Chapter 72
The noise in the Pit was deafening. It seemed that half the state had turned out to see the basketball state championship game between the Los Alamos Hilltoppers and the Roswell Goddard Rockets. Even people who normally did not follow high school basketball had become enthralled with the story of the junior phenom, Marcus Aurelius Smythe.
Indeed, his entrance into the University of New Mexico basketball stadium generated a welcome that a victorious Caesar would have found thrilling. Heather was stunned by the crowd response, which rose to such volume that she began to wonder if her ears would start bleeding.
Sitting here in courtside seats with her mom, dad, and the Smythes, the thrill that surged through her enhanced nerve endings was tinged with just a hint of dismay. That Jack and Janet Johnson stood cheering immediately behind her only heightened her concern.
Janet put two fingers between her lips and sent out a whistle that caused Mark to turn his head toward them and smile. If Heather’s ears had not been bleeding before, they certainly were now.
Although the crowd’s size was surprising, both Heather and Jennifer had been expecting a response after Friday’s article in the sports section of the Albuquerque Journal.
“Junior Point Guard Sets the Court on Fire” the sports headline had blared. Immediately below the headline, the picture showed Mark spinning between defenders, the ball passing between his legs in mid-dribble. Jennifer had almost succeeded in making her brother feel guilty about the attention he was drawing when Janet had walked by in the school hallway.
“Mark, congratulations on the wonderful article. Jack and I are so excited for you.”
With those few words, the brief hint of guilt disappeared from Mark’s face, vaporized as thoroughly as rainwater on a volcano.
And so, here and now, they all stood together cheering in unison with thousands of others to whom Mark was a total stranger. Surreal.
Jennifer’s sharp elbow interrupted Heather’s reverie. Her eyes moved across the stadium to the spot at which Jennifer pointed.
“I didn’t know George Delome was friends with Raul,” Jennifer said.
At the far end of the floor, near the entry hallway from the locker rooms, Raul stood in close conversation with the Hilltoppers’ team manager.
“George is a member of Raul’s Bible study group.”
Just then the horn blared out, sending George scurrying across the floor toward the bench. Although Heather could not hear what was said, it was quite clear that Coach Harmon was less than pleased with George’s delay in getting the water bottles distributed.
While he may have been tardy to this point, the alacrity with which the pudgy boy scurried along the bench setting out the individual bottles behind the player positions was impressive. He paused momentarily behind Mark’s spot, fumbling through the bag to grab a bottle, but then he was on down the rest of the line in manager record time.
“What a geek,” Jennifer said, shaking her head as she watched him trip over some equipment at the far end.
Heather nodded. What Raul saw in the fat kid was beyond her. Maybe he just took pity on him.
The crowd cheered, signaling the tip-off and that the game was underway. Both teams opened up red hot, but the Rockets had no answer for Mark. They quickly abandoned their man-to-man defense, switching to a box-one zone. That let them keep a player man-to-man on Mark while everyone else played zone defense.
Nevertheless, by the end of the first quarter, Mark had already scored fifteen points and had four assists. Hilltoppers, twenty-six. Rockets, twenty.
The Hilltoppers continued building on their lead in the second quarter as Mark worked his magic, his spinning drives bringing the crowd to their feet.
Then he began to falter. Three times in a row, as he brought the ball down the court against the Rocket full-court press, Mark lost the ball to quick double teams. Even his shot deteriorated. Just before halftime, he shot an air-ball fifteen feet from the basket. As the buzzer sounded, he walked off the court shaking his head in disbelief.
The halftime score showed that the Hilltoppers still led, but their twelve point lead had dwindled to a mere two.
“What’s up with your brother?” Heather asked.
“No idea,” said Jennifer. “Maybe he’s taking my warning about playing too well to heart.”
“I don’t know. It didn’t look like he was trying to mess up.”
Jennifer shrugged. “You’ve got me. Let’s go get some popcorn.”
By the time they made their way up to the concession stands, conquered the impressive line, and returned back to their seats, the second half had started. If anything, Mark was playing worse than he had at the end of the first half. His movements seemed sluggish, even awkward.
To Heather’s surprise, Coach Harmon even yelled at him during a timeout, sitting him on the bench for the last two minutes of the third quarter. Mark just sat there beside the coach on the bench, shaking his head. He even refused the water that George Delome brought to him, despite the portly manager’s attempts to get him to drink.
The fourth quarter opened with Mark still sitting on the bench, as his team gradually fell farther behind. Finally, with just over six minutes left in the game and the Hilltoppers trailing, sixty-six to seventy-eight, Coach Harmon called a timeout and signaled for Mark to get back in the game.
Whatever the cause of his sloppy play for the last two quarters, the benching seemed to have helped clear Mark’s mind. His ball-handling sharpness was back, perhaps not to his normal level, but impressive nonetheless. And as he played, the Hilltoppers clawed their way back into the game.
With thirty seconds left on the clock, the fans in the stadium were on their feet, screaming their lungs out as Mark brought the ball up the court, trailing by one point. Even Jennifer was screaming so loud that Heather thought she might cough out a tonsil.
With the clock ticking down under ten seconds, Heather held her breath as Mark drove into the lane. It seemed that every one of the Goddard Rockets swarmed over him, slapping at the ball as he moved among them.
Mark dived forward, launching a pass between two Rockets to a wide-open Bobby Kline, who caught it cleanly at the top of the key. As the clock ticked to one, Bobby launched a jump shot that seemed to leave his hands in slow motion, arcing up toward the basket as the horn sounded, ending the game. The shot hit the rim, looped around the inside twice, and then rose back up to the balance on the edge before finally dropping through.
If the stadium had been loud before, the sound that filled it now was deafening. People rushed onto the court in a swarm, lifting Bobby on their shoulders and patting Mark and the other players on the back until they disappeared into the throng.
After the hubbub subsided, the rest of the evening passed very slowly. The team stayed to watch the 5A championship game, after receiving their own trophy and hitting the showers, and the Smythes and McFarlands stayed to watch that game too. The question on everyone’s lips was asked of Mark again and again throughout the evening.
Finally, Heather got her turn. “What happened in the second and third quarter?”
“I don’t know. I was just out of it for a while.”
“Yeah. Well, it’s a good thing you got it back together. It sure was looking bad for our side.”
Mark grinned. “It’s a good thing Bobby hit that shot or I don’t think I could have lived it down.”
“You still played the best game of anyone out there.”
“Somehow I don’t think the team and the fans would have seen it that way if we had lost that game. I’m just glad Bobby pulled it off.”
By the time the last game ended and the McFarlands pulled into their own driveway, Heather was exhausted. At least they had gotten home before the Smythes. Poor Jennifer would have to wait for the team bus to make its way back to the high school before they could pick up Mark and make their way back home. Heather was just glad it wasn’t her.
Awakening bright and early Sunday morning, Heather felt more rested than she had in days. Apparently, sleeping the sleep of exhaustion was good for her. By the time she had showered, eaten breakfast, and gotten into the car to head to church, a sense of well-being enveloped her. A quick stop at the convenience store put an end to that.
As she waited for her mother to make her way through the checkout line, Heather’s eyes spotted Mark’s picture on the front of the National Inquisitor. It was a close-up of Mark’s glassy stare as Coach Harmon leaned in nose-to-nose yelling at him. But it was the headline that almost made her drop her soda.
High School Prodigy’s Pre-Game Drinking Binge Almost Costs Team Championship
Not good, she thought. Not good at all.