The Sixth Man Read online

  “You ever think about what it would be like to not play a sport?”

  “I thought about it when I was suspended for that week because of the false-positive on my test,” Alex said.

  “Yeah, that sucked,” Matt said. “I still feel guilty about that—”

  “Why?” Alex broke in. “You had nothing to do with it….”

  “Yeah, but my dad had everything to do with it.”

  “Doesn’t matter. You were innocent….”

  “Of framing you. Not of taking steroids…”

  “And you’re paying the price for it right now.”

  “That’s what I’m saying,” he said. “I’m a jock. I need to play. I know I wouldn’t be playing basketball right now, but I’d be working out, getting ready for baseball, keeping in shape. I can’t even go in the weight room at school. It’s killing me.”

  “Can you go to the Y? Is there a town baseball team you could play for? I know it sucks, but it’s just until next fall, right?” Alex said.

  “That’s what I thought,” Matt said. “Then I got a letter today from the school board informing me that, after further review of my case, they decided my suspension would extend through next football season.”

  “What!?”

  “Yeah. They said I had only missed one football game—the championship game—and since I admitted I’d been using most of the season, they believed I should be suspended for next season.”

  They were pulling into Alex’s driveway.

  “Thing is, if I don’t play as a senior, no college is going to recruit me.”

  “Matt, I don’t know what to say,” Alex finally said.

  “I’m going to fight it,” Matt said. “I said I’d accept whatever penalty I received, but this isn’t fair. I have to play football next fall.”

  “Is there some way you can fight it?”

  “My mom knows a lawyer who will help,” he said. “We’re going to see him on Monday after school.”

  “What’s your dad think?” Alex was almost afraid to ask the question.

  “I don’t know,” Matt said. “He and I really don’t speak anymore.”

  “I’m sorry,” Alex said.

  “I’m not,” Matt said. “Listen, Goldie, do me a favor and don’t tell anyone—not even Jonas or Christine—okay?”

  “Sure,” Alex said. “But you’ll let me know how it goes, right?”

  Matt nodded.

  Alex got out of the car and walked into the house. His life wasn’t exactly smooth sailing right now, but he was suddenly grateful to have his problems and no one else’s.

  Alex’s phone buzzed at 7:50 the next morning. He couldn’t believe that anyone would call him so early on a Saturday. He reached to turn it off and saw it was Christine.

  “Why would you call me at this hour on a Saturday?”

  “I’m fine, thanks for asking,” she responded.

  He sighed. “What’s up?” he asked. “Besides me, now.”

  “I forgot to ask you last night about Stark’s.”

  “You mean lunch?” He was still a little groggy.

  “Yes,” she said. “Mr. Hillier wants me to do a big story about Max for Wednesday’s paper, and I want to talk to you about him.”

  “So you woke me up to make a date to talk about Max?” he said.

  “Well,” she said. “I’d also like to see you.”

  Alex sighed again. She always found a way to turn things around….

  “I’ll be there at eleven-thirty,” he said.

  “Don’t sound so enthused,” she said, and was gone.

  Alex looked out his window. The sun hadn’t been up for very long, and everything was sparkling with frost.

  He thought about going back to sleep. Then it occurred to him that if he got up, he could read the newspaper accounts of last night’s game. He groaned loudly and stumbled in the direction of the shower.

  When Alex came downstairs, his mom asked him what in the world he was doing up and showered so early.

  “Christine,” he answered. “She woke me to say she needs to talk with me for a story she’s doing on Max.”

  His mom laughed. “He did make the winning shot last night, right?”

  “I passed him the ball,” Alex answered.

  She walked over and kissed him on the top of his head. “And she asked you to lunch, not him.”

  “Yeah,” Alex said, actually feeling better.

  “By the way, I taped Comcast’s late-night news just in case they mentioned the game,” she said. “Turns out they somehow got tape of the last shot. It’s cued up on the TV if you want to look at it.”

  “You’re the best, Mom,” he said, heading for the family room.

  “That’s right,” she said. “And if you have any doubts, I’ll make you some eggs.”

  Dei Lynam had anchored the show the night before.

  “Everyone knows Chester Heights has always been more of a football school than a basketball school,” she said. “In fact, that’s freshman quarterback Alex Myers with the ball as the last seconds are ticking away with the Lions down 68–66 to Bryn Mawr.” The tape ran as Alex dribbled to the frontcourt. “Then Myers finds transfer Max Bellotti on the wing, and just before the buzzer”—she paused as Max released the shot and the red light behind the basket came on with the ball in the air—“and SWISH!” Lynam said. “Chester Heights’ biggest win since Ben Franklin invented basketball.”

  It was a running joke on Comcast that Ben Franklin had invented everything—including basketball. Poor James Naismith, Alex thought, but he was smiling as he turned off the TV and returned to the kitchen, where his eggs awaited.

  Jonas and Christine were both waiting in their usual booth in the back when Alex got to Stark’s.

  “Awake yet?” Christine asked as Alex slid in next to her.

  “Thanks to you,” he answered.

  She smiled, which always left Alex a little weak-kneed, even when sitting down. “Max is coming too,” she said. “I’ve done the background stuff on him, so I thought I could talk to all three of you about last night and about the team at once.”

  It figures, thought Alex. “Are we waiting to order?” he asked. “I’m hungry.”

  “Nope,” Christine said, waving. “He’s here right now.”

  “I didn’t think anyplace could be colder than Detroit,” Max said, taking his coat off and putting it on the hook next to the booth. “But I might have been wrong.” He sat down next to Jonas. The waitress came over, and Alex, Jonas, and Christine told Max he’d be crazy to order anything but a hamburger—Stark’s was famous for them.

  “Thanks for inviting me,” Max said once the waitress was gone. “It’s nice to have friends in a new place.”

  Jonas laughed. “There were a lot of girls last night who seemed like they wanted to be your best friend.”

  Max grimaced. “Yeah, but that’s different. It’s flattering—I mean, very flattering, but also really uncomfortable. I’m more interested in making real friends.”

  “You better get used to it,” Jonas said. “I don’t see it stopping anytime soon.”

  “Hope can be pretty relentless,” Alex agreed.

  Max laughed uncomfortably. “She’s not really my type.”

  “She is a bit over the top,” Christine said.

  Max smiled. “She’s, um…direct. And she’s got a certain style. But like I said, not my type.”

  Alex cringed inwardly. That probably meant Christine was his type. Alex was convinced that Christine was everyone’s type.

  “Well, you’ve only got about half the girls in school to choose from,” Jonas said. “I’m sure you’ll find someone.”

  Max was shaking his head. “You guys don’t understand,” he said finally. It seemed like he wanted to say more, but then the waitress delivered their lunches and everyone dug in. Except Max.

  “See, the thing is…”—Max took a deep breath—“I’m gay.”

  Alex choked a little on his milk shake and sta
rted coughing.

  Jonas stared at Max for a second and then said, “Come again?”

  “I’m gay,” Max repeated.

  They were all quiet for a moment. Alex knew plenty of people who were gay, but this was the first time someone had actually come out to him. He had no idea what to say.

  “Are you upset, Alex?” Max said. Alex realized his only response had been to choke on his milk shake.

  “No!” Alex said. “Not at all. Surprised? Yes. It just never occurred to me—”

  “Why would it occur to you?” Christine asked, which was a good question, but one that seemed to come out a bit hostile.

  “I just meant I never thought—”

  “Because Max is good-looking and girls like him, right?” Christine said.

  Alex was baffled. Why was Christine attacking him for being surprised by surprising news?

  Jonas clearly felt the same way. “Christine, what is Alex doing wrong here? Why are you on his case?”

  “I…,” Christine faltered. “I don’t know, really.”

  “It’s okay,” Max said. “It’s okay if you’re surprised. I’ve never really told anybody….Well—a few people knew at my old school.

  “But moving here…starting somewhere new…Chester Heights seems like a pretty liberal school. I know there’s a GLAAD chapter in the school with about a hundred members.”

  “Remind me what GLAAD stands for,” Alex said.

  “Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation,” Christine answered quickly.

  “I was…thinking of joining,” Max said.

  Alex thought about that for a second, then understood the implication.

  “You mean you’re thinking of coming out publicly,” he said.

  Max nodded. “Jason Collins did it in the NBA, Michael Sam in the NFL, and Derrick Gordon did it in college basketball up at Massachusetts,” he said. “More and more athletes are coming forward. Things have changed a lot.”

  “Have you talked to your parents about it?” Alex asked.

  “About being gay or joining the GLAAD group?”

  “Both,” Alex answered.

  “Yes to being gay, no to GLAAD.”

  “How did they react?” Jonas asked.

  “I think my mom kind of knew,” he said. “My dad’s trying very hard to not be upset, but I know it bothers him. I think at first he thought I was somehow trying to get back at him because of the divorce. But I just didn’t want to leave Detroit without him knowing.”

  “So how’s he going to react if you come out?” Alex asked.

  “It’s not if; it’s when,” Max said. “I’m going to come out at some point. And I just thought, new city, new school, new friends. Why not just be honest from the start? It’s really hard to lie all the time. The party last night kind of reinforced it for me.”

  “That makes a lot of sense,” Christine said.

  “Yeah, but my question is, how do you think the other guys on the team will react?”

  Alex looked at Jonas.

  “You can probably guess,” Jonas said. “The smart ones won’t care. The dumb ones probably will.”

  “You mean Wakefield and Early?” Max asked.

  “I wouldn’t count on those other three seniors either,” Alex said.

  “Bogus will be fine,” Christine said. “He’s quiet, but a good guy. I don’t know the other two that well.”

  “And you guys?” Max asked, looking at them all. “Are we okay?”

  “Of course,” Christine said.

  “It’s fine by me,” Alex agreed.

  “Fine?” Jonas scoffed. “Alex is psyched you won’t be hitting on Christine.”

  Alex practically choked on his milk shake again, but then laughed. “Fair point,” he admitted, while Christine rolled her eyes (and blushed just a little).

  “I tell you what, though,” Jonas continued, shaking his head. “Hope Alexander is going to be seriously put out.”

  With that they all laughed and went back to their burgers.

  They talked through the possible ramifications of Max’s joining GLAAD and whether he should come out in the Weekly Roar. They all figured it would be a big story locally and nationally.

  Max had mentioned that he had started to receive recruiting letters from colleges in the fall. Derrick Gordon, the University of Massachusetts guard, had come out in 2014, but Max might end up being the first highly recruited high school athlete to be openly gay.

  They talked about timing. Max was just one week into a new school. And this story might blow up in ways none of them could predict. Did he want to take that on right now?

  Max listened and nodded and groaned. “Look, I’d rather not be in the center of some media frenzy. The more you talk about it, the worse it sounds. But I can’t go through another night like last night,” he said. “I was embarrassed, and to be honest, I felt sorry for Hope.”

  Max continued: “Maybe it won’t be that big of a deal. I mean, it shouldn’t be, right?”

  They all nodded. It shouldn’t be a big deal. But they all knew that it would be.

  Alex got home to find his mom getting ready to go out again with Coach Archer. It still made Alex a little queasy, but he wasn’t going to ask her to stop. She seemed so happy. Throw in the whole dad–and–Megan Wheeler debacle, and there was no way he was going to criticize any relationship his mom was in.

  Still. He wanted to talk to his mom about Max, but he felt compelled to make her promise not to say anything to Coach Archer, which was weird.

  She looked at him very seriously. “Alex, there’s nothing you can’t tell me in confidence—whether with Evan or anyone else. You can always trust me on that.”

  He nodded and told her what had happened at Stark’s.

  “Christine’s right—Max should take his time and think it through,” his mom said. “It’s good that he feels confident enough to want to come out, but there is going to be a lot of publicity. Maybe it shouldn’t be that way, but it is—even now.”

  Alex nodded.

  “He’ll need friends to help him through,” she added, and came over to put an arm around him. “He’s lucky to have you guys.”

  He noticed she was more dressed up than she had been for her other dates with Coach Archer.

  “What are you doing tonight?” he asked.

  “We’re going to see A Chorus Line,” she said. “There’s a new revival of it in Philadelphia.”

  “I thought you hated musicals,” Alex said.

  “I do,” his mom said. “Going to see Cats eleven times as a kid turned me off them forever. I’ll never forgive my mother for that. But Evan loves A Chorus Line.”

  “Really?”

  “Yup. Says he cries every time he hears ‘What I Did for Love.’ ”

  Alex had a hard time picturing Coach Archer getting weepy about anything, much less a song from a musical.

  Then, without really thinking it through, he said, “You must really like him.”

  She smiled. “Yes, I do,” she said. “Evan’s a very nice guy, and he’s fun to go out with. But I don’t want you to worry. I’m nowhere close to getting serious with anyone.”

  “So, you aren’t going to do anything like Dad….”

  She laughed. “Absolutely not,” she said.

  “But you do think he’s good-looking.”

  “Oh, he’s very good-looking. But there’s a lot more to life than that.”

  “So I don’t need to worry about being coached by my stepfather?” he asked.

  “Only if Chester Heights hires George Clooney to coach baseball,” she said. “Then all bets are off.”

  Alex laughed. He could live with that.

  The crowd for Tuesday’s game against Lincoln was easily the biggest of the season.

  “Is it us beating Bryn Mawr, or is it the Max Factor?” Jonas asked as they went through their pregame layup drills.

  Alex answered by nodding in the direction of the student section. About ten rows up, twenty girls were w
earing red-and-white T-shirts that said THE MAX PACK on them.

  “Nice,” Jonas said.

  Max jogged by—clearly not happy. “The longer I wait, the worse this is going to get,” he said.

  “Let’s talk about it later,” Alex said. “We do have a game to play.”

  Fortunately, the game wasn’t all that difficult. If Max was distracted, it didn’t show. He scored twenty-two points and had twelve rebounds. Holder had identical numbers: twenty-two and twelve, but there was less shrieking when he scored. Alex came in three minutes into the game and didn’t come out until the game was in hand. He scored fourteen points and had eleven assists. Jonas had eighteen points. Zane Wakefield had two. The Lions eased to an 81–62 win.

  The win made the Lions an unimpressive 5–3 on the season but 2–0 in the conference, which, in a very real sense, was all that mattered.

  “Back on the road for the next two,” Coach Archer said. “We’re looking good, but let’s not rest on our laurels. We aren’t going to sneak up on people anymore.”

  Alex wasn’t worried about that. He was worried that if Max decided now was the time to come out, all the commotion around the announcement might slow down—or completely stop—the momentum they had built since he had joined the team.

  “Maybe we should ask Max to keep quiet for a while longer,” Alex said to Jonas as they climbed the stairs from the locker room back to the gym floor.

  “How long?” Jonas said. “I kind of understand where he’s coming from. How would you feel if guys were throwing themselves at your feet?”

  “What?”

  “Think about it. For Max, all those girls shrieking and throwing themselves at him is about the same as it would be if you or I had fifty guys doing that.”

  “Come on, it’s different.”

  “Is it?”

  Alex thought a moment, then decided Jonas was right.

  “Okay, I see your point. But I still wish we could get a few more games behind us before we get hit with a media frenzy.”

  Jonas shook his head. “Not really up to us.”

  Alex knew he was right.

  Christine had done a short feature on Max for the Weekly Roar on Wednesday about how his presence gave the team a whole new dynamic on offense and made them a team to watch in the league. And as if to prove her right, the Lions won again easily at Thomas Jefferson on Friday.