Page 1 of Fast Break
CHAPTER 1
JT
So, there’s this girl in my senior year advanced science class. Her name’s Chanel and she is pretty much everything you’d want in a girl—pretty as a summer’s day, bright hazel eyes and curves in all the right places. She has long, honey blonde hair that she flicks over her shoulder like she knows exactly how good she looks.
Everybody likes her. She’s bubbly, friendly and just a little bit flirty. Especially with me it seems because Chanel has been making eyes at me since I arrived at Evergreen High a month ago, just in time for final semester of senior year.
Chanel has this group of friends, and they go everywhere together—literally. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her without that posse of girls trailing behind. She smiles and waves at me every time I walk past, and her friends all stop and nudge Chanel while sending me these knowing grins.
Thing is, I know exactly what to make of her attention. I’m just not sure what to do with it. See, plenty of girls have looked at me the way Chanel does. I just haven’t really been all that sure about looking back. Maybe I’m a late bloomer.
Or maybe there’s something a little bit wrong with me.
My cousin Trey goes to Evergreen with me. We grew up ruling this neighbourhood together until my family moved away when I was eight. I felt like I was living in purgatory ever since, stuck out in the middle ofnowheresvillefor the last ten years. There’s not a whole lot I’ll miss about Morlee, a tiny, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it backwater, population eleven-and-a-half thousand. Let me assure you, life in inland Australia is not for the faint of heart.
So when my parents announced two months ago we were moving back home, I was ecstatic. I didn’t even care that it meant switching schools in the middle of my senior year. I was finally going home, back to where I belonged. Back with Trey.
Having Trey here made switching to a new high school way easier than it could have been. It also helped that I basically walked into an established friendship group with Trey there to vouch for me.
It’s hard enough moving schools in the middle of senior year. I’m not the best student, academically speaking, but sports? That’s where I shine. Basketball especially even though I don’t quite hit six feet, but I make up for it with speed, balance and droves of confidence.
I turned eighteen a few weeks ago, smack bang in the middle of our move to Evergreen. Pretty sure my parents would have forgotten entirely if my grandparents hadn’t called to ask how we were celebrating. Cue a hastily thrown-together (and painfully formal) family dinner with our nearest relatives, where I was gifted a reflections journal and a Bible study companion.
Afterwards, Trey gave me a pair of Nike LeBron’s in an eye-catching orange and blue and then took me out to a club where we drank way too much Jack Daniel’s and had the time of our lives. I’m gonna leave it to your judgement as to which celebration I preferred.
I’m not used to that kind of freedom, but having Trey around certainly helps. It wouldn’t be so bad if I could actually get my driver’s license like everyone else in our year. If only my dad would let me near the car to start learning.
Not that I need to ask to know what he’d say. I can already hear that patronising tone he loves to use on me:“It’s not about your years, it’s about the effort you put in, Jethro Thomas, and so far, I am seeing no evidence of that.”
My parents are literally the only humans on the planet who call me by my first names. I guess they’re the ones who chose it so they can do what they like, but if anyone else called me Jethro Thomas instead of JT, well let’s just say they would be hearing about it.
Trey and I have one major thing in common which is that we grew up dominating the basketball court together. Trey is the one who got me a tryout with Evergreen’s Division one basketball team—the Dukes—and I made the cut even though I missed the original tryout dates and the first few games of the season.
It's been amazing playing with my cousin again—the actual best thing about being back home. Being on the Division one team seems to make us very cool here at Evergreen. Well, at least in our eyes.
The Dukes are a really great team too with an awesome yet slightly terrifying coach in Coach Vizard. Rumour has it he was once an assistant coach for one of the top-level NBL basketball teams, but nobody seems to have any proof of this. But the standard is way higher than at my old regional K-12 school and since basketball is basically my life, this is the main reason I have loved coming back home to Evergreen.
So, I could probably say that school has been pretty good so far, even though I’m still figuring out my way around, in terms of both the hallways and the hierarchy. It’s not just basketball where the bar is higher—everything here is harder and better and just …more. I am finding it a little hard to keep up. But at least thanks to Trey and basketball, I’ve slotted in pretty smoothly. And honestly? I don’t mind being the shiny new toy.
But then there’s Quinn.
Quinn Dayton to be precise. He’s in my advanced science class and he’s, well, I’m not sure what it is about him. But there’ssomethingabout him and thatsomethingmeans I tend to look at him. Like, all the time. He’s kind of cool but also not likepopularcool. Just cool in the sense that he doesn’t give a damn what anyone else thinks about him and I really like that. I wish I could be more like that but unfortunately, I’m not. I do care what people think. Way too much.
It's hard to be in high school and not care what people think. I care if people think I’m funny or cool or good at sports and I try so hard to fit in because of that. But Quinn, well, Quinn just strolls into class with this casual coolness about him, not even bothering to look up and see that my eyes are trained on him. Always. He sits in the front row because he is, like, crazy smart and so classy and sophisticated and he doesn’t care that the front row is not the cool place to sit. Except it is cool because he’s sitting there and a part of me always wants to just go slide into the space beside him and talk to him.
I haven’t done that yet because I am completely intimidated by him. I’m not afraid to admit it. He’s not a nerd or anything, just smart in that way I envy because it seems like he doesn’t even try. He has this group of friends, and they are neither cool nor unpopular, just somewhere in the middle and Quinn seems to be completely okay with that. I wish I could be more like that.
But there’s this other thing about Quinn and I wasn’t sure if I should mention it, but he is like, really pretty to look at. Is that even a thing? Like, is it okay to think that other guys are pretty? Maybe I should have said handsome because he is definitely classically good looking—tall, dark and handsome in that fairytale hero kind of way.
He has these bright blue eyes that are so incredible and piercing andall knowingthathandsomedoesn’t quite seem to cut it. He has this chiselled jawline and these razor-sharp cheekbones that make him look elegant and sophisticated. His hair is dark and effortlessly tussled in that cute boyband kind of way.Bedroom hairI think I heard it once described and that description sure suits Quinn Dayton.
He also sometimes has a bit of a five o’clock shadow on his jawline which I am envious of but it also looks really good on him. Like, really good. My grandma likes to call me her baby-faced assassin and I guess what she means by that is that I only got my first electric razor a couple of years ago and let’s just say it doesn’t always require daily usage. So yeah, I guess I am a little awed by Quinn and his obvious masculinity.
Unlike Morlee Regional High, Evergreen has a strict uniform policy where the boys wear grey pants and a navy blazer over a white shirt with a navy and silver striped tie. I never thought much about uniforms before but Quinn, well, Quinn sure wears that uniform in a way that leaves my mouth dry. Yesterday he came into class with his blazer strung over his arm and his shirt sleeves rolled up and I think I might have had a stroke. My eyes were fixated on places they had no business being fixated, places I had never really noticed on a guy before. But not him, not Quinn.
I notice everything about him.
He's never noticed me.
