Dante froze in the doorway.
"I've been coaching thirty years," Benny said. "You think I can't see a kid favoring his left leg coming down off a rebound? Sit. Ice."
Dante sat. Benny tossed him a cold pack from a mini-fridge under the desk. For a while neither of them said anything.
"Linwood called," Benny said finally. "Coach Odom. He liked you. He likes your vision. He liked that you didn't sulk when you stepped out of bounds." He laced his fingers on the desk. "He's not going to offer you a full ride, Dante. I want you to hear that from me and not from your mother's face. It's a Division Two program. They've got some athletic money, they'd put a partial on the table, maybe forty percent if you have a strong state run. The rest would have to come from somewhere else. Grades. Need-based. Loans."
Dante looked at the cold pack on his knee.
"I thought—" he started.
"I know what you thought. I know what a lot of people have been telling you, and I've let some of it slide, because hope's good for a kid and you've worked like a dog. That's on me." Benny leaned back. "You're a very good high school point guard. You might be a very good college point guard at the right school. You are not, and I say this with love, going to be Terrence Barnes."
Dante almost laughed. "That's my dad's jersey."
"I know whose jersey it is. I coached against your dad when I was twenty-four and he was a junior. He was better than you at your age and his knee went out his senior year and he never played another organized game." Benny's voice softened. "And then he went to community college at night and became the best HVAC man on the east side and married your mother and raised you two. You understand what I'm saying? The door everybody talks about isn't the only door in the building."
Dante pressed his palms flat against his eyes.
"Get the knee looked at," Benny said. "Tomorrow. Our trainer, then a real doctor. And then tell your mother. Both things. Linwood and the knee. Before the twenty-eighth."
"The twenty-eighth," Dante said, and then he took his hands down. "Coach. The twenty-eighth. That's—"
"State quarterfinal. Seven p.m. Here, thank God, we got the home draw." Benny squinted at him. "Why?"
*
The trainer said tendinitis, and the orthopedist on Friday afternoon, a brisk woman with a gap in her front teeth, said tendinitis with some cartilage irritation underneath, nothing torn, nothing that would end anything if he was smart about it, but he was going to have to be smart about it. Physical therapy twice a week. Strength work. A brace for the rest of the season. Rest after.
He told his mother that night, at the kitchen island, with both of them standing.