Synopsis

Mikey makes everything a joke, even the clinical depression he’s struggled with for years. After a run of failed jobs, he becomes the unlikely basketball coach at a high school for high-risk offenders who are experiencing mental illness. The position becomes suddenly available after the team tried to strangle their last coach.

Every instinct tells Mikey to get as far away from this school as possible. Coaching these kids, who have been arrested for who-knows-what, would be difficult for a normie. For Mikey, it could cause another breakdown and force him right back to living on the street. But he knows that if he has any chance to make his twenty-sixth birthday, he needs to keep this job, even if the school board wants him fired, and the students would rather fight each other than play ball.

This poignant, hilarious, and sometimes uncomfortable novel proves that even the most damaged of us can emerge victorious.

Amazon

Praise

“Head Fake is inspiring, moving, and meaningful. It made me laugh all the way through. A great story – a great piece of work.” – Gil Bellows, Actor and Emmy Award Winning Producer of the film, Temple Grandin

“Head Fake is like a jab in the ribs, reminding us that even in our worst hour, laughter and connection can be the flashlight in the dark, guiding us toward healing and redemption.” – Chris Rock

“Scott Gordon weaves an absolutely brilliant and authentic tale that set me on a roller coaster (the thrilling, yet frightening, upside down kind) of emotions. It’s been ages since I’ve read a story that can have me cackling one second, then bawling my eyeballs out the next.” – Eve Porinchak, Bestselling Author of One Cut

“Head Fake made me laugh and cry in equal measure—sometimes simultaneously. More than an underdog sports story, this gut-wrenching and ultimately uplifting novel will have you cheering in ways you never imagined.” – Doug Kurtz, Story Coach and Bestselling Author of Mosquito.

“This is one of those books that you will think about and wonder how it will end, and then when it does, you will miss the characters as they will have found a place in your heart. A novel I won’t soon forget.” – Leslie A. Rasmussen, Award-winning author of After Happily Ever After and The Stories We Cannot Tell

“An absorbing, uplifting tale of finding light and self-worth in adversity’s darkest depths.” – Kirkus Reviews

Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Father of the Year said that if I didn’t get this job, I was back out of the house and living on the street…tomorrow. Based on my interviewing skills, my time indoors was running out.

It was almost three. I noticed a few tatted and pierced students sucking on smokes and playing with their phones by four yellow buses parked in the school’s drive. The buses looked like every other I’d seen, only three-quarters the size. A driver was dozing in the front seat of one. The way he slept without a care in the world, he just had to be the one quitting. I hesitated to rouse him, but I wanted to know why he was leaving and if he had advice on how to land this gig, so I rapped on his door.

His eyes fluttered open, focusing on me as if I were a madman. He swung open the door. “Can I help you?”

“You the one quitting?” I asked, ascending the first step. I peered down the aisle, which appeared to have twenty seats. The driver, a lanky dude, all knees and elbows and pointy chin, nodded. By his feet sat a six-pack of Coke and a brown paper bag with grease spots that smelled of tuna fish, which reminded me of childhood lunches with my mother.

“About to take my final run, quit two weeks ago, and they still haven’t found anybody stupid enough to take the job.”

I couldn’t win. “What’s bad about it?”

“Just wait about thirty seconds and see for yourself.”

On cue, the school’s doors opened, releasing fifty or more kids. As a group, these kids looked rough, the kind of rough you would avoid by crossing the street. Some headed toward the buses, others played grab ass, and most lit up smokes. The mentally ill loved their cigarettes. The sticks gave their hands something to do and the tobacco whipped their wandering thoughts in line—at least that’s why I used to smoke. I don’t anymore ‘cause you gotta be kidding me at a buck a loosie and eight a pack.

Suddenly a six-foot girl with a red mohawk launched out of the school like a guided missile. “Gonzalo!” she wailed. “You stole my phone!”

A Mexican kid began bobbing and weaving through the crowd to avoid her.

“Give me my phone! You know that’s the only phone I can speak to Darnell on!”

“Darnell’s her dead brother,” said the driver.

Gonzalo had some moves, faking left and darting right, but she homed in on him like prey, flinging some poor rag doll of a girl out of her way.

I didn’t want to look, to see this poor kid having a psychotic episode, but I learned in the ward to keep my eye on people in the middle of a break—their movements were unpredictable and dangerous.

“I’m gonna beat your raggedy ass, Gonzalo!” she said, swinging her arms with the abandon of one of those advertorial air dancers you see in front of car dealerships, until she finally connected with the back of his head, knocking him to the pavement. She leapt on him and patted him down. She yanked his backpack off his shoulder and emptied it, but there was no phone. “He gonna call any second.”

A Black mountain, maybe six-six and three hundred-plus pounds, who looked like an angry linebacker, bolted out of the building. He pushed his way toward the fight, which escalated into the girl now banging Gonzalo’s head on the pavement. The Mountain was fast for a big guy and snatched the girl off her prey, putting her in a full nelson as she mule-kicked his shins. “I know he got it!” she cried. “He got my special phone.”

As Gonzalo stood and brushed himself off, I noticed he had 5150, which I knew to be California code for “involuntary psychiatric commitment,” tattooed on the side of his neck. He started putting notebooks, pens, and books back in his backpack. “I’m outta here. That puta’s off her meds,” he said to nobody.

“Gonzalo, hold up!” issued a voice that started at the Mountain’s feet, taking sand and gravel with it on its way up to his mouth.

The bus driver turned to me, shrugged, rested his case.

“I don’t got anything,” said Gonzalo, as he backed toward me, absently touching his back pocket, which had a white phone peeking out of the top.

“Gonzalo, stop. Now!” said the big man, still holding the struggling girl.

But he kept moving, looking like he was thinking of bolting. The students watched in silence and my heart tore in half for this girl—I would’ve killed to have a phone I could call my mom on. I’d be dialing right now.

“Hey, Gonzalo,” I called out, stepping off the bus. “She can talk to her dead brother on that phone. You gotta take that into the equation.”

Both the kid and the Mountain stopped and regarded me. “Who the hell are you?” they asked in unison.

“New driver, maybe, hopefully.”

“Office is that way,” said the Mountain, thumbing over his shoulder to the door.

“You the gym teacher or something?” I asked.

“Security.”

Gonzalo slung his backpack over his shoulder, knocking the phone for me to clearly see it—it wasn’t his. “Hey, playa, you a big Hello Kitty fan?” I called out.

Gonzalo turned and mad dogged me. “What you say, cabrón?”

“You gotta cat in an adorable red ribbon sticking out of your pocket.”

“Bring the phone here now,” called out Mountain. “Now!”

The gig was up, and Gonzalo moped his way to the big man. He handed the phone to the girl, who burst into tears.

The Mountain looked over to me. “Yo, you better get your narrow ass inside you want that job.”

I turned to the driver, who was finishing his Coke, then back to the girl sitting on the ground talking on her phone.

“You still want it?” asked the Mountain.

“I’m going. I’m going.”

About the Author

Scott Gordon’s fiction has appeared in the Green Hills Literary Lantern (GHLL), Modern Times Magazine, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, The Satirist, and Mobius Magazine. In addition to writing fiction, he has written and directed films and television series, including A History of Black Achievement in America, Great American Authors, and more.

Originally from New Jersey, Scott lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Samantha, and their two rescue pups, Mel Brooks and Khaleesi Bee.

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