thought I was a grown man even though I was only sixteen. I loved it.
But to be perfectly honest, I still thought about Liza. She knew me before any of this basketball stuff, and that endeared her to me. We hadn’t gone on a date yet or even kissed, but I decided I wanted to step up my game with her. No more silly flirting. I needed her to take me seriously. So, one night, instead of doing my homework, I stayed up for hours writing her a love letter. I had never written one before and my handwriting was barely legible, but I needed to let her know how I felt. By the time I was done, there were way too many crossed-out words, and the paper looked like a wrinkled shirt exhumed from the back of my closet.
It didn’t matter because everything I needed to say was right there above those blue lines on a single piece of loose-leaf paper. I folded it carefully and tucked it in my jacket pocket for safekeeping. Around one in the morning, I reached for the light to switch it off, but I stopped. I felt paralyzed. My mother’s bed lay empty just a couple feet from mine. Her jewelry, dusty and untouched, lay on the dresser. I said a prayer. Not to God, but to Cathy. Maybe Cathy would hear me this time. I wanted to tell her about a girl.
The next day at school I missed homeroom, so I handed the letter to Liza before her sixth-period study hall.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“Just read it,” I said before quickly disappearing down the hallway.
She could tell I was a little bit shy when it came to being romantic, but I think it endeared me to her. She read the letter out loud to her friends and was flattered. She really got a kick out of it. A mutual friend of ours in that same study hall told her that one of my boys and I had made a ranking of the cutest girls in school, and that I gave her the highest grade.
Later that day, I saw her in the hallway. I had waited three hours to find out what she thought. She approached and smiled. She reached in her purse and handed me a piece of paper with her phone number on it.
My letter worked.
We started talking on the phone almost every night. Back then, all we had were landlines with just one number. Inevitably Grandma or Aunt JaNean would pick up the receiver somewhere else in the house and I’d have to yell, “I’m on the phone!”
About two weeks later, Liza and I went on our first date. We decided to see the movie Independence Day and doubled with another couple to keep things light. At the concession stand, I loaded up my pockets with candy, and then we settled in our seats as the house lights went low.
In the lobby afterward, I finished a Blow Pop lollipop and then fashioned the stick into a ring, which I put on Liza’s finger.
“You know you’re going to be my wife one day,” I said.
Her eyes widened as she looked at me, her lips pursed with a brand of skepticism that could only come from a woman from Queens who had heard it all. Them Queens girls. They’re just thorns without the rose. But not this one. Her gentle features softened and we paused for a moment.
There in the lobby, I kissed her for the first time.
After an exhausting but exhilarating summer on the basketball court, I was excited to suit up again for my junior year at Christ the King. We opened the season with a rematch against St. Raymond’s. We returned almost our entire team, and this time it wasn’t close. Erick Barkley went to the hole like a bolt of lightning. Forward Ira Miller caught fire from deep. We blew them out 107–78 in front of a sold-out gym. I had the best game of my career with twenty-eight points, sixteen rebounds, eight assists, and four blocks and was named MVP of the tournament.
“They just gave us a good, old-fashioned . . . how do I put this politely? Beating,” St. Ray’s coach, Gary Decesare, told the New York Daily News afterward.
We steamrolled through the 1995–96 regular season, finishing 25–0 as the nation’s second-ranked team behind my seventeen points and ten rebounds per game. We were ready to defend our CHSAA title. The New York Times called me a “one-man wrecking crew” as we beat St. Raymond’s yet again in the quarterfinals, as I went off for sixteen points, twenty-one rebounds, six blocks, and five assists.
Next up in the semis, we advanced to the title game after dispatching St. Francis Prep 68–46. We were giddy with the idea of an undefeated season. There was talk of us being the best New York City high school team in a decade. But it wasn’t to be. In the finals, Rice High School jumped out to a 12–2 lead before we snapped out of our funk and tied the game at thirty-three by the half. I struggled to get good shots, and Rice’s ball movement and hustle were more than we could handle. In the end, it was close. Rice’s Bevon Robin drove the length of the floor and hit a crazy shot off the backboard with 1.3 seconds left in overtime to win it.
I was crestfallen. I sat on the bench and buried my head in my hands. I felt like I had let the team down. We had gone an outstanding 48–3 in the last two years, but I only thought about one thing: returning to the title game for the third year in a row and taking back what was ours.
I would not get that chance.