El Paso . Texas
NEXT: D-Bow’s High School Hoops. Copyright © 2013 by Kevin Waltman. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written consent from the publisher, except for brief quotations for reviews. For further information, write Cinco Puntos Press, 701 Texas Avenue, El Paso, TX 79901; or call 1-915-838-1625.
FIRST EDITION
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Waltman, Kevin.
Next / by Kevin Waltman—First edition.
pages cm. — (D-Bow’s high school hoops ; [1])
Summary: Indiana basketball prodigy Derrick Bowen—D-Bow to his friends—is impatient to start his freshman year, but his old-school coach favors a senior for a guard spot; meanwhile, pressure at home builds for D-Bow to transfer from his neighborhood school to an exclusive prep school.
ISBN 978-1-935955-64-1 (hardback); ISBN 978-1-935955-65-8 (paperback);
ISBN 9781935955665 (E-book)
[1. Basketball—Fiction. 2. High schools—Fiction. 3. Schools—Fiction. 4. African Americans—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.W1728Ne 2013
[Fic] dc—23
2013026452
Book and cover design by Anne M. Giangiulio
with b-ball advice from Bubba, as always.
Many thanks to Ben Osborne, editor of SLAM Magazine,
for connecting Cinco Puntos to Kevin Waltman.
For Jessica. For Calla. My dearest darlings.
PART I
1.
“Ball,” I shout, but just get ignored. Instead, I watch some thirty-year-old chump with gray in his goatee and a belly hanging down over his shorts dribble and dribble and then jack one up from twenty-five feet. Barely scrapes iron.
Two possessions later my Uncle Kid backs his man down to hit the game-winner, and my five is run off. Someone’s left an empty water bottle by the court and I chuck it in disgust. It clears the chain link and clatters into Fall Creek Parkway, gets squashed by traffic. I sit in the grass and watch the next five take the court, waiting my turn to get back out there. Worst of all, I have to listen to that guy run his mouth like he’s some kind of baller. Brownlee is what they all call him, and I’ve seen him here before. Always the same shit. He makes one nice shot, then chucks away the rest of the game—and then has the nerve to make noise at other players about what they did wrong.
“Little man,” he says. He mops his face with his t-shirt. “You, little man.”
I look away, watch Uncle Kid—Sidney, really, but everyone still calls him Kid—knock in another turnaround. My uncle’s pushing 40 and has seen better days, and, I mean, it’s embarrassing to watch him walk up to the court with some fake limp in his stride like he thinks he’s a bad-ass. But the man flirted with the NBA. Had coach after coach tell him he was this close to making a roster. So he can still bring it between the lines.
“Little man, you need to pay attention. I was telling you, you got to clear out some. You got in my way on that last trip.”
I look at Brownlee, watch him squint at me, his sweaty black face glistening in the sun. He’s got that twitchy, bossy teacher