Nichols brought the ball up the court with controlled urgency. With twenty-three seconds left and his Roadrunners down one, it was go-time, but not panic-time. In moments like this—in the clutch—the game slowed down for Nichols. His teammates made their cuts like marbles through syrup. Every tick of the clock was an ocean of potential; every dribble a bookmark in space. This was his time. Like Coach Dunlow often told him in the quieter moments—after practice, or in the locker room before games; in any event out of earshot of his teammates—You’re our point guard, aright? Our floor general. Where YOU go, this TEAM goes. So if nothing else, he owed it to the team to stay cool as a lizard in the shade. Central Valley District Championships didn’t just happen after all, not to mention Aurelia Jackson—hair pulled back in a whip of a ponytail, glitter bomb on her cheeks—was right there in the bleachers: fourth stanchion, fourth row. And he had spotted one of the assistant coaches from The U—where he’d signed a letter of intent to go play ball next fall—wedged way up in the corner, where all coaches and scouts seemed to sit, as though they were private investigators or spies. 

He pushed the ball past half-court and with about twenty seconds to go, made eye contact with Witherspoon on the wing. Witherspoon was six-two or six-three, all sneakers and elbows, but he could shoot the leather off the ball from just about anywhere on the floor. Problem was, he was slow as a slug and couldn’t jump over a credit card. Nichols knew he’d get some Division III offers but turn them down and go to a state school to party and study Marketing or something. He waved Witherspoon off and his teammate quickly—gratefully—obliged, circling around beneath the basket to the opposite corner of the floor.

Seventeen seconds.

Nichols took a few dribbles to his right to fill the space Witherspoon had just left. Behind him, he heard Coach Dunlow—his voice as sandpapered as a battle-sieged general—holler, C’mon now!, one of those phrases that meant absolutely nothing, but which seemed to work nonetheless. The kid defending Nichols must have heard it too, because he grinned a little, revealing a mouthguard that was red and slick with spit, settled deeper into his defensive crouch and clapped his hands in a way that struck Nichols as both ironic and pitiable. 

Fourteen seconds.

Freed from a screen on the low block near the basket, the Roadrunners’ center, Ahearn, a doughy slab of a kid, cut to Nichols’ side of the court and kept his defender on his hip. He waved at Nichols wide-eyed with the universal sign for Holy shit, I’m open. Ahearn was a stud offensive lineman fielding several Division I offers and really only played basketball because he got a kick out of manhandling other centers who weighed less than he did, which was all of them. Nichols respected Ahearn because he wasn’t afraid of shit; he’d take the last shot without blinking. But he had about as much finesse as a jackhammer, and if, God forbid, he was fouled and sent to the free throw line? Well, they might as well pack it in and head home for Jeopardy!. Nichols gave Ahearn a nod of the chin. Ahearn rolled his eyes and slapped his thigh in a show of frustration, then curled away to the other side of the lane. Now nothing stood between Nichols and the basket except for Mr. Mouthguard here, and he wasn’t at all worried about that.  

Nine seconds.

Mouthguard licked his lips, sneered and clapped again. Not once did Nichols break eye contact. No. He stared right into Mouthguard’s eyes and saw there a kid who wore gruff self-confidence as a cloak. Perhaps he had an older brother who used to kick his ass. Or perhaps he was from a well-to-do family and projected a disdainful arrogance to distract from his butter-soft upbringing. Whatever the case, he must have felt exposed, because he broke Nichols’ gaze to glance over his shoulder to see if he had any defensive help. Big mistake. By the time he looked back, Nichols had already made his move, a right-to-left shimmying crossover dribble, to knife into the lane. Mouthguard pressed his body into Nichols’ right side as he did his best to keep up. But it was too late: Nichols gathered the ball in two hands and planted his left foot for lift-off. He felt bodies closing in to his left so he double-clutched and swept the ball to his right hand for a low scoop shot with enough English that it would spin off the glass and into the cup. 

Except he must have mis-timed his jump, because the ball rolled off his fingertips, took its low trajectory toward the basket and lodged fast into the crook of space between rim and backboard. Nichols’ momentum carried him to the floor where he slid on his hip. He scrambled to his feet and fired a glance at the game clock—a shade under two seconds—then up at the ball where it held fast. He waited for the final buzzer to sound. 

No sound came. 

He looked back at the clock: it hadn’t budged. The scorer’s table must have stopped the clock for the dead ball, which meant the game… wasn’t over? The game wasn’t over! Okay sure, possession would go to the other team and the odds were incredibly low—damn near impossible, really—but the Roadrunners could quickly foul and who knows, miracles can happen if you just believe.

Nichols looked to the scorer’s table to confirm, but no one at the table was moving. 

At all.

Not the terse grandma working the scorebook who now glared, unblinking, over the rims of her glasses in the direction of the basket as though it had insulted her personally. Nor the dad in the ballcap manning the clock who stared at the controller, mouth agape, like it had just pulled a quarter from behind his ear. Neither was Coach Dunlow, who stood stock-still with his face red and his hands clasped on top of his head in anticipatory anguish. And neither was the Roadrunners’ bench where the assistant coaches and Nichols’ teammates were all, every last one of them, stuck in contorted poses of agony and hope. Beyond the bench, the several hundred people in the stands were a mosaic of arrested motion: flailing arms and derpy faces and sparkly pom-poms and even a mini-explosion of Cheetos. 

Now hold on . . . now just hold the fuck on.

Nichols spun and saw Mouthguard hanging in midair where he had collided with a fellow defender. His head was turned away to avoid his teammate’s elbow and his eyes were scrunched tight and his lips were parted in a wince that revealed the flash of red rubber that protected his teeth.

He was stuck.

In midair.

Whatthefuck!

Nichols shot a look at Ahearn. 

Frozen. 

A rumbling mound of gleeful chaos caught motionless mid-stride on his way to gather Nichols’ rebound. 

He scanned for Witherspoon in the far corner: frozen, and flinching and generally shrinking from the moment. 

Ohgodohgodohgod . . . what had he done. Sure, time had always seemed to shift into a lower gear for him in pivotal moments—what he attributed to his court vision and finesse—but this? No, this was very different. He cleared his throat and said—whispered, really—Hello? Then he said it louder—HELLO—and his voiced boomed around the concrete walls of the gym.

It was dead-silent, save for the low-grade industrial hum from the duct work above, and Nichols’ own breath, labored and heavy from his attack of the basket.

He went over to Ahearn and whispered his teammates’ name: Ahearn? Yo Ahearn! What the fuck you doing, man? Stop playing. 

He poked his teammate in the ribs. The mesh jersey fabric gave way and he felt the soft flesh beneath. But Ahearn didn’t feel it. Or if he felt it, his thoughts and reactions were bottled up in that thick head of his. 

Instinct and fear carried Nichols over to one of the referees, the one camped out at the baseline beneath the hoop. He was a thin man with thin, graying hair, and his watery eyes were locked on the basket. His mouth was open a little and his whistle, on a string, had fallen from his lips and now dangled at his chest. Nichols waved a hand in front of the ref’s face. Nothing. Then, for reasons he couldn’t quite explain, he put the whistle back into the ref’s mouth, pressed the lips together—grimacing as he felt the weird, prickly old man whiskers—to keep it secure. He hoped, stupidly, that the ref would blow the whistle and something, anything, would happen. But the ref didn’t blow the whistle. He just stood there like a fucked up Foot Locker mannequin. 

THINK, Nichols. Thinkthinkthinkthink. Maybe he could re-start the clock himself? Or like, call 911? And say what, exactly? That he’d managed to disrupt the space-time continuum in a musty high school gym?

Nichols took a deep breath to gather himself. Calm. Down. Almost unconsciously, he bent down to adjust his socks, a routine he relied upon to gather himself and set his focus before free throws. 

First the left. 

Then the right. 

Setting the socks so they sat just below his calf. 

He righted himself and took in another breath, let it out slow. 

There.

That was a little better. 

And maybe it was the rush of blood to the head, but to his surprise, the panic receded a bit and a strange sensation washed over him, something he hadn’t felt in a very long time: absolute, unfettered independence.

He was not, for once in his life, being relied upon, scrutinized or evaluated. 

He was... for the moment…  free?

He turned his attention to Aurelia Jackson, wedged halfway up the bleachers behind the Roadrunners’ bench. She stood with her hands clasped together beneath her chin, her eyes wide and her lips pressed tightly together as though she’d frozen in the middle of making an elongated mmm sound. 

She looked beautiful. 

Nichols had tried and failed not to fall for her—they’d only really got to know each other in Mr. Brathwaite’s bio lab this semester—because in September they were heading off to schools a dozen states away from each other. They hadn’t really begun dating so much as hanging out more or less all the time. They ate lunch together, took free period together in the library and often took the bus to Aurelia’s family’s place after school to do homework, which usually resulted in them retreating to Aurelia’s bedroom before her mother got home from work. They’d yet to go to his house because after Mom passed, it was just he and Dad and the place was often a mess of clutter and dishes and usually at least one lightbulb needed replacing. Besides, he wasn’t ready to let Aurelia into his life like that. Not yet. He climbed the bleacher steps to the fourth row and shimmied past the other motionless students. Nichols reached and touched her cheek and when he took his hand away, his thumb had little sparkling flecks of glitter on it. The sight of it made Nichols sad. Because he knew, deep down, that it wasn’t going to work between them. Sure, the summer would be fun and maybe they’d grow even closer, until, the night before they were to leave for school, they’d have an emotional, all-night conversation about how they’d try to make it work. Do the long distance thing. Talk every day and visit each other when they could. And there was winter break, and really, the semesters were only three or four months long apiece, hardly any time at all. But Nichols knew that it was impossible, what with him having practice every day and all the travel, and certainly Aurelia herself would be busy with her own life and maybe she would be the one who would want the freedom, to go out and see new people and try new things. 

Shit, he said aloud, and startled himself. He glanced around to see if Aurelia or the other kids in the bleachers had heard him. But of course they hadn’t. 

SHIT, he yelled. Why was he even here? In this jersey, in this gym, with the ball in his hands at the end of the game expected to do something. Like, why couldn’t he just rescind his commitment to The U, and take a semester off before applying to Aurelia’s school? What was stopping him from taking that kind of risk? He felt a thrill up his neck just thinking about it and he almost shook Aurelia with excitement in order to tell her all about his new plan. But then his attention drifted to the top row of the bleachers where the assistant coach from The U sat hunched forward, knees on elbows, chin in palm, eyes closed as though he’d peacefully dozed off for just a quick nap, a rest of the eyes. 

That was why. 

Not the coach specifically. But everything he represented. 

Before Mom passed, she’d made him promise to get his degree. It wasn’t some long, drawn-out emotional conversation or anything. Because that’s not who Mom was. She had looked up at him from the bed she lay in, pallid and woozy from the morphine, and with the pursed lips she bore for every lesson or instruction she’d ever given him, rasped: If you don’t finish your degree, I will personally come back down to earth and smack you into February. It didn’t matter how he got his degree. If, by some miracle he made the league, or played in Europe, or semi-pro, or even if he tore up his knee and didn’t play a minute at The U: he would finish school. In four years, or ten years, he’d get that piece of paper. And Nichols knew that this—that orange ball of pebbled leather wedged in the hoop—was his best chance to do so. Because if he was being honest, he wouldn’t get into Aurelia’s school on grades alone. And even if he did, the loans would be crippling. He could, in theory, stay local, go to the community college and live at home to help Dad, but after that? The reality was that companies weren’t exactly banging down the door to hire CVCC grads. No. This was his chance, and he’d be damned if he would go and fuck it up. 

Nichols looked again at Aurelia and almost said I love you out loud. He caught himself just in case everyone could still hear even if they couldn’t move. But he thought it, and thought about how maybe he’d even tell her someday.

Nichols shimmied his way out of the row and went down the bleacher steps to the court where he made his way to the center circle. He looked at the ball wedged up there in the rim. He could, he supposed, manipulate the outcome of the game. He could jump up, poke the ball from its resting place such that it dropped through the basket. Maybe then everything would unstick and he’d go home a hero. Or maybe that was dishonest and everything would remain stuck because of it. Maybe the best thing to do would be to knock the ball down and let the game play out. By the rules of the sport, there would be a jump ball, which in high school rules deferred to the possession arrow, and that belonged to their opponent. Despite his hope to the contrary, all of this pretty much spelled a loss for the Roadrunners and no championship banner to accompany the one from ‘73. But punching that ball loose meant setting the rest of Nichols’ life in motion. And he wasn’t so sure he was ready for that. 

He turned and walked to the other end of the court, pushed open the aluminum door that led to the locker room. He went in, found his locker, opened it and removed his jacket. He put it on and flipped up the hood. He went back into the gym, crossed the court where all nine players and two refs were still stiff as dummies, and went through the lobby, framed on either side by glass cases that served as shrines to Roadrunner athletic glories of yore. He shouldered through the double doors and went outside. 

The central valley wind whipped and whistled through the parking lot. It was a clear night, temperature in the low teens, and Nichols could see his breath. Steam came off his exposed legs. It felt very good.  

Soon, Nichols would go back inside, jump up and punch the ball free. For now, he closed his eyes, braced himself against the wind and let the minutes pass with hardly a thought at all.

BRENDAN GILLEN is a writer in Brooklyn, NY. His stories have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best Small Fictions and appear in the Florida Review, Wigleaf, Necessary Fiction, Maudlin House, Taco Bell Quarterly, New Delta Review, X-R-A-Y and elsewhere. His first novel, STATIC, is forthcoming from Vine Leaves Press (July '24). You can find him online atbgillen.com and on Twitter/IG @beegillen.