Fast Break by Mike Lupica Page B

he was swinging his right leg.
    Jayson kicked nothing but air,
both
of his legs flying like somebody had pulled a rug out from underneath him. He came down hard on the ground.
    He turned and saw Zoe running—flying—toward the goal at the other end of the field.
    â€œHey!” he yelled after her. “You didn’t say you could move!”
    Without looking back, she yelled, “You never asked!”
    She didn’t even wait until she got close to the goal, didn’t even appear to break stride as she fired a shot from what looked to Jayson like an incredibly long distance away from it, catching the ball cleanly, curving it into the net like a pro.
    Only then did she make a slow turn to face him, hands on her hips, smiling wide at him like she’d just won the World Cup.
    Jayson sat on the grass, watching her, feeling himself do something he hadn’t done in a long time, certainly not since he’d moved to this side of Moreland.
    Smiling.

13
    THE THING ABOUT ZOE MONTGOMERY was, she just let him be.
    She didn’t seem all that bothered by his mood swings, and she made fun of him when she felt like it, without Jayson ever thinking she was actually trying to be mean. As far as he could tell after a week at Belmont, she didn’t have any interest in changing him. It was a nice break from the adults in his life who kept telling him who he was and how he should act, what he needed, even how he should think.
    Jayson didn’t know how much she knew about his past, how he had ended up on this side of town living with the Lawtons, what his life was like before he got here. He figured she had to know at least
some
of it, but if she had questions, she hadn’t asked them, at least not yet.
    That was fine with him. He was just enjoying spending time with this girl.
    Even with his limited knowledge of girls, and the limited amount of time he’d spent with them, Jayson could tell that Zoe was different. Of all the new people who’d become partof his life on this side of Moreland—the Lawtons, Ms. Moretti, the guys on the team, his teachers, and his coach—Zoe was the only one whom he really wanted to let in.
    Somehow he trusted her, even though she’d never asked him to.
    Ms. Moretti and the Lawtons were always talking about trust, how it worked both ways,
asking
him to trust them, to the point where he’d shut down as soon as he heard the word.
    Zoe wasn’t like that.
    It didn’t mean he felt comfortable being around her, or talking to her. But when he was with her, he felt like he could be himself. Whatever that meant.
    He had said to himself that he wasn’t going to be a phony, wasn’t going to let his new life change him, but he knew he wasn’t completely being himself at school now, or with the guys on the team, because he was making an effort to fit in. Trying to be one of the boys, making the best of the situation, thinking about a chance to play at Cameron Indoor if he could learn to accept his new team.
    It wasn’t as if he hated the guys on the team. They were actually all right. He was starting to work well with Cameron, their big guy, somebody Jayson knew would be able to hold his own, no problem, at the Jeff. Cameron could catch, shoot, rebound, defend. He wasn’t afraid to play physical, box out hard, whatever it took to get a rebound or a stop.
    The problem was that no matter how hard he tried, he justcouldn’t think of the Belmont Bobcats as
his
team. He felt like he was some NBA player who got traded to a team he didn’t want to play for.
    It was weird, when he really thought about it. It took switching schools and switching teams to feel closer to Tyrese and Shabazz than he’d ever felt going to school with them. Hooping with them at the Jeff.
    â€œYou’re still gonna chop it up when you start playing games,” Tyrese said to him on the phone.
    The season started in three days. Belmont’s first game was