13

“HEY, MIKE.”

“Oh. Hey, Kirsten,” I told her.

I was in my room, holding my follow-through after taking a shot. Kirsten stood just inside the door frame. Moments before, I’d been counting down slowly from ten before attempting the game-winning shot. I’d used my best announcer voice as I described myself as “the sharpshooter from Rapid River.”

I really hoped she didn’t hear me say that.

“Did it go in?” she asked. “Did the sharpshooter from Rapid River live up to the hype?”

I dropped my arm. “No,” I admitted. “But I got fouled. The refs are still looking at the replay to determine whether I got the shot off in time.”

Kirsten made her hands into fists and pretended to bite them. “The suspense is killing me,” she said.

I laughed. “I didn’t realize you were here today.”

She nodded. “Coach Duncan texted me and said he had a few things to go over with me before Monday’s game.” 

“Wait,” I said, genuinely surprised. “Coach Duncan texts? As in my dad?”

The guy may have been a visionary as a coach, but when it came to technology, he had always been a dinosaur. Years ago, when Mom was trying to convince him we needed a family plan, she said that it was crazy in this day and age not to have a cell phone. “This day and age?” Dad replied. “What’s so special about this day and age, Mary? They seemed to get along okay without cell phones in every other day and age in the history of humankind.” Texting has always been particularly annoying to him. “What’s so hard about calling someone?” he liked to say. “Are we so busy in this day and age that we can’t have an actual conversation?” We ended up getting the family plan as a gift to “all of us” from “Santa.”

“I showed him how to do it last week,” Kirsten said. “I think it takes him about a day to finish typing. I can’t believe he still has a flip phone.”

It’s true. Year after year our cell phone company tells him he’s due for an upgrade; year after year Dad says it’s not worth the hassle.

“So maybe you were supposed to be here yesterday, not today,” I said. Then I panicked: what if she didn’t realize I was joking? “Don’t get me wrong,” I said, “you’re welcome here whenever you want, no matter what my mom says.”

Which I realized was a stupid thing to say as soon as it came out of my mouth.

“She doesn’t like me, does she?” Kirsten said.

“No,” I stammered. “I mean, yes. Yes, she likes you. She just doesn’t—she doesn’t get the whole sports thing.”

Kirsten entered the room enough to close the door behind her. “I know, right?” she said. “What is it with parents and not getting sports?”

I knew she wasn’t talking about parents generally. She was talking about hers. But I still didn’t know what to say. I didn’t mind her complaining about them, but joining in felt risky.

“You know that you were making the lights blink?” Kirsten said. “We were downstairs, me and Coach, and the ceiling was, like, thudding every time you jumped, and then the light started flickering.” She laughed—in disbelief, I guess—and said, “It was kind of freaky.”

I shrugged. “What can I say? It was a pretty epic game.”

“Must mean your leg’s getting better, huh?”

“Yeah—I have another doctor’s appointment coming up. Hopefully I’ll get cleared to practice.”

“Definitely,” she said. She took her hands out of the front pocket of her hoodie. “So . . .” she said, “can I play?”

Before we started, I told her she needed to know some ground rules. How to dribble, for instance. (The ball didn’t bounce too well, so you were allowed to throw it down off the carpet and then catch it—so long as you kept throwing it down and catching it in one continuous motion. You could never just hold the ball while moving.) How to shoot a three-pointer. (At least one body part had to be touching the desk—your back, the back of your legs, the heel of your foot, etc.) How to block without goaltending. (Since it was relatively easy to jump up and touch the ceiling, the defender was not allowed to stand back and block three-pointers.) How to foul (make any contact with the arm or wrist), and how not to foul (any other contact was completely acceptable).

These rules, I told her, were invented and approved by the commissioners of the International Bedroom Basketball Association.

“Let me guess,” she said. “You and Eric?”

“And Dad,” I said. “He’s like the James Naismith of bedroom basketball. Dad played a version of this game with me when I was a kid, but Eric and I are in charge of any and all subsequent rule changes.”

“Pretty big responsibility,” Kirsten kidded.

“It’s a tough job,” I said, “but somebody’s got to do it.”

“How do I know you haven’t rigged the rules in your favor?”

“Any objections,” I said, “should be addressed in a letter to the commissioners of the International Bedroom Basketball Association.”

“Sounds reasonable,” she said.

Then she took off her hoodie to reveal a tight, black, stretchy shirt underneath. “Okay if I take a practice shot first, commissioner? It might take me a while to get the hang of this.”

It didn’t. Within a few minutes, she was pump faking and shooting quick-release three- pointers and was already getting plenty of backspin on her shots. She did the dribble-catch thing like she’d been doing it her whole life.

She was physical, too. She dug her heels in on defense and pushed back against me when I tried to move to the basket. On offense, she put her shoulder and butt into me and backed me toward the hoop.

Finally, as she leaned into me, making shimmy-fakes while pivoting one way and then the other, it happened.

I didn’t know if it was her butt grinding against me, or placing part of my forearm against her chest whenever I had the ball—either way, when I looked down, there it was.

It was, simply put, the most terrifying thing that has ever happened to me in my life.

I turned away from Kirsten and mumbled something about the bathroom. Swearing under my breath at my tired knee to hurry up, I escaped my bedroom and crossed the hall and dragged my leg into the bathroom, slamming the door closed behind me.

Go down! I muttered. Go down, dammit!

But minutes passed, and it wouldn’t budge.

I flushed the toilet, turned the water on and off, and took the only option I had left: I trapped it with my waistband against the part of my stomach just below my belly button.

Luckily, I was wearing a baggy shirt.

When I got back to my room, Kirsten had her long-sleeved shirt back on. “I better get going,” she said. “I guess I lost track of time.”

She made her way to the door, and I wondered if she was shuffling along the edge of the dresser that way to keep as much distance from me as possible. Had she felt it pressing against her? Did she know?

“You’re too tall,” she said. “Next time we play, you have to use your head to block shots. No more hands allowed.”

I said, “Okay” and watched her leave.

As I gathered up and re-stacked some Sports Illustrateds that had fallen off the dresser during the game, I let out a deep sigh and waited for the blood to start flowing to all the other parts of my body.