What Happens to Goodbye(30)

“Oh, shit,” I said as he crumpled to the pavement. “Mom, I have to go.”
I tossed my phone on a deck chair, then ran down the steps to the driveway. Dave was lying in the driveway, stunned, while his friend stood a few feet away staring at me, wide-eyed. The ball had rolled into the street, stopping by a garbage can.
“Holy crap,” the friend said. “What kind of shot was that?”
“Are you okay? ” I asked Dave, dropping to my knees beside him. “I’m so sorry. I was just—”
Dave was blinking, looking up at the sky. “Wow,” he said slowly, then slid his gaze over to meet mine. “You are much better than us at this game.”
I wasn’t sure how to respond to this. I opened my mouth to try, or at least to apologize, but nothing came. Instead, we just stared at each other, and I thought of a few nights earlier, sitting on those hard wooden stairs, the sky above us. Strange meetings, above and below ground, like crazy collisions, refracting then attracting again.
“Dude, that was incredible,” his friend said, shaking me loose from this trance. “You went down like a mighty oak, felled in the forest!”
I sat back on my heels as Dave pushed himself slowly up on his elbows. Then he shook his head hard, like they do in cartoons when they’re trying to unscramble their brains. It would have been funny, maybe, if I hadn’t been the one responsible for the damage in the first place. “I really didn’t mean to—” I finally managed.
“It’s okay.” He did another head shake, then got to his feet. “No permanent damage.”
“That’s a relief,” said his friend, who had gone to chase down the ball and now returned, bouncing it in front of him. “I know he’s not much to look at, but this boy’s brain is like a national treasure.”
Dave just looked at him, his expression flat. To me, he said, “I’m fine.”

“And I’m Ellis,” his friend said, sticking out his hand. I shook it slowly. “Now that we’re acquainted, you have got to teach me how to do that shot. Seriously.”
“No,” I said, sounding sharper than I meant to. They both looked surprised. “I mean . . . I don’t really know how to do it.”
“Dave’s medulla oblongata begs to differ,” Ellis replied, pressing the ball into my hands. “Come on. Please?”
I felt my face flush. I didn’t want to. In fact, I couldn’t believe I’d even thrown the ball in the first place, much less that it had gone in. It was a testament to my dad’s teaching—administered basically since I could walk, at parks and our home court—that I could not touch a basketball for years and still make his signature shot.
While my dad loved basketball, and lived it and breathed it for most of his young life, he was not the best player: a bit on the short side, with a passable jump shot and a decent layup. But he was fast and passionate, which usually got him playing time, even if it wasn’t much. To his teammates and friends, though, he was more known for the various custom shots that hedeveloped and honed during practice downtime and in neighborhood pickup games. There were dozens of them: the Slip ’n’ Slide (a sort of backward spin move), the Ascot (a necklevel fakeout, then sudden burst to the basket), the Cole Slaw (you kind of had to see it to understand). But of them all, the Boomerang was the most famous. It was more of an assault than a shot, and required an overhand throw, practiced aim, and more than a bit of luck. Clearly, I’d had two of the three.
Now as I stood there with these two guys, both watching me expectantly, I suddenly heard the rattle of my dad’s truck. When I looked up, he was downshifting, turning into the driveway. It wasn’t until he was approaching and I saw his face, surprised, that I realized I was still holding the basketball. He pulled up, looked at it, then at me, and cut the engine.
“Look,” I said to Ellis. I . . . I can’t. Sorry.”
He looked at me, quizzical, as I knew this apology sounded entirely too heartfelt under the circumstances. Then again, it wasn’t really for him. Or even for Dave, who deserved it, considering the hit he’d taken. Instead, even as the words came I knew they were really for my dad, whose eyes I could feel on me as I handed off the ball, and walked off the court and back inside. Game over.
“Okay, try this one. Four-letter word, has an a in it. Clue is country in Micronesia.”
I heard chopping, then water running. “Guam.”
A pause. “Hey. That fits!”
“Yeah?”
I watched from the doorway of the Luna Blu kitchen as Tracey, Opal’s worst waitress, hopped up onto a prep table, crossing her legs. Across from her, at an identical table, a slim blond guy wearing an apron was chopping tomatoes, a huge red, pulpy pile in front of him.
“All right,” she said now, peering down at the folded newspaper in her hands. “How about this? Shakespeare character born via C-section.”
The guy kept chopping, using the knife to push another pile into the ones on the table. “Well—”
“Wait!” Tracey whipped out the pen front behind her ear, clicking it open. “I know this one! It’s Caesar. I’ll just . . .” She frowned. “It doesn’t work, though.”
The guy rinsed the knife, then wiped it with a bar towel. “Try Macduff.”
She squinted down at the page for a second. “Holy crap. You’re right again! You’re entirely too smart to be a prep cook. Where’d you go to college, again?”
“Dropped out,” the guy replied. Then he looked up, seeing me. “Hey. Can I help you?”