Home Court by Amar'e Stoudemire

Author:Amar'e Stoudemire
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 2012-08-17T16:00:00+00:00

I was in a pretty bad mood by the time I made it home. I just wanted to head inside and maybe zone out with some TV. But when I got there, Dad was pulling up from the other direction. The big trailer bounced up and over the curb as it made the wide, slow turn into the driveway. I walked alongside the truck as it eased to a stop. Then I waited for Dad to get out.

“Now that was a full day’s work,” he said, as he stepped down out of the driver’s seat. He swung the door shut behind him, and turned toward me. He was about to say something else, but as soon as he got a good look at me, he stopped.

“Hey, Pops,” I said.

I could see his eyes taking in my scraped-up knee and my scratched-up arm. He was looking at me the way I once saw a guy look at his car after a fender bender downtown, carefully sizing up the damage. The only difference was that my dad wasn’t thinking about the repair costs. He was probably just wondering what had happened to his kid.

“You look worse than I do,” he said, “and I’ve been using a wood chipper all day!”

He was trying to cheer me up. I tried to smile, but I couldn’t get the corners of my mouth to move any way but down.

“I knew it was a mistake to play,” I said.

“What do you mean, STAT?” he said.

Like I said before, STAT stood for Standing Tall And Talented. I usually liked that, but I wasn’t feeling all that Tall or Talented at the moment.

“I should’ve just gone skateboarding or played baseball with Timmy and them,” I said. The words came out in one big blurt.

“You didn’t get those scratches from a hardball,” said Dad.

“I was playing hoops with Mike and Deuce,” I said.

“Nothing wrong with playing ball with your boys,” said Dad.

“No, I know, it’s just …” I was trying to think of how to explain. “There are these kids who’ve been hogging the court. And I knew if I got dragged into it, it would end up being this whole big thing.”

I stopped and ran that back to see if it made any sense or if Dad was going to say anything about it. He was still standing there, though. He was wiping his hands on his work pants, but his eyes were still looking at mine. He was still listening to what I had to say. He knew before I did that there was more coming.

“Those guys are my best friends,” I said. “It’s just that they always want me to be playing hoops with them, but I’m into a bunch of things.”

“Yeah,” said my dad. “You sure don’t have any trouble keeping yourself busy.”

“I like baseball, football, skateboarding, and even reading about history and stuff,” I said. I didn’t even mention the music, movies, bowling, and other things. This was my dad, and he knew me as well as anyone.

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