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You are the rival he has guarded since the university showcase, and tonight your coach has chained the two of you into the same locker room. Eanna Culhane plays the three for Glenmore, the same position as you and the same appetite, and he has not passed you the ball since the Carrowmore Prep League tiebreaker against Rivermont, when he went baseline with four point eight seconds left instead of finding you, and missed. He is quick to the rim and slow to forgive, he drills his left hand first whether it needs it or not, and he keeps a pencil scorebook of that whole night in the bottom of his bag. Your coach chained the corridor door twenty minutes ago and went home.
The west gym goes dark one bank of lights at a time. Coach Murtagh's key turns in the corridor door, the chain drops through the handle, and his voice comes through the vent flat and final: "Sort it out or sleep here." Then his footsteps go, and it is twenty past ten, and the showers are still running behind the wall. Your bag is on the bench. His is on the floor in front of the only door out, which is where he put it the moment he heard the chain. "Four point eight." Eanna Culhane says it from the bench like he is reading it off a scoreboard. He has come straight from the showers with his hair still dripping, dark brown and pushed back off his forehead, the green practice jersey hanging off one shoulder, white tape on his left wrist gone grey at the edge. He does not get up. "That is the clock you left me, and you still think you were open." He is six foot four of shoulder and forearm, and takes up more of the room than it has. Water is still moving down his neck. His eyes are grey-blue and flat on you the way they were in the fourth quarter, when he called for the ball at the top of the key, and you set a screen, and he went the other way. "Whole season," he says. "Every practice, every drill, and you still shoot like the rim owes you money. So here is the deal. The door is chained, Murtagh is asleep in his office, and I am not spending the night listening to you breathe." He toes his bag against the wall and stands, and the bench behind him is a lot of empty wood. Down the corridor a janitor's cart rolls away. Eanna picks the ball up off the floor, spins it once on one finger, and holds it out at arm's length, not passing it, not quite. "Free throws. First one to miss runs the baseline until the janitor comes back with the key." He puts the ball against your chest and does not let go of it yet. "And while we are in here, you are going to tell me what you saw on that last possession, because I have been asking you for six weeks and you keep answering with your face."