Chapter 1 CHAPTER 1
BOUNCE, BOUNCE, BOUNCE.

I bounce a basketball down the hall on my way downstairs.

"Marcus!" cries my mother as I round the corner to the kitchen. "Have mercy and stop that inside the house!"

I shoot the ball into a basket that holds shoes by the door.

"Nice shot," says my older sister, Sabria, who is already at the table, dunking French toast into syrup.

I sit down next to her.

"Marcus, that ball bouncing everywhere is echoing through the house," says Mom. "It's kind of early for that noise, okay?"

"It's the sound of a basketball!" I say. "That kind of noise is perfect all day long!"

My mother groans. "I need more coffee first."

Mom pauses to pick up her mug as she makes sandwiches. Now that I'm in middle school, my mother has decided that she shouldn't pack my whole lunch. She makes the main part, like a sandwich or pasta, and I have to put in either a piece of fruit or a vegetable and a dessert. I tried to sneak in an extra bag of cookies once, but she checks my lunch every day. When I stay at my dad's house, his thinking is that it's my lunch and I should just take care of it. He doesn't care if I pack an entire bag of Cheetos and call it a day.

"Okay, schedules for the day," Mom says, looking at her phone as my sister and I shoot each other a look. Mom is always focused on schedules. She has charts all over the place listing each kid's activities, practices, and games, and who's doing drop-off or pickup. Now that my parents are divorced, it's a daily thing to go over who'll be there to shuttle everyone around and where we're staying each night, since we go back and forth between Mom's house and Dad's house. Because both of my parents work and because my sports schedules can get a little wild, we don't do one week at Mom's and then one week at Dad's. We switch around a lot, so it makes everything a little bananas.

Even though it's been a while, I'm still getting used to having two houses and two bedrooms. I still don't like it, but the fact is, my parents are divorced, and nothing is going to change that. I've accepted it, but I still sometimes get really mad that we don't all live together. The worst, to me, is toting a bag between houses, because there are some things I only have one of, like my game-day baseball glove, and I have to cart that around. Once, Sabria totally lost it and screamed, "I live out of a bag, and I don't have a home anymore!"

Mom and Dad freaked a little after that, but they sat us down and explained that we now have two houses and two homes but we're still a part of one family. Which we understand, mostly. But still, if you leave a favorite pair of sneakers at one house, then realize two days later that you want to wear them... you're out of luck. That makes me mad.

"Marcus, you have basketball after school," says Mom, reading off her chart. "And Sabria is babysitting next door for the twins. Sabria, you'll take the bus home, then walk over there. Marcus, you will stay for practice. Your dad will pick you up and bring you here since I have to work late. You will both be here for dinner and sleep here tonight." Mom nods at the chart. She seems pleased that today is a relatively easy day. Things can get a little out of hand when both Mom and Dad are working nights, especially if both of us kids also have evening activities.

"Homework all done?" asks Mom, eyeing the two of us. Mom and Dad are both strict about homework. Sometimes Dad will let me do homework while I watch a game, but Mom never does. She believes in concentrating.

"But if I can do homework and watch a game, isn't that better?" I sometimes ask. "I'm getting practice at doing two things at once. I mean, that has to be better than sitting here only doing one thing, right?"

"No," Mom will say. "There are some things that should have your full attention. Do you want me to drive and make dinner? That would cause a major accident. I'd either crash the car or burn down the house."

I roll my eyes. "That's a fairly crazy example, Mom," I say.

"Would Dad let you break your concentration with baseball practice to play a video game at the same time?" she asks.

I actually laugh at the thought of that. Dad is hard-core about baseball training. Dad is hard-core about a lot of things, but really hard-core about my baseball training. Every morning, I practice with Dad, doing drills, throwing, and doing exercises to keep me strong and nimble. If I even try to chat with Dad during practice, he'll rumble back at me.

Thankfully, I did my homework last night. I'm good about doing it, even if I don't always like it or if I'm pretty tired after a game or a practice. The truth? I don't mind school. I like learning new stuff and challenging myself. But most kids don't go around saying that they love school. I might complain about homework, but I always do it. I'm competitive in all things--on courts, on fields, and in classrooms.

Sabria gives me some side-eye. "You know you have a project coming up," she says.

I scowl back since Sabria is always stepping in my business. "I do," I say. "But we haven't even started on it in class. How did you know?"

"I heard you talking about it," says Sabria.

I give her a look. Somehow Sabria manages to "overhear" a lot of stuff. I'm about to accuse her of reading my texts when my mother says, "Marcus, what's the project about?"

"We aren't even supposed to start it yet," I say again, a little huffy. "Don't worry, Mom. I know, I know, school is important."

"It is," says Mom evenly. "But I'm also interested in what you're working on."

"It's for media studies," I say. "It's about why you need multiple news sources to fully understand something. And how you have to look at all the information and then make an informed conclusion for yourself."

"It was boring when we did that unit," says Sabria. Ah, so maybe she wasn't eavesdropping. Maybe she just remembers taking the same class.

"It doesn't sound boring at all!" says Mom. "And it's a very important skill to have. You need to understand what you're reading and understand how you're getting information!"

I smirk at my sister as I slurp down my French toast. Older sisters who always have to be right can be so annoying.

"Okay, let's go, kids," says Mom, glancing at the clock.

Mom or Dad drives us to school instead of making us take the bus, which is fine with me because standing outside at a bus stop does not seem fun, even in perfect weather. Sabria goes to high school, which she thinks is totally cool. It is, but she always complains about how much homework she has, so I'm in no rush to get there.

Dad likes to be focused in the morning, checking in on the news and what our goals are for the day. Mom is a lot more chatty, which can be good, but sometimes I just like it quiet.

We gather up our backpacks and lunches and head toward the car. Sabria gets to the front seat first. I shrug and throw my bag into the back and slide in. If I'm in the back seat, I can kind of just tune everything out, and this morning I'm tired. I already had my daily baseball practice with Dad, and my arm is a little sore. Plus, Dad has me working on core strength and lifting weights. I do a lot even before school starts in the morning.

My dad and I practice every single morning, in the rain, in the cold, even in the snow. No weekends off. Dad thinks I have real talent for baseball and if I work hard and practice, I have a shot at being a pro player. While that sounds kind of cool, the truth is, I'm not totally sure I want to be a professional baseball player. For practically my entire life everyone has said, "Wow, that kid can play" when I'm on the baseball field. It's not that I don't like baseball; I love baseball. But I don't like people deciding things for me. I want some choices, and if I feel like I can work hard and be great at more than baseball, why wouldn't I at least try?

I also love basketball. It's an awesome game, and I practice hard and am pretty decent on the court. I don't feel the same pressure with basketball, because there isn't this expectation of, Oh, here comes Marcus Stroman. He's supposed to be the best basketball player. No one says that. And that's cool. It makes me want to be a better basketball player. Maybe I can be a professional basketball player, even if everyone always tells me I'm not tall enough to play.

I must be more zoned out than I realized, because the sound of the car door slamming startles me. I watch Sabria walking up the path to her school as my mother's gaze follows her. Mom always waits until we're at the door to the school, which makes me half smile and half roll my eyes. Mom isn't afraid we won't actually go in. She just likes to see us get to the door. Mom watches Sabria pull open the main door to the school, then slowly leaves the drop-off lane, glancing at me in the rearview mirror.

As I sit in the car, I'm doing this new thing Gary taught me. Gary is my mental-health coach. A mental-health coach is like a coach for your head, the inside part. Gary helps me process how I feel about things and is helping me see how I react to them too. Sometimes I get really tense or nervous, and Gary shows me how to relax and feel a little looser. It's important in life, but it's also important on the field or the court, when sometimes I really tense up, and as my dad says, I get stuck in my head.

When my dad used to say I was stuck inside my head, I always had an image of myself literally stuck inside my head, crawling on my hands and knees. It was kind of funny, but it isn't funny at all when things really rattle you.

Gary taught me this game I can use when I get really upset or stressed or stuck. It's called the Senses game because you use all five senses, and, yes, we laugh because it sounds like a game you'd play in preschool, but it really works. You have to look around you and find five things to see, four things to hear, three things to smell, two things to feel, and one thing that would taste good. Sometimes Gary shuffles them around so it's five things to smell or four things to feel. It makes you look around to see where you are and take it in.

If I'm stressed at a baseball game, I can smell the grass, feel the sun, hear crowds chanting (or booing). The cool thing is that while you're doing it, you really notice things you might not normally notice. Once, I had to name five things I smelled at a baseball game, and I realized how much I could smell beyond grass. At one game I smelled the newly cut grass, sure, but I also smelled hot dogs grilling in the park behind the field, the dirt, sweat (gross but true), and I swore I smelled cologne. For a while after that I wondered which teammate had been wearing cologne to a game.

To be honest, I sometimes do the Senses game when I'm just hanging out, like a mind puzzle. It grounds me.

My school is just down the street from Sabria's, so Mom slows the car a few minutes later. "Okay, love," she says, "have a great day!"

"I'll try," I say, and slide out, slipping my backpack over my shoulder and giving Mom a wave. Then I hustle inside because having your mom wait while you walk into middle school is getting to be a little embarrassing.

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Excerpted from The Spin by Marcus Stroman
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