“Who’s that, a cyborg assassin?”
“Don’t pretend like you don’t know.”
Christina eased her palm forward to bring the map to half transparency. As they crept from their hiding place, she followed Rainmaker’s progress. The vampire bat moved steadily through the backstreets. She tried to think of the perfect caption for Melissa’s post—Making it rain in Central Ohio! or Goth rocked!—but everything she came up with sounded too inside-jokey.
Social media was harder than it looked.
William and Daniel were pinned down. The Tesla Predator had rolled past a few times, patrolling up and down the street, waiting for infantry soldiers to reveal themselves. And they’d heard movement in the mansion attached to their garage. They had to assume snipers had taken position in the busted windows.
The garage was more like what old people called a “carport,” a short canopied tunnel with an open front. William figured garage doors hadn’t been invented when this place was built. If the carport hadn’t been strewn with junk to create a little warren, they’d be completely exposed.
“It’s possible that we suck at this,” William said. They were crouching behind a pile of rotten firewood covered with a ragged sheet. A sweet hint of decay wafted up, and William tried not to touch any of the wood. Daniel peeked over the top at the street, which had been quiet for the past few minutes. William wondered if any teams had been chased all the way out to the parking lot.
“Nah,” Daniel said. “We’re still in it.”
“When you’re in the middle of a game, do you ever lose track of it all and forget you’re even playing? I felt like that in the Derby, like I’d always been there. Like it was my life.”
“There’s this book my dad gave me in ninth grade, when I made JV, called Basketball Fundamentals by Walt Jackson.”
William eyed his friend. “Sounds riveting.”
“It’s dry as hell. Walt Jackson was a point guard for the Sixers back when they all still did layups because nobody really dunked yet. The book is pretty much what you’d expect except for the last chapter, which is called ‘The Art of Being a Proper Vessel.’ It’s got a totally different tone and writing style, like one minute Jackson’s laying out the details of a pick-and-roll for nine pages, and then all of a sudden he’s talking about how the entire past and future of basketball is flowing through every player like a wind that comes down off the plains—he was from Topeka—and it can be distracting when you realize everything that’s going to happen in the game has already happened. Like it can suddenly hit you when you square up for a totally uncontested shot and you brick it hard because at the moment of release you have this oceanic awareness washing over you…. Anyway, Jackson says that the way to be respectful of your place in the vast ecosystem of the game is to be able to compartmentalize. Don’t worry about anything beyond your next step, your next dribble. Don’t think about the score. Just focus on being the best at what you’re currently doing, and all that other stuff will fall away. I don’t know. It was the sixties when he wrote it.”
William put a finger to his lips and gradually widened his eyes while Daniel spoke. Daniel was looking straight at him but didn’t get the hint.
William whispered softly, “That sounds great, maybe I could borrow it sometime.”
“Sure. I mean, you should read more anyway. What was the last book you read?”
“Internet.”
“What about my copy of Gatsby that I gave you?”
“Internet.”
There was a distant rustling on Main Street. Someone was approaching, or else a raccoon was scavenging the barbecue. William raised his head and sighted his scope along the thoroughfare. Half the lanterns had gone out, and the night was heavy with the weight of the asylum.
“You know what’s weird about Basketball Fundamentals?” Daniel was whispering now. “It was my dad’s when he was a kid. On the inside cover, in pencil, you can still see where he wrote his name, Martin Benson.”
“Good old Marty.”
“Which means he must have read that last chapter. But he never said anything to me about it. You’d think it would have come up.”
William swiveled left and trained his scope on the south end of the street, beyond the fountain. A shadow flickered in a window, and the lantern was doused. Darkness deepened.
“You never say much about your dad,” Daniel said. “I don’t even know his name.”
“Terrence Mackler.” The name brought with it an impression of a brown Carhartt sweatshirt and the sawdust that clung to William’s clothes when he hugged his dad. He remembered learning about the Civil War in elementary school and associating his father’s job as “union carpenter” with the blue-uniformed soldiers building makeshift battle headquarters for General Sherman….
“Good old Terry,” Daniel said.
William’s throat felt tight. He amped up his focus. Something was coming up the road, and he was going to destroy it. He wished they had real live weapons so he could aim for the propane tanks on the grills huddled in the fountain, catalyze a Michael Bay–worthy explosion. He slid a pinkie under his right eye to wipe a tear before it fell. What was his problem?
His father’s nightstand back in Michigan had been a vortex of dadness: cologne, deodorant, Icy Hot, Neosporin, CD player/clock radio, Allman Brothers CDs, loose change, money clip, Trident gum, handkerchief. During summer vacation, with both his parents at work, William used to creep into their bedroom and stand by the nightstand, absorbing the sights and smells of man stuff, wondering about being grown up. What did it look like these days? His mother’s nightstand held stray pills and crumpled
