A Sharp Endless Need - Hardcover

Crane, Marisa

 
9780593733646: A Sharp Endless Need
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0593733649 ISBN 13: 9780593733646
Verlag: Dial Press, 2025

Inhaltsangabe

A propulsive and nostalgic coming-of-age novel about an all-consuming relationship between two teammates on a girls’ high school basketball team, from the Lambda Literary Award–winning author of I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself

“Brilliant . . . so alive and vibrating that it took my breath away.”—Kevin Wilson, New York Times bestselling author of Nothing to See Here

Star point guard Mack Morris’s senior year of high school begins with twin cataclysms: the death of her father and the arrival of transfer student Liv Cooper. On the court, Mack and Liv discover an electrifying, game-winning chemistry; off the court, they fall into an equally intoxicating more-than-friendship that is out-of-bounds for their small Pennsylvania town in 2004, and for Liv’s conservative mother. As Mack’s desire and grief collide with drugs, sex, and the looming college signing deadline, she is forced to reckon with the disconnect between her past and her future—and fight for the life she wants for herself, whether or not Liv will be on the court beside her.

Written with the lush longing of André Aciman’s Call Me by Your Name, the obsessive attention of Jean Kyoung Frazier’s Pizza Girl, and all the romance and feeling of the beloved 2000 movie Love & Basketball, Marisa Crane’s sophomore novel is a voice-driven, literary treatment of the big feelings of first love, intimacy, heartbreak, grief, and, of course, sports.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Marisa Crane is a former college basketball player and the author of I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself, a New York Times Editors’ Choice, Indie Next pick, and winner of a LAMBDA Literary Award. They have received fellowships from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, American Short Fiction, and Vermont Studio Center, and their short work has appeared in Literary Hub, The Sun, TriQuarterly, Prairie Schooner, Joyland, and elsewhere. Originally from Allentown, PA, they currently live in San Diego with their family.

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1

Pep Talk in the Huddle

Before I met Liv, before everything changed, my dad took me to a Sixers game. The whole drive into the city we were buzzing, and he kept messing with the radio trying to find a station that reflected our excitement, but there was nothing but commercials and bad pop music and public service announcements about the dangers of marijuana. There’s nothing natural about getting high, a man scolded us.

There was traffic on the Schuylkill like usual. We were going to be late. In the car next to us two men, boys really, were making out in the back seat, hands gripping the meat of each other’s necks. The two boys in the front were a silent film of laughter, heads thrown back, mouths open wide as if to swallow all the light in the city. I tried not to look at the ones kissing, though I liked it, liked what they were doing with each other. Dad didn’t notice them, he was too busy driving with his knees while he turned a map every which way, trying to find a detour, although I doubt he would have made some rude comment. I take that back—he might have said something rude like Nobody wants to see that, but it wouldn’t have been because they were gay, it would have been because they were young and happy, and he was old and unhappy.

My junior season had just ended with a loss in the district quarterfinals, not a bad run for a team made up of mostly other-sport athletes. For them, basketball was just a way to stay in shape between soccer and track, field hockey and softball. The only other serious player, serious as in trying to get a scholarship to play in college, had been this senior who never saw a shot she didn’t like. Double-teamed, feet not set, didn’t matter. All she cared about was how many points she put up, no matter how many shots it took her to get there. No matter how many points she gave up. I was glad to be rid of her, I’d be free to make more happen.

The Sixers parking lot was an absolute shit show. Every time my dad pulled over and put on his blinker, some other car would slip right in and steal our spot, and Dad would speed away, pounding the dashboard and cursing up a storm. Eventually, we found a spot by a group of people doing so many poppers it looked like a birthday party. A woman in a tracksuit did a handstand and everyone hugged her legs, pressing their cheeks to the thighs, the knees, the calves of her swishy pants. I thought about mentioning how weirdly touching I found this scene, then I thought again.

“That’s what losers look like, Mackenzie,” said Dad, though he was smiling, a wistful smile like maybe he missed being a loser, though I couldn’t imagine a time when that could have been true.

After all that, we ended up having nosebleed seats. I’m talking outer-space level. My dad double-checked the tickets like fifteen times when we got to our seats, his brows knit tightly as he turned his Sixers hat backward then forward then backward again, his eyes moving from ticket to seat. The game had already started. I watched a tiny Allen Iverson hit three jumpers in a row before Dad finally admitted defeat.

“It’s okay, what matters is that we’re here,” he said, even though I hadn’t said a word about it.

He made sure to buy us cotton candy and popcorn and whatever else we could stuff our faces with. And when he whistled and beckoned for the old guy with the hairy forearms to bring him a beer, he bought two, setting one in my cup holder and gesturing at it with a big meaty paw. It was the first time he bought me my own beer, and for some reason, maybe because I missed stealing a few sips of his here and there, missed the brush of our hands as we passed the cup back and forth, it made me want to cry. To keep from crying, I made a joke about how Mom should make note of this milestone in my baby book, but he wasn’t listening. He was already sucking down his beer and yelling at Kyle Korver to stop being such a pretty boy and take a f***ing charge.

“We get it, you hate him,” I said, laughing. He turned to me, mouth twisted in worry.

“Don’t tell me you actually like him,” he said. “My heart can’t take it.”

I assured him that I didn’t give two shits about Kyle Korver’s face or otherwise, but we did need him to win so he might as well suck it up.

He seemed satisfied by my answer. I drank my beer and made a big stink about how good it was even though it tasted like bitter creek water. I drank all the time with my friends, but he didn’t know that; he thought he was giving me a special treat.

Our section was pretty full, with tons of families around, including a dad a few seats away who kept eyeing my beer and then pulling his preteen daughter closer as if, at any moment, I might tie her up and pour it down her throat. I watched her while I drank. She crossed her legs at the knee and kept flipping her hair this way and that. She wore some cute lacy top that could have been from Limited Too or something. It looked a bit young for Wet Seal, though I was sure she’d graduate to those cleavagey tank tops any day now. Me, I was in baggy sweats and my Jordan 3s. But it wasn’t just our clothes that differentiated us. I got the sense that, on an elemental level, she was different from me. She probably had a boyfriend; she probably actually liked her boyfriend. Wanted his lips on hers, his hands up her shirt in the back row of a movie theater. I didn’t know what that was like. To desire something so dull, something so easily attainable. I wanted to want that, I really did.

“Careful, there, kid, don’t want you getting trashed on my watch,” said my dad. His beer had been replaced by a sad, dented cup. “Hey, you don’t happen to have any money on you, do you?” he asked.

I gave him a strange look before answering. “No, Coach Puck hasn’t paid me yet.”

He’d never asked me for money before. I would have thought he was kidding if he didn’t look so earnest.

Coach Puck was my high school coach. He paid me twenty dollars an hour to clean his house. It wasn’t for the faint of heart, either. None of that dusting or vacuuming shit. He was a hoarder, lived in a house with eight dogs, two kids, and a wife he loved to hate or hated to love, I was never sure which.

“My goddamn cokehead of a wife,” he was always saying, running a hand through his greasy, shoulder-length hair.

I wasn’t even sure his wife was real. I’d never seen her, and I was over there often enough that my mom started asking me what business a forty-eight-year-old man had with a sixteen-year-old girl. According to Coach, his wife spent all her time in the basement, buying and selling troll dolls on eBay, high off her ass. Anyway, one Saturday I spent all day trying to scrape unidentified dried goo from the inside of his refrigerator. I didn’t mind, more money for me. His front yard had some things going on, too. It was a mishmash of whatever the f*** didn’t fit in the house or garage, I guess. Two old, ratty couches, a few tires, a bathroom sink, a broken printer, you name it. No matter the time of year, you could count on there being falling-down Christmas lights and a blow-up reindeer. He really was an odd guy. I loved him the same way I loved my dad: with a violence that terrified even me. I would throw a right hook for them. Would stab a motherf***er.

“Well, what about the last payment?” said my dad. “What’d you go and spend that on?”

“Drugs,” I said. Then, “Tattoos.”

“Strippers.”

“Sneakers.”

Laughing, he said, “My son....

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Verlag
Dial Press
Erscheinungsdatum
2025
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0593733649
ISBN 13 
9780593733646
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
256
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar

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