Tilt - Alan Cumyn [17]
Stan couldn’t see where Hartleman was. He couldn’t see the basket. He could barely see Brolin, for that matter. It was all a mash . . .
But his body knew what to do. Bounce, bounce, a fake to the right . . . and Brolin smiled. Smiled!
Stan didn’t know where the basket was till he was shooting. His wrist was releasing, and there it was finally . . . ludicrously far away.
Brolin eased into position to collect the rebound . . . which didn’t come because the ball fell through pure as rain.
“In! It’s in!” screamed Hartleman. Then the senior was hugging him. Screaming right in Brolin’s meaty face. “We got a boy here can fucking shoot!”
The ball was blowing off toward a puddle. Blake went after it. For a moment Stan thought they’d have to play again, that Brolin was simply not going to accept the result.
But Brolin was looking at something else—at someone. Stan had a hard time following his gaze. He had a hard time figuring if his feet were on the ground.
But eventually he saw.
There was Coach Burgess by the door, his big hands in the pockets of his sweatpants.
8
Stan sat through biology class trying not to stare at Janine Igwash in her clingy black top. He was trying to think of how exactly to tell her he wasn’t going to the dance even though he’d said he would. But it was almost impossible because Jason Biggs, every few minutes, kept saying things like, “You and Hartleman beat Brolin and Blake two-on-two! With Burgess watching! Unbelievable!”
It was unbelievable. Given the wind, the bent rim, Stan’s dizzy head, how far away he was when he took that shot.
He couldn’t tell her about his father. That would be too much. But maybe his mother could be sick. With what? Nothing too serious. A bad flu, so Stan would have to stay home and look after Lily and it really was tough luck about the dance, thanks so much for thinking of him. He might actually be carrying flu himself so don’t stand so close.
Sometimes solutions seemed to come out of the air.
“And Brolin was covering you on the last shot! That’s what I heard!” Jason Biggs said. “You are in! You are on the senior team!” He shook his pimply face at the wonder of it and Mr. Stillwater looked up from his marking to glare at Stan.
They were supposed to be reading from the textbook and Stan had exactly the correct page open on his desk. But Stillwater still glared at him.
“You are on the senior team!” Biggs whispered again.
Tryouts wouldn’t start till Monday. But Stan felt a little giddy wind inside, fluttering with the possibilities.
As soon as biology ended, Stan would walk out with Janine Igwash and tell her about his mother’s flu. He’d do it in the hallway where it would be so noisy no one else would hear. “I’m so sorry,” he’d say. “Maybe I shouldn’t even be in class today. I might be infectious myself.”
He too could be sorry.
But what was she doing inviting him in the first place?
It would be a small lie to keep other larger stupid things from happening.
“I heard Brolin was so mad he bent the junior hoop right out of shape,” Jason Biggs whispered.
Stan read about how light hit the retina and created an upside-down image. The signals intersect at the optic chiasm and cross over to the opposite side of the brain for reversal in the visual cortex.
But what if the actual world was upside down and we saw clearly but our brains misprocessed all the information?
Maybe some people saw things correctly — upside down to everyone else. And maybe those same few were all in asylums banging their heads against their bedpans because everyone else was crazy.
Stan found himself flipping through the book, past cell division, past photosynthesis, past the organs of digestion . . . to the human reproductive system.
The page just fell open: The Female Reproductive Organs. They were fantastical shapes in yellow, pink, orange, blue. Like flowers and gourds stuck up inside shadowy female flesh. It was a brand new book so no previous student had had time to scribble foolishness