Airball

Chapter 7 - Don't Trust The Blond-Haired Kid

I nodded at him. "You too."

"So, I guess we'll get ball first, then," Jackson said, more of a statement than a question.

"Not so fast," I replied. "Shoot for it."

"If you say so."

Jackson stepped up to the three point line and easily swished the ball in.

"You're pretty good," I told him.

"Think you can do better?" he smiled.

I was about to tell him that I knew that I could do better, before I realized that I couldn't do better. So instead, I accept the ball from him and shoot my shot. It bounces off the rim A bad shot, but closer than most of the ones I had taken so far.

"Gonna need to work on that," Jackson said.

I smiled his easy-going smile back at him, showing him that he wasn't the only one who could pull it off. "You just wait," I said.

Jackson pointed at me. "I like you," he said. "Alright, everyone, let's get this game going."

Bad news: I did even worse in this one.

You would think that it a game playing with people on my level, with an equal level of chemistry with everyone, I would be able to do a little better. Right?

Wrong.

Within the first seconds of the game, I ran down for a layup and got tripped. Tripped. I rolled over and saw some blond-haired dude standing above me, grinning. I reached out my hand to him, but he didn't pull me back up. He sneered. Sneered. So I picked myself back up and continued on with the game. I proceeded to miss shot after shot, with Coach Hendrix watching the whole thing. Every time I would go in for a layup or jump-shot, I would get blocked by the same blond-haired kid. And when he couldn't block me, he would give me a push. Not hard enough to draw attention, just hard enough to throw me off balance a little.

The one thing I did good was work with my team. I rotated people in and out from the bench, but I tried to keep at least two of my friends in at all times. And I threw and made plays to them. That was the only thing that kept my team in the game. I would initiate some of our old plays and we would run them, getting some easy points. But it didn't compare to the other team. Jason and the blond-haired jerk and another kid had chemistry that was a match even for Cam, Nathan, Max's, and mine.

In the end, Jackson's team won. 14-22. It wasn't an absolute blow-out, but it wasn't good either. Especially since the head coach had seen me mess up over and over and over. I started to wish I hadn't come.

Maybe it would have been easier not knowing if I was good enough to play basketball again. At least now I knew: I was not good at basketball anymore. I should just drop it, I thought.

Both games were over, and the coach blew his whistle and motioned for everyone to huddle around him. As I was walking to join the huddle, the blond-haired kid stuck out his foot in an attempt to trip me again. But that time, I'd seen it coming. I swept my own foot swiftly against the kid's other leg, and he started to topple. Before he could hit the ground, I grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him back up. When I looked closely at him, I noticed he looked a lot like me. He had the same blond hair I had, only he used a hint of gel to get his to stick up. He had the same mischievous eyes that always seemed to get me into trouble, only his were brown, not blue. He was a couple inches taller than me, but looked to be the same age. A freshman. He glared at me.

"What's your problem with me, man?" I asked him. "I don't have beef with you."

The kid didn't respond. He just shook me off him and joined the huddle. I followed, shaking my head. Some people were just thick. A gym full of several dozen players made quite the huddle indeed.