23

DAD DROVE ME TO SCHOOL.

I asked him what was wrong with Kirsten and he said she’d be fine.

“Then why did she say she wasn’t coming to our house again?”

Dad watched the road intently—too intently? —but couldn’t help wincing. “She said that?”

I waited for him to answer my question.

“Look, Mike . . .” he said, but then he just repeated himself: “We had a difficult conversation, okay? My guess is that it has something to do with that.”

“A difficult conversation about what?”

“I’d rather not talk about it, Mike. I’m sorry, but I hope you’ll respect me on that.”

Kirsten had apologized to me, too. As she raced away from me. And then again in a text message. Which is supposed to be a nice thing—saying you’re sorry—but what does it mean when you don’t even know why the person is apologizing?

“So that’s it?” I said. “Kirsten’s never coming to our house again—sorry?”

“Give her some time, okay? I think she may have gotten a little carried away.”

I didn’t bother asking what she may have gotten carried away about.

Luckily, that day at practice I didn’t have too much time to dwell on Kirsten or Dad or whatever the hell happened the night before.

I was too tired.

We had lost our last game, against Pine Hill, because of missed free throws. With less than a minute to go, we were up by enough points to force Pine Hill to start fouling us to stop the clock. If we’d made the free throws, we would have won easily—but we missed them, and Pine Hill made a few big buckets down the stretch to come back and win.

As a result, we did only two things at practice:

We shot lots of free throws.

And we ran.

Coach Wight had all of us stand at the baseline. One at a time, a player stepped forward to the line and shot five free throws. However, many baskets the shooter missed, that’s how many killers we ran.

Let’s just say we missed a lot of free throws.

All of us held our hips and hunched over, our breaths wheezy. My body was so tired it didn’t know what to do with itself. I sweat and shivered at the same time. I was totally dehydrated—my lips were so dry they stuck to my teeth—but way too tired to drink anything (assuming Coach ever let us take a water break).

Disclaimer: when I say we missed free throws, I’m not actually talking about myself. I don’t say this to be a bad teammate—there’s no I in team, blah blah blah—but just to point out that I hadn’t had the chance to miss (or make) any free throws yet. Besides, not to brag, but if there was one thing I could do, it was shoot free throws. In junior high, there was an annual local free-throw shooting competition. I won it three years in a row. Actually, just shooting, in general, was my thing. If basketball were just a game of H.O.R.S.E., I’d be a superstar. The problem has always been getting—in other words, getting off—my shot.

But no one tries to block your shot when you shoot a free throw.

“Duncan, you’re up,” Coach Wight said.

I wondered if I had blacked out for a second. We’d been going right down the line, and last I’d checked, there were still three guys ahead of me, including Jake Nichols, who stood next to me, bent over at the waist.

“Coach?”

“Step up to the line, son.”

So I did. I straightened up and accepted the ball from Coach Wight and pressed the toe of my right foot just behind the free-throw line. I cleared my head, which wasn’t difficult. I was too tired to think, anyway. Then I followed the same routine I’ve been following since I was eight and Dad put up our hoop in the driveway.

I stretched my neck, dribbled three times, spun the ball against my palm—never taking my eyes off the rim. The ball left my fingertips with my elbow pointing the way.

Swish.

I took my eyes off the rim just long enough to receive another pass from Coach.

I took a breath and started my routine again. Almost all basketball players learn that you should establish a free throw shooting routine, but there’s more to it than that. The routine only matters, my dad taught me, if it gets you in a rhythm. Take Tim Duncan, my Dad once told me. Besides being one of the best shooting big men ever, he follows the same free-throw routine over and over, and yet somehow manages to not be a good free thrower. And it’s all because he takes this really long, rhythm-breaking pause before he shoots. (“Or at least that’s my theory,” Dad said, “and I’m sticking to it. For some reason he never called and asked me to be his free throw doctor.”)

After my three dribbles and ball-spin, I let another shot go.

This one touched a little rim, but also buried itself in the net. 

Another key to shooting free throws is wrist and elbow strength because unlike your legs, your wrist and elbow don’t get tired, or heavy, or weak.

Neck stretch, three dribbles, spin the ball, shoot.

In again.

Some part of me was conscious, of course, of my teammates. I saw them straightening up more and more with every make, their chests heaving less and less. But that was only when I lowered my eyes to get the ball back. After that, it was all about the rim again.

I made the last two and didn’t need a rebounder: the shots had enough backspin to bounce back to me on their own.

Someone actually clapped his hands, as if he was a fan or something.

The next player in line was Adam Pilsner. When he stepped toward me to take the ball and the next five shots, there was audible groaning. This was definitely a first: Adam may have been a butthead bully to Eric, but he was pretty popular. Maybe because everyone was afraid of him. He was a big bruiser of a guy who routinely knocked other players to the floor, including his own teammates.

He was also a terrible free throw shooter.

As he approached me, the rest of the team shuffled to the baseline, getting ready to run.

I handed the ball to Adam just as Coach Wight said, “I have an idea. Why doesn’t Mike take the rest of the shots today? We’ll save the running until the end.”

The rest of the team didn’t say anything, probably for the same reason I didn’t: they weren’t sure whether this was a trick question. If we said yes, would he say basketball is a team game and we failed his little test? What was the catch here?

Which was what I almost asked Coach when he said, “Duncan? That work for you?”

“Whatever you say, Coach.”

“You can go back with the others, Pilsner,” Coach said. “Duncan, the amount of running your team does for the remainder of practice is entirely dependent on the number of shots you miss.” He stood with his back to the rest of the guys as he said this. “Got it?” He finished with a wink.

“Got it, Coach,” I said. Because I did: he wasn’t putting me on the spot to be cruel. He was giving me a chance to win over my teammates and truly earn my spot on the team.

Maybe if I made enough free throws, I thought, I might see some playing time. Maybe I would even start some games.

But I was getting ahead of myself.

First things first.

I stretched my neck, took my dribbles, spun the ball and sunk another shot.

That evening, as I walked up the driveway, I typed a text message to Eric: you’ll never guess who got booed today at practice… (Okay, Adam didn’t get booed, but close enough.) I was just about to type the answer (Buttbreath? Buttcrust? I could never remember which was which) and hit send when I looked up and saw Dad’s car in the garage. This was a surprise. He had a game that night. That was why Kirsten had stopped by the night before: to study film of their next opponent.

The game wasn’t until later that night, but he never came home between school and a game.

I was confused. But I was also excited.

I couldn’t wait to tell him about practice. 

After all the crappy stuff that’s been happening in this house, here was some news we could celebrate together.

I’d made 14 of my last 15 free throws. Even the one I missed was in and out. By the end of practice, my teammates cheered every single make. A couple of them actually stood under the basket and caught the ball before it had a chance to bounce on the ground. They’d look up through the rim and watch the ball drop into it, then throw me a chest pass and tell me to keep it up, man, whatever you do, don’t stop now. When I was done, my shoulder and backside were slapped repeatedly, and my fists were banged by other fists.

I sidestepped Dad’s van and opened the door to the house. “Dad?”

“In here.”

I found him in the kitchen: sitting at the table, holding a newspaper.

“Aren’t you supposed to be at a game right now?”

Dad lowered the paper but I didn’t give him a chance to answer. “We had practice today, which—well, duh, you knew we had practice—but at practice, we were shooting free-throws—”

“Mike.”

“—and every time we missed we had to run. But then Coach called on me, even though it wasn’t my turn, and—”

“Mike,” Dad said again, this time with a little more force. I stopped talking. “I need you to read something, okay?”

He folded the paper, twice, and extended it to me, the pointer finger of his other hand showing me where to start.

It was our local paper, The Dais. He pointed to the Letters to the Editor section.

“What’s going on?”

“Just read this, okay? We’ll talk about it when you’re done.”

I followed his finger to the first letter, which was only a paragraph long:

 

 

Our daughter, Kirsten Howard, plays on the varsity girls’ basketball squad.

 

 

I looked up.

Dad looked away.

I kept reading.

 

 

Over the past school year, her coach, Jeff Duncan, has developed an inappropriately intimate relationship with her. For the last few months, he has met with her one-on-one every night after practice—a decision which we questioned at the time but unfortunately allowed to continue. Recent events have confirmed our worst suspicions: that this relationship has gone well beyond what is appropriate for a coach and his high school player. We’ve chosen to go public with this letter in the hope that actions will be taken more swiftly.

Sincerely, Linda and Steve Howard    

 

 

I had finished the letter but wasn’t sure what to do next, so I read it again. My eyes snagged on the phrase “inappropriately intimate” and wouldn’t budge.

Finally, I said, “What does this mean?”

“It means there was a misunderstanding.”

“A misunderstanding of what?”

“Of our relationship. Of Kirsten’s and my….” He didn’t finish the sentence. “Look at me, Michael.” His hand was on my shoulder, and he didn’t say anything until I lifted my head from the paper. “None of it is true, okay? Whatever it seems to be implying, it didn’t happen. That’s why I wanted you to read it now, with me sitting here. I wanted you to hear me tell you right away that this is completely untrue.”

By now he had both his hands on my shoulders and was leaning in, his eyes watery, his voice shaking.

“Are you hearing me?” he asked. “This isn’t true, Mike. Okay? Whatever it’s suggesting, it isn’t true.”

I believed him. Of course I believed him.

He was my father. Why wouldn’t I believe him?