A Good Start
I got off to a good start.
#. March 3, 2016
#-1. Oahu, Hawaii, USA
#-2. Kahuku CDP, Honolulu
#-3. Kahuku High School
The NFHS. The National Federation of State High School Associations. It was the organization established to systematically govern every high school sport in America. Its top priority was preventing overuse of young athletes — what they called training hour restrictions. Regardless of the sport, all high school team practices across the country could not exceed two hours a day after sunrise. Go over that, and the penalties were steep: fines, tournament bans, stripped eligibility. Of course, they couldn't stop anyone from working out on their own, so with just a little diligence, you could train as much as you pleased.
The man beside me was telling me something I already knew. He must have assumed I wouldn't know it — after all, no one could have dreamed that I was living my second life.
I watched his back as he moved ahead.
"Everyone, attention—!"
"…."
"…."
"Right now, I've got someone to introduce to you!"
Coach Travis stepped slightly to the side. And I took a bold step forward. As I stood before the crowd, the coach introduced me.
"Dwayne Moi Stone—! I'm sure you've all heard the name at least once! Starting this semester, this kid will be playing at Kahuku!"
I could feel all kinds of eyes on me. A few of them were downright hostile. No — hostile might not be the word. Well. I'd expected as much. In this place, there would be people destined to become my friends, and people destined to start off as my enemies. But for now, I paid it no mind. It was simply a matter of facing it and overcoming it.
"Hello. I'm Dwayne Moi Stone, and I'm from Paia, Maui. I'm an island boy who's lived in Hawaii my whole life."
"That's hilarious."
"Who's that?"
"…."
Silence fell over the room at the coach's words. The voice had come quickly from the far left side. In other words — from the direction glaring at me the fiercest. I turned my gaze that way too.
"If you're planning on bullying the new kid, you'd better quit right now! I won't stand for it! And this is the kid every school in the country wanted. Mater Dei drooled over him for five years! But he joined OUR team in the end! He'll be a clear plus to next year's roster, so go ahead and say hello now."
Applause broke out, and not long after, another voice rang out from the left.
Shoulders spread wide as a doorframe. A massive frame. Enormous curls spilling over those shoulders. His face looked full of mischief.
"Coach!"
"Yeah?"
"Show us what the kid can actually do!"
"That's right! Let him show us!"
Pweeee—!
One ringleader, and two yes-men egging him on. Judging by the reactions around us, those three would be the captains once the seniors graduated. And without a doubt, they'd be Huamatus. Three brothers — the numbers matched perfectly. They knew exactly who I was. Whose son I was. Whose grandson. And just what kind of figure my grandfather was within the clan. Decades of old, festering resentment was aimed straight at me.
The coach tried to shut it down first.
"Sioele. I understand how you feel, but Moi hasn't officially played football yet—"
"That's fine. I'll do it."
"What?"
"I said I'll do it. Test me like you'd test anyone else."
"You serious?"
"Yup."
But I accepted the challenge. I couldn't say what the Huamatus were like, but the Stones never ran from anything. That was exactly what I'd learned from my grandfather and my father.
Amid a chorus of curiosity-fueled cheering, I got ready. High school football teams everywhere ran the same standard tests, and they varied by position. Linemen got tested on tackles to gauge their strength, wide receivers on whether they could shake a defender one-on-one and make the catch. And a quarterback, naturally—
"You ready?!!"
"Yes—!!"
—got tested on passing. A barrel was set up about fifty yards away, and I intended to put this pigskin right inside it. Ah, right — we call the ball a pigskin sometimes. Or a Duke. Most of the time people just casually say football. Anyway.
With everyone on the field watching, I stared at the target, bounced the ball once in my hand, and lofted it lightly. The ball sailed away in a gentle arc. And then—
Thud—
It dropped dead on target. The moment the ball landed in the barrel with such absurd ease, a stunned cheer erupted from the crowd. But I didn't stop. I jogged backward, put more distance between us, and called for another ball.
At this distance… around sixty-five yards, maybe? A football field runs about 120 yards end to end. So this was more than half the field. I looked back and forth between the target and the empty air, bounced the pigskin lightly in my hand again, and threw.
"…."
"…."
The ball rose with even more force this time. The spiral was gorgeous. Climbing a high arc, it peaked, descended in a smooth, even line, and then found the mouth of the barrel once more. A dull but crystalline sound rang out from far away.
Thud—!
"OHHHHHHHHH—!!!!"
"LET'S GO!!!!"
They came sprinting over and surrounded me, screaming. The three brothers, of course, did not approach. Passing wasn't everything for a quarterback, but at the very least, this meant no one would be able to give me grief in my first days at the school. In that sense — I'd gotten off to a good start.
Even as the excitement refused to die down, a few of them stayed by my side to the end.
"Day—am! How did you even DO that?!"
"You're telling me you've never actually played football?!"
"Joe. Next season, you're the man catching my passes — so remember that."
"I'm Cire. Cire Loo. Hey — I've got your back."
The one who'd introduced himself as Joe was a wide receiver. Cire Loo looked to be on the offensive line. With friends made in a single stroke, I walked over to the coach. He greeted me with a beaming smile, then asked:
"So? What number do you want?"
Honestly, I'd given it quite a bit of thought. Jersey numbers mattered. The most coveted quarterback number in this life was 12 — because Tom Brady wore 12. In my past life, mine had been 16. So I went with the one in between: 14. At that, everyone's eyes turned to one side. That man was apparently the current owner of number 14.
"Eh. I'm graduating anyway. Do whatever you want with it."
"YEAAAAAHHHH—!!"
"Let's Go—!!"
The crowd cheered all over again just for the number choice. Soon after, I said my goodbyes and left the field. The whole walk out, hot gazes rained down on me. From the cheerleaders, that is. It looked like the leader was the one with the most girls clustered around him, but since they'd be graduating seniors anyway, I let my eyes drift elsewhere instead. Brown skin and black hair, biting her lower lip just slightly. Charming. When I flashed a wink at a girl whose name I didn't even know, squeals erupted behind me.
It wasn't that I had any intention of shunning women. Then again, I wasn't about to live as a womanizer either. I slipped out of school, asked around until I found the bus stop, waited about ten minutes, and hopped on a bus headed for Honolulu. Roughly an hour to Grandma's house. I figured I'd get some proper sleep.
My first real encounter with high school. It wasn't as bad as I'd imagined.
#. April 9, 2016
#-1. Maui, Hawaii, USA
#-2. Wailuku
#-3. The War Memorial Sports Complex
Today was a very special day.
Pop—!
"STRIKEOUT!!"
"Ah…."
Every time the boy on the mound froze a batter with an unhittable fastball, groans of despair poured from the stands. And every single one of those groaning spectators was a baseball man.
"They should declare today a national day of mourning."
"You're telling me."
"Whew— damn it. Football, of all things."
From the tender age of thirteen, the boy on that mound had been pulling Major League scouts all the way to Hawaii. And over the past three years, he'd received offers from countless high school teams. Full-ride scholarships were the bare minimum; a few private schools had even quietly dangled under-the-table payments worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. It had all come to nothing. The boy's will was made of steel. And so was his family's.
Fifteen years old. A boy who had conquered the entire Little League world on nothing but fastballs — not a single breaking ball in his repertoire. Dwayne Moi Stone was leaving baseball forever, today.
Pop—!
"STRIKEOUT!!"
99 wins, 0 losses across his Little League career. 26 perfect games and 38 no-hitters. 91 shutouts. And an ERA of, naturally(?), 0.00. Hitting college-level velocity before turning eleven simply wasn't supposed to be possible.
Pop—!
"STRIKEOUT!!"
Fourteen consecutive strikeouts now complete, Dwayne Moi Stone needed just one more out. A few of the scouts who couldn't bear to watch his final outing had already left the ballpark, while the ones too stubborn to let go of their hopes kept licking their lips in frustration.
With him, a championship is a guaranteed lock.
Pop—!
"STRIKEOUT!!"
All fifteen outs chalked up as strikeouts, Dwayne Moi Stone swaggered back to the dugout. The scouts who remained traded words with one another. On any ordinary day, they would never have done this — but right now, they were comrades bound by a shared heartbreak(?).
"He could've thrown 110, easy."
"And we'll never get the chance to see it."
"Whew—"
Choking on their deep disappointment, the remaining men slowly dragged themselves out of their seats, and the crowd hoisted the winning pitcher onto their shoulders. He was so big and heavy by now that the lift was mostly symbolic, but Dwayne Moi Stone still beamed and thanked everyone around him.
"Thank me? I'm the one who should be thanking you."
Thomas Bradley, head coach of Central Maui, who'd grown rounder and warmer over the years, was the one grateful to Moi. And he meant it one hundred percent. After joining the team, Moi had personally stamped out the quiet ostracism that had festered within the roster, and with that long-simmering headache completely resolved, the club had enjoyed nothing but peaceful days. Beyond that, Moi had meticulously cultivated a good culture so it would carry on even after he was gone. Dwayne Moi Stone was a baseball player of supreme talent — but he was also a captain wiser than any grown man.
The retirement of a fifteen-year-old Little Leaguer. It shouldn't have been news at all. And yet.
Astonishingly, every major sports outlet in America had announced the retirement of this fifteen-year-old Little League boy on the same day.
#. April 17, 2016
#-1. Maui, Hawaii, USA
#-2. Paia
#-3. Restaurant Aloha
One person's crisis and sorrow is another's opportunity. Steve Smith — former NBA player and head coach of Oak Hill Academy in Virginia — truly believed that.
"Basketball would be the absolute best choice for your son."
"…."
"…."
Oak Hill Academy, a storied Virginia basketball powerhouse, had come courting Dwayne Moi Stone with staggering terms: a full scholarship. A suite-grade dorm room. A personal coach. A personal chef. He'd arrived in Paia brimming with confidence, armed with an offer the likes of which no recruit had ever seen — and received a rejection so clean it was almost surgical. Twenty minutes later, Steve Smith had been shown the door.
Outside, a familiar face was waiting.
"Alex?"
Alex Cooper, head coach of Detroit Jesuit High School back in Virginia, had been kicked out of the restaurant an hour earlier. The two men sat facing the ocean, hunched over miserably, and talked.
"…What did they offer you?"
"I said I'd do anything. Anything at all."
"I see."
"And you?"
"About the same."
No elite high school basketball program had ever been rebuffed this savagely by a middle schooler with zero official playing record. In the first place, nobody recruited a player without a track record. That was what made the humiliation sting all the more now. Neither man needed to say who should go first. They found their common ground on their own.
"About today…."
"We keep it between the two of us?"
"Fair enough."
Agreeing to bury their shared shame, they turned their backs and walked off in opposite directions. And Moi watched them go. Through the window of his own room. With Melicia Stone at his side.
"Hmm— so football's that great, huh?"
"It's not that it's great, Auntie."
"?"
"It's destiny."
Clapping her nephew on the back as if it were the most natural thing in the world, Melicia Stone told him she was headed to the shop across the street to help out and asked him to come along.
"I'll get dressed and be right down."
"Okay."
Melicia Stone paused on her way out of his room. Then she turned to look at the nephew she loved most in the world. He'd been mature beyond his years since he was little, overflowing with consideration for others. And his manners — heavens. There wasn't a girl in the whole town who wasn't nursing a crush on him.
He's my nephew, but no matter how I look at it, he's grown up so well.
Proud of the nephew who had shot up so fast he could pass for a grown man, Melicia Stone headed downstairs. And Moi, now changed into fresh clothes—
Number five, at last.
—turned his gaze to the fifth item on the plan he'd prepared on his road to becoming the NFL's greatest quarterback.
5. Become a starter the moment I set foot in high school!
And all around Dwayne Moi Stone's desk, the walls were packed shoulder to shoulder with trophies and certificates — every award he'd earned over the past five years of outstanding academic achievement.