“A little more knowledge lights our way,” Luke says, and nobody can argue with that.
Jake makes every layup during warm-ups.
Big deal. So does everybody else.
He sinks shot after shot from midrange. Never misses.
Somebody notices.
“J-Money,” says Kolt. “You came to play.”
Jake smiles, grateful that this game has fixed what was broken between them, like it has so many times before. He wouldn’t want Kolt to think anything that happens after is his fault.
They pair up for shooting warm-ups, and Jake dribbles back behind the arc. Pulls up for three and drains it. Kolt grabs the ball and fires it to Jake, who drains this one too.
One after another, Jake sinks the threes, each one confirming and clarifying the plan in his mind. Tonight is the night. He has no doubt they’ll win, and after they win, he’ll be done. It’ll be better for everybody, really. Everywhere but the court he messes up. He takes and he takes and he takes. So he’ll give back this one last time, and then it’ll all be over. And what a way to end it.
He must have hit a dozen threes in a row, but he just keeps going. Maybe it’s the chemicals thrumming through his veins. Maybe not.
Most of the other guys—on both teams—have stopped to watch now. Jake’s aware of it, but that’s not to say he cares. He’s past pride or shame. He knows where the ball needs to go and how to get it there. Simple as that. The world has been stripped down to his body and the ball and the hardwood and the hoop. When that’s all there is, how can he miss?
He continues around the arc, hitting every single shot, Kolt still feeding him. The crowd is watching, cheering. He’s almost to the baseline now and facing his own bench, and even though he’s focused on the court, not the crowd, he knows they’re all there.
His mom and Luke.
Daphne.
Coach B.
And near the back of the arena, someone else he almost recognizes.
The ball hits Jake in the chest, but he still catches it.
“Sorry,” Kolt says. “I thought you were ready.”
Jake looks at Kolt, then back up to the hooded, bearded face that caught his gaze. Has he seen this man before?
“You okay?” Kolt asks. “You gonna shoot it? Or are you posing for the statue they’re gonna make after you win this game for us?”
It’s because he looks like Kolt, Jake realizes. That’s why the man looks so familiar.
And then it all fits into place, as perfectly as the planks of hardwood beneath him.
The man looks just like Kolt.
And Jake has seen him once before.
He almost laughs now, because the man has aged more than he should have. He looks not unlike the picture of Jesus that has stared down at Jake every Sunday of his life.
But this is no perfect savior. This is the only person Jake knows who is like him—who has hurt everyone he loves and sold his very soul to the same monster.
And yet, here he is. Dirty and drawn, yeah, but almost smiling. And very much alive.
The rumor is true, then. It has to be.
He got clean.
Suddenly Jake feels something. Just a hint of a wonder whether there may be another way. Not to die, but to be reborn. Maybe it’s his imagination or maybe it’s the drugs, but he thinks he sees a glimpse of his salvation, his redemption, his path forward, in the man’s haunted eyes.
“Who you looking at?” Kolt asks, following Jake’s gaze to the back of the arena. The moment Kolt turns, the man pulls down his hood and bows his head.
“Nobody,” Jake says. All his life, he would have believed that too. That someone who struggled with addiction was basically nobody.
He certainly believes that about himself.
But when he looks back up at the man, time slows. The crowd disappears. Suddenly Jake sees that this person he has never really met has been shaping his life for years.
Seven years ago, Kmart was the team leader who showed up at the championship game too high to play.
It was benching Kmart—the team’s top scorer—and losing that game that cost Coach B his job.
It was Coach B’s losing his job and Kmart’s showing up in the parking lot that turned Jake and Kolt into best friends the day they met.
It was going to a hearing when Kolt couldn’t bear to—even though Kmart himself never showed up—that made Daphne notice Jake in the courtroom that first day.
And now Jake remembers one more time when Kmart was there at a crossroads, and he’s as sure of this one as the others.
It was Kmart who picked him up from the dirt at the construction site on that worst, most desperate day of all, when the pain was so searing, so blinding that he could barely recognize the face of the man who saved him, who spoke so soft and steady to him and Luke both.
The noise of the crowd is still dull in Jake’s ears. All he can do is stare at Kmart. All he can see is salvation. Jake knows he’s not worthy to cry out to a perfect God for help, but the savior he is looking for is sitting here in the stands. He has felt this frightening clarity, this need to hurt himself only once before. And the same person saved him then.
The immediate plan has not changed, he realizes. Play the game. Win the game, for Seth and Kolt and Coach B and Daphne and Luke and his mom and all the people he’s hurt. Do this one small thing for them, and then…
When the announcer calls Jake’s name, Kmart looks straight back into his eyes, gives him one slight nod that means more than the roar of the crowd. Something sparks in Jake’s belly, and the spark gives way to something like a summer rain.
Jake remembers this feeling.
He thinks it might be hope.
Kade Martin knows he shouldn’t have come.
