It wasn’t exactly a throwaway game, but it wasn’t nothing.
This was last year, and Hank’s hands were only his, and the Eustace Eagles were shooting for states. Their opponents, the Filton Pillagers, wouldn’t survive districts.
The score was 63–32, so a missed basket hardly mattered, apart from the infuriation. Apart from Tim Miller using his status as team captain to demand that every player do five rounds of blood and guts for each missed basket. But Tim wasn’t without confidence, either, and for the fourth quarter he’d suggested trading positions with Hank.
Hank had good enough handles to play point guard when he had to, and it might make for a thrilling finale to a lackluster game.
The player marking Hank, a waspish, ginger-haired number seventeen, tried stealing the ball only once before he realized it was a no-go; now he seemed preoccupied with restricting Hank’s movements as much as possible.
Hank barely noticed. The only worry Hank had, as far as number seventeen was concerned, was not stepping on him.
In his peripheries Hank saw Tim rush forward, teeth bared, positioning himself on the right side of the free throw line. He was ready for the pass, and Hank would give it to him—Hank was nothing if not a reliable team player, and the ball felt more alive if you kept it in motion.
Hank dribbled slowly, with almost painful deliberation, through the center circle and then instantly picked up momentum, shoes squeaking on the floorboards. Number seventeen ghosted his right side, half a step behind.
At the top of the key Hank jerked left, as if to pull away—
Number seventeen followed.
Hank passed the ball from his left back to his right hand. With a sudden burst of speed, a full-fledged push from the ball of his left foot, Hank was gone.
He grinned. People thought if you were big you had to lumber.
Hank let the ball fly from his fingertips to Tim’s, then swooped back around and all but hugged the baseline alongside Filton players, boxing out the biggest ones, hungry for the rebound.
Not that he’d be fed. Tim rarely missed after Hank assisted.
But a freckled guy was dogging Tim’s every move, cutting forward, making Tim backstep, so Tim couldn’t get that ball up high enough—
He locked eyes with Hank again.
Hank caught the ball over number seventeen’s head and pivoted—
Hank had decent court vision, and from here could see the basket perfectly, but his eyes drifted to the sideline, as they always did even though he knew Dad wouldn’t be there—
He lifted the ball up.
“HANK THE TANKKKKK!” shouted a voice from the bench, and Hank couldn’t help but grin—and there, behind Orson, all but falling out of his seat with a pad of paper tucked under one arm—
Hank forgot to look back at the basket.
Number seventeen plucked the ball right out of his frozen hands and was away.
“The fuck, Ass-quez?!” Tim barked, before sprinting after him.
It wasn’t an important basket. They were already winning.
Why was Brendan Nesbitt on his feet, imperfect hands curled into perfect fists? Brendan Nesbitt, who almost certainly had no interest in basketball?
Or certainly didn’t, because Hank had spent a couple of years surreptitiously finding out what things Brendan Nesbitt was interested in, and mostly those things were photography and Victorian clothing and jeweled insects and being friendly and fretful and twitchy and asking questions, and probably the only way he’d be interested in basketball was if he was interested in a player.
It can’t be.
The final score was 83–54.
Tim and the others jostled Hank in the locker room, swore at him a bit, thumped him on the shoulders while they changed.
“Guys, guys, Tank’s going through heartbreak.” Orson mimed the tiniest violin. “Have pity on his poor ugly soul.”
Word had spread about his breakup with Carmella. Word of the reasons why hadn’t yet, because Carmella would never tell anyone about Hank bawling over space barbarians on the couch.
Hank buried his gaze in his duffel bag and waited for the others to leave without him, claiming he had to take a dump. This was one surefire way to clear a locker room.
Brendan was waiting in the cubby beside the trophy case. His sketch pad rested on jittery knees.
Hank forced himself to breathe. “Hey, Nesbitt. What’s up?”
Brendan Nesbitt tipped his head sideways. “Usually fluorescent bulbs. But, um, there’s never a truly funny way to answer that question, is there? Any answer always falls flat but I always try to make it work regardless. Probably a manifestation of my anxiety. Which is another statement that always, ah, falls flat.”
“You don’t have to be funny.” Every word from Brendan had thought inside it.
“Thanks, Coach? Ha. Sorry.”
Hank swallowed. He forced himself not to stare at the cheekbones under those wire glasses. Don’t break this.
“Didn’t think you were a basketball fan.” Everything Hank ever said had no thought inside it. He hated that in himself, loved the opposite in Brendan.
“Oh, I’m not.” Brendan flipped through his sketch pad. “I’m doing homework for Drawing II. We’re supposed to be capturing human bodies in motion. I heard a rumor that people move during basketball. Carmella reminded me there was a game tonight.”
Of course. Carmella. Never tell anyone, except the one at the center of everything.
“Well, hope you got some good stuff!” Jesus. Someone should cut off Hank’s big, stupid tongue, big and stupid like all of him, like his size-fourteen feet. “See you, Nesbitt!”
Before he reached whatever respite the evening air might offer his burning face, Brendan’s voice rose.
“I only drew pictures of you, Hank.”
When Hank turned, Brendan was standing.
“What?”
Eyes that were simply eyes. “I came here to draw you. Just you.”
Hank shook his head. “Didn’t you take Drawing II last semester?”
Brendan Nesbitt always seemed so uncertain, so kind, but now he was firmly determined in his movements. He took three strides closer to Hank, who fought the urge to step back. His blood in his ears, in all of him, uncomfortable pressures beneath his tracksuit. “And why do you know my schedule, Hank Vasquez?”
Hank stared at Brendan’s pale eyelashes. How were they the color of sand, the color of his eyes and freckles, too? How were they the exact color that made Hank want to touch them?
“Gotohomecomingwithme?” Hank whispered on an exhale, before his head could get in his way.
Brendan Nesbitt, an inch from his face, didn’t use his voice.
He stood on tiptoe and pressed his lips to Hank’s. Gone were all quivering movements.
“I’ll be wearing white and black,” he said, before the wind took him.
At Orson’s house on Halloween, Hank missed another basket.
There was no joy and no fury at the failure. There was only the empty air, becoming familiar, and the smack, no longer jarring.
So far this season, Hank had made two baskets. Neither of those baskets had been made during JV games. Neither of them had been made in the vicinity of Coach Huang, who seemed to have given him up as a lost cause.
“Nerve damage? Just do what you can.”
Helpful as Carmella’s rumor remained, Hank knew that wasn’t all.
His hands were stronger now. He could hold spoons, he could lift as much as he ever had in Strength and Conditioning class. His handwriting no longer personified attempted paper murder.
But a wall shot up inside his head whenever he touched a ball. It made his heart and hands stutter in turn. All of him was connected to all of him.
A basketball thwacked Hank in the side.
“I swear my hand slipped!” Orson slapped his knees.
“Yeah, right.” Hank wasn’t angry at him in the least.
Hank had remained on the JV team only because Orson kept him playing. And Hank had made friends with underclassmen, like oddball Adam Paul Robert (“I’ve got three first names!”) and exchange student Friedrich Kirschner (“Ich bin aus Kreiszig gekommen!”), because Orson had introduced Hank as someone worth knowing. The JV team wanted to win, but more than that they just wanted to play. On varsity, there were people punching walls and crushing bottles underfoot after defeats. The JV guys laughed off losses over plates of General Tso’s at the China Buffet.
It was Orson’s fault that Hank came here after meeting with Henry Flowers on Halloween, nothing but missing hoops and laughter on his agenda. It was easy to forget the world here.
When Hank had first entered the Liu home during the second week of September, he was greeted by the foreboding glare of Orson’s grandmother. Orson led him through a marbled kitchen to the patio where she was playing solitaire.
“Ni hao, Nainai. This is Hank. Hank, this is my grandma.”
Hank didn’t offer his hand, but a hearty smile. “Nice to meet you.”
Grandma Liu took in Hank’s size, bending her cards in silence. Hank became aware that his shoulders were blocking her light. He wished himself smaller.
She muttered something in Mandarin. Orson sighed and replied.
“Yes, Grandma, this is the supergay one,” he repeated, in English. “Got any other nice things to say?”
She waved them away. They escaped to the back porch.
“So … what did you really tell her?”
“Oh, you heard me. Just the thing about you being supergay. I don’t front, Hank Vasquez, my boy. And neither should you.”
Hank smirked. “But sometimes you’re on the frontcourt.”
“Heyyyyy.”
“Heyyyyy.”
“And everything centers around you. Oh, man, I can’t handle this level of pun-ography. If it’s gonna be like this, you can’t keep coming over. I’ll be a basket case in no time. You get me?”
Hank snorted. “That’s fucking terrible.”
Orson hung his head in mock sadness. “I know. Imagine the hoops I’d have to jump through to get better.”
“Goddamnit, stop it, Orson.”
Despite the puns, by now Hank was used to the view from Orson’s porch. Calling it a porch when his father had turned it into a multipurpose court for his tennis and his son’s basketball seemed like underselling it. You couldn’t call it a yard, either, because one of those stretched lush and green from another tier below, an oasis complete with automated sprinklers.
Hank could see the smear of Nameless Canyon in the distance, but had noticed immediately: he couldn’t see his house from here.
“Still an awesome view.” Hank sat taller on the bench.
“Oh, man.” Orson threw him a bottle of Pocari Sweat. The oily taste really did grow on you. He fanned a hand at the horizon. “One day, son, all this will be yours.”
“Don’t start that crap again.”
“You can say ‘shit.’ Gran can’t hear you. Probably. We’ll know pretty quick by whether or not she starts throwing cutlery from the window.”
“It’s a habit. I have a little brother, remember.”
“I met Milo. He’s too suave to swear, but if he heard you do it he’d just straighten his—whatsit? What are they? The little one-lensed glasses things?”
“Monocle?” They were part of Victorian fashion, something Brendan knew about.
“Yeah, Milo’d fix his monocle and take notes.”
Hank swigged his Pocari and cringed. “What does that mean?”
“Your brother’s like a little genius, isn’t he?”
“I don’t think his teachers say so. But yeah. He totally is.”
Orson mimed looking at a watch. “That does it for tonight, good man.”
“We’ve only been here an hour?”
Orson wiped his forehead. “Yeah. I’ve sort of got a thing?”
“Well, you have a few things.” Hank climbed to his feet.
“Miller’s having a thing tonight to celebrate winning districts.”
Hank aimed. Missing as usual, smiling as usual. “Oh? A thing, huh?”
“A Halloween party. It’s stupid. But the whole team’s going and it would be kind of weird if I didn’t.”
“I remember last year’s. Ben O’Brien hosted it.”
“What a shit show that was.”
Hank’s first shot of Jäger, followed by the first time he’d locked himself in an upstairs bathroom because he felt the alcohol making his lips loose, making him want to say gay things and kiss gay things or not gay things, guy things would have been fine.
“Gotta make an appearance. You know how it is. Politics! I’d rather be sipping sweet, sweet Pocari here with you, man. Shooting the shit.”
“Yeah.” Hank wasn’t sure how he felt, but he knew he didn’t like seeing Orson so uncomfortable. “My shooting is shit.”
“Ha.” Orson couldn’t muster a pun. “But you get me, right?”
“Yeah, no, I get you.” Hank let slip a rare real smile.
He appreciated Orson’s effort. Most people didn’t bother Hank anymore, thanks to Carmella. But they also didn’t bother with him. He’d gone missing, after all.
Orson mimicked spiking his bangs. “This magic doesn’t happen by accident. I’m gonna dump a bucket of gel on my luscious locks. Feel free to hang here as late as you want.”
“And have your grandma sneer at me? Nah, I’ll head out.”
“Hey, man, that’s just her face. Don’t be mean.”
“Come on, she hates me.”
“Okay, she might. But!” Orson gave him a thumbs-up. “It’s because you’re kind of Mexican, not because you’re supergay.”
“That’s nice to know.” Hank retrieved the ball. “Orson?”
“Shoot.”
“Do the varsity guys know you hang out with me?”
Orson didn’t meet his eyes. “Well, probably. Lady’s man, man’s man, dog’s man, cat’s man, other animal’s man. I hang out with everybody.”
“Yeah. I guess you do.”
Orson was the reason Hank was still playing basketball, but Hank wasn’t the reason Orson was anything. It should have been fine. It didn’t change Orson’s generosity, his heartfelt rescue of Hank this autumn.
Hank was just a monster. Part of him wanted to own things, to possess them. And he really didn’t know if that was Luz’s residue or not. Maybe he’d always had this greedy pit at his core. Maybe that came from Dad.
“I’d ask you to come with, but I know you don’t want to.”
Hank thought of Henry Flowers. The request that he look for things he shouldn’t see. Right now, his fists were all his own.
“Actually.” Hank flashed a wide one. “I do want to.”
Orson hardly blinked. “Really?”
“Why the hell not. It’s Halloween!” Time to do something terrifying.
It could have teetered either way. Then Orson’s face split open and he started pounding Hank on the shoulder. “Exactly! Miller can suck it! We’re coming to his party and we’re gaying it up!”
“You helping me with that?” Orson seemed about as gay as Hank was smart.
“Just cheering you on, buddy. Just cheering you on.”
Hank wondered if this was a moment worth sketching.