True Legend (17 page)

THIRTY-FIVE

D
rew could only think of one thing to ask, picturing the room the man said was empty now.

“What about the books?” Drew said.

“What books?”

“The books he had in his room.”

“Must be in the boxes downstairs. Said he'd come back for them. Then he paid up and left. Like I told you: the guy was gone like the wind.”

Drew was still picturing the books and that old basketball he played with at Morrison. All Legend really had.

“You ask him where he was going?” Drew said. “Why he was just up and leaving?”

“Kid,” the man said, “let me explain something to you. I'm the manager of this dump, not a concierge.”

Drew walked past him, walked outside, taking deep breaths, trying to process what had just happened.
I won't run,
Legend had said.

Only now he had.

Drew had trusted him.
Same as he trusted me,
Drew thought.
He asked me to keep his secret, keep my word, and I did. Why couldn't he keep his in return, instead of running?

All the way home, walking on his sore knee and not even caring, Drew wondered if he still needed to keep Legend's secret, wondered if you were obligated to keep your word when somebody else didn't keep his.

Wondered if there was some kind of rule about that.

He thought about a lot of things, trying to figure out his next move. The player whose moves on the court always came natural.

When he got to his room, his mom not home, he called Mr. Gilbert and asked if Eddie could come get him. Mr. Gilbert said sure, then laughed and said, “Of course he won't be picking you up in the Maserati. Don't know if you heard, but it's in the shop.”

“Funny,” Drew said, and then asked if Eddie could leave right away—it was kind of important.

• • •

When he got to the house, Mr. Gilbert didn't ask what he needed, just wanted to talk about the knee.

“You never leave practice,” he said, “the way you never take yourself out of a game.”

“Caught Tyler just right,” Drew said. “And you know how strong that boy is. If it's still yakking at me tomorrow, I'll take one more day off, just to be on the safe side.”

“If it's still hurting tomorrow, we're going to have the best orthopedic guy in LA take a look at it.”

“No,”
Drew said. The words coming out on fire. He didn't want the top orthopedic guy in LA to take a close look at him and wonder how Drew could have gotten a bruise like that clipping a teammate.

“It's just dinged, is all,” Drew said. “Not like I took a bullet.”

“Blah, blah, blah,” Mr. Gilbert said. “If you're not out there for practice, you and me are taking a ride.”

“Figgeritout,” Drew said. “I'm not gonna do anything that would jeopardize the season.”

“I don't care one way or another about this season,” Mr. Gilbert said. “I'm looking at the next one. And the one after that.”

Drew knew what he had to say to end this. “Don't worry,” Drew said. “We both got our eye on the prize.”

“Well,” Mr. Gilbert said, giving Drew his cocky grin, “at least when you're not playing NASCAR with one of
my
cars.”

Mr. Gilbert had been cool about the accident from the start, even though Drew knew he wouldn't have been nearly as cool if he'd known Drew had been the one behind the wheel and had gotten himself hurt because of that.

Drew wondered how the man would have reacted if it had been Robbie taking one of the fancy cars out for a joyride.

“Stuff happens,” Mr. Gilbert had said, and had even tried to plead Lee's case with Coach, saying that he'd done a lot worse in high school. With Mr. G, you could never know whether he thought trying to get Lee's suspension reduced was the right thing to do or whether he thought doing that made him look good.

Or maybe he just didn't want to get mad at Lee because he thought Drew might not like that, another sort of star treatment for Drew.

Which never seemed to end, no matter how much you were the one in the wrong. Legend had said that the only time the star treatment ended was when you no longer were one.

“So what's on your mind tonight?” Mr. Gilbert said. “You needed to come over?”

“I need a favor,” Drew said, “and my mom is still too mad for me to ask her.”

“That's all?” Mr. Gilbert said. “You sounded like it was something serious. You want a favor, you got it.”

“But I didn't tell you what it is.”

Mr. Gilbert gave him a look, like he couldn't believe what he was hearing. “True,” he said, “this is me. Your all-around man.”

“Sorry, sometimes I forget how generous you are.”

Laying it down now.

“So what can I do you for?”

“I need Eddie to drive me down to Santa Monica,” Drew said. “To see a guy.” Then he added, “For a paper I'm working on.”

• • •

When Coach Fred Holman opened the door and Drew told him why he was there, Holman said, “He's dead, is where he is.”

Drew could only imagine, standing there, not being asked to come in, what it must have been like to play for this guy. When Coach John Wooden, the famous old UCLA coach, had died a couple of years before, Drew had read some of the stories about how people used to go see him at his little place in Encino like they were going to see some holy man at a shrine. He didn't see that happening with the old coach standing in front of him, looking at Drew like he'd come to sell him something.

“You're the only one who knows he's alive besides me,” Drew said.

Fred Holman looked to be wearing the same clothes he'd worn the first day, the same sweater even.

“You should have called first,” he said.

“I just wanted to get up here and see you as soon as I could.”

“You want me to help you find him,” Coach Fred Holman said. “Give me one good reason why.”

This time the truth came out easy.

“Because I'm his friend,” Drew said.

THIRTY-SIX

C
oach Fred Holman told Drew he could show himself out—the Lakers were about to play the Suns, and he wanted to watch.

“But before you go, you ought to know something,” he said to Drew. “He's run before. And when he finally turned up, it turned out he'd been in a place I should have known to look for him.”

“I'm not sure what you're telling me.”

“It's not rocket science,” Fred Holman said. “You've scouted the man. Haven't you
learned
anything?”

Drew felt like the old man was trying to help out, 100 percent, but he still made it sound as if he were telling Drew to get off his lawn.

But that was it. The old man didn't even offer to shake hands before Drew walked out the front door and got into Mr. Gilbert's car, safely in the passenger's seat this time.

On the way back to Agoura Hills, he thought about what the old man had meant, almost making it sound as if Legend might be hiding in plain sight. But it wasn't as if he had all this free time on his hands to go searching for him. He had three regular season games left and a knee to manage without letting on how much it was hurting him, because there was no way he was coming out of the lineup, not with Lee already out.

He knew what these games meant to Lee.

Plus, he had the paper to finish.

He wound up working on that when he got home, worked on it late into the night, revising it, acting like the student his mom wanted him to be. Working on it all by himself, no help from Lee.

No help from Legend.

He'd decided that he was going to tell the reader—Mr. Shockey, in this case—from the jump that Donald wasn't his subject's real name, that he was a real person, a player the world had pretty much forgotten. Given up for dead, so to speak.

Writing about a playground legend, he treated it like a playground game, establishing the rules.

He didn't say what city Legend was from, didn't say where he'd played his high school ball. Just said he was a perfect example of how everything could go all sideways and haywire on you, not just your basketball but your whole dag-gone life.

Two
A.M.
, he was still writing.

Trying the best he could, in his own thoughts and words, to get to what he thought about “Donald,” what had happened to him.

And the more he wrote—surprised at how into it he was now—the less it was about some grade he was trying to get, or what Mr. Shockey was going to think about what he was writing.

Drew simply wanted to get this
right.

Before he shut down his laptop at a quarter to three, he read everything he'd written since he'd gotten home from Coach Holman's house, and it was like the words had been written by somebody else.

Sometimes he wasn't sure whether he was writing about Legend or about himself.

Drew turned out the light, got into bed, closed his eyes, tried to clear his mind. But his mind was still busy.

Full of this one thought: he was ending the season pretty much the same star player—the
playa—
he'd been when the season started. But somehow, something he never saw coming, he hoped he was turning into a different person.

Maybe that was why, when he was done writing the paper, he wrote one more thing before he went to bed. An e-mail to Callie Mason he should have written a lot sooner.

One that just had two words in it: “I'm sorry.”

• • •

Oakley beat St. Thomas, no worries, ending up winning by twenty. Drew sat out the last eight minutes while guys off the end of the bench finally got some real burn. He was happy with the win, and even happier that nobody seemed to notice, not even Lee, that he was playing the game at a different speed than usual.

Mostly no one questioned Drew's health because by the time St. Thomas came out of its match-up zone near the end of the first half, Drew had already torched them for twenty-four points, going five for five from beyond the three-point arc.

It hurt, but he knew he would have hurt all over if he hadn't gone on the floor this time.

By the time Drew sat down for good, he was glad Coach didn't need a full game out of him tonight.

Glad the team didn't.

It was when he was sitting at the end of the bench next to Lee—Lee in his blazer and tie and khaki pants—wanting to ice but no way to do that without people noticing, that he saw Callie. She was sitting up in the stands.

It was the first time he'd seen her there since the H-O-R-S-E game.

He told himself not to get his hopes up, knowing her being there might not have anything to do with him. After all, she still hadn't responded to his apology. Drew had wondered if he'd sent the e-mail to the right address.

Maybe she didn't care whether he was sorry or not.

But at least she was there.

• • •

Darlene Robinson was waiting for Drew in the gym after he had showered and dressed, telling himself he'd ice when he got home, first thing.

When he walked through the opening in the bleachers at the locker-room end of the court, Callie was there, with some of her teammates.

“Hey,” he said, hoping she wouldn't chill him out because her friends were there.

“Great game,” she said. “And by the way? I accept.”

“Accept what?”

“Your apology.”

Drew didn't need to do the math: she'd just said more words to him than she had since she walked out of the gym that day. More words
combined.

And not just any words. The ones he wanted to hear.

Before he could respond, something else pretty amazing happened. Amazing to him, leastways: Callie told her friends she'd catch up with them later.

They left. She stayed.

Now Drew didn't know
what
to say.

In a quiet voice, Callie said, “You feeling okay?”

“I'm good.”

“You weren't moving like you do,” she said. “Like you can.” The girl had watched the game with basketball eyes.

“Little nicked up is all,” he said. “Caught a knee at practice the other day that was a little bit like catching a beating.”

“
Thank
you,” she said.

And smiled at him.

Drew smiled back, saying, “Nice to see my pain is working for you.”

She laughed. “God got you.”

“Payback,” Drew said.

They both stood there. Drew could see his mom at half-court, still waiting.

Finally Callie said, “You doing anything?”

“No,” he said. Fast.

“I've got my car,” Callie said.

Drew knew she'd gotten her license about five minutes after she turned sixteen.

“Yeah?” Drew said.

“I was going to stop by the library,” she said. “In town. I'm finishing this paper.”

“Me too.” Drew answered almost before she stopped talking, like he was jumping out on a pick.

“We could stop there and, like, get a burger after,” she said.

It was amazing how his knee had suddenly stopped hurting. “Yeah, sure,” he said. “But . . .”

“If you're busy—”

“No, no, nothing like that. I just . . .” He shrugged and smiled, and some air came out of him so loudly it made him laugh. “So you're not hating on me?”

Callie laughed again. “Well, as you may have noticed, I
was.
But then the more I thought about it, the more I thought, ‘The boy couldn't help himself.' Being a guy, I mean. And then I started thinking on something else, that somebody who played the game as smart and clean as you do, at least
most
of the time, can't be
all
bad.”

“I'm not.”

With that, he went over and told him mom that he was going to the library. Something he sort of hoped would make
her
stop hating on him.

“The
library
?” she said. “You sick? Let me feel your forehead.”

“I'm going with Callie,” Drew said.

She looked past him now, nodded, like that explained everything.
“Oh,”
she said, making that one word seem as long as a term paper.

“Then we might get something to eat after.”

“Oh,” she said again, and now she
smiled, something he hadn't seen her do since the whole Maserati deal.

“So don't worry about dinner for me,” he said. “I'm good.”

Was he ever.