Swagger Read online

  As we walked home, neither of us said anything about Cash or the near fight. When he reached his house, Levi stopped. “It’s my birthday today,” he said. “I’m seventeen.”

  I smiled and pretended to punch him in the stomach. “Happy birthday. You doing anything special?”

  He shook his head. “No, my dad doesn’t believe in celebrating birthdays much. We’ll just have dinner.” With that, he turned and disappeared into his beater house.

  That night my grades from Redwood High finally arrived in the mail—nearly a month late. I had an A in printmaking, a C+ in geometry, and Bs in everything else. My SAT scores had come in a week earlier, and they were fine. I e-mailed Coach Richter. Five minutes after I hit Send his answer came.

  “Those are two big steps in the right direction, Jonas. Keep it up. Coach R.”

  10

  PART OF ME WANTED TO stay away from Green Lake, but that would have been a coward’s move. So Levi and I showed up the next day at the regular time. Cash and the other two guys were already there. Cash nodded at me, and then said: “How you doing, Double D?” It wasn’t an accident; for the whole time we shot around waiting for a court, he never once used “Dumb-Dumb.”

  “Double D” wasn’t great, but it wasn’t as vicious as “Dumb-Dumb.” People could hear “Double D” and not know what the nickname meant. Maybe I should have pushed harder with Cash—with all of them—but I didn’t. Cash had backed off, so I backed off. Our truce carried over to the court too. That day I made sure I got him the ball when he was open. The guy did have good hands and a shooter’s touch, even if he was a jerk.

  Cash and Nick and DeShawn left early—they were headed back to the beach and the girls. When they were gone, Levi and I found a side court and shot hoops, neither of us ready to go home. We’d been shooting for a couple of minutes when a twenty-something guy wearing a muscle T-shirt stepped onto the court. “Mind if I join you?” he asked. “Name is Ryan. Ryan Hartwell.”

  Right away I knew he was—or had been—a basketball player. He was taller than me, but not as tall as Levi. He had sky blue eyes, dark brown hair, and just the hint of a beard. He’d clearly spent some time pumping iron, but he’d built basketball muscles, not weightlifter muscles. He looked lean and strong.

  We told him our names and then went back to shooting. Hartwell had spring in his step and could knock down jumpers. He was cocky too, with the way he almost palmed the ball when he dribbled and the What else would you expect? look he got on his face when he swished a long jumper.

  We shared the ball for five minutes or so. It felt awkward shooting with a guy that much older, so I didn’t say much. Then, after I’d missed a long shot, Hartwell grabbed the rebound and held it. “I don’t want to push in where I’m not wanted,” he said, “but I’ve been watching your games these past few days. You’re good players, but there are some times—especially with the pick and roll—when your positioning is off. I could help if you’d like.”

  I glanced at Levi. In that split second, Hartwell dribbled once and then fired up a twenty-foot jumper. His effortless release resulted in a perfect swish. I looked at Levi, and he nodded. “If you’ve got something to teach us,” I said, “we’re ready to learn.”

  Hartwell started with basic plays—pick and roll, pick and pop—but then he’d show us subtle variations, stepping in to take one of our places when he needed to make a point. “Plant your foot hard before you go up for a jumper. Do that and you won’t drift. How high you jump is unimportant. Great shooters release the ball before the guys guarding them know they’re even thinking about shooting—fast like a hummingbird.”

  Eventually Levi and I wore down. Hartwell noticed, and he nodded toward the drinking fountain. A few minutes later, we were sprawled out on the gym floor, too tired to go home.

  “Did I hear you say you’re Harding guys?” Hartwell said.

  I nodded toward Levi. “He plays for Harding. I just moved to Seattle, but I started for my high school in California, and I’m hoping to play for Harding too.”

  Hartwell questioned Levi about his family, and Levi recited stuff I already knew. Then Hartwell looked back to me. “What city in California are you from?”

  “Redwood City. It’s south of San Francisco.”

  “Oh, yeah, I know where that is. My college roommate was from Palo Alto. Did your parents work for Apple or Google or one of those high-tech firms?”

  I laughed. “No way.”

  Hartwell smiled. “So you’re not a billionaire’s son?”

  “Not even close.”

  Silence followed, and then Levi stood. “I’ve got to get home,” he said.

  I climbed to my feet and followed him. As we were leaving the gym, I called back to Hartwell. “Hey, are you a coach?”

  “Not yet,” he said. “But someday.”

  11

  EVEN BEFORE ALL THE MOVING boxes were unpacked, my dad had started working at the Blue Jay restaurant in the Northgate Mall. He left the house each day around noon and didn’t return home until after midnight. You’d think that much work would wear him out, but on the rare times when I did see him, he looked better. He was losing weight, his eyes were alive, and the recycling bin wasn’t filled with empty beer bottles.

  My mom was hired at Great Clips in Greenwood, a hair salon that was close to the house. She was working part-time, but she said that she was sure it would go to full-time in a matter of months. I wanted a job too, but when I’d asked my dad about working for him at the Blue Jay, he’d screwed up his face. “I can’t hire you, Jonas. The other workers will see you as some sort of spy, and I need them to trust me. But here’s what I can do. This house needs a lot of work. I won’t have time to do any of it, so I’ll pay you a buck over minimum wage to work for me. The first thing on the list is clearing out the weeds from the flower beds. What do you say?”

  I agreed to work for him, and I drifted into a good routine. I’d get up late, eat a little breakfast, and then kill the morning doing nothing. After an early lunch, I’d stop by Levi’s house. We’d walk down to Green Lake, hook up with the Harding guys, and play until three. I’d hustle home, eat something fast, and then work in the yard or paint or clean something—whatever my dad had laid out for me. Then it was a shower, another meal—either with my mom or alone—and up to my room. I’d log on to Facebook to check for messages from Lisa Yee or Mark Westwood. Or I’d play Halo or watch a baseball game on the computer. A couple of times I asked Levi if he wanted to catch a movie somewhere, but both times he said no. Maybe movies were against his religion, or maybe he didn’t have any money.

  Ryan Hartwell would sit up in the stands every day and watch our games, shouting out encouragement. If we lost, he’d come down and shoot around with us on a side court. He worked mainly with Levi and me, but he spent time with Cash and the other guys too. I never saw him spend any time with guys from the other high schools. That puzzled me then, but now I get it. Nothing Hartwell did was by accident.

  During our sessions on the side court, Hartwell taught Levi how to do a reverse jam, how to go up and under, how to pinwheel the ball down. “A rim-rattling dunk intimidates an opponent,” Hartwell said. He paused, and a smile came to his face. His eyes took in both of us. “Get a little swagger in your game, and other teams will back off. Even the refs will back off. If you play it right, you can make the rules.”

  Levi picked up Hartwell’s lessons quickly, and both Hartwell and I tried to get him to dunk more in the actual games. Every once in a while, Levi would throw one down, but not often. It was as if he was afraid that at any minute Coach Knecht would come bursting through the doors of the gym and yell at him to knock it off. The fun parts of basketball—of anything—made Levi uncomfortable.

  One afternoon, as we were shooting around after Cash and the other guys had left, I told Hartwell about my hopes for a basketball scholarship to Monitor College. He’d gone to college somewhere in the East, and he grew interested as I spoke. “I’ve never actually been to
Monitor College,” he said, “but I’ve heard nothing but good things about it. You keep playing hard, and you’ll get that scholarship. I played Division Two college ball myself, and you’ve got enough game. Trust me—I know.”

  Hartwell’s words gave my confidence a huge boost. Still, who knew if I’d even get enough playing time to show Richter what I could do? I needed to see Brindle play the point so I could measure myself against him, but that matchup was months away.

  12

  TOWARD THE END OF AUGUST, Cash went to St. Louis to visit his brother, and Nick took off for Missoula to visit grandparents. I don’t know if DeShawn went anywhere, but he stopped coming. Guys from other teams were also gone, so the games at Green Lake became raggedy. Levi and I kept going because we had nothing else to do.

  When I returned home one afternoon, an eight-year-old Subaru Outback, a little scraped and a little dented, sat in the driveway. My mom’s new car didn’t look like much, but my dad said it was mechanically sound. “I’ll need it for work sometimes,” my mom said, “but you’ll be able to use it quite a bit. In fact, why don’t you take it and go camping up in the mountains this weekend? Ask your friend Levi. School starts soon, and you haven’t had any sort of vacation.”

  Levi and I left two days later. He could only go for two days and one night—his mother needed his help with the little girls, and he was still working with his dad to turn the store into a church, but two days worked for me too. My dad had half a dozen projects around the house that he wanted me to do.

  The Cascade Mountains are close to Seattle. We got an early start so we reached Kachess Lake in the morning. As we drove through the campground, I saw girls our age on the lake roaring about on Jet Skis. It would have been fine by me to skip the backpacking and instead spend the next couple of days hanging out on the beach.

  If Levi noticed the girls, he didn’t say anything. I drove past the lake and through the campground to the trailhead. While he filled out the paperwork and dropped the fee into the fee box, I unloaded the trunk.

  I figured we’d just sling our packs over our shoulders and start walking, but Levi had a long checklist—compass, food, water, emergency blankets, matches. It wasn’t enough to tell Levi I had the item; I had to hold it up so that he could see it. The one thing I thought important—a cell phone—he didn’t own.

  About halfway through, I got frustrated. “We’re only going out for one night, Levi. It’s no big deal if we don’t have something. We’ll survive.”

  “Only a fool goes into the mountains unprepared,” he said.

  That shut me up.

  At last we started up the trail. For the first mile, we saw kids with their parents out on day hikes. The second mile there were fewer people, mainly guys with their girlfriends. We’d smile and they’d smile, and for the first time in my life I wondered if somebody might think I was gay—a thought I didn’t like at all. Three miles out we saw backpackers, and now guys with their buddies outnumbered guys out with their girlfriends.

  Parts of the trail were steep. One spot was more than a little scary; a misstep and it was a long fall into a ravine—instant death. The backpack straps dug into my shoulders, but Levi didn’t complain, so I kept my mouth shut.

  As we hiked higher up into the mountains, I’d point to something and say: “That looks cool,” and then Levi would tell me all about it. Trees, birds, mushrooms, and insects—he knew about everything. He spotted cougar poop and explained how he could tell it wasn’t bear poop, not that I really wanted to know. “You can feel God here,” he said. “You can feel his perfect goodness.”

  At Thorp Lake, we searched for a place to set up camp. I saw a dozen spots that looked fine, but Levi found something wrong with each one. He was carrying the tent, so I trudged along, quiet, waiting.

  Finally he found an area that satisfied him: high ground, flat land, and layers of composting leaves to make the earth softer. He insisted that we set up the tent perfectly, stretching out the ropes and pounding in the pegs until our campsite looked like a magazine ad.

  We started a fire and roasted hot dogs; I wolfed down three along with a half pound of dried apricots. I’d packed the fixings for s’mores. We made some, ate them, made some more, and ate them too. As we ate, Levi told me about watersheds and how they clean the earth. I found myself yawning just as the first stars were coming out. I called it a night and headed into the tent. I didn’t think I’d sleep well, but I didn’t stir when Levi came into the tent.

  In the middle of the night, I had to pee. I unzipped the sleeping bag and the front of the tent, and then staggered outside. The fire had gone completely out, but it wasn’t dark. I looked up and understood why.

  Thousands of stars were shining down on me—way more stars than I’d ever seen on the clearest night in either Redwood City or Seattle. I could actually see the Milky Way wind its way across the heavens. I stared up at the stars until the cold forced me back to the tent and into my sleeping bag.

  The next morning I was sore, especially the back of my thighs. As we ate dried fruit and hot oatmeal for breakfast, Levi said he would have liked to keep walking deeper and deeper into the woods. I pretended to agree, but the Milky Way had been enough for one trip.

  As we hiked down, the sky clouded over. Rain hadn’t been predicted, but that didn’t stop the clouds from opening. I had nothing that could stand up against the onslaught, but Levi had packed a rain parka for himself and a spare one for me.

  It took far less time to come down the mountain than it had taken to go up. At the trailhead, we loaded our soggy stuff into the Subaru. I made a mental note to clean the trunk before returning the keys to my mother.

  As we pulled onto I-90, I suddenly wished I were alone, which probably comes from being an only child. I was afraid Levi would want to talk about . . . about what? I didn’t want to hear any more about ferns or mushrooms or beetles. Luckily, he surprised me. “I’d like to sketch, if that’s okay.”

  So he sketched and I drove, U2 playing through the car speakers. Once in a while, I peeked over at his work. He drew birds, trees, and flowers—all the things he’d pointed out to me as we’d hiked. He’d do a bird from the side, then the same bird straight on, from behind, sitting on a branch, flying. The instant he finished one animal or plant, he would turn to something new.

  He worked nonstop, filling page after page. They were amazing drawings, but they were slightly crazy, too. Why draw twenty versions of one leaf? Once he started drawing something, he didn’t seem to know how to stop.

  13

  WHEN LEVI AND I RETURNED to Green Lake the next afternoon, the first person we saw was Ryan Hartwell. “Where were you guys?” He seemed almost angry.

  When I explained that I’d gotten my mother’s car and that we’d gone backpacking, his expression changed. “I love the mountains,” he said. “If you ever need somebody to get you up into the backcountry, just ask. I’ll go anytime—rain, snow, or shine.”

  Cash came in then, his big smile and loud voice announcing his return. A couple minutes later, Nick and DeShawn strolled through the door. I hadn’t expected many other high school players to show up, but after two weeks of skimpy turnouts, nearly everyone had returned. We had ninety minutes of solid games that day, and then again every day for the following week. When we weren’t playing, Hartwell was giving us tips. Everything was so good I wanted it to go on, but when I looked at the calendar one Saturday morning, it was September 3. School was just a few days away.

  That afternoon we played our best basketball of the summer. Cash and I hadn’t become friends, but we’d become teammates. We won four in a row before we lost one of those games where nobody can buy a bucket. Even in that game, we played as a unit.

  After the last game, we stood at center court, looking at one another and feeling satisfied with what we’d accomplished. Finally Cash, DeShawn, and Nick said they were heading out. They’d reached the door when Hartwell, who’d been watching all afternoon, called them back.

 
“What’s up?” Cash asked.

  “To thank you for letting an old guy hang out with you this summer, I’m having a Labor Day party on Monday. I live across the street in the apartment building above Road Runner Sports. Number 212. There’s an interior courtyard with a swimming pool. I’ll order some pizzas. You can swim or just hang out at the pool with the girls.”

  DeShawn and Nick looked at Cash. “Sure,” Cash said. “Sounds good.”

  Hartwell turned to Levi and me. “How about you two?”

  With the gym closed for Labor Day, I’d have nothing to do on Monday except work for my dad, and I didn’t want to do that all day. Besides, Hartwell had done so much for us. “Okay,” I said, and it was understood that I was also speaking for Levi.

  “Great,” Hartwell said. “Monday around two. And you guys had better show. I don’t want to be sitting around with three large pizzas and nobody to help me eat them.”

  14

  AT TWO ON MONDAY AFTERNOON, Levi and I were standing in the lobby of the apartment building, staring at the call button next to Ryan Hartwell’s name, neither of us eager to push it. We might have slipped away, in spite of our promise, but then Cash, DeShawn, and Nick came in. DeShawn and Nick hung back, but not Cash. “There’s his name,” he said, pointing. “What are you waiting for? Push the button.”

  So I did. Immediately Hartwell’s voice came through the intercom. “I’ll buzz you in.” Three minutes later, all five of us were in his apartment.

  It was a nice place—brand-new—but without much furniture. In the main room, Hartwell had one sofa, a plasma TV on the wall, a half-filled bookcase, and that was it. Through an open door, I could see a mattress laying on the floor of his bedroom, clothes piled up around it.

  “Make yourself at home,” he said.