Excerpt: ‘The Assist’

Janice wasn't buying it. Like a jeweler using a loop to find inclusions in a precious stone, she trained her eyes on Ridley’s complexion, just a shade lighter than their black slate lab table. Then she pointed to a fair-skinned Hispanic boy at the next table. "He's Honduran, Ridley. You black!"

Ridley knew he didn't fit neatly into any of those race circles they ask you to fill out with a No. 2 pencil. Whenever he had to choose one, he chose black, because that part was obvious. His mother would probably have chosen Hispanic, but that's because she still spoke a lot of Spanish. Ridley couldn’t speak much Spanish, but he understood a good deal. Still, the only time he really felt his Latin roots was when he was eating his mother's food.

In English class, his teacher was out, so Ridley spent the period playing Connect 4. The pace was slow in pre-Calculus class as well. The teacher was an older woman with long white-blonde hair and glasses that seemed to rest permanently on the end of her nose. Even if the subject matter was brutally dull, all the basketball players loved Ms. Raimondi because Ms. Raimondi loved all the basketball players. In a school where faculty members were usually no-shows at the basketball games, Diane Raimondi came to many games and even brought along her own homemade cheering signs. A weary veteran of the Boston schools, Raimondi taught in an old-school manner that contrasted sharply with the newfangled approaches favored by all the recent Ivy League grads who had been invading the Charlestown teaching ranks. But O'Brien liked putting his players in her classes because Raimondi had realistic expectations about what they could handle.

Ridley dreaded fourth period the most because it was the slowest of all. That's when he should have been in gym class. But O'Brien, one of two phys ed teachers at the school, had persuaded the headmaster to let his players skip gym in favor of a study hall that O'Brien monitored with ferocious scrutiny. Over the years he noticed his players' biggest academic troubles usually occurred out of basketball season, when he had the least control over their lives. The in-school, year-round study hall was his way of extending control. Sitting at the front of the room, wearing one of his warm-up suits, O’Brien insisted on monastic silence. As Ridley did his homework, he plotted in his head when he would take his bathroom break to best keep the boredom at bay.

O’Brien wasn’t like the stereotypical jock coach trying to line up gut classes for his stars. He often pushed his guys to stretch, as long as he was sure the teacher would work with them, giving them extra help and making sure they never failed. This year O'Brien had put Ridley in an Advanced Placement American history class, which was a gamble. He knew colleges reward ambition, but penalize failure. The class was like nothing else in Ridley's day. In pace, substance, even the look of the classroom, it was like being transported to a competitive school in some affluent suburb.

There were two young, demanding teachers for 14 students. The classroom was vibrant. The walls were decorated with bumper stickers that read "I think, therefore I'm dangerous" and blown-up quotes from the likes of Malcolm X. There were flip charts and study guides and color-coded assignment sheets and handouts of writings by left-wing historian Howard Zinn. There was even a very verbal white girl with purple hair who repeatedly spoke in affected sentences that always seemed to begin with the word "distinctly."

The lead teacher was a short, stout young woman who wore an extra-long denim skirt and kept a pen hanging on a string around her neck. As she began her lesson on the Whig Party, Ridley took out a piece of loose-leaf notebook paper and wrote CHAPTER 14 in block letters at the top. He tried to keep up, turning repeatedly to the black girl sitting next to him. Menda Francois had her hand up almost from the moment she walked into class, confidently fielding the teachers' questions about 19th-century politics. She was smart and talkative and serious, a girl in a hurry. Back when she was a freshman, Menda had treated school like a joke, ending the year with a D average and an abysmal attendance record. Not long after that, somehow her interest got sparked in a college awareness program in Vermont. Her low G.P.A. sank her application. That rejection turned out to be all the motivation she needed to transform herself into a straight-A student by her sophomore year. She had remained a high flier ever since.

The class was the closest thing Ridley had to a true college prep experience. If everything went right, it would give him vital skills for next year. But first he had to get through it. By October, his average grade hovered around a D-minus.

With basketball season still a month away, Ridley didn't have after-school study hall or practice yet. Instead, when the final bell rang, he headed for the weight room, trying to add some muscle to his upper body on his march to get meaner on the court. After the workout, he and Spot hung out in the lobby outside the gym. There, they were met by a dodgy guy named Jermaine, who looked to be in his early thirties. He herded the two high school seniors into his car to so they could play for a team he coached in a men's league. It didn't matter that Ridley and Spot weren't exactly men yet. The important point was they were shooters.

As he walked out of the gym, Ridley was stopped by two different girls, each wanting to hug him. Around the school, it was obvious more and more girls were trying to catch Ridley's rising star. As the guys drove off in Jermaine's tan luxury sedan with leather seats and rap blasting on the stereo, they passed a girl walking alone up the street between the high school and the housing project. Spot rolled down the window and flashed his Hollywood smile. "I love you, baby!" he said, holding his hand up to his ear. "I'll call you tonight."

Ridley asked Jermaine what restaurant he would be taking them to after the game.

Jermaine turned down the stereo. "If you niggas don't win, there ain't gonna be no food." Then he turned the volume way up and pushed his foot down hard on the accelerator.

IN EARLY NOVEMBER, A FEW DOZEN PEOPLE walked into the small cafe on the fifth floor of Charlestown High to witness Ridley's signing ceremony. He would be officially committing himself to the University of Toledo. In truth, the signing was for show. All the details of Ridley's scholarship had already been worked out behind the scenes. But O'Brien wanted to give Ridley a chance to bask in the limelight and, more important, give his younger players something to strive for. There was pizza and a huge sheet cake with Ridley's picture on it.

"One of every 10,000 high school basketball players in this country receives a basketball scholarship," O'Brien, dressed in a red Charlestown warm-up suit, told the gathering of players, teachers, and Ridley's family. "One out of every 10,000." He had read that statistic somewhere, or at least he was pretty sure he had. No matter — he knew no one in the crowd would challenge him on it. He simply wanted to drive home that point that Ridley's achievement was special, and had taken lots of hard work.

For most of the players in the audience, who were as familiar with Toledo as they were with Tajikistan, O'Brien made sure to orient them in a language they would understand. "Toledo is in one of the top 10 basketball conferences in the country," he said. "Turn on your TV on December 12, and you'll see them playing Duke on ESPN."

O'Brien unfurled a flurry of other figures for the crowd, some of them goosed a little to improve their motivational power. How Ridley's scholarship was worth $145,000 over the next four years. How Division I scholarship athletes needed a minimum combined SAT score of 820, while Ridley's was 960. How they needed to have completed 14 core courses, while Ridley had 22 under his belt and was an honor roll student. "I hope you younger guys look at him and say, 'You know what, I hope to be in that position some day.' "

"Most of all," O'Brien said, "he's a real good person." As the group applauded, Ridley, wearing square zirconia earrings and a gray Charlestown hoodie, walked up to the front of the room. O'Brien then said, "Ridley also brought his honey. Say hi to Rebecca." Wearing a cream-colored top and a black skirt, Rebecca Johnson stepped forward, a smile filling her heart-shaped face. "I'm Ridley's mom," she told the crowd, waving tentatively.

Back at the table, looking a little uneasy, sat a man with short hair, squarish on the top, and a closely cropped salt-and-pepper beard. Ridley's father, McClary Johnson, was dressed stylishly in jeans and loafers. Rebecca had met McClary on one of her trips home to Honduras after the death of her first husband, with whom she'd had a son and daughter. McClary followed her to the States, they married, and then had Ridley. When Ridley was about 5, they separated, though the divorce hadn’t gone through until last year. McClary lived with his own mother just a few miles away from Ridley, but as the years went by he had seen less and less of his son. That only endeared Ridley more to Rebecca. One evening, as she pointed to McClary across the room, Rebecca said, "My heart don't beat no more for him. Only for Ridley. He's my pride and joy."

As for the signing ceremony, Ridley didn't want to make too much of a fuss and asked his mother not to tell his father about it. "I won't," she had assured him.

Instead, she not only told him, but brought him with her in her car. "I wanted McClary to hurt a little bit," she said later. "To see what he missed."

Excerpted from “The Assist” by Neil Swidey. Copyright © 2007 Neil Swidey. Excerpted by permission of Public Affairs Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

For more information about “The Assist” and a new scholarship fund created to help promising students get a second chance at college, please visit www.theassist.net.

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