Slam!

  Praise for

  WALTER DEAN MYERS’S

  SLAM!

  “[An] admirably realistic coming-of-age novel.”

  —Booklist, starred review

  “A Harlem teenager learns how to apply the will he has to win at hoops to other parts of his life in this vivid, fluent story…. Few writers can match Myers for taut, savvy basketball action.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Readers will appreciate Slam! for the honesty with which Myers portrays the dreams of one Harlem teenager.”

  —The Horn Book

  “Enduring truths, winningly presented.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Once again, Myers produces a book that reinforces his standing as a preeminent YA author.”

  —School Library Journal

  “Open to any page, and let Myers’s skill with words pull you into the story. Slam! will fly off the shelves into the hands of basketball fans, and will give them a lot more than a game.”

  —Voice of Youth Advocates

  “Myers has a neat trick of making the reader see the world through Slam’s streetwise, life-naïve eyes…. The conclusion is hopeful, and the basketball scenes are tough.”

  —The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

  A Coretta Scott King Award Winner

  An ALA Best Book for Young Adults

  An NYPL Book for the Teen Age

  An ALA Quick Pick

  For Grace Killens, with thanks for her support.

  CONTENTS

  PRAISE FOR WALTER DEAN MYERS’S SLAM!

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  AN INTERVIEW WITH WALTER DEAN MYERS

  ALSO BY WALTER DEAN MYERS

  COPYRIGHT

  Basketball is my thing. I can hoop. Case closed. I’m six four and I got the moves, the eye, and the heart. You can take my game to the bank and wait around for the interest. With me it’s not like playing a game, it’s like the only time I’m being for real. Bringing the ball down the court makes me feel like a bird that just learned to fly. I see my guys moving down in front of me and everything feels and looks right. Patterns come up and a small buzz comes into my head that starts to build up and I know it won’t end until the ball swishes through the net. If somebody starts messing with my game it’s like they’re getting into my head. But if I’ve got the ball it’s okay, because I can take care of the situation. That’s the word and I know it the same way I know my tag, Slam. Yeah, that’s it. Slam. But without the ball, without the floorboards under my feet, without the mid-court line that takes me halfway home, you can get to me.

  So when Mr. Tate, the principal at my new school, started talking about me laying low for the season until I got my grades together I was like seriously turned out. The night after he talked to my moms I couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t the hissing of the radiator or my little brother talking in his sleep in the other bed, it was the idea of not playing ball that was bouncing crazylike through my head.

  Sometimes I don’t mind not sleeping. I like to lay in the dark and listen to the sounds coming up from the street. I can lay in bed and tell just what time it is by how much traffic go by in the street below. When it’s late night you hear the sound of car doors and people talking and boom boxes spilling out the latest tunes. When it rains the tires hiss on the street and when there’s a real rain with the wind blowing sometimes you can hear it against the tin sign over Billy’s bicycle shop. If there’s a fight you hear the voices rising and catching each other up. The sound of broken glass can cut through other noises, even if it’s just a bottle of wine somebody dropped. And behind all the other sounds there’s always the sirens, bringing their bad news from far off and making you hold your breath until they pass so you know it ain’t any of your people who’s getting arrested or being taken to the hospital. In the early morning you hear the clang of the garbage trucks, then the low growl of the buses and you know the people who got work are starting off downtown to their jobs.

  In the morning you don’t hear any police sirens or ambulances. It’s like all the shooting and chasing is over for the night and the neighborhood is getting ready for a new day. You hear the news on the radios of people who got a reason to get up early and you hear mamas yelling for their kids who go to school to wake up. Soon as the first radio goes on in the morning, Salty, the pit bull Akbar keeps in his shop, wakes up and starts howling. Salty is a trip. He can do his regular howl, which ain’t much, or he can howl like a police siren or an ambulance. Whatever way he howls you know what’s coming down the street long before you get to see it.

  When something bothers me a lot I keep thinking about it, like I’m replaying a tape over and over. No matter what I do it stays in my head.

  I must of dozed off and woke up still thinking about my moms coming to school the day before. She’s cool. She come to Mr. Tate’s office and listened to him talk about how he was so disappointed in me. He was saying it like he knew me, but he was calling me Gregory instead of Greg, which is my name. Greg Harris. No way he would be into Slam.

  When Mr. Tate asked my moms did she know how I was doing in my subjects, she said yes, and that I would do better. The way she said it was firm, but her eyes were glistening and I knew she was hurt by what he was saying. She really wanted me to do good. She didn’t look at me, which made me feel bad.

  When she left, Mr. Tate ran the whole thing down to me again about how I was going to fail this subject or I was going to fail that subject and how later on I wouldn’t be able to get a good job. He said it slow like maybe he thought I wouldn’t get it if he said it too fast. I got it all right, I just couldn’t do nothing with it.

  When I got home Moms made some tea, which is what she always does when things get serious. That was together because I know she’s definitely in my corner and I knew things were serious so I sat with her and we had the tea and she talked about how she had it when she went to school in Brooklyn. Then my pops come in with Derek. Derek’s nine years old and got more mouth than he got backup. He’s always running up the stairs with some dude on his tail ready to bust him up. But you can’t be mad at him because he got this stupid grin that’s crooked and when he flashed that grin at you and you started grinning back you just couldn’t hold on to being mad. I worry about him, though. I’m seventeen and the streets mess with me and keep me nervous, and he’s only nine.

  He saw the conversation going on and come in and parked himself on the couch. I figured Pops would be in on the gig in a minute, too.

  Me and Moms and Derek are like real family; so is Pops when he’s acting right, which means when he’s working. When he’s working he’s like laid back at home and he’s mostly off the bottle. He takes a little taste now and then, but it’s no big thing. And every job he gets it’s supposed to be this big position and you know it’s not that much, but he’s scoping and hoping so you go along with it. When he’s not working he gets into these moods and sometimes he gets nasty. He drinks hard, too. Sometimes he and Moms split up, but they always get back together. She digs the dude, and so do we.

  Funny thing is that Derek looks a lot like Moms a
nd I look like I’m in between them. Mom is round and you could tell she was fly back in the used to be. Pops is thin and nervous-looking. Sometimes when he’s down he sits in the dark with his eyes open. I can understand him not being cool when he doesn’t have a job.

  “Mama came home crying,” Derek said.

  “Yo, man, why don’t you shut up!” I said.

  “Why he got to shut up?” my pops asked, coming into the room wiping his hands on a paper towel. “You the one made your mama have to go round to the school. You the one the principal talking about. Why Derek got to shut up?”

  “He don’t have to shut up,” I said. I got up from the couch.

  “I’m going to have supper ready soon,” Moms said. “I’m just waiting for the rice to finish cooking.”

  “I’m not hungry,” I said.

  “You got to have a balanced diet,” Derek piped up again. “If you don’t you can grow funny.”

  If Derek makes ten it’s going to be a miracle.

  I went to the room me and Derek shared, laid across the bed and tried to chill, but I knew it wasn’t going to work. The mess was just working on my cap like a bad toothache or something. Mr. Tate talking about “don’t I know how I hurt my mother?” Man, she’s sitting up in his office fixing to cry and whatnot and he asking some stupid mess like that.

  Mr. Tate had thrown in a remark about how I might have to transfer back to Carver if my grades didn’t turn around. The way he said it was as if there was something wrong with Carver. I liked Carver. It was just that when they had all the fuss about getting more black kids to go to the magnet schools I got picked to go to Latimer for visual arts. Everybody had talked about how dope Latimer was. It was okay, but it wasn’t all that.

  The bedroom door opened and Moms came in with some fried chicken, green beans, rice, and gravy.

  “I’m not hungry,” I said again.

  “This isn’t for you,” Moms said. “This is my food. I just thought I’d come in here and eat it while I talked to you.”

  “Oh.”

  “You think any more about what Mr. Tate said?”

  “You know I did,” I said.

  “He mentioned you giving up the art club and basketball and using the time for studying.” She had the plate on her lap.

  “I don’t know. What this school is all about is doing stuff. Everybody’s in a band, or in a club,” I said. “If I got to act like I’m in jail I might as well go on back to Carver.”

  “You sure you don’t want part of this chicken?”

  “If you’re just going to sit there and hold it …” I said.

  “Baby, I know it’s hard,” Moms said, handing me the plate. “Those kids at Latimer have been doing well for a long time. You got to catch up. You know what I mean?”

  “You think I should give up everything and just study?”

  “How about giving up one of them,” Moms said. “Either leave the art club or don’t go out for basketball.”

  “What did Pops say when I left?”

  “He didn’t say much more,” Moms said. “Don’t get gravy on my spread.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “But you know how he feels,” she went on. “He just wants you to do good.”

  “Yeah, I know. Maybe I’ll give up the art club.”

  “I didn’t think you could stand walking away from basketball.” Moms got up and went to the door. “When you finish eating, bring the plate out to the kitchen and wash it. I don’t want any roaches in here.”

  “Yo, Mom, you mind if I punch out Derek tonight?”

  “Don’t you hit Derek,” she said. “He’s the only cute child I got.”

  Sometimes I set stuff up in my mind like it’s going to be true, even though in my heart I know it’s not true. It’s when I want something so bad it gets real to me before it even happens. I could see me doing this with the basketball tryouts. I mean, like, I knew that nothing I did on the basketball court was going to get my grades up and everything, but somehow I still had this vision of me busting out on the court and then everything being all right. It didn’t make sense, but there it was.

  The gym’s on the fourth floor and when I get there I see the tryouts are already going on.

  “Didn’t you read the notice?” this kid says to me. “Tryouts began at two-thirty.”

  I took out the notice and checked it out. It did say two-thirty. I knew it when I first read it, but then I kind of switched it in my mind so that I made it seem like after school. No big deal.

  I put on my sweats and shoes and sat on the bench. Mr. Goldstein was the assistant coach and he told the regular coach, Mr. Nipper, that I was there to try out. Coach, he just looked over at me and looked away.

  They had set up a game. Mr. Goldstein was the ref and Coach Nipper was sitting down on the sidelines taking notes. They had five guys playing on each side, shirts and skins, and only one other guy sitting on the side. Only twelve guys showed. At Carver half the school would have been trying out. The guy sitting on the side was about six feet and built pretty nice but he didn’t look hard enough to play no ball. If only twelve guys showed up we’d probably all be on the team.

  I watched the guys run. A couple of them had some game, most of them weren’t that much. Ducky, the first guy I had met at Latimer, was on the court looking like he was hoping nobody would throw him the ball. Ducky’s about five feet six, got red hair that’s always hanging in his face, and this look on his face like maybe something hurts him. He couldn’t even run right, let alone play no ball. But he was diving on the ball when it was on the floor and jumping for rebounds even when he didn’t get close.

  They didn’t have many bloods at Latimer. The first day I got there and saw that Mr. Tate, the principal, was black, I thought most of the school was going to be black like Carver was. Hey, big time wrong. There was one brother on the floor, Jimmy Ellis. He was in some of my classes. He was okay, nothing great, but okay.

  One of the white guys looked like he knew the game. I didn’t know him. He moved nice and knew how to handle the ball. But then he wasn’t going up against nothing great.

  They played for a while and then the coach put in the other guy who was sitting on the side. He must have sent his rep down before him because everybody was backing off the dude and letting him run his show like he wanted it. He was the best thing on the court and everybody was treating him like he was.

  “You,” the coach pointed to me. “Take your shirt off and go in at center with the skins.”

  “I don’t play center,” I said. “I’m a guard.”

  “Then you just sit there,” he said. He looked back at the game.

  They ran the whole practice and I sat there. I guess I was supposed to run over and say I was going to go in at center. But center ain’t my game, I’m a guard. I play facing the hoop and either dishing off or busting a move for the basket. Play me weak and I will definitely throw it down on you. Slam! That’s my game, and it’s sweet. When you love something, either a game or playing a horn or whatever it is you do, after a while you know what it’s about. And what my game is about is something serious.

  So the tryouts are over and the coach calls everybody over except me, checks off their names on his clipboard, and tells them they’re on the team. I wasn’t even worried because the dude hasn’t seen me play. Mr. Goldstein asks him about me and I hear him saying something about not needing any prima donnas on the team.

  “He probably can’t play, anyway.” He said that loud enough to make sure I heard him.

  “Play better than anybody you got here,” I said, loud enough for him to hear me.

  He stands there for a while just looking at me and then he drops his clipboard to the floor like that’s supposed to impress somebody.

  “Get me a ball,” he said to one of the kids on the bench. “Come on, hotshot, let’s see what you got.’

  Now he’s going to go one-on-one with me so he can diss me. Hey, I know the program. He’s supposed to run his show and ev
erybody is supposed to fall out because he got a game.

  “Five baskets win,” he says, and drops the ball on the floor so I got to pick it up. No problemo.

  I took the ball out and he comes and starts leaning on me like old dudes do when they’re too slow to keep up with you. I make a little fake and he’s got his hands all over me.

  “C’mon, I thought you were a guard.”

  I make the same little move and he puts his hands on me again. Then I fake the move and make another fake in the other direction and he goes for it. I put up a jump shot and it didn’t touch anything but net. Made me feel good.

  He takes the ball out and he’s shaking his shoulders and nodding his head like I’m supposed to be nervous. He fakes, then goes up for a shot.

  Hey, I’m seventeen years old, six feet four, a hundred and sixty-two pounds, and I can definitely rise. I go up and slap his mess away. I don’t even chase the ball, I just put my hand on my hip and give him a look.

  “My ball,” he says. “You too lazy to get it before it goes out of bounds?”

  “Your ball,” I said, “my game.”

  I knew that was going to tick him off but he was out to diss me and it wasn’t going to happen. Not in this life.

  He tried to muscle past me, leaning all in on me and using his elbows. But I could hear his breathing and it was getting heavy. Sometimes when I play against old dudes in the hood they start laying on me and I know I just got to hold them off until they run out of breath, and then they got to throw up a prayer because they too tired to bust anything real.

  He’s pushing me and pushing me and then he starts looking to see where he is. For a while I’m holding him out, but I don’t try nothing, just let him back me to the hoop. Then I ease off for a minute and he thinks he can turn. When he does I slap the ball away again.

  This time I get it and when he comes to me I know what I got. I got a tired dude who can’t get up. I put the ball on the floor one time hard, take a big step outside his left foot, shoot past him, and go up like I mean it.

  I wasn’t sure if I was getting up right but when I see the rim I know I’m not only right but righteous. I slammed it down as hard as I could.