Foul (Night Fall ™) Read online

  NIGHT FALL

  FOUL

  P A U L H O B L I N

  Text copyright © 2011 by Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.

  All rights reserved. International copyright secured. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc., except for the inclusion of brief quotations in an acknowledged review.

  Darby Creek

  A division of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.

  241 First Avenue North

  Minneapolis, MN 55401 U.S.A.

  Website address: www.lernerbooks.com

  Cover photographs © Walter B. McKenzie/Digital Vision/Getty

  Cover photographs © Walter B. McKenzie/Digital Vision/Getty

  Main body text set in Memento Regular 12/16.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Hoblin, Paul.

  Foul / by Paul Hoblin.

  p. cm. — (Night fall)

  ISBN 978-0-7613-7746-7 (lib. bdg. : alk. paper)

  [1. Horror stories. 2. Basketball—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.H653Fo 2011

  [Fic]—dc22 2011000931

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  1—BP—7/15/11

  eISBN: 978-0-7613-7949-2 (pdf)

  eISBN: 978-1-4677-2958-1 (ePub)

  eISBN: 978-1-4677-2957-4 (mobi)

  For MKTK.

  Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,

  Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before

  —Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven

  1

  I may only be a sixteen-year-old kid, but on the basketball court, I’m a man.

  I’m the man.

  Almost seven feet tall and over two hundred fifty pounds of muscle, I might as well be Superman.

  Ask anyone. Ask my best friend, Nate. Better yet, ask his dad, Sheriff Brady. He’ll tell you in official police language that Ryan Johnson (that’s me) is bigger, faster, and stronger than any other Bridgewater citizen. Case dismissed.

  You can ask my adoptive parents, too. My biological parents died in a car crash when I was a kid. I can hardly remember them at all. But ask my adoptive parents, and they’ll probably even try to take credit for my genes.

  Ask the Bridgewater High fans. They’ve been shouting my name for almost four quarters now. Way to go, Rhino! You’re the man, Rhino! That’s what everyone calls me—Rhino. Like when they want an autograph: “Rhino, will you sign this ball for me?” Or when they see me in the open court, getting ready to dunk. “Rhino! Rhino! Rhino!”

  Ask any of these people and they’ll tell you. I own this court. Every inch of it.

  Put me at the ten-second line and I’ll win every tip-off. Put me behind the three-point arc and I’ll drain some threes. Put me in the lane and, well, if you’re my opponent, you don’t want me in the lane. On one end I’ll swat your shot into the thirtieth row of the bleachers. On the other end I’ll shoot my sweet hook or my floater. And that’s if you’re lucky. That’s if I’m feeling nice. Otherwise I’ll shoulder you to the floor and dunk the ball in your face. Or onto your face, if you haven’t gotten up yet.

  Just don’t put me at the free-throw line. Please, please don’t put me there.

  That’s the one place on this court where everyone’s cheers turn to groans. It’s the one place where I’m not the man.

  If I’m Superman, shooting free throws is my kryptonite.

  My muscular legs and arms go weak just thinking about it.

  That’s where I am now. The foul line. I already missed my first free throw, and the ref passes me the ball to attempt my second. I look around the stadium. Patty and Dale—that’s what I call my adoptive parents—are in the middle of the bleachers. As always, they’re biting their knuckles. So is Cindy Williams. She’s a cheerleader and, according to me, the prettiest the girl in school. Nate’s dad, Sheriff Brady, probably isn’t even watching. He probably has his eyes closed behind those shades he wears. He’s seen his share of murders and mayhem, but those things are nowhere near as scary as my shooting form at the line.

  And then there’s the basketball recruiter. At least, I think that’s what he is. He’s been standing all game by the exit sign, watching us play. Watching me play. I’m used to it by now, of course. I may only be sixteen, but lots of recruiters have come to see my basketball skills. This is the first one to make me nervous, though. That’s because he’s wearing a Northern California State blue-and-gold sweatshirt, which is where my dad, my real dad, played ball. And it’s where I want to play, too.

  I return my focus to the basketball court. I watch Nate put his elbow into the guy next to him, ready to go for the rebound before I even shoot. I don’t blame him. Everyone here knows I’m going to miss—even me.

  I lift the ball over my head, let it go, and prove every one of us is right.

  The ball clangs off the rim, and the other team grabs the rebound.

  2

  As usual, I’m the last one out of the locker room. Nate talked with me for a while, but then he pounded my fist and left. He knows I like to be alone after a game. Not that that’s easy to do. Fans have started to wait around longer and longer. They want to clap me on the back or get my signature. Which means the only way I can be alone is to stay in this locker room until they finally give up.

  And that’s fine by me. It smells like stale body odor in here, but it’s peaceful. Plus, I have a whole post-game routine. I sit in front of my locker and replay all of my highlights in my head—my rebounds, my dunks. As I do this I eat the granola bar Patty packs in my sports bag before every game.

  My phone buzzes. I take it out of my pocket and look at the number. I don’t recognize it, but that’s not new. I get lots of calls from people I don’t know. Recruiters get my number by contacting my coach or my parents. Fans get it however they can. Nate was once given a hundred bucks for my digits. He pocketed the cash and walked away without saying a thing.

  Maybe it’s the Northern California State guy calling. If it is, I don’t mind the interruption.

  “Hello?” I say.

  “This is Ryan Johnson, right?” It’s a male voice, but I don’t think I recognize it. “Ryan Danielson Johnson?”

  I’m not sure why he’s saying my middle name like that, like it’s really important or something.

  “Call me Rhino,” I say. If it is the Northern California State recruiter, I want to sound casual.

  “I saw you play tonight.”

  “And what did you think?” I ask. “Am I college material?”

  “I think you need to make your free throws.”

  Talk about a tough critic. “I scored thirty-eight points,” I say.

  “If you’d made your shots at the line, you would have scored ten more.”

  I try to stay calm. This guy is annoying, but I don’t want to piss off the man who’s going to get me into my dad’s school. I look at my feet and take a deep breath. “I hear you,” I say. “I’ll work on it.”

  “You better,” he says.

  “I know, I know. Free throws win or lose games, right?” I’ve been hearing this from coaches for years, and I’m sick of it. We won today by twenty-four points.

  I’m still looking at my feet, at my soggy shower sandals. I press my soles down. The sandals squish.

  “That’s one reason to make your foul shots, yeah.”

  “What’s the other one?” I ask.

  There’s a pause.

  “If you don’t start making your free throws,” the man says, “people are going to get hurt.”


  3

  At first I don’t know what to say. “What are you . . . who is this?”

  But no one answers. Whoever it is, he must have hung up.

  I sit there, staring at my phone. My heart is thudding against my ribs, and I tell myself to calm down. After all, I’ve received threats before. Lots of them. It’s just part of being a basketball star. Earlier in the season the Bridgewater Gazette did a feature on me. The headline was “Rhino Bowls Over the Competition.” Someone sent me a copy of the article, but they crossed out the o in “Bowls” and replaced it with an a: “Rhino Bawls Over the Competition.” The article included a black-and-white picture of me, and the person who sent it had drawn teardrops on my face. “This is what you’re going to look like next game!” the person wrote.

  Opposing fans tell me all the time that I’m going to get pummeled, crushed, even killed. It’s usually pretty clear, though, that they’re talking about the upcoming game. They mean I’m going to get pummeled, crushed, or killed on the basketball court.

  But this threat feels more, well, threatening. Maybe I’ll tell Sheriff Brady. Then again, I showed him the marked-up article as soon as I got it, and he couldn’t do a thing about it. He said he totally understood my concern, but there was no way to track down the person who sent the article. “Unfortunately,” he said, “you’re going to have to get used to this kind of thing.”

  Like I said, it’s all part of being a star.

  I put my phone back in my pocket. All of a sudden I don’t want to be alone anymore. I pull my sports bag over my shoulder and head for the door. My sandals squish with every step.

  When I enter the hallway, I hear someone talking loudly. A girl’s voice this time. It’s Cindy Williams. She’s leaning against the wall. Unlike most of the other cheerleaders, she hasn’t bleached her hair blonde or made it completely straight, and I’m glad she hasn’t. She has a winter jacket on, but she’s still wearing her cheerleader outfit. The fabric of her skirt is pressed against the wall, and I can see even more of her legs than usual. She’s talking on her phone. Loudly.

  “So are you coming or not?” she says. After a little while she says, “Fine!” and hangs up.

  She’s upset. Her face looks hard with anger. She lifts her long dark hair with the back of her hand so her neck can breathe.

  I swallow hard, try to get up the courage to ask if she needs a ride. I might be the man on the court, but I feel like a scared little boy when talking to girls. Especially Cindy.

  She turns her head and sees me. I swallow one more time. I’m just about to open my mouth when she says, “Hey, Rhino. Mind driving me home?”

  4

  “I usually don’t yell like that, I swear,” Cindy says. We’re walking down the hallway together. “That phone call just didn’t go as I was expecting it to.”

  I know what you mean, I think. But I don’t say anything. I just swallow some more.

  “Thanks for doing this, Rhino,” she says.

  I nod, swallow.

  “Sometimes my boyfriend can be a real creep.” She’s referring to a college dude she’s been dating since forever. How can I compete with that? “I mean,” she says, “my ex-boyfriend.”

  Nice. Maybe I don’t have to compete with it.

  “He said he wanted to remain friends. His words, not mine. And for some reason I agreed. I don’t know why I’m surprised he didn’t show up tonight. I actually thought he’d be less of a jerk as a friend than a boyfriend.”

  We’re at the doors to the parking lot now. It’s the end of February, and the lot is iced over. I look at my car, squatting alone way in the back. I look at Cindy’s bare legs.

  I’m about to ask if she’s going to be all right walking that far in the freezing air. But she once again beats me to it: “Sure you want to walk all that way in those wet sandals?” she asks.

  I want to tell her it’s no big deal, that I’m more concerned about her. But right now that seems like too many words for my mouth to manage. So instead I just nod again and push the door open. The cold breeze is stiff. We walk carefully across the patches of ice. When we get to my car, I unlock her door first.

  “Thanks,” Cindy says.

  Before I can make it to my side of the car, Cindy reaches across the seat and unlocks my door for me. I get in, put the key in the ignition, and think, Start. Please, please start. Someday I’ll drive a sports car, but right now all I have is an old, rusty, two-door piece of crap that I barely even fit in. My head brushes the ceiling unless I slouch.

  Thankfully, the car does start.

  “It’s not too far,” Cindy says.

  She’s telling the truth. In less than a mile she points to her house. My headlights swing across the house, and I see that it’s big and white. All the lights are off inside. I pull into the driveway.

  “Thanks again, Rhino,” she says, opening her door.

  I nod once more.

  She pokes her head back in the car. “You’re not a jerk, are you?” she says.

  Finally, I speak. “I don’t think so.”

  “I don’t think so either,” she says. She shuts the door and speed-walks toward her house. Her legs jitter in the cold as she digs for her keys in her jacket pocket. I wait for some of the lights to turn on, and I put the car in reverse.

  When I enter my own house, Dale is sitting at the kitchen table, holding the landline phone. He’s wearing one of his many turtlenecks, and I think about telling him for about the hundredth time that they look really lame. Maybe there was a time when guys wore turtlenecks, but that time is long gone. I swear, he’d wear turtleneck T-shirts all summer if they made them. He has some theory about his neck looking too long without them.

  I shut the door behind me, and he turns his head. “Hi, Rhino,” he says.

  “Hey, Dale.”

  “Just got off the phone with a recruiter from Northern California State,” Dale says. “He was at your game.”

  All of a sudden my heart is thudding in my chest again. “What did he say?”

  “He says you need to work on your free throws.”

  5

  Two days later, we’re playing our archrivals, St. Philomena’s. It’s late in the game, and where do I find myself?

  The free-throw line.

  This time the game is close. We’re down by just one point when the ref hands me the ball for my first shot. There’s only a few seconds left. I look around and see all the usual people: Dale and Patty are sitting at half court. Cindy’s in a crouch, ready to spring into the air with her pom-poms if I make the shot. Sheriff Brady’s stationed in front of the exit like always. The Northern California State recruiter is standing right next to him, wearing the same sweatshirt as last time. It’s blue, with yellow letters across the chest that say NCSU.

  I bring the ball above my head and let it fly.

  CLANG!

  I can almost hear the collective sigh of everyone in the building.

  I glance at the recruiter again. He’s been standing there, next to Sheriff Brady, most of the game, and I wonder why. It turns out he didn’t say anything about my free-throw shooting when he called my house—that was just Dale’s way of joking around. “Still,” Dale said, “you do need to start making those shots.” Which is just like him. Ever since I became a star he’s been giving me lots of advice. He never even played middle-school basketball, but I swear he talks to me sometimes like he’s an expert.

  I bend my knees and shoot.

  Another miss.

  Luckily, Nate’s able to get the rebound and tip it off the backboard and into the hoop.

  The fans go crazy. They mob the court. I have to sift through all the bodies, but finally I make it to Nate and say, “You saved me, buddy.”

  The two of us stand there grinning at each other. Over his shoulder, I can’t help but notice the recruiter leaving. The overhead lights gleam off his pale, bald head. He breaks away from the crowd and slips out the door.

  As happy as I am for Nate and my team, I wish t
he recruiter hadn’t seen me miss those shots.

  6

  I’m on the court longer than the rest of my teammates. We’re three games away from winning the conference championship, and after the game everyone wants a piece of me. Fans clap my back and punch my shoulder. An interviewer for the Bridgewater Gazette pulls me aside and asks me questions.

  By the time I get to the locker room, everyone’s gone. After taking a shower I sit in my usual spot, in front of my locker, dripping. I’m wearing my shower sandals again and eating my granola bar. I’m going through the game in my head when a locker door slams shut. I jump. I thought I was alone. When I check out the next row of lockers, I find Nate sitting there.

  He’s still in his basketball uniform. His school clothes and his winter jacket are in a pile next to him. When he sees me he picks the pile up and makes for the door. Nate’s above-average in height, but he’s really skinny. I can hardly see his upper body behind the bundle he’s carrying.

  “Everything OK?” I say.

  “Sure,” Nate says. He’s trying to open the door.

  “Here, let me help,” I say. I’m in the middle of the locker room, and I take a few steps in his direction.

  “I can open a door without the great Rhino’s help,” he says.

  What’s his problem? “I wasn’t saying you couldn’t,” I tell him.

  He takes a deep breath. The pile rises, falls. “Look,” he says, “sometimes I get sick of being overlooked, okay? Why did you get interviewed? I’m the one who made the game-winning shot.”