FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Our team went undefeated in my junior year of high school. Catherine, Garet, and I made for a trio that the other teams simply could not keep up with. On top of that, Kimmitt's training guaranteed that the rest of our team was competent enough to back us up, if not come close to matching any of us. In short, Grade 11 was easy for us.

We improved during the off-season, from mid-June to January. Catherine's muscles had become even more tightly bunched, and she'd even started bulking up some. Garet's muscle mass had skyrocketed now that he was finished growing taller. I had grown a lot taller, and my workouts with Garet and the flying group had helped me put on some muscle. On top of that, the constant practice had sharpened all of our skills.

So during the regular season of my senior year, we went undefeated again. This time, though, we didn't have a single game that we won by less than 40 points.

Catherine and I took some time to get used to our new positions, of course. Catherine still got the chance to push the attack quite a bit as a shooting guard, but there were also times when she had to hold back. For the first month or so of practice, Kimmit was yelling at her at least once per day to get back into her position. She took the criticism with frosty silence, but she always listened. By the time the season actually started, she was getting better at sitting back and monitoring the situation. She was still a bit overeager to dive forward into the heat of things, but she made up for that with her tremendous skill. She'd turned from a thrusting knife into a penetrating scalpel; more reserved, but also more precise.

I only ever once heard Catherine complaining about her new position. It was pretty early on in the year, one evening after practice. Catherine had said that she had to stick around to talk with Kimmitt a bit before she could give me a ride home. I was hanging around outside the gym, waiting for her. I was just pacing around by the doors, going over the homework I had to do that night in my head, when I started hearing Catherine's raised voice coming through the doors. I only hesitated a moment before heading over to listen. I was careful about opening the door, making sure it would make no noise. As soon as it was open a crack, their voices came through clearly enough for me to hear.

"...position! We're supposed to be winning!"

"Miss DeMille, you know very well that I could put you at centre and Garet at point guard and we would still win every game this season."

"But we could be winning by more! You know that the more possessions I get, the more points we score! I don't just want to win, I want us to win by as much as we can!"

There was a very long moment of silence. I panicked, thinking they might have noticed that the door was open a crack. I was about to pull away when I heard Kimmitt's voice again, still gruff, but no longer dismissive.

"Alright. I could let you play small forward and destroy the competition even more this year. I could do the same next year, too. What about after that? What happens when the scouts from all the university teams come to the games and think, 'Wow, isn't she great? Too bad she's a six foot nothing forward.'" He paused then, and I could just see Catherine in my head, fuming as she glared at him. He went on. "You didn't just hire me to make you win games. You hired me to train you up as a future professional player. You are never going to be tall enough to play forward at a professional level. The sooner you can start learning to play guard, the more attractive you'll be to university and pro teams."

There was silence for a short while after that. When they started talking again, both of them had lowered their voices, and I couldn't make out much. I closed the door as carefully as I'd opened it, and waited for Catherine to come out.

I started out practicing as a small forward that year, and that was a big enough change already. By the time the season actually started, though, I'd grown tall enough that Kimmit played me as a power forward. It was necessary; Maddy had graduated the year before, and our team was desperately low on players tall enough to play the bigger positions. I realized early on that Kimmit had been planning on this for a while. All of those times the cat had asked me to practice rebounds with the taller members of our team the year before had helped prepare me. That said, it was still strange to find myself up so close to the net, in the heart of the action. I kept having to fight my instincts to pull back. More than once, I noticed a situation, and dismissively thought that one of our forwards would handle it. It would take me a second or two to realize that I was the forward that ought to have been handling it, and then I had to rush in.

Garet helped me out a lot that year. He'd been playing centre for years, so he had plenty of advice for me. He helped me learn how to keep my head during the more frantic plays close to the net, and he showed me how to position myself to best disrupt plays on the defence, and to keep myself open on the offence. I quickly learned that my wings were a huge asset to me in that position; they were perfect for blocking lines of sight.

As that year went on, and my flapping got stronger from all of the practices with Tessa and her group, Garet was the person that I tested my flaps against. At first it was just sloppy and awkward stuff. He would go to shoot over my head, and I would get so confused over whether I was jumping or flapping that the ball would already be in the basket by the time I left the ground. He laughed at me about it, but always pushed me to try again, to do it better. My timing got better at an agonizingly slow pace. By the time we actually started playing games, I could pull off the flaps about half of the time without throwing off my timing. I was still hesitant to use the flaps in actual games, but I forced myself to do it. It wasn't like there was much chance of us losing if I screwed up a single block.

It wasn't just my playing and training that Garet helped me with, though. Somehow or other, some of our other teammates had learned about my dad. I don't know how, but once in a while somebody would make some sort of a vague comment that made me know people had figured it out. I couldn't talk with any of them about it, though. I wasn't that close to any of them.

I certainly couldn't talk to Catherine about the situation as the year went on. Our relationship may have been a bit closer than 'professional' at this point, but I certainly wouldn't call it friendly. Every time I heard something new from the clinic about my dad's treatment, it made me resent the DeMilles a bit more. They were helping me, yes, but they were taking advantage of the situation.

I couldn't even really talk to my mom or my siblings about it, either. Mom was stressed out enough as it was; I didn't want to dump my own anxieties on her. I couldn't share my feelings with my siblings without making them worry more about my dad's condition. I tried to just shut down and act brave and unfazed around my family.

That left only one person that knew most of the story, and that I felt I could talk to openly about the whole situation. That was Garet. Something had changed profoundly in our relationship that night I told him about my dad going back to the clinic. Just his quiet acceptance, his presence without requiring me to say anything or explain my feelings, had been enough to pull me through.

I think that was why, a week after that night, when Garet and I were back in the gym working, I suddenly piped up. "It was a tumour, by the way."

Garet, working with barbels at the time, looked over at me in surprise. I'm still impressed that he didn't just drop the barbels on the spot. A sweaty gym, in the middle of a workout, wasn't exactly the best place for that kind of discussion. I don't think he even knew what I was talking about at first. He just stared for a few moments before he clued in. "Oh, right. They figured that out?"

"Yeah." I just stood where I was for a long few seconds, unsure how to continue. At length, I just shrugged and said, "It's operable, though. They think they'll go in some time this week."

The big crocodile nodded slowly. "Cool."

I nodded back, and the two of us returned to our workout. The rest of our conversation that night was the normal mix of goading and encouragement, but it was that short moment that stuck with me.

We had a lot of small talks like that over the next few months. The next week I told him that the operation had gone well, and that they'd managed to remove the tumour. The week after that, I blurted out that they'd done a biopsy on the tumour, and after a few more tests, they'd determined that it was malignant. After that, it was a lot of small tidbits, about how the treatments were going, what drugs they were testing out. Where the cancer had spread. Whenever my family heard anything about my dad, Garet was the only person I talked it over with. Normally he was quiet whenever I talked about the situation; he just listened, and sometimes asked for more details. I didn't need him to say much. I just needed to speak and get it off my chest.

After a few months of this, one night at the gym he took a turn to talk. It was right after I'd told him about the most recent run of treatments they were trying out on my dad. Instead of Garet's usual silence after such snippets, though, he announced that he'd received a letter from his mom. I was shocked at first, but I quickly fell silent and just listened while he told me about the letter. I didn't know all that much about her; I just knew from rumours that she was in jail, and had been for years.

I'm not going to get into too much detail about what he told me. That's his story to tell, not mine. But he had his own stress to get off his chest, and I think I was the only person that he felt he could let it out on.

Now don't get the wrong impression here. These weren't tearful, emotional breakdowns. It was always just calm, quiet talking. Outside of those talks, we behaved much the same around each other as we had before. The two of us joked and poked fun at each other, we got competitive and aggressive while we were playing, and Garet spoke too loud and too angrily about Catherine. We disagreed and argued. Now that I was in my final year of high school and he was doing his victory lap year, the two of us had a few classes together. We commiserated over how much homework we had to do outside of our practices and training.

Just about all of my waking hours that year were spent with either Catherine, or Garet, or both. The two of them were keeping up their shaky truce; every now and again one or the other would make some sort of comment that put the other on edge, but they managed to keep things from blowing up. Garet would always just complain to me afterwards, and Catherine... I have no idea what she did. I guess she'd decided to grin and bear it.

Looking back, I sometimes wonder whether their reduced arguing had more to do with me than any understanding on their part. I started out that season in high spirits, and I don't think anybody was surprised when Kimmitt made me captain again. After my dad's cancer returned, though, my mood changed. At first I tried to not let it show, but as the year went on and the news grew worse and worse, I know that my stress started peeking through. I was quieter during practices, and my voice grew sharper. I spoke less and less with Catherine during our practices, and I was more ready to turn a disagreement into an argument. I was still able to joke around with Garet, but I knew I was being too sensitive about some of his ribbing sometimes. Nobody ever commented on my behaviour, but I knew.

The worst part was that I didn't care. Normally I would have felt bad for taking out my anger or frustration on people that didn't deserve it, but the further we got into the season, the less it bothered me. I was too tired, too stressed out, too angry. I kept thinking that it was everybody else's fault when I snapped at them, and on a few occasions I just got frustrated at people for things they couldn't have known better about.

I can see now that I was well on my way to a crash and burn. I'd been pushing myself for over a year with little or no break. Even my relatively stress-free summer had still involved a lot of practice and working out. I probably wouldn't have made it to the city finals without self-destructing if it hadn't been for Coach Kimmitt.

One day in early February, Kimmitt asked for Garet and I to meet him after practice. We were both surprised; normally Kimmitt wanted to talk to either one or the other of us, but rarely ever both at once. Certainly never without also asking to see Catherine. The palm cockatoo shot me a look after the comment, but I ignored her as best as I could throughout the practice.

When Kimmitt called an end to practice, Garet and I made our way over to him while the others went to the locker rooms. Kimmitt was waiting for us, the housecat's claws tapping along his clipboard. His eyes were severe as they looked over both of us in turn. I could feel Garet tensing next to me, and I didn't feel much better. Even after over a year of training with Kimmitt, the old cat still made me feel off-balance.

"So," he barked, making me jump, "have either of you put much thought into where you're going for university?"

Garet and I just stared for a few moments, too surprised to respond. When I responded, my voice sounded stupid in my own ears. "Excuse me, sir?"

"University. The application deadline is coming up. Have either of you considered where you'll be applying?"

There were a few more seconds of awkward silence. It was Garet who replied. "...sir? You've seen my marks, haven't you?"

"Yes, I have," the cat nodded. "I've seen both of your marks. I certainly wouldn't call either of you star students. But Garet, your marks have shown remarkable improvement over the past year, and Hiro, your marks are acceptable. If you were to apply, I'm certain that most schools would gladly overlook your somewhat lacklustre grades in recognition of your athletic performance."

Garet and I looked at each other from the corners of our eyes. He looked just as flabbergasted as I felt. With everything else I'd been focused on recently, applying for university had been the last thing on my mind. Hell, I doubt I'd ever even considered it. In the back of my mind, I'd always known that my marks weren't good enough to really keep up in university. I'd figured that my younger brother Ken might have the marks to get a scholarship, and maybe Mai could pull off something, but I'd never expected much from myself. Besides, even if I had had the marks to go to school, there were other, far more practical reasons that would keep me from it.

"Sir, I'm not sure you understand. I don't think I..." I shot a look over at Garet again. He nodded. "Neither of us are really... in a position to attend university." I could see that Kimmitt wanted to speak, but I cut him off. "Not just because of our grades, sir."

Kimmitt's expression changed as he looked at me, his eyebrow rising. After a moment, he looked over at Garet, too, and the crocodile met his gaze. There were a few very long awkward moments of silence before Kimmitt sighed and shook his head. He lifted the clip on his clipboard, and pulled a small stack of papers off of the bottom. He held out one stack to each of us, and we took them, not sure what else to do. I looked down, and my eyes widened as I saw what they were. It was a stack of application forms and brochures for universities.

"The top of that stack is all the schools that are sending scouts to the provincial championships." The cat reached out to the stack in Garet's hands, and slid a finger between a couple pages about a third of the way through the stack. He lifted that bit, showing the papers beneath. "The bottom is all of the schools that are sending scouts to nationals this year."

Garet and I just stood, stunned, in the middle of the empty gym. My eyes darted back and forth between Kimmitt's straight face and the stack of papers in my hands. I finally managed to open my beak, and was just beginning to stammer a response when Kimmitt cut me off.

"Before you try to tell me that you can't afford it, hear me out." Kimmitt waited for me to shut my beak before he went on. "The two of you are good. You are very good. I'm not just saying that schools will overlook your grades for your playing skill; I'm saying that they will pay to have you play for their schools. Depending on how far our team goes this year and how well the two of you perform, I wouldn't be surprised if schools offered you full scholarships and academic support to play for their teams. So your job: this weekend, I want the two of you to fill out all of these applications." Garet must have tried to say something, because Kimmitt's face hardened and his voice jumped. "Every one. Bring them back to me on Monday, and I'll send them off and cover the application fees. Is that understood?"

What else could we do? Kimmitt wasn't the type to take any disagreement, and the two of us were too bowled over to complain anyways. So the two of us just nodded, and promised to get the applications done by the next Monday.

When I jumped into the back of the car, after getting changed, Catherine was waiting for me. Her arms were crossed, and her eyes were narrowed on me. My stomach did a small somersault as she glared at me for that moment.

"Have a nice chat with Kimmitt?"

I was off-balance for another moment, before I set my gaze and forced that cool look I'd learned over the past few years up to my face. I met her gaze. "Yeah, it was alright."

She nodded. I got my seatbelt on, and Laurence started up the car. As we pulled away from the school, Catherine muttered, barely audible: "Good luck with the applications."

I didn't respond. She was thinking something, and I didn't know what it was. All I knew was that she had that calculating look on her face that always made me uncomfortable.

Regardless, Garet and I managed to finish the stack of applications, and we got them back to Kimmit on time. I mostly forgot about them right after; even after what Kimmit had said, it still seemed unlikely that any university would waste its time with me. The few times I thought about it, it was as a fun distraction.

So it was quite a surprise when I came home from practice one day and my mom said that there was an envelope waiting for me. I couldn't even remember the last time I'd received a letter. I mean, we got bills all the time, but I don't know if I'd ever personally received a letter from anybody. The look on my mom's face when she told me tipped me off that there was something odd going on, but I couldn't guess what it was.

When I saw the large, thick envelope sitting on the kitchen table with our local university's seal on it, I just stopped dead in my tracks and stared. I could feel my mom standing just behind me, waiting for my reaction, but the stunned silence was all I could muster up at the time.

I was shaking when I opened it up. From how thick it was, I knew it was more than just a rejection letter. They'd accepted me. What was more, when I looked through the materials, there was a pamphlet about the basketball team, a letter from their coach, and an offer for a scholarship. I kept staring at it for so long that my mom eventually had to take the paper from me and read it herself.

The look on her face as she read through the offer is one of my fondest memories to this day.

That night I was full of nervous, jubilant energy. I called my dad to tell him, and he sounded more excited about that offer than he'd been after watching any of my winning basketball games. I was so excited that I barely slept that night, and I was blinking to keep awake through all of my classes the next day. When I met up with Garet for lunch, he looked much the same as I did; exhausted but excited. He took one look at me, and then his broad snout parted in a grin.

"You wouldn't have happened to have received some mail yesterday, would you?"

I just grinned back at him. The two of us struggled to keep each other awake through the rest of our classes that afternoon, and then headed to practice. Predictably, the two of us were awful that afternoon. We made a lot of very stupid mistakes from our exhaustion and excitement, and Kimmitt made sure to point out each and every one to us. Catherine shot me a few angry looks whenever I missed a pass or failed to react fast enough for a rebound.

Kimmitt was as frustrated as I'd ever seen him when he called an end to practice. He called Garet and I over, and we were both ready for the scolding he gave us. After about a minute of listening to the cat berate the two of us on our timing, and on how we were supposed to be acting as leaders on the team, Garet finally piped up.

"Sorry, coach. Neither of us got much sleep last night."

"Oh? And why, pray tell, would that be?"

Garet and I traded looks, and I shrugged. Garet was grinning again when he explained that the two of us had received our acceptances from the university in Vancouver.

Now I'm not sure what I was expecting from Kimmitt. I knew he wasn't the type to fly into happy hysterics or give tearful congratulations.

Still, I was expecting more than the dismissive look he gave us. The only surprise I saw on his face was a raised eyebrow, but there certainly wasn't any happiness there. His voice was flat when he replied.

"So?"

Garet and I glanced to each other again, stunned. I spoke this time, trying to cut Garet off before he said anything that might raise the cat's anger. "We got accepted to a school. We got accepted with scholarships. That's a big deal!"

The cat rolled his eyes, and then muttered, "How much are they offering to cover? Full tuition?" Kimmitt glanced from me to Garet and back again, measuring our silence. He went on. "How many times in the past decade has Vancouver won the CFIS title? How many times have they even qualified for playoffs?" When neither of us replied again, he rolled his eyes. "Don't get excited yet, boys. It was a given that Vancouver would accept the two of you. They've probably already had scouts watching some of our games, because we're local. They sent those replies so quickly because they're hoping they can get you two excited, and then snatch you up cheap before any other schools have had the chance to watch you and make their own offers."

I kept staring at him, unsure how to respond. Garet's voice was measured and low when he replied. "So you're suggesting...?"

"I'm suggesting that the two of you keep those offers as worst case scenario backup options. After more scouts see you play during provincials, better offers will start coming. When we go to nationals, and we will go to nationals, you'll see even more." He let his sharp gaze wander from Garet back over to me, and then he growled out, "Don't sell yourselves short, boys. Wait at least until after provincials."

---

When the city-wide championship rolled around that year, our team again had no trouble taking the title. If I'd been in better spirits, I probably would have felt bad for the other teams. They went into that tournament expecting to get rolled over. I even overheard somebody on one of the other teams bitterly ask why they didn't just give us the trophy and then have the rest of the teams play a tournament for second place. I briefly considered suggesting they stop whining and get better, but was too focused on the game to work up the effort.

The provincial championship the next month, in early June, was what we were really focusing on. Garet and I, of course, were excited because of the prospect of playing in front of scouts. That said, there were a number of returning players on our team. After our disappointing finish the year before, they were all hungry to take another crack at that provincial title. Catherine, of course, was always excited for any chance to beat other teams.

About a week before the provincial tournament, we learned that my dad's condition was too rough for him to travel. I knew that should've hit me hard, but instead it seemed to just make me focus more on the scouts that would be there. My dad had missed the city finals, too, so I reasoned that it wasn't that big of a surprise for him to not make the provincial tournament. Instead of impressing him, I could put all my focus into impressing those scouts. They would be his stand-ins. I would blow the scouts away, and the next time I saw my dad, I would tell him how impressed they'd been. I would tell him that I was going to go to a university and play for their team, just like he had. The idea dominated more and more of my mind as time went on.

By the time the tournament arrived, I was wound up tight enough to explode. Much like the year before, the tournament was a two day affair; the first day was all round-robin games to determine the seeding for the second day.

For all that the first day of games weren't supposed to be as important, I was still stressed. I hadn't had the chance to test my skills as a power forward against particularly good opponents yet, and for the first game or two I was really off-balance. I was making mistakes that I shouldn't have been making; the types of mistakes that could cause trouble in a more important game. In any other situation, all they would have cost me were glares from Catherine and barked criticism from Kimmitt. Early on during the day, though, I'd started looking into the stands and staring at the crowd. My mom and my siblings were up there, and I tried to make it seem like I was just looking up at them. In truth, though, I was scanning through the stands looking for scouts. It didn't take me long to pick some of them out; the occasional person sitting on their own, watching and taking notes in notebooks or on their phones. I picked out at least five, and there were probably more that I didn't notice. Every time I made a mistake out on the court, I felt their eyes on me, measuring my abilities.

As the day went on, though, I fell more and more into my stride. The extra energy from my excitement pushed me, and we finished out that day without a single loss. I went home feeling electric, and knowing that I would have all of the elimination games the next day to show off.

We had one of the first games on the second day, and fortunately it was quite an easy one. We were paired off against the lowest seeded team, so we were able to take things easy. Once again, my eyes kept wandering up to the stands. There were a few more people there, now that the elimination rounds had started. I noticed a few more scouts hanging around, but that wasn't a surprise. What did surprise me was when I looked up into the stands and saw two palm cockatoos sitting up there. I almost stumbled from my shock as I recognized them as Mr and Mrs DeMille. After I saw them, I wondered how I hadn't noticed them earlier; they stood out from everybody else there. They were dressed casually, but the quality of their clothing still set them apart. They were watching our game intently, and Mrs DeMille even waved down at me when she saw me looking.

I returned my focus to the game, but dodged a few glances at Catherine. Was she happy? I didn't know. If she was, she wasn't showing it. She had always been good at hiding her emotions, though, and I had more experience in identifying when she was trying to conceal anger or frustration than happiness.

The games that day went smoothly. We slipped through each round with comfortable leads, and we only paid half-attention to the other games. For all that the games were easy, though, and for all that we were in control for all of them, I found myself on edge. I was conscious of every mistake that everybody out on the court made. Normally I would have just shrugged them off, but today they felt like they mattered. I managed to hold in my frustration during the first game, but by midway through our second game of the day I was making small, sharp comments each time somebody made the slightest wrong move. The comments got me surprised looks from my teammates; I normally only spoke with somebody about their playing if it was actually a problem, and I was always positive about it. I think I offended a few of them, but it didn't matter.

I needed to impress those scouts. I had to impress those scouts, and then tell my dad how impressed the scouts had been. I _needed_to.

Much later in the day, our team was waiting in the locker room. We had already cleared our way through to the finals by that point, and were just waiting to find out who we would be facing. All of us were trying to catch our breath and relax after our three previous games that day. I was standing off on my own in one of the corners, trying to resist the urge to pace. I was sweaty and a bit achy from the intense weekend, but I didn't care. I couldn't get the image of the scouts out of my head. I'd felt their eyes on me for the entire day, and known that they were watching. They were judging.

"Calm down."

I blinked, then turned and looked at Catherine. She was standing just next to me, her voice low so that only I would hear. I noticed a few of the others looking at us, but I ignored them as I replied just as quietly as Catherine.

"I'm fine."

"No you're not. You're barely talking and your feathers are getting all puffed up."

I started at that, and glanced down at myself. Sure enough, the feathers around my neck were puffing up past the collar of my jersey. I quickly began brushing down, and Catherine kept speaking.

"Pull it together, Hiro. This is our game. No matter who we face, they don't stand a chance."

"I know." I tried to keep the heat out of my voice, but some leaked through. Catherine raised an eyebrow, but I ignored it. "It matters now, though."

She stared at me after that, trying to read me. I didn't care for once. She could read me all she liked.

When she spoke, her words were slow. "It didn't matter before?"

I met her gaze. My breathing was getting heavier and I could hear my heartbeat in my ears. Fuck it. "Not like it does now. Before, I was playing because you wanted to win. This game? This is about me. This is me buying my ticket out of all this. If Garet and I do well here, and if we do well at nationals, we can get out." I forced myself to stop and take a few deep breaths. I'd almost raised my voice above the whisper that Catherine and I were using. I didn't want the rest of the team to hear.

Catherine, for her part, was still staring at me. I didn't back down. There was still some reproach in her expression, but there was something else there, too.

At last I sighed and shook my head. "You wouldn't get it."

"I think I do." I was surprised by that response, but she spoke before I could question her. "I need you to focus, though."

"I am focused."

"Do you remember why I hired you, Hiro? I hired you to do what I can't. Do you know who you're acting like right now?" I just stared at her, and at last she rolled her eyes and gave an exasperated sigh. "You're acting like me, and you're cracking. You're wound too tight, and you're letting it out on everybody else. So figure out whatever the hell it is that makes you who you are, and pull it together Hiro. I still need you and this team for nationals once this game is over."

She walked away from me after that, leaving me standing alone in the corner. We'd both kept our voices low for the entire conversation, so nobody else had heard. Garet was shooting me a look from across the locker room, but I ignored him for now. I was staring at the wall, thinking about what Catherine had said.

Despite what Catherine had said, she didn't get it. She couldn't understand what was going on here. Garet and I needed this. It was our only chance to get out of our situations and maybe into a better situation. If I could impress the scouts, I could get into a good school, I could impress my dad, make him proud of me, make everything alright and-

My thoughts ground to a halt. Oh. I took a few very deep breaths. Oh.

She was right. Jesus Christ, Catherine DeMille was right.

There was a sound at the door to the locker room, and I turned to look with everybody else. Kimmitt was standing there, looking as cool and calm as ever. He started talking, but I wasn't really listening to him. Somewhere in the back of my head, I knew he was probably telling us who we were going to play, and what to look out for on them, or other things like that. My thoughts were stuck on my dad, though. I wanted him here. I wanted him to be here to watch, but he couldn't be here, and that sucked. That was what it all boiled down to.

I don't know if that made me feel better or worse. It definitely made me feel more calm, though. It helped me push away all of the thoughts and stress that had been assaulting me for the past weeks. I held onto that feeling as we waited until one of the tournament officials came and told us the game would be starting soon. I walked out of the locker room with everybody else, still wrapped up in my mind.

We stepped onto the court. There was a small roar of applause, and I blinked in surprise. The stands weren't full by any stretch, but there were more people than there had been the entire rest of the weekend. It was the closest to a proper crowd that I'd ever played in front of. I let my eyes wander across all the people for a long few moments, and again I picked out the scouts. This time, though, I let my gaze just pass over them. Instead, I picked out Catherine's parents sitting up there. They were easy to see; even if it weren't for Mr DeMille's imposing figure, the pair of palm cockatoos' feather crests made it impossible to miss them. I then looked over to where my own family was sitting. My mom was leaning forward on the bench, and to my surprise my brother and sister were sitting still, watching intently.

I watched the three of them, and forced myself to take a few deep breaths. I imagined my dad sitting there with them. He wasn't the hunched and sick figure that I was used to seeing now. Instead, he was the giant that used to take me to the basketball court to practice my free throws. He was still unhealthy, but not as obviously sick. His voice was in my ears, speaking calmly but commandingly from the sidelines.

"Breathe, Hiro. Breathe it all out, and focus."

I breathed. I turned away and took up my position, just off to the left of Garet at the centre line. Garet was squaring off with the other centre, his entire body tensed. He took a moment to cast a glance over at me, and I nodded to him. I glanced over my shoulder, to where Catherine was standing further back from us. She was glaring ahead at the other team, her focus so razor sharp that she didn't even glance at me.

I took another deep breath and glanced back over at Garet. I was on the court with the crocodile that had bullied and physically threatened me for a good few years, and the cockatoo that had manipulated me and used my father's sickness to her own benefit. I knew that the two of them wanted nothing more than to tear each other apart, in their own respective ways. I should have felt anything but safe there. They were my team, though. I knew how the two of them moved, I knew that I could trust them. Out here, on the court, there was nothing that could stand against the three of us.

The ref tossed the ball into the air. Garet and the other centre jumped, and everybody started moving.

The next hour passed by mostly in a blur. We were in control from the outset, and we never let it up. Between Garet and I, our team was in complete control of the entire post area. Garet was taller than anybody on the other team, and he easily outdid all of them in bulk. He could push past most other players with his size alone, and none of them stood a chance of blocking him.

On the odd occasion when Garet didn't have the muscle to pull a play off, I more than made up for it with my speed and agility. I could out-manoeuvre all of the other team's forwards and centres, making it easy to chase down rebounds. Often, I would open up a passing lane for one of our guards, they would send the ball to me, then I would just get it to Garet closer to the net. The two of us were unstoppable.

Catherine, for her part, managed to almost single-handedly dominate the perimeter. She was ruthless in putting pressure on the other team's guards, which threw off many of their plays. When we were on the offence, she was an expert at setting up plays. She still had her greedy streak, but it was a bit more controlled than it had been the year before. Every now and again, she would just appear in front of the net, way out of the position. If she'd ever made a mistake on one of those plays, we would've been in an awkward position. She never made a mistake, though. Catherine would just cooly land her basket, then back off without another word.

Late in the third quarter, we were rushing down to the other team's end of the court. Our point guard had the ball, and he was getting ready to pass forward to me. I was standing just off to the left of the net, keeping an eye on Garet. I had the perfect pass ready, and was just waiting for the ball.

Just as our point guard was getting ready to throw, one of the other team's players stepped out in front of him. I saw that moment of panic in his eyes, and I cast my glance around. Catherine was far out on the other side, keeping herself open just in case. There wasn't a chance for her to close in and help our point guard.

I returned my attention to him, and my eyes widened as I saw him go for the pass anyways. He jumped, and threw wildly.

I stared at the ball as it went up. From the moment it left his hands, I knew it was going to go wide, and too high. There was a breath while it was in the air that I didn't move, just staring. If I didn't catch that pass, it would undoubtedly go over the foul line, and we would have a turnover.

I stepped to the side, moving more into position. As it began closing with me, still going too high, I pushed off and jumped as hard as I could. At the same time, I brought my arms out, and then down in one powerful flap. I felt, actually _felt_the air billowing out from beneath my feathers, and I lifted higher and faster. I turned myself, and caught the ball out of the air. My eyes picked out Garet, still just off to the side of the net. I threw while I was still in the air.

I landed as Garet caught the ball, and made an easy shot. My chest was heaving and my arms were burning from the intense burst of movement, so at first I didn't notice the roar of applause. When I did, though, I blinked, and looked around. People weren't looking at Garet or applauding him for having made that shot. All eyes were on me, and I felt very exposed for those few seconds.

Fortunately, the game was still going, and play resumed a few moments later. I jogged back to our end of the court with my team, still a bit bewildered. Garet pulled up beside me as we made our way back to our net, and he leaned over towards me.

"About damn time you pulled something like that off in a game."

I couldn't hold in a small grin when he said that, and he gave me a slap on the back.

We won that game by 28 points. Towards the end of the final quarter, the other team seemed to have given up. Still, we pushed until the end, and when the buzzer sounded the audience applauded for us, even if it wasn't too loud.

The next hour or so was a blur. The awards ceremony was held not too long after the end of the game, and we were crowned provincial championships. Everybody on my team was ecstatic. I don't think I'd ever seen Garet with a smile that big stretched across his face. Catherine was cool and quiet, but the red colour in her cheeks and the way she was presenting her crest made it clear just how pleased she was. Kimmitt was quiet, but every now and again I saw a hint of a grin on his face.

After we were presented with our medals and Kimmitt had accepted the trophy for our school, I fully intended to track down my mom and my siblings in the stands. Before I could go off to find them, though, Kimmitt came and tracked Garet and I down in the locker room. His tail was lashing behind him as he told me that there were a few people that wanted to see us. Garet and I exchanged curious looks, and then we followed him out into the hallway. Garet actually bumped into my back as I stepped out and froze in place.

There were half a dozen people with notebooks and clipboards standing in the hallway waiting for us. I recognized most of them from the crowd; they were the scouts that I'd been watching for the past two days. I just stared at them for a long moment, unable to move as they turned to face me. I finally snapped out of it when Garet gave me a small shove from behind. The two of us stepped out, and the scouts stepped in closer. Kimmitt hovered behind us as they all took their turns talking to us, handing us pamphlets from their respective schools and talking about their basketball programs. I was too stunned to say much, and I don't think Garet was doing much better.

We were there for probably half-an-hour. Our teammates slowly trickled out of the changeroom, and more than one of them shot Garet and I grins as they walked by, knowing exactly what was going on. When Catherine eventually came out of the women's changeroom, she just stopped and looked at the two of us. I cast a glance over at her, and for a moment I forgot about the scout and couldn't look away from her. The palm cockatoo was glaring, her eyes narrowed on Garet and I. That crest of hers was back flat against her head, and I could see her muscles tensing.

It intimidated me. It put me in mind of that look she'd shot at Garet's and my backs a year earlier, when we'd been walking away from our failed run at the provincial title. For one terrifying second, our eyes met, and she kept staring.

Then, all at once, she turned and walked away. I let out a breath I didn't know I'd been holding, and watched her walk away. Kimmitt gave me a small tap on the shoulder, and I shook myself. I turned back forward to face the scout, and tried to push Catherine from my mind.

When Garet and I finally got away from the scouts and finished getting changed, I jogged to go and find my family. It was partly because I was excited to see them, to tell my mom about the scouts, to get home and call my dad and talk to him about the game. I knew that more than a small part of it was that I hoped it would dispel that image of Catherine's intense gaze on me.

---

The next day was another day of exhaustion at school. After the intense weekend, I was half-asleep all day. They announced our team's victory and advancement to the national playoffs on the morning announcements, and over the course of the day more than a few people made a point of congratulating me. Many of them were people I'd never even traded words with; just random classmates whose faces I recognized from the year or the semester before.

I ran into Garet at lunch, and the two of us just traded exhausted grins. I was sure that he was still riding as high as I was from the games and the conversations with the scouts.

We struggled through our afternoon classes together. When the bell at the end of the day rang, we headed over to my locker, and I grabbed my practice clothes for basketball. We started walking through the still-crowded hallways towards his locker, speaking casually. We were both too zoned out from exhaustion to really get into anything heavy. Besides, neither of us had had enough time to let everything fully sink in. Neither of us had wrapped our minds around the fact that we would be competing in nationals, or that we were both getting scouted by multiple universities. So we mostly just spoke about homework, and the weather, small things like that.

We were just down the hallway from Garet's locker, and I was looking over at him as I talked about the book we were studying in English, when the crocodile froze in place. I kept walking for a few steps before I realized he'd stopped. I shot him a confused look, but his wide eyes were locked straight forward. After a long few awkward moments, I turned and followed his gaze.

Up ahead of us, there were a few people that clearly didn't belong in our school. There were two of them, and their blue uniforms quickly identified them as police officers. I was so surprised to see them that I didn't really look at anything else for a few seconds. What would they be doing in a school?

I started turning to look back at Garet, and then I noticed what was happening. They were standing next to an open locker, looking through it. One of our teachers was standing next to them, looking severe and disapproving as she watched them work. Time stood still as I stared at that locker, and I realized that it belonged to Garet.

I just stared ahead. I could hear Garet breathing beside me. I turned to look over at him, and I saw that his muscles were tense under his scales. His eyes were darting around, swapping from staring ahead at his locker and looking in every other direction. His muzzle parted, and I could barely hear his voice when he spoke.

"I, uh, I should get-- fuck." He was already halfway through taking a step back, but he'd frozen again. I looked over, and my stomach jumped into my throat when I saw that the cops were looking over at the two of us. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Garet taking another step back. That snapped me out of my paralysis, and I rounded on him.

"Don't."

He glanced over at me, his eyes wide. "What?"

"Don't run, man. Please."

"Hiro, I can't-- They'll--"

I knew that they were walking towards us now. I could hear the normal bustling and chatter in the hallway getting quieter. I was focused entirely on Garet. His eyes were flicking between me and the police. He was still tensed, ready to run. I knew that the feathers around my neck were puffing up, but for once I didn't care if it was showing.

It was the first time I'd seen Garet afraid of anything, and it was scaring the shit out of me.

I kept staring up at him, and at last I swallowed the lump in my throat and spoke. "Don't run. You know that'll make it worse."

He kept staring at me with that terrified, animal fear in his eyes. I could tell he wanted to run, but I kept looking him in the eye, waiting. Footsteps made their way over to us, and all noise in the hallway died.

"Are you Garet Evans?"

That seemed to snap Garet out of his trance. He looked away from me, and over towards the police officers. "Yeah?"

"Is that your locker over there?"

"Yes."

"Are these yours?"

I was keeping my eyes on Garet, so I didn't see what the officer held up, but it sounded like a few plastic bags. I'd seen those small bags before, on the few occasions I'd gotten a glimpse inside of his locker. I knew what was in them.

"Yes." Garet's voice was very quiet when he finally responded.

There were a few moments of silence, and I heard the cop fiddling with something. "And what about this?"

Garet's eyes flicked down, and then widened. "No." His voice sounded genuinely surprised.

"You're sure?"

"No. I mean yes, I'm sure! That's not mine!"

I finally turned to look, surprised by the urgency in Garet's voice. I blinked as I saw a small, unmarked package wrapped in brown paper in the cop's hands. It was about the size of a brick. I was confused about why they would find something like that so special, and why Garet sounded so concerned.

"So you admit to the weed, but you have no idea where this came from?" The police officer gestured with the package, her voice incredulous.

"Yeah, you have to believe me! That isn't mine!"

The officer snorted, then nodded to her partner. "Alright, we're going to need you to come with us."

"But that isn't mine!"

"The weed's enough. Come on, kid."

The next few moments were a blur. They cuffed Garet while everybody looked on, and then led him away. I think I was just too stunned and shocked to react at first, or to put everything together, so I just watched. Garet didn't try talking to me while they led him off, he just kept trying to convince the officers that the package wasn't his.

Everybody else started moving shortly after they left, going back to business after the interruption. I just stood in the middle of the hallway, oblivious to the goings on around me.

I don't think it all really clicked into place until long after the hallway had emptied, and I was standing there alone. My mind kept going back to that package, and why Garet and the cop had made such a big deal of it. Why would something like that matter when they already had him for selling weed...

Then, all at once, it clicked. The package had been brick-shaped. I could only think of one thing that would be shipped in unmarked bricks, particularly to a drug dealer.

That was the moment that I realized how much trouble Garet was in.