Airball

Chapter 19 - Break Point

January 14, 2020.

It was Tuesday, which was the first day of the week in what felt like forever that wasn't going to be followed by a game. I had started in game 8 last Friday as well as game 9 yesterday. Game 10 wasn't until tomorrow so it felt like I had a little bit of a break, even though I still had practice to attend to after school. I had scored 6 points during the game on Friday and 9 during the game yesterday. The odd number on yesterday's game was from a free throw shot that I made, though, not a three pointer, which was a shot I had yet to make during any game this season. Scoring at all in the first place was still an improvement for me, so I was pretty happy with my performance.

It was still early in the week, and it was going pretty mediocre in terms of everything outside of basketball. On the good side, I'd been doing well in my classes. I got back a perfect score on a math quiz, an A on a human geography quiz, and I even did pretty well on a biology test. Despite this, my biology grade might be about to drop again, which brings us to the bad side. For one, Harper had been pretty cold to me recently, and I couldn't figure out why. She wasn't acting mean or even ignoring me really, but she seemed more closed off than she had in the past. Nathan, Cam, and Max were still avoiding me when they could, but to be fair I was also avoiding them. I wished I could think of something to do about that situation, but nothing was coming to me. It wasn't really too much of a problem, since Cam acted pretty normal during games when we were on the court together. I hadn't been on the court at the same time as Nathan (Coach Hendrix probably had something to do with that) and I had only been on the court with Max for a minute or two, which wasn't long enough for something to happen. Chance also returned to school yesterday. He hadn't been in any classes or come to any of the games since his incident. I thought that they might have suspended him, but he might just have been taking some days to himself. He was at the game yesterday, and just sat on the bench the entire game glaring at me. I guess he didn't like that I had taken his position. I didn't really care though. What was he going to do about it?

I walked down the hallway thinking about all this. I guess my week had more bad points than good points but when you add in my basketball performance as of late, I guess it balanced out. Things always have a way of doing that. I was about halfway to my next class when someone yelled something from behind me.

"Blake, look out!"

I turned right as some strong hands shoved me backwards against the wall of lockers. My books fell out of my hands and my shoulders were pressed back against the lockers. The person I ended up facing? You guessed it—Chance.

"Hey, man..." I said weakly, but I knew that there was no talking my way out of what was coming. The look in Chance's eyes as he faced me was filled with more rage than I'd ever seen in a person before.

"Did 'next time' come earlier than you thought?" he growled at me. "You really thought you could steal my spot on the team without any consequences?"

"Look, you don't want to do this," I tried to reason, but my voice hardened all the same. I hated bullies. I had lost my cool on one in middle school, and it cost me greatly. So I tried to stay calm. "Not here, and not now."

He tightened his grip on my shoulders. I looked around to see that lots of people had gathered around to see what would happen. It was mostly people who weren't on the basketball team and had no idea what was happening, but I did see Jackson and Nathan mixed in the crowd, neither of which was coming to stop what was happening. "You mean that you don't want to do this."

"No, I don't," I replied. "You know why? Because then we'll both be kicked off the team, and that helps no one."

"You deserve to be kicked off the team!" Chance shouted.