Zeller smirked. I panicked that “beautiful” had given me away, somehow.
—Awful nice of you to say so, he said. I wouldn’t call it “beautiful” myself. But we’re gettin’ there, Miles. We. Are. Gettin’. There.
He knocked on his desk.
—Enough of the lady-talk. I wanted to let you know we appreciate your patience while we get this recruitin’ class in order. We’re puttin’ together a damn good group. Quietly the best this school’s ever seen. And that’s complicated, son. You got all these different facets you gotta address.
—Yes sir. Facets.
Zeller looked down at a manila folder splayed open on his desk. I saw my name on the top of a form.
—Grades are fine, he said, trailing his finger along the sheet. Test scores much better. Any idea what you’d want to study?
“Linebacking” was the real answer, but I wasn’t sure how well that would go over.
—English, I said. With a minor in kinesiology.
He looked up, surprised by my ambition to be a literature devotee who also knew how to treat sprained wrists. He resumed reading, and soon I saw his eyes stick. He squinted, bringing the sheet closer to his face, and my heart pounded at the thought that he’d happened on something damning. He slid the sheet toward me and pointed at my birthday.
—That a typo? Sixteen?
—I turn seventeen in August, Coach.
Zeller looked at Hightower.
—You tell me this already?
Hightower nodded. Zeller’s body relaxed as he leaned back in his leather chair, thumbs tapping the armrests.
—Sixteen, he said again, to himself this time. And you still don’t have any D1 offers?
—No sir.
He leaned forward, energized.
—You know, most of our program’s made up of players other schools overlooked. Grades on the bubble. Attitude problem. Forty time a little slow. Other people might call ‘em misfits, scraps, what have you. But you know what I call ‘em? Diamonds in the fuckin’ rough. So tell me, Miles. You feel like you can be part of somethin’ bigger than yourself?
Jesus Christ.
—Yes sir.
—You interested in makin’ history?
—Yes.
He smiled. He was smiling, he was smiling and saying:
—Then we’re ready to offer you a scholarship.
I was standing—when did that happen? I was laughing—but at what? Coach Zeller and I were shaking hands. I was fairly sure I was breathing.
I hugged Coach Hightower, hugged him as if the world had flooded and he was the tree trunk that had spared me.
I was so dazed I barely registered anything I saw during our tour of the Hay’s lower levels, and I only settled down when the recruits were taken to the flagstone sidewalk outside the third-floor entrance. There we were placed in the care of an Athletic Department flack named Mary Sue Kim, a small Asian woman—I’d only recently learned not to say “Oriental”—dressed in blue jeans and a purple King College fleece.
Mary Sue was to give us a tour of King’s academic region, which began with a dormitory shaped like a medieval fort. We walked beneath the Gothic arch cut through the dorm’s center, and on the other side entered another world altogether: West Campus’s main quad. There was a long lawn down the middle pillared with mighty oaks, and bordering both sides were more Gothic dormitories that mirrored each other for a good quarter of a mile, their gables and crenellations, towers and ramparts, parapets and finials so finely carved that the granite looked supple. On the quad’s far end stood the King Chapel, more a stone ship than a church that plied the bright winter sunlight. Three-o’clock classes had just let out, and the quad was bustling with King students—my future classmates.
Reshawn walked at the head of our group. The downcast look I’d seen on his face had continued during our tour of the Hay, but he was alert now as he walked alongside Mary Sue.
—Through that arch is Kaledin Plaza, she said. Sophomore players live over there, in Mennee Hall. And you can catch the shuttle to the other campuses at—
—Where’s the Rare Book Room?
Mary Sue pushed her face toward Reshawn, smiling.
—Rare what?
—Books, he said. Like manuscripts and letters? I read King owns Hawthorne’s notes for Blithedale.
Mary Sue remained baffled. Reshawn’s face darkened. I was beginning to realize how short his temper was.
—Where’s the library?
—Oh! she said. Over there—it’s on the itinerary. We’ll go after dinner with the Coronets.
Reshawn tilted his head.
—Coronets? The fuck are they?
Mary Sue somehow managed to squirm without moving.
—You know, she said. The cheerleading squad?
Reshawn sucked his teeth and broke away toward the library, ignoring Mary Sue’s calls for him to stop. She set off after him, seeming to forget there were fourteen other recruits she was responsible for, and we were forced to trail after her, dodging between King students amused by the sight of overmuscled boys straggling behind a tiny, determined woman. We caught up with Mary Sue at the entrance to the library, and she caught up with Reshawn in the Rare Book Room, a dim, musty, pin-drop space where he was leaning over a glass display case of illuminated manuscripts. He must have noticed us coming in, must have known he was being watched, and I doubted he could focus on whatever he was reading; but he stubbornly kept looking at the manuscripts. There was something performative about this I disliked, something false and pretentious, something—what’s the word I’d heard my uncles use?—uppity.
Reshawn couldn’t ignore us forever, and he was sullen the rest of the afternoon, blatantly ignoring the cheerleaders at dinner as he sat at the far end of the table and read pamphlets he’d collected in the Rare Book Room. After the tour of the library, Reshawn and I walked back across campus, neither of us speaking as we passed beneath the tall, curling iron lamps that lit up the darkening quad. But forget Reshawn: there was the Ford, idling in front of the Hay. I had my new teammates to talk to, and I was especially eager to see Chase, who’d been so kind to me, who could now welcome me as a D1 peer, a
