Basketball E-Book

Lucy Jane Bledsoe

• Herausgeber: Gemma Open Door for Literacy
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 47

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

BJ's mother is short.Mom is an abstract painter who runs an arty cafe. BJ, however, takes after her missing father. Just twenty-one, she's a college basketball player who lives and breathes the game. High tops and hoops occupy her every waking moment. When she accidentally discovers her dad, a shadowy presence throughout her whole life, she suspects her best friends may actually be closer than she thinks--are they her sisters? Maybe there is more family she's never met! BJ just wants to keep her mind on the game.

Leseprobe

Lucy Jane Bledsoe

BASKETBALL

Lucy Jane Bledsoe is the author of four novels, a collection of short fiction, a collection of narrative nonfiction, and six books for kids. She is the recipient of the 2009 Sherwood Anderson Prize for Fiction, the 2009 Arts & Letters Fiction Prize, as well as a California Arts Council Fellowship, a PEN Syndicated Fiction Award, and an American Library Association Stonewall Award. Her stories have been published in dozens of journals, including Arts & Letters, Shenandoah, ZYZZYVA, Bloom, Hot Metal Bridge, Terrain, and Fiction International. Her novels have been translated into Japanese, Spanish, and German, and her stories into Dutch and Chinese.

First published by GemmaMedia in 2012.

GemmaMedia

230 Commercial street

Boston, MA 02109 UsA

www.gemmamedia.com

© 2012 by Lucy Jane Bledsoe

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles of reviews.

Printed in the United states of America

16 15 14 13 12    1 2 3 4 5

978-1-936846-23-8

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bledsoe, Lucy Jane.

Basketball / Lucy Jane Bledsoe.

p. cm. -- (Gemma open door)

ISBN 978-1-936846-23-8

1. Women college students--Fiction. 2. Women baskeball players--Fiction. 3. Family secrets--Fiction. I. Title.

PS3552.L418B37 2012

813’.54--dc23

2012003742

Cover by Night & Day Design

Inspired by the Irish series of books designed for adult literacy, Gemma Open Door Foundation provides fresh stories, new ideas, and essential resources for young people and adults as they embrace the power of reading and the written word.

Brian BouldreyNorth American Series Editor

Open Dore

Contents

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

ONE

I'm standing on the free-throw line, sweaty in my uniform, as if the game isn't over. Even the fans are starting to clear out. A few slap my back, move their mouths. They're probably congratulating me on my first Division I game.

I don't even hear them.

All I see is his face. My dad's. A man I met for the first time just now when I shook his hand. He has no idea who I am. Last he heard, like about twenty years ago, Mom wasn't able to have children.

Soon the entire gym will be empty except for me, standing frozen at the free throw line. I finally lope over to the bench and pull on my warm-ups.

I can handle this, right? Sure. No problem.

My gym bag rings. I unzip it, reach for my phone, and check the number. Oh boy. I quickly press IGNORE. It's going to be a long time before I can explain this to her.

My mother's message has always been as plain as buckshot. The moment my father broke her heart is the defining moment of her life. Should I choose to ally myself with him in any way, I may as well just kill her.

But tell you what. Let's leave Freud out of it. What are the facts here?

The locker room is empty by now. I strip off my uniform and get under a hot shower. Calm down. Just the facts, right?

I'm a basketball player. Division I recruit for the University of Oregon. Six feet two inches tall.

My mom is shortish, you might say dumpy, and a painter. An abstract painter.

Who do you suppose contributed the most genes to me?

Yep, him. And guess what? He happens to also be the father of my two new best friends, Becky and Sarah McCormack, the hotshot twins from Indiana, basketball's mecca.

Like I said, I don't think Freud is going to be helpful here. But the genetics of the situation are sort of interesting. What's coincidence and what's DNA? Our heights are genetic, obviously. But maybe even the highly unlikely fact that we all ended up playing for the University of Oregon has some plausible genetic explanation. After all, Coach Washington recruited all three of us. She's attracted to a particular style of basketball, right? What's funny is that my father spent the last ten years grooming Becky and Sarah for that recruiting moment. Whereas I played in New York—hardly basketball mecca—and for a private school to boot. My mom is supportive of everything I do, and she loves the scholarship, but you couldn't really say her dreams for me ever included athletic competition. So my father's extensive training with the twins might have been superfluous. We all have his ball-playing genes, including a tendency toward a cooperative style and singular focus. All you had to do was feed us and put a roof over our heads.

Mom will like that part. We got what there was to get from Michael. His staying in our lives wouldn't have contributed anything more.

I am, however, on the brink of bringing him into our lives. My life. Mom's life. Michael's life. And maybe most alarmingly, Becky and Sarah's lives. I have to figure out how—or if—to do that.

TWO

Back to the facts. Here's what I know.