Saturday, August 6, 2011

Exerpt

So here is a short exerpt from the book I just finished. It's tentatively entitled "Game", but we'll see. Here, the main character is thinking about a dude she saw at a high school basketball tournament, and goes on to explain a little bit about her connection to the sport and her relationship with her best friend. Dont get it twisted though, this story is not about hooping LOL

Hope ya like it!

*************************************************



"It had been three days since I was at the War Memorial, and I was still thinking about Jason Carter. I had watched the news footage of the game as many times as they showed it, trying to drink him in as much as I could before they moved on to covering the collegiate games, reducing him to a memory left to slowly fade from my mind. I really wish I had been paying more attention at the game. The reels the news played showed Jason driving to the basket in one play, shooting from the elbow in another, and breaking some dude’s ankles in a third. Dude’s crossover is NASTY! I was so turned on.

See, I was a hooper too, and nothing turned me on more than a dude with game. Despite our lack of interest at the arena, both Kim and I had a great appreciation for it. We both played at our respective schools, and she had plans to one day try out for the WNBA. Everybody expected her to, too. The day I met her at my grandmother’s house was just one of many days her Uncle Preston had taken her out to the courts at the beach to play with the older girls. When he found out I liked to play, he started taking me too.

We were both very good, but had very different games. I was a natural shooter, while Kim was all handle. She’d broken a few ankles in the hood by the time we were freshman in high school, while I had no problem shooting a nigga’s eyes out. They talked a lotta shit, but they respected our games, and none of them ever thought twice about picking one of us up on their teams, when they ran outside the rec center. That’s how most dudes knew us, even when we didn’t really know them – pretty girls that hooped got much play. Several times, I’d be somewhere and some random dude would come up to me like, “yo, aint your name Lynn?” I would look at them like who the fuck are you? and they would tell me they saw me hooping somewhere. That would usually be followed by “you don’t got me though” or some other stupid shit like that, which always annoyed the hell outta me.

Me and Kim had to join a CYO team just so we could play together. We were a pretty lethal combination, but going to different schools didn’t allow us to be that during the regular season, so we just went to each other’s games, when our schedules didn’t conflict, and practiced together at home. We were both going to the WNBA’s basketball camp that summer. Uncle Pres and my aunt broke up, after some woman started playing on her phone and saying she was pregnant by him, but he was still like an uncle to me, and came to most of my games, so me and Kim always told people we were cousins and that basketball ran in the family. The difference was, Kim lived and breathed it. I loved the game, but I knew I didn’t love it like she did. She worked hard for it. I was just kinda naturally gifted – in everything really. She pretended to envy that about me, but I envied her drive and focus. For as many things as I was good at, I’d never hone in on just one and take it to the top. Still, I thought I would hoop forever, and I believed that right up to the day I gave it up."


exerpt from "Game"
(c)2011

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.