What the Game Cost Us

“We’ve lost two hours,” Dad said, stretching each word out as if I were too young to understand a clock. “We can still reach the hotel before midnight if we leave now. You’ll get six hours’ rest, and your first rotation starts at nine. Get your bag.”

“Atlanta isn’t happening for me,” I said.

At last, he turned to Renee. “Tell him to come outside.”

“I’m not going to tell him that,” she answered, steady as ever. “He’s sixteen, and he’s made his choice. You can’t haul a teenager over a state line to play after he’s said he doesn’t want to.”

“It’s bigger than a game,” Marcus said. A crack appeared in the control he’d brought through the door. He faced me and stepped farther into the room. “This is your future, Isaiah. You have no idea what I had to do to get you into that showcase. Do you know who’ll be watching tomorrow?”

“The people in the stands aren’t what I’m worried about,” I said, feeling my voice climb. “Jordan’s camp is.”

His eyes flickered at my brother’s name. A tendon jumped near his jaw, and something wounded showed through his anger for half a heartbeat. Then he buried it. Shame never seemed to last long on Dad before it turned hard again.

“Leave Jordan out of this.” Dad pointed at me. “You don’t understand how grown-up decisions get made in this family.”

“I understand numbers.” I pushed up from the sofa. Standing, I realized I was finally eye to eye with him. “Mom had to ask Aunt Renee for money on Tuesday. Your car has been grinding for weeks, and you still haven’t taken it in. Every time I pull on basketball shoes, we sink a little deeper.”

“It’s an investment!” he shouted, and his voice filled Renee’s apartment. “You think scholarships appear on their own? You think scouts are coming to our lousy school gym to watch you play kids who can’t use their left hands? They have to see you. You have to be where they are. I’m making a path for you, Isaiah.”

“I never asked for a path like this.” My throat felt raw. “Not if Mom ends up crying in the kitchen in the middle of the night. Not if Jordan has to toss his science camp papers and act like he doesn’t care. I’m not some stock you bought, Dad. I’m a kid who loves basketball. Stop risking everything on me.”

For a moment, nobody spoke. The refrigerator’s low buzz seemed to swell until it was the only sound in the apartment.

Dad studied me. The squared shoulders and hard stance of the man who’d been giving orders slipped away, leaving him looking worn down inside his windbreaker. His shoulders sagged. I no longer seemed to be a son challenging him; I seemed like someone who had pulled apart the rules he lived by.

“I’m trying to give you the life I never had,” he said, barely above a rough murmur. “You know how many fathers just leave? How many boys you play with would do anything for a dad who pushed them toward a chance?”

“I know,” I said, quieter now. “But you’re not helping me get ahead anymore. You’re just putting pressure on me.”

He held my eyes. I watched the certainty drain from his face as he understood that the usual ways of making me obey had stopped working. I was too big for him to carry out, and his words couldn’t force me to agree.

He drew the zipper of his jacket up.

“All right,” he said, his voice flat. “Stay here tonight, then. You can be an ordinary high school kid. But hear me, Isaiah: I’m finished. No more checks, no more rides, no more fighting to get you a place. If you want to play nearby and vanish, do it without me.”

He left before I could answer. The door shut behind him, and the latch clicked into place with a finality I could feel in my chest.

I sank onto the sofa again. My legs seemed to give up all at once, and the anger that had held me upright left with them.

Renee came over and lowered herself beside me. She didn’t promise that things would work out or try to make the moment sound smaller. She only put a hand behind my neck and squeezed.

“See if you can get some sleep,” she said.

Sleep never came. I kept staring into the dark until Saturday’s pale light began showing through the blinds. By half past six, my body was awake anyway, carrying the restless charge I usually felt on tournament mornings. My knees had that familiar ache, though I hadn’t played. In a different version of the day, I’d be in a budget hotel room tying my sneakers, chewing a stale bagel, and getting ready to walk into a gym that smelled of floor polish and IcyHot.

I left the living room and headed toward the kitchen, carrying the weight of the night with me.

Renee was already at the little island, a black coffee beside her as she read from her tablet.