Jefferson High was louder than it looked from the outside.
Not just the slamming lockers and the shout-laughs ricocheting off brick. There was a hum under everything, like the campus ran on its own heartbeat and nobody told him the rhythm.
Asher kept his hood up on the walk from the back lot, earbuds in with nothing playing. The music wasn't the point; it was permission not to hear. A girl on a scooter zipped past and almost clipped him. He stepped back, mumbled "my bad" even though she'd cut the corner. Her friend laughed. The sound trailed him.
He told himself this school was a reset. New halls, new faces, no one who'd watched the video of him sitting on a bench with his head in his hands while a tournament game kept going without him. But resets were just the same game on a different court. He knew that.
He cut behind the gym because it was faster to the bus stop and he wanted the day over. The side doors were propped open with a gray trash bin, and the smell hit him first—floor wax and sweat and that sweet-dusty tang that never quite leaves a gym. Then the sound.
Thump. Thump. Swish.
His feet stopped before his head did.
Through the gap he caught snapshots: a guard sliding his feet, palms out; a coach's hand chopping the air; two players trading chest passes like metronomes. Squeak of rubber. The whistle. The layered echoes that make a big space sound like it's breathing.
The back of his neck got hot. He tightened his grip on his backpack strap and looked away, the kind of quick turn you do when you accidentally make eye contact with a mirror. Keep moving. Not your world anymore.
"Hey—yo!"
He pretended not to hear. Concrete under his shoes, sun on his cheek. Two more steps.
"Hey, blond kid!"
He sighed and stopped. Turned.
A tall guy jogged up the stairs, red practice jersey clinging to him, a ball tucked against his ribs like it had always lived there. Messy hair, easy smile—the kind of smile people hand you before they decide if they like you.
"You hoop?" he asked.
Asher blinked. "Do I what?"
"Play," the guy said, tilting his head toward the open door. "You look like you used to."
"I don't."
The guy's eyes dropped to Asher's shoes. "Those are Kobes, right? The older ones."
Asher glanced down: white leather creased at the toes, gray where the laces used to be white. He'd meant to grab the beat-up Vans this morning. "Yeah," he said. "They're just shoes."
"Sure," the guy said, faint smile like he wasn't buying it. "You were staring at the court like someone who misses it."
Heat crept up Asher's neck. "You always psychoanalyze strangers or am I lucky?"
"Maybe both." The guy held out a palm. "Jordan."
Asher didn't take the handshake, so Jordan just rapped his knuckles lightly on the ball instead, like that counted. "Captain," he added, as if that explained the audacity.
"Good for you."
"Tryouts are next week. Coach keeps the place open after hours. If you want to shoot, no one's gonna hassle you."
"I'm good," Asher said.
Jordan nodded like he'd expected that answer. He spun the ball once, clean, and pinned it back to his hip. "Alright. Just figured I'd say hi. You've got—" He stopped himself, shook his head. "Never mind. Later."
He jogged backward a step, pivoted, and slid through the propped door. The noise swallowed him and then went muffled, like someone had lowered the volume slider on Asher's chest and cranked it somewhere else.
Asher stood there longer than he meant to, counting the beats without trying to.
Thump. Thump. Swish.
He tore his eyes away and kept going.
The bus shelter rattled when trucks passed. Someone had scratched initials into the Plexiglas and filled them with pen ink so they'd show. A freshman at the far end practiced a TikTok dance, headphones in, arms sharp, face blank. Asher watched the road. His reflection ghosted in the torn route map: hair too long and wavy, blond catching the light, brown eyes darker under the shadow of his hood. He pushed the hair off his forehead and it fell back the second his hand dropped. It always had.
The bus pulled up with a sigh. He took a middle seat, set his backpack on his lap, and stared out the window. A little kid near the front swung his feet and asked his dad if dinosaurs would be allowed in heaven. The dad said, "Buddy, if there's a heaven, the dinosaurs are definitely there." The kid seemed satisfied. Asher felt that weird ache you get when something sweet wanders past your wall.
Three stops later, two boys in football hoodies got on and sat behind him. They talked loud enough for everyone to hear, the way athletes do when they want to be looked at without asking. One of them said, "Dude, that new gym floor is still sticky. Coach is gonna figure it out." The other said, "You can't fix sticky." They both laughed.
Asher counted bricks on a long wall, lost track, started again. The bus hissed and knelt and hissed and went.
When he got off, the sun had slid low and made the street look more generous than it was. Ranch houses with patchy lawns. A basketball hoop on one driveway sagged forward, net mostly knots, one loop missing. Somewhere, a dog barked three times, like a metronome.
Home smelled like someone had tried to cook and decided not to. His mom's shoes were by the door, but the apartment was quiet—no TV, no music, just the baseboard heater doing that faint click-pop it did when it remembered to be on.
A note waited on the counter, her hurried block letters pressed harder on the downstrokes:
Dinner's in the fridge. Don't forget your meds. Love you. — Mom
He flattened the paper with his palm. The corners were already curling. He didn't know what he was going to do with the notes long-term—he had a stack in a drawer—but throwing them away felt like dropping a ball on purpose.
The fridge held pasta in a container and half an apple he'd promised he'd eat yesterday. He microwaved the pasta and leaned against the counter, scrolling with his thumb. He didn't want anything in particular; he wanted the nothing that looking like you're doing something gives you.
A youth league account he hadn't unfollowed—maybe he thought he had—posted a throwback photo. Him at thirteen, jersey five, grin too wide for his face, hair shorter and cleaner, sweat shining on his cheek. Trophy almost as tall as his torso.
Asher Holt — the next big thing.
Comments below it:
@coachmiles: Kid was lightning.
@amy_hoops: Where'd he go?
@someone: Heard he switched sports lol
He locked his phone. The microwave beeped. He didn't move for a second, then took the container out and burned his fingers because he always forgot.
He ate at the counter. The pasta had clumped, but he didn't mind. Eating was a box to check. After a few bites, the apartment felt too quiet. He opened the kitchen window for noise, and noise came in—the distant hum of the boulevard, someone talking on speakerphone in the alley, and, faintly, a basketball.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
He closed his eyes for two beats, then three more, then gave up and went to his room with the container and a fork and the note still in his hand. His room was smaller now that his bed was in it. Posters he hadn't hung yet leaned against the wall: a city skyline, a music festival lineup he'd never gone to, a print of a painting he didn't really understand but liked the colors of.
He set the note on his desk, propped against the lamp base. The tiny act felt like something. He sat on the edge of the bed and toed his shoes off without untying the knots. One fell on its side like it was done trying.
He took his meds with water straight from the bathroom tap. The mirror over the sink showed a boy who looked like he'd missed a summer and was trying to pretend he hadn't. At five-foot-ten he'd always been the short one in photos, the one on the end of the line with his knees slightly bent so he didn't look even smaller. Coaches called him "quick," said it like a consolation prize. It never felt like one until other parts stopped working.
The ball outside kept going. Closer now. Or maybe the night magnified it. He counted without meaning to. Fourteen bounces to a second shot, then fifteen, like the person out there was arguing with the number.
He opened his bedroom window enough to hear but not to invite the air in. He could see the glow of the streetlight on the next block, just the edge. A shape moved across it once—some kid dribbling down the sidewalk, the ball rising to his hip and dropping to the concrete like a promise.
He pressed the heel of his hand to the center of his chest for a second, hard, the way you do when a muscle remembers something you told it to forget.
The apartment door clicked in the lock. "Ash?" his mom called. Her voice made a tired shape of his name.
"In here," he said, getting up.
She came to the doorway with her work tote still on her shoulder. Her hair was pulled back tight. She wore those black sneakers she got on sale at the strip mall with the tiny air pockets that squeaked every fifth step. "Hey, baby," she said, and her face did that softening thing and then went careful, like she'd stepped near a hole and remembered the map.
"Hey," he said.
"You eat?"
"Yeah."
"Notes help?"
He smiled, small. "They do."
She nodded once, relief and apology in the same motion. "Good. I'm off tomorrow night. We can do the store. You need anything now?"
"I'm fine."
"You sure?"
"Yeah."
She hovered in the pause, like she wanted to say something else and decided not to. "Okay." She kissed the top of his head, the way she always had, even though he had to duck now. "Goodnight, Asher."
"'Night."
He closed the door with his foot and stood in the middle of the room until the ball outside started up again.
He lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. A crack ran from the light fixture to the corner, thin as a pencil line. It looked like a baseline from this angle. He hated that his brain made that connection. He liked it, too.
His phone buzzed. Jordan, somehow. He hadn't given his number to anyone. Then he remembered the digital forms the office made him fill out that morning—team captains had access to some list, probably. He considered ignoring it, opened it anyway.
Unknown: it's jordan from the gym. if this is the wrong asher, my bad lol
Unknown: gym doors are open from 4–6 most days. coach forgets to lock the side closet. there's a rack of dead balls in there. they still bounce.
Unknown: not trying to be weird. sometimes it's easier when no one's watching.
Asher stared at the three bubbles of gray text, thumb hovering over the keyboard. He typed k and deleted it. Typed thanks and deleted that too because it looked too much like agreement. He set the phone face-down and closed his eyes.
The bounce outside paused, then resumed. New rhythm. Two quick ones, a pause, then three. He counted a few sequences before he realized he was smiling. Not big. The kind you feel more than show.
After ten minutes, he got up, slid his shoes back on without untying them, grabbed his hoodie, and stood in the doorway of his room with his hand on the light switch. He didn't flip it. He listened to the whole apartment breathing—the fridge, the heater, his mom's TV low in the next room—and decided he wasn't brave or stupid enough to go back to the gym tonight.
He went as far as the kitchen window. The streetlight cast a shaky circle on the cracked pavement. A moth kept hitting the glass and sliding down like it was trying to remember how to be a moth. The ball's sound faded as whoever it was turned the corner, then came back faint, then disappeared.
He rinsed his fork and left it in the drying rack because he'd wash it in the morning anyway. Back in his room, he pulled the blinds half-closed and lay down again with his hoodie on. The hood made its own small room around his ears. He breathed there.
His phone buzzed once more. A second message from the same unknown number:
Unknown: if you tell me to stop texting i will. just wanted you to know the door stays open. that's all.
He flipped the phone over, stared at the little blue cursor in the text box, and typed:
Asher: noted.
He sent it before he could talk himself out of it. The word looked colder than he meant. He left it. He started to put the phone down, then typed one more:
Asher: thanks for the info
A minute passed. No dots. Good. Better.
He turned onto his side and watched the small triangle of streetlight on his carpet shift as a car rolled by. He thought of the smell of wax and dust and the way the ball pushes your palm back up when it's alive, how the good ones feel like they rise on their own. He thought of the last time he'd held one and how he'd never wanted to touch anything less.
He pulled the hood tighter and tried to think about nothing. It worked for maybe four seconds.
When he finally slept, the gym door in his dream was half open and no one was inside, and the ball he picked up was heavier than he remembered but it fit his hand like it used to, and the first dribble sounded exactly like memory.
Thump. Thump. Swish.
The noise didn't stop when he woke. It stayed, quiet but there, like a neighbor through a thin wall. He lay still, listening. The morning would come either way.
He decided he could live with the noise for one more day. After that, he'd decide again.