He had done it his whole life. Find Mom. She was always looking at him. That was the thing. She was always, always looking at him, and he had built something on that, something he didn't have a name for.
She wasn't looking at him.
She was looking at Emmett. Emmett had his head bent over the notebook, writing, and Yolanda had her body turned a quarter toward him, her elbow on her knee, and she was watching the side of his face with an expression Dante had never seen her wear in a gym. Not cheering. Not worrying about the score. Studying. Like a woman reading something written in a language she used to know.
The ball hit Dante in the hands and he bobbled it and stepped out of bounds.
Benny called timeout. Benny Alvarez was fifty-three and five-foot-seven and wore the same brown sport coat to every game he'd coached since 2009, and he did not yell, ever, which made his timeouts more frightening than other men's. He crouched in front of Dante and put one hand flat on the boy's good knee.
"Where'd you go?" he said quietly.
"Nowhere."
"Your eyes went to the stands. I saw it. Everybody in Linwood saw it." Benny didn't look toward the scout. "You don't play for the corner, son. You never have. You play for the next pass. Give me the next pass."
Dante gave him the next pass. And the next one. He didn't look up again until there were forty seconds left and Fulton Heights was up four and he was at the free-throw line, and in the silence before the first shot he let himself do it, one more time, fast.
His mother was looking at him now. Standing, hands pressed together at her mouth.
And beside her, Emmett was standing too. The notebook had slid off his knees onto the bleacher. He wasn't cheering. He was just standing, hat in his hand, watching his brother at the line.
Dante made both. They won by six. He finished with nineteen points and seven assists, and in the handshake line his knee felt like somebody had filled it with sand, and when he got to the end of the line and turned around, the man in the Linwood quarter-zip was already gone.
*
They drove home in the dark with Mama Ruth in the front seat telling a long story about a deacon's wife who had put raisins in a potato salad. Dante sat in the back with his head against the window. Emmett sat on the other side of the back seat with the notebook in his lap and the overhead light off, so he couldn't have been reading it.
At home, the boys went upstairs without speaking to each other. Mama Ruth stayed to make tea she didn't drink, kissed her daughter on the cheek, and said only, "Boring. Remember," before she drove herself home.
Yolanda stood alone in the kitchen.