Lunch Money Can't Shoot by Michael Levin

Author:Michael Levin [Michael Levin & Jack Pannell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Morgan James Publishing
Published: 2017-10-14T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

BALLIN’

The afternoon went as smoothly for William as had his morning, minus the slight hiccup with Martin the Angry Giant. But once again, his teachers spoke a little more slowly and a little more loudly to him than to the other students, which William felt somewhat insulting and patronizing. At one point, he nearly raised his hand and said, “I’ve lived in the United States all my life and I understand English pretty well. And my hearing is perfect, so you don’t have to raise your voice, and you don’t have to slow down. I’m tracking with what you’re saying.”

William didn’t do it because he didn’t want to embarrass himself, and in some sense he felt he was something of an ambassador on behalf of African-Americans everywhere. He figured anything he did or said would be used as a weapon against all black people.

Suddenly he felt a new respect for those Civil Rights luminaries whose portraits graced the walls of his home, both here in Turnberry and back in the city. Nobody was exactly on his case or bothering him. In fact, people couldn’t have been nicer. But still, he felt like he was being treated as “The Other” in strange, subtle, smiling ways. He felt a deeper bond with the leaders of the Civil Rights movement than ever before.

His first school day in Turnberry finally ended, at 2:40 pm, in P.E., in a gym that was as big and pretty as anything he had seen watching the NBA on TV. Not exactly, but it was still a million times nicer than the smelly old gym in his old school, which looked as though it had seen better days a few generations of students before William got there. The floor of the Turnberry Middle School gym practically glistened. It was so clean, William thought he could eat off it. Nylon nets fluttered from the basketball hoops, inviting shot after shot. Of course, the kids were playing volleyball, which William had never seen before, instead of basketball. But he knew he’d be playing basketball soon enough.

When the last bell rang, Tommy and Red led William to the boys’ locker room, which had actual working showers. For a minute, William wondered if he had died and gone to middle school heaven. The lockers looked shiny and new. No graffiti anywhere. And then came the most amazing moment of all.

Coach Clark called William into his office, which wasn’t that much—it might have been a converted closet with a lot of exposed cinderblock. It was only half the size of Danielle’s office, William noted with a perverse sense of pride. She might not have been the coach, and everybody knows the coach is the most important person on the faculty of any school, but at least she had a window.

“All right, young man,” Coach Clark said. “What are you, about five-one? Why don’t you try on this uniform right here.”

The coach nodded at a table that was actually an old door propped up on wooden stilts.

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