The Only Good Indians(81)

Forty dollars or not, right here’s where the real money is.

“Sixteen–eighteen,” Shaney says.

“Give up now, you want,” Denorah says back. “There’s no shame. I’m younger, faster, play every day. You’ve taken this farther than anyone else would have.”

Shaney laughs at this.

“You should probably be asleep now anyway,” Denorah says, “right? Or you and Jo on different schedules or something?”

“I slept for ten years,” Shaney says back.

After a breath to make sense of this, to not make sense of this—she didn’t step on a court for a whole decade, and can still play like this?—Denorah bounces the ball across.

Because she’s winded, Shaney takes the ball up into the Crow version of triple-threat, which more and more Denorah’s thinking might actually be some sort of quadruple-threat, and turns around to back her defender down, probably muscle her back at the end of that, fall back on one leg, bank it in. Not showy, but, if there’s no three-second violations, generally effective in one-on-one like this.

But now Denorah knows not to try to reach around, slap the ball. That’s what Shaney’s waiting for. Probably she’s just acting spent, is really ready to spin off Denorah, go up and under, lay it in.

Denorah thins her lips, shows her teeth where Shaney can’t see, and shakes her head no to the chance of that happening. Not on this defender. Not in this game.

Still, when Shaney bounces back into her, she can’t help but give six inches, a foot.

Again, again.

Denorah steps in to regain ground, leading with her hips now because Coach says that’s where women are most solid, and when Shaney’s hair is in her mouth she spits it out but doesn’t raise a hand to guide the strands out, because being grossed out doesn’t matter, not when a point’s at stake.

Except—

There’s something wet on Denorah’s chin?

Now she does raise the back of her hand, to wipe at it.

Blood?

Did she bite her tongue? Bust a lip?

No.

She backs off a full foot, to study Shaney’s back.

“Hey,” she says, stopping the game. “You’re bleeding.”

The whole back of Shaney’s pale yellow shirt is red and dripping, her hair all matted in it.

“When you hit the pole that last time,” Denorah adds.

Shaney keeps dribbling, the ball a metronome. Her face shrouded under her everywhere hair.

“We’re playing,” she says.

“But—”

Shaney spins against nothing, is playing mad now, is up against an imaginary defender.

She slashes past Denorah, is already pulling the ball up under her arm and behind her like protecting it for a bust-through, and, because she can, because she hasn’t been in this backed-off of a position yet, Denorah reaches an easy hand out, slaps the ball from around Shaney’s back, doesn’t even have to shift her feet.

It’s not a defensive move, it’s a time-out.

The ball rolls off Shaney’s knee, out into the crunchy grass and snow. Shaney, her momentum already gathered, has no choice but to keep surging forward. For the second time in as many plays she slams into the utility pole, shaking the janky backboard, more splinters and bird-nest trash sifting down. Denorah steps out of that bad rain, clocks Shaney coming down hard and awkward right on her back, like somebody cut her legs out from under while she was up there walking on air.

She flips over fast, onto her palms and toes, and then she rolls her shoulders slow, her hair all around her face, and screams straight down into the concrete, screams for longer than her lungs should have air for.

Denorah turns her head, like studying this from a slightly different angle can make it make sense.

“Hey, hey, are you all—” she tries, leaning ahead with her hand open like to help, but now Shaney is standing in her easy, athletic way, her body loose and dangerous again.

She guides the hair out of her face and … her eyes. They’re different. They’re yellowy now, with hazel striations radiating out from the deep black hole of a pupil. Worse, her eyes are too big for her face now.

Denorah falls back, sits on the concrete with maybe half her weight, the rest on her fingertips.

She’s not making the game tonight, she knows.

“What—what are you?” she says, breathing hard from fear now, not exertion.

“I’m the end of the game, little girl,” Shaney says, then twitches her head around, stares hard at Cassidy’s camper.

Dad? Denorah says deep inside, her heart fluttering with hope.

She looks to the right, trying to will three or four horsemen up from the grey trees, dogs weaving ahead of them.

There’s nothing.

“The end of your game, anyway,” Shaney goes on.

“Why are you doing this?” Denorah says, her voice getting more shaky at the end than she planned.

“Ask your father,” Shaney says right back, still watching whatever she’s watching over at the camper, or the sweat, or the cop car.

“My dad? Why? What did he do? He doesn’t even know you.”

“We met ten years ago. He had a gun. I didn’t.”

To prove it she whips her hair away from her melty forehead, leans forward so Denorah can take a long look.