Dance Real Slow by Michael Grant Jaffe Page B

I’m concerned, you’re all the same—starting at ground zero.”
    Most of them are staring at points off behind me, with shallow expressions on their faces. Except for Calvin, who truly appears interested, for he has never heard me talk this way, and certainly never to a captive audience this size. His head is cocked and his mouth forms a supple, pink O.
    â€œI suppose,” I say, and then fall silent. Although it has not turned especially cold yet, one of the space heaters over my shoulder clicks on, rattling with a tinny belch at first and then settling into a steady, low-pitched hum. “Really, I’m not a basketball coach at all. I’m a father—a lawyer.” The decision came to me several nights ago, as I lay nearly asleep in the gentle darkness of my bedroom: if I made an effort, I could manage coaching this team for a few months. I would not allow those fears of mirroring my father, of being like him in ways I could not tolerate, to stop me from attempting something I might actually enjoy—that Calvin might enjoy, too. Perhaps,along with the delicate attention to the details of daily life, basketball might serve to bring Calvin and me closer together, which is exactly what it did not do for my own father and me. “Mostly, I’m just trying to help out Coach Miller.”
    Peter Sawyer smiles when I look his way and then drops his eyes, hypnotized by the dark cuticle pattern in the wooden seat beneath him.
    â€œLet’s … let’s make this fun. All right?”
    Most of the boys nod. At first, I have them run a simple lay-up drill, forming two lines, one at each side of the basket. After a while, they switch sides, shooting instead from the left. Then I call out Peter Sawyer and another boy and have them choose teams for a scrimmage, with each boy introducing himself to me after he is picked. Midway through the selection process, one of the missing boys walks in, barefoot, his sneakers tied together, slung over his right shoulder.
    â€œHey, wait a minute,” says Peter, gesturing toward the new boy and then turning to me. “He’d have been my first or second pick. Now they’ve got Eric
and
Noah. They’re the two best players.”
    Eric Shaw, the first selection, is nearly six feet six inches tall—lean, with sharp, well-defined muscles stretched tight over his bones, creating thin, mottled ridges that catch crescents of light on his tobacco-colored skin. His calves are narrow as forearms and he walks on the balls of his feet with a quick, short bounce. His hair is shorn close as a shadow, leaving only stubble.
    The late arrival is Noah Ward. He sits on the floor, bunching his socks before slipping them on his chalkyfeet. I recognize him as one of the letter-jacket-clad boys from the football game Calvin and I attended a month or so ago. Noah was the boy driving the pickup truck with the miniature basketball sneakers swinging from the rearview mirror. His face is narrow and angular, with a minor constellation of freckles spattered across the bridge of his nose. Bisecting the nearly perfect oval of his left earlobe is a small, gold hoop earring. He doesn’t seem concerned in the least which team he ends up on, or that he has interrupted practice.
    â€œWhy’re you late?” I ask.
    â€œJust one of those unavoidable things, you know?”
    â€œNo, I don’t know. I believe this is what’s called getting off to a bad start. So let’s try again. Why are you late?”
    â€œGirl problems,” he answers, rising to his feet.
    Someone mutters something under his breath about a person named Ann and a few of the other boys snicker.
    â€œLook, y’all don’t have to be here if you’ve got better things to do with your time,” I say, preparing to kick a basketball from out of my path. But I stop, realizing I sound an awful lot like my father when he was coaching. These are boys, simply boys, and this