True Legend by Mike Lupica Read Free Book Online Page A

basketball coming at him or just life.
    The way life was coming at him now.
    â€œI do got somebody, as a matter of fact.”
    â€œYou
have
somebody, Mr. Grammar. So who is it?”
    â€œA guy I saw playing ball one night at Morrison Park,” Drew said.
    Then it was like he was writing the paper out loud as he leaned forward in his chair, telling Mr. Shockey about the guy, how amazed he was at the basketball things he could do, how he scared the man off, bringing Lee back with him, almost as a way of proving to himself that the guy was real.
    Even as he talked his way through his paper, Drew realized he was actually going to have to find out what the guy’s story
was.
But he’d worry about that later.
    For now, he just needed to get Mr. Shockey off him, like he did when somebody guarded him too close.
    Get out of this room.
    â€œWhy do you care about this man?” Mr. Shockey said.
    Drew was still thinking fast.
    â€œI think one of the themes of my paper ought to be that, even though I feel like I know this guy, I don’t want to
be
him.”
    Mr. Shockey slapped the desk again, even harder than before. “See,
that’s
what I’m talking about! This is a subject you’re passionate about!”
    â€œ
Oh,
yeah,” Drew said, trying to make himself sound as fired up as Mr. S was. “I feel like I’ve been watching guys like this from the first time my mom thought I was old enough to start going to playgrounds by myself back in New York.”
    One more time, he was letting somebody, Mr. Shockey in this case, hear what they wanted to hear.
    It was easy, once you got the hang of it. Another way of getting somebody to do something for you.
    If there were grades for learning how to do that, Drew Robinson knew he would be getting straight A’s all the way through.
    He didn’t think he was being phony or playing a role. If anything, he told himself, he was playing the role of himself. People always said he made the game of basketball look easy, but Drew knew how hard you had to work to get to there, making it look that easy. It was the same with the things he had to say and do, the poses he needed, to make his life easier for him.
    â€œI know you can come through,” Mr. Shockey said, “just like you do when a game is on the line.”
    â€œI’m gonna prove to you I can do this.”
    â€œProve it to your
self
,” Mr. Shockey said. “I have a feeling this is going to be your best work yet.”
    Well,
Drew thought,
mine and Lee’s.
    As soon as he was out of Mr. Shockey’s office, he went straight for the gym. He had a class after his free, history, but his history teacher, Mr. Williams, was the biggest basketball fan of all his teachers. Had played high school ball himself—a story he never got tired of telling Drew—and had never gotten over it.
    Drew knew he could skip history as much or as often as he wanted, that Mr. Williams really was his boy and would take care of him.
    The gym would be empty this time of day. So he went to his locker, got into a Kentucky T-shirt that John Wall had sent him before he went to Washington to play in the pros, got into his favorite baggy white practice shorts, went and found himself a game ball.
    Then he was out there on the court at Henry Gilbert, not talking some talk about English or some paper he had to do and nodding his head to a teacher, even one he liked, about a game being on the line.
    Not pretending he was all invested in some old playground player.
    Not having to pretend, period.
    Out there, Drew never did.

EIGHT
    T here was no practice on Thursday, because Coach DiGregorio had to attend a once-a-year coaches’ conference in San Diego. So Lee and Drew had made a plan to hang out after school. Nothing solid—Lee told Drew he’d have to wait until around four thirty because he had a conference of his own with his Spanish teacher, Mrs. Conte.
    â€œMy name in class is