Marisa Crane

A vibrant and intimate novel about growing up, first love, and all the joy and heartbreak of competitive high school basketball

“Brilliant … so alive and vibrating that it took my breath away.”—Kevin Wilson, New York Times bestselling author of Nothing to See Here

Star point guard Mack Morris’s senior year of high school begins with twin cataclysms: the death of Mack’s father and the arrival of transfer student Liv Cooper. Playing side by side for their high school basketball team, Mack and Liv discover an electrifying, game-winning chemistry on the court. Off the court, they fall into an equally intoxicating more-than-friendship—one that feels out-of-bounds in their small Pennsylvania town. Mack teeters on the precipice of adulthood as desire and grief collide with drugs, sex, and the looming college signing deadline. Caught between the dual impulses of ambition and self-destruction, Mack must decide what kind of life they want to fight for.

Written with the lush longing of Andre Aciman’s Call Me By Your Name,the obsessive attention of Jean Kyoung Frazier’s Pizza Girl, and with all the romance and feeling of the beloved 2000 movie Love & Basketball, A Sharp Endless Need is a stunning testament to the big feelings of coming-of-age, falling in love, and, of course, playing sports.

A Novel

A Sharp Endless Need

Lindsay

Some people said basketball was like dancing, you needed rhythm, you needed to feel the ball's desire like you needed your heart to beat right, but we knew, in the deeps of our hips, that basketball was even more erotic than dancing; it was a collaboration, a mutual creation, a way of fucking without touching.

It occurred to me that most spectators only like athletes for what they can give them: money, pride, excitement, and entertainment. Otherwise, they'll write them off faster than the time it takes AI to shake a defender.

I didn't necessarily care about attracting boys, but I did want to feel attractive to anyone who happened to be looking at me.

There was something about his mannerisms that was practiced, something cultivated, like he was performing the only idea of masculinity that he knew, but something told me if he quit the act, he'd be softer, with a feminine feel to him. I didn't believe he was hitting on me because he wanted to but because of some ideal he'd bought into.

Why, I wondered, couldn't it always be this way? Just the two of us, simultaneously discovering and destroying the limits of intimacy as we knew them?

Just like that, I'd forgiven her for her ignorance. I felt exposed. There was, and still is, a divine pleasure in having someone peel back all the layers and scoop out all the much in order to get a good look at you. As egotistical as it is, I admit, I wanted to hear about myself, from someone who was always watching, always studying, always storing that information. Tell me more about me, I wanted to say. Go on.

As soon as the smoke hit my lungs, I felt better. I wouldn't go so far as to say weed made me feel happy to be alive, but it made me happy despite being alive.

What do you do with a desire that doesn't desire you back? I now know that wanting isn't the end of something. Sometimes you can fill a desire with an alternative - say, a pill instead of that teammate you would run blindfolded into a fire for - and sometimes, if you're lucky enough, you can fill your emptiness with more emptiness, like how air fills a room but no one ever things of it that way except for scientists.

He was ruining my high with his self-pity, but I was prepared to let him. Maybe that was what love was, sacrificing your high for your best friend.

After all, it's hard to be the authority on yourself when the whole world is leading you astray. And sometimes you need someone to remind you who you are and who you want.

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