Sharkman

Sharkman by Steve Alten Read Free Book Online Page A

Book: Sharkman by Steve Alten Read Free Book Online
Authors: Steve Alten
the coach’s sarcasm. “Sure, Coach. Just don’t piss him off.”
    The team cracked up, guys pounding knuckles and slapping palms. The jock world lives by the law of the jungle—the strong always picking on the weak. Back in San Diego, I had fought my way from being locker room prey to earning a place at the table, and there was nothing better than being one of the predators—one of the guys.
    There was nothing worse than being the team meal and Stephen Ley clearly had a boner for me.
    “All right, knock it off. We open against West Boca in two weeks; play the way you played Saturday against Seminole Ridge and we’ll be lucky to finish the season at .500.”
    Coach Flaig started the DVD. “Defense. We opened in man-to-man, hoping to put pressure on their guards. They must have run this same high screen and roll twenty times, and twenty times our guards were late contesting their three. Stephen, that’s your man setting the pick. What’s missing here?”
    “Looks like Jerome, Coach. Yo, ’Rome, I told you all game, you got to fight your way around the screen. Same for Michael Jay and Rusty. You guys got lit up.”
    “Shut up, Ley.”
    “Stephen’s right. Seminole’s backcourt scored forty-one points—including seven treys. Who can tell me why?”
    Heads dropped, except for Stephen Ley’s—the “emperor” proud in his royal clothes—only I could see that he was naked.
    “Ley didn’t hedge the screener,” I heard myself saying.
    Heads turned. Was the crippled antelope really challenging the lion?
    “Explain it to him, Kwan,” Coach Flaig barked.
    I rolled out from the shadows of the bleachers, my heart pounding as I pointed to the frozen image of the screen and roll. “The defender guarding the guy setting the screen has to hedge . . . he has to jump out on the opposite side of the pick, forcing the ball handler to go wide. That buys the defending guard an extra second or two to fight through the screen, catch his man, and defend the shot.”
    “Owned,” yelled Jerome. “Yo, Ley, why you making us look so bad?”
    “And you never called out the picks,” chimed in Rusty.
    “Shut up, scrub.” He turned to me, his eyes full of venom. “Who the fu—”
    Coach Flaig blew his whistle, cutting him off. “We win as a team, we lose as a team, and we play help defense as a team. Everybody has to talk. Bigs have to hedge. Guards have to fight over the screen. Get it now, because we’re gonna drill the screen and roll all afternoon until you do. Everyone on the baseline for suicides.”
    Groans and moans as the team stomped down the bleachers, a few sneakers kicking at my chair.
    Coach Flaig smiled at me. “I’m still looking for a team manager. You up for it?”
    “No, thanks, Coach. I already volunteered for another program.”
    I rolled out of the gym as the whistle blew, sending the team sprinting from the end line to the foul line and back, to half court and back . . . to the opposite foul line and back—and finally from end line to end line and back.
    Suicides. Pounding hearts and burning lungs and quads drenched in lactic acid.
    I hated suicides—all basketball players do, yet I would have traded my right arm to be able to run them again.

8
    W ednesday. I woke up, excited to begin my internship with Anya at the facility in Miami.
    First, I had to survive the wrath of Stephen Ley.
    The basketball star was pissed off, and he was letting everyone know it on Facebook and Twitter. Heading to first period, I could feel the stares and hear the whispers from the other students—herds of strangers, pointing at the “dead man rolling.”
    High school’s like that. Students move in groups. There’s protection among your own kind, a feeling that you belong. Doors open, you get invited to parties . . . what counts is you’re not one of the losers who stay at home on Saturday nights, you’re not the slowest camper—the one who gets eaten by the bear.
    Back in San Diego I had been a jock, at the

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