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It was fall in Tree Hill, which meant exactly one thing.
Basketball.
It was embarrassing, that Holly was only just learning this today. Her old town had been big on football. The most popular guy in school was the quarterback, not the point guard. But just like back home, the chosen sport of this town was organised religion.
And, as she was learning, the most popular priests in town were all related.
She slid in beside her new crowd of friends at lunch the first Friday of the season and could immediately tell something was different.
“Where’s Skylar?”
Courtenay looked up from her questionable looking cafeteria sushi. “It’s game day,” was all she said. “She’s a cheerleader.”
“Yeah,” Holly said, “but does that mean she can’t have lunch?”
The girls all tittered.
“Hols, you’re so cute,” Margot laughed.
Courtenay took pity on her. “It’s the first game day of the season.” She explained, “which means the Scotts are all back in town.”
“The who?”
Margot rolled her eyes. “The Scott family. Lydia will be doing something big this season. I can just tell. There won't be a cheerleader in school today taking time to eat lunch.”
It clicked then. The first thing you learnt in a new school was the name of the head cheerleader- and then the name of the sports star.
She knew the point guard- Henry Mirskey-Taylor. And the head cheerleader?
Lydia. Lydia Scott.
Courtenay was elaborating, “the first game of the season is always like this. All the Scotts always come to town, like a holiday.”
“You can’t miss them,” Margot said, “honestly, they’re everywhere. You’ll see tonight.”
“Oh,” Courtenay said, “some guy wrote this article in the New York times about them a couple of years back. You could always look that up if you want.”
“Oh yeah,” Margot agreed, “so, what do you say, you coming to the game tonight?”
Holly very quickly learnt that the answer to that question in tree hill was always, “yes.”
The Brothers Scott:
The Unbelievable True Story of Tree Hill, NC
By Frank Giles
[1]
It’s a Tuesday afternoon and my flight has been redirected to one of those tiny regional airports I love to hate. It’s still, and the air feels thick with ozone. Fair enough, I think. There’s a massive storm somewhere in the country that’s grounded my flight in this tiny town. It makes sense that the oncoming storm is what has people of this place scurrying around like they’re battening down the hatches.
As it turns out, I am completely wrong.
‘Naw, honey,’ the friendly serving girl tells me over a cup of truly delicious coffee at a place called Karen’s Café.
There’s a game on tonight. I ask if it’s football. I played a bit in high school, and figure watching a game wouldn’t be the worst way to spend the rest of my afternoon.
I might well have asked my server if she could rustle me up some heroin. ‘Basketball,’ she corrects me, with a disapproving tut which makes me feel like I have a month of dish duty in my mother’s kitchen awaiting me.
I soon find out why.
The basketball court here, named after someone called Durham, is bigger and more lovingly maintained than most high school facilities I’ve visited.
In pride of place are the retired jerseys.
Durham’s is one of them.
#44 bears the name Quentin Fields, a name some from North Carolina might remember from a grim new story that came out over ten years ago.
The story here is in the rest of those jerseys. Lined up along the wall of that gym with photos and banners proclaiming, ‘Ravens’ in block letters, are jerseys emblazoned with ‘Scott.’
That night, a senior named James Lucas Scott played the most outstanding game of basketball I’ve seen on any high school court anywhere I’ve ever seen. I later learn that his cousin, Sawyer Scott, is the only freshman on a cheer squad that is also looking to win a state championship this year.
It wasn’t until I started looking into this young man that I discovered that at least in this case, it seems that exceptional people come from exceptional circumstances.
[2]
As with any good story, the best place to start is the beginning.
Daniel Scott might not have known it when he stepped onto the Tree Hill High court that first time, but he was going to spawn a multi-generational basketball dynasty in the small town of Tree Hill.
“He probably would have liked to think it though,” one of his old classmates tell me as I catch up with him over a beer in Charlotte. “I saw him a few times after we graduated.” He looks thoughtful. “He sold me a car.”
Dan Scott faced the same sort of adversity both of his sons later would, though perhaps with less grace. His high school sweet-heart, Karen Roe, became unexpectedly pregnant just as he left on a scholarship that looked ready to set him up for the kind of life most high school athletes dream of. It caused his relationship to implode.
“Karen was great,” Kim Spiers, ex Ravens cheerleader tells me, “everyone loved her. Her and Dan just made sense. And I think whatever they say, he really did love her back. I think it was just that he loved basketball more.”
We’re sitting in a diner in the middle of nowhere, near Raleigh. Kim’s married now, and hasn’t seen Karen since she moved away from Tree Hill. But she remembers the pregnancy that changed the course of Tree Hill history. “My god,” she says, “Karen was strong. I remember seeing her when I came home for spring break. She must have been nearly nine months pregnant, and she was working at that café. I know she bought it eventually, but back then she was just a waitress.” She laughs. “I didn’t know it then, but do you know what it’s like to be nine months pregnant? You definitely don’t want to be bussing tables.”
There was little fanfare on May 20, 1989 save for a $5 birth announcement in one small corner of the Tree Hill Gazette.
Lucas Eugene Scott
Born 5.20.89
Six lbs, 10 oz.
By all accounts, Dan Scott had very little to do with his firstborn son past his conception. The story was vastly different with his second son, Nathan Royal Scott, born August fifteenth later that year to two married, if somewhat young, parents. The half page birth announcement complete with a photograph of the new family is almost gaudy.
With his basketball career already over, Dan Scott moved his family back to Tree Hill.
Despite this, Lucas and Nathan would not have much to do with each other for the next seventeen years of their lives.
[3]
Isaac Walters is a carpet salesman from Charlotte. Once, back in the day, he played basketball with a middle-school aged Nathan Scott.
“Shit, man,” he laughs, “Nathan was good even back then. I used to be jealous.”
‘Used to be?’
“Let’s just say I’ve got a bit more perspective now. We were, what, ten? If my Dad was like Dan Scott, jeez, I woulda been that good too. Purely out of self-defence.”
Nathan and Lucas, despite being almost the same age, wouldn’t play on the same team until they were juniors in high school. Nathan had the benefit, or some would say detriment of his father’s coaching. How Lucas became so accomplished as to walk onto the Ravens basketball court as a junior and walk away a state champion is more of a mystery.
Neither brother has ever commented publicly on their separate upbringing. And it’s fair to say that during the majority of my research into the Scott brothers and their contemporaries from Tree Hill, almost all potential sources or witnesses have been remarkably close-mouthed.
Tree Hill was and is a small town. Small town loyalties live and die hard.
Perhaps the only insights into the childhood of Nathan and Lucas Scott we will receive is from the latter’s debut novel. It’s an open secret that An Unkindness of Ravens was written about Lucas and Nathan’s early lives. The author wasn’t exactly imaginative when he named the characters.
Even then, the elder Scott brother alluded little to his early childhood. Whilst Nathan Scott was tossing twenty-three free-throws in a row with his father watching on, Lucas Scott appears to have sprung fully formed as a seventeen-year-old from the gentle grasslands surrounding Cape Fear.
What little information we have comes from the first chapter of the book:
The River Court was our church. A holy place of worship, anointed with blood, sweat and tears. We didn’t sing any hymns, but we did laugh. And Mouth and Jimmy’s commentary would echo there late into the night. Scoring a basket there, with your best friends cheering for you, was as close to a religious experience as I could imagine getting.
This was the place we loved. This was where we honed our craft without ever realising it. So easy, then, to not realise how I would end up owing some of the best moments of my life to the boys we were on that court. They taught me more than basketball. They taught me teamwork. Together, we became men.
Critics have called Scott’s writing a touch dramatic at times. I agree, but don’t find that a weakness. How could you read that, and not understand how much that game meant to a young Lucas Scott. How could you read that, and not understand how basketball would change that young man’s life? It is dramatic, because to him, this is the most important thing perhaps in his entire life.
Because if later years are anything to go by, the years described by the elder Scott’s book and whatever measly press releases, articles and archived radio shows this reporter could unearth in the measly months I had to research this story before my editor demanded it go to print, basketball did in fact change the lives of not just Lucas Scott, but his brother, and their friends.
[4]
If An Unkindness of Ravens is anything to go by, Lucas Scott joins the Ravens after a dramatic midnight show down with his estranged half-brother. This is also the point at which several other characters are introduced to the story.
This is perhaps where this article reaches a wider audience than sports fans, or fans of a notoriously reclusive author, now with a cult following. Among Tree Hill’s residents number film directors, fashion designers, rock stars and music producers. A fact no one would have guessed just by taking a stroll through the town.
The cast of Lucas and Nathan’s Tree Hill gang is even to this day notoriously insular. Most don’t respond to any requests for comment and are all successful enough that my requests only reach their assistants, or even lower down the corporate food chain.
“Look,” Glenda Farrell, noted in the acknowledgements of Lucas’ debut novel as the first person to ever lay eyes on the manuscript, says after I admittedly ambush her on the steps of a library in Berkley, “Lucas is a great guy. I’ve got nothing more to say to you than that. Leave the man alone.”
That was the closest I actually got to someone who was confirmed as being someone Lucas spoke more than two words to in his senior year of high school. The rest of my research was conducted through archival news articles and by tracking down almost anyone at high school in the region at the same time as the brothers Scott.
“Oh, we hated them,” Heather Brown of Pickerington tells me. “All those stuck-up prissies from Tree Hill, but especially the Scott brothers.” She laughs, “of course, it just pissed our boys off more that half our cheer squad was more interested in the enemy than them.”
When I ask if there was anything more to it than just a small town rivalry, she sobers a little. “Well, a couple of our boys got in big trouble over something to do with those two in the woods after a game one year. It was one of the first away games their new shooting guard- the blonde brother- played.”
I ask around about that night. People remember it fondly in Pickerington.
“Those boys walked buck-ass naked through the centre of town,” one source tells me. Heather tells me that she was probably exaggerating.
“They definitely had their drawers on,” she snickers. “They were shirtless though. Boy, even in this town those Ravens had a reputation for trouble.”
Heather’s referring to an incident with a stolen school bus that was covered up around the start of Nathan Scott’s junior season. Looking into it, I found that the team list for the Tree Hill Ravens looked drastically different in the first game of that season, to the last. A number of starting players, seniors, even, were cut from the team.
“Look man, leave me alone.” Jake Jagielski was one of the few players whose name survived that cut. He’s a big, protective bear of a man from Savannah and I’m not looking for a fight. He sends me away with just six words: “I’m not talking about that, alright?”
“It was a school bus,” Heather confirms for me. “I had a cousin who lived in tree hill. He was a cop. The basketball team took a big yellow bus on a joyride. My boyfriend at the time was over-the-moon until he realised that Scott didn’t even get a suspension. We lost to the Ravens just a few weeks later.” She shrugs. “Go figure.”
It’s harder to find out about the supporting characters in the early years of the Scott brothers’ reign over Tree Hill basketball. Whoever they were, they were a lot less public than Nathan and Lucas. At least, they were to start with.
Taking cues from An Unkindness of Ravens, the general consensus is that the core unit of the Scott boys’ lives was female. The narrator of the novel, obviously based off of Lucas himself, freely admits his closest friend was a girl called Haley, who’d grown up at his mother’s café alongside him. His romantic and platonic entanglements with cheerleaders Peyton and Brooke are at the core of the narrative.
As for their male friends, Lucas’ friends from his river court days, Skills and Mouth, feature most prominently in the book. None of the gang seems to be close with Jagielski any more, though he receives an interesting mention in the novel.
Most of these figures we actually know more about than most. The characters known as Skills and Mouth are likely local North Carolina broadcasters Antwon Taylor and Marvin McFadden. Both use their aliases on the air regularly. Taylor, in his morning show ‘Skills and Mills in the Morning,” which he co-hosts with McFadden’s wife, Millicent McFadden.
If you think that’s odd, brace yourself. The small town, small dating pool stereotype seems to ring shockingly true if this reporter’s investigative skills are anything to go by.
We know slightly more about these figures in the modern day. Many of them are now public figures. But as for what they were like in high school, in those crucial two years that shaped the lives of these fabulously successful people, much of that is a mystery.
[5]
Undeniably the object of desire in An Unkindness of Ravens, though arguably not the female lead, Peyton is presumably based on ex-record executive Peyton Sawyer. This was a girl that occupied almost all teenaged Lucas Scott’s attention. And, if dedicated fans are to be believed, she remains his muse to this day, perhaps also having inspired Scott’s second novel, The Comet.
Little is known about the love of Lucas Scott’s life in high school. She was named as a victim in the tragic shooting that occurred in Tree Hill in what would have been the Scott brothers’ senior year. Her name also appears on a couple of police reports involving stalking stories children should really be using to teach their kids about internet safety.
Most of what I could find on Peyton Sawyer pre-graduation was gleaned from the underground music scene.
For those in the know, Tree Hill is something of a music hot-spot. Bands and artists frequently and suddenly will stop in the town whilst on tour. To those not in the know, it is baffling why a small town would attract such big names.
To others it is perfectly clear.
Chris Keller, the current president of Red Bedroom records, based in Tree Hill, notoriously loves the limelight. But he is somewhat recalcitrant to talk to me about anything other than his now quite ancient records.
He does slip up once, “oh that?” He is referring to the charity album, Friends with Benefit. “That was Peyton. For a while there half the band managers on the planet were wrapped around her little finger. I mean, can you imagine? Fall Out Boy in Tree Hill?”
Later in life, comparatively less is known about Peyton than about the other figures of Tree Hill. The Red Bedroom Records website records lists her as its founder, though nothing is listed about why she stepped down.
A disgruntled executive, one Miranda Stone, did however inform me with a decided roll of her eyes that children were the bane of her existence in the music industry.
Lucas Scott, we know from the back cover of his latest book:
Lives in North Carolina, near his family, with his wife and their children. He is the author of An Unkindness of Ravens, The Comet and his most recent novel, When Fields Flew.
This reporter, and perhaps you the reader, might assume that perhaps the children Stone refers to, and those that Scott barely mentions are one and the same? Certainly, the alliteratively named Sawyer Scott, head cheerleader at Tree Hill high, looks the spitting image of an author and a retired record executive.
And eventually, I did find the marriage certificate in city hall records. This despite a determined blonde clerk getting in my way and distracting me with boxes of useless documentation from the wrong decades.
Just before the birth record of one Sawyer Brooke Scott, a marriage certificate for Lucas Eugene Scott, and his wife, Peyton Elisabeth Scott, nee Sawyer.
[6]
We know significantly more about Brooke Davis, so clearly the girl from Scott’s novel who he predicted would change the world.
If by change the world, Scott meant make and lose a lot of money, he may have been correct. Brooke Davis, now Brooke Baker, has had her fortunes and despairs well documented in the public eye.
Like the other figures in present day Tree Hill, Baker inspires tight-lipped loyalty. Her family run business, Baker Man, does every so often put out photos of its founding members. All stereotypically attractive, and posing in a light-filled family room of a house on the river.
Victoria and Ted Davis, both of whom have aged well despite being well into their sixties. Brooke and Julian Baker, looking every inch the middle-aged celebrities, they are. Mr Baker is, of course, the creator of the television show Ravens, based of course on Lucas Scott’s novel.
See, I told you this was a small town.
Their sons are good looking too. An Instagram post shows Baker Man sponsored the efforts of the AV club at Tree Hill high, where I am assured that Davis Baker mans the same commentary booth that his mother’s good friend Marvin McFadden.
The Bakers remain enshrined in this community, perhaps now their most widely renowned celebrities. But arguably not their most beloved. Never was there as much mania around Brooke Baker as there was around hometown hero Nathan Scott, and later, his family.
[7]
“Oh boy, were we pissed.” Theresa Rodriguez reminisces. She is quite drunk in a bar in Charleston. It is potentially unethical to be reporting this, but I am quite desperate, and all of this information was volunteered. “We were all so excited when Nathan and Peyton broke up. It meant a chance, to be with Nathan Scott.”
I ask if the legend around him existed even then.
She waves a drunken hand, “of course.” Nathan Scott’s rise was to so many in this town a foregone conclusion. Which was why it was so odd, as Theresa suggests, that of all the faces for Nathan Scott to pick out of a crowd, he picked Haley James.
At least, it was confusing at the time.
It made a lot more sense to those who did not know them back before Haley James’ first tour and the incredible rise of Nathan’s career.
“I never really got the hype,” an anonymous Tree Hill graduate tells me. She was at the school during Mrs Scott’s brief tenure as a teacher there. “I mean, there wasn’t a whole lot special about them, was there? She was a popular, successful cheerleader and he was the star athlete. What so surprising about that? America is founded on that.”
It is true from the outside, Haley and Nathan Scott don’t seem too far out of the ordinary. A pair of minor celebrities with a growing family. Publicly, minor frictions aside, they were one of the more likable NBA couples when Nathan was playing. Their kid was cute, and so were they. America does love a pair of high school sweethearts.
Nathan Scott was obviously devoted to his wife. He would thank her at every public press conference.
“He certainly towed the line, that one,” ex-coach Bobby Irons laughs. “Came to every practice and session he could, and worked damn hard, but at the end of the day he was always out of there like a shot.” He laughs again. “They’re good for each other those two. It must have been nice for him to have someone he always wanted to go home to.”
Their High School romance might have been storied once Nathan had made it into the public eye, but to their contemporaries at the time Nathan and Haley’s romance was fairly shocking.
Looking at An Unkindness of Ravens, Haley was initially described as somewhat of a social outcast, with terrible fashion sense. An unusual choice for a boy destined to be a star.
Her peers at high school were somewhat more unkind, and she was known first as, “that girl who got married in junior year,” and then as “that pregnant cheerleader.”
Damian West is a washed up ball player these days. A while ago, he was on track to be somebody. He played with Nathan at the elite High Flyers Academy one summer, and then against him in a tournament that ended his high school basketball career, and sent Nathan Scott and the Tree Hill Ravens on a path to state championship glory.
Now he’s a somewhat disgruntled department store manager still living in his home town. He works in the sports section.
“Everyone knew that for whatever reason, Scott didn’t just have a girlfriend, he had a wife. I didn’t believe it at first. I figured he was like me.”
When I ask him to clarify what that means to him, he grimaces. “Willing to do whatever it takes.” He shrugs. “Guys like that don’t have wives in high school. They certainly don’t have kids. Until Nathan, I didn’t think guys like that ever made it out.” He shrugs. “I was wrong.”
West didn’t know the couple particularly well, I gather, but he was witness to the legendary Scott temper.
“We were playing in the final game of that tournament. Man, I figured he must have been beat. We went into that tournament knowing that his brother, the second-best player on that team, was gone. Nathan was carrying that entire squad on his back. It must have been half way through that I realised it wasn’t going to be that easy.”
There’s a foul recorded in the official record of that game, against Damian West. It’s this he is referring to.
“Everyone in Tree Hill knew not to go after Haley Scott,” Damian says, with a wry smile. “I was arrogant enough to think I could try. Even though I was warned not to.”
West fouled Nathan and ended up colliding with Haley Scott on the side-line.
“Man, the look in his eyes…” West wears the look of a haunted man. “I made him bleed that day, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a guy so angry as when I dared touch his wife. I honestly thought he was thinking about killing me.”
West is pensive, for a moment, “you know, thinking back, I think that exact moment was when my life changed. That’s when I lost that game.”
As it would turn out, Nathan had every reason to be protective. Haley Scott was pregnant that day. She would give birth to their first child at their high school graduation.
[8]
“Oh god, it was so cute,” Missy Quigley, a kindergarten teacher who attended the same junior college as the Scotts the year after their graduation, and the birth of their first son, tells me.
“I am so surprised more babies were not born that year. It was that cute, seeing the big basketball star with his kid up on his shoulders after practice. I was sure it was going to give everyone baby fever.”
Others had a more, shall we say, nuanced view. After a point shaving controversy in his senior year, Nathan’s full-ride scholarship to Duke was renounced. Though according to the admissions office, his selection was already on shaky ground when the Scotts announced their pregnancy at a conference meant to confirm Nathan’s commitment to the school.
“I mean,” Greg Winer, a scout for Duke’s basketball program levels with me one day, “it’s just not really the done thing, to rock up to college with a wife and a baby, is it? I remember watching that press conference, and wondering to myself, what the hell is this kid thinking? That’s his career over, and in the most country, small-town, hick way possible.”
Winer shakes his head. “His final year of college, Scott played a game for Maryland against us. Went down in history as one of our worst losses. When he was done dunking on us, he picked his kid up out of his wife’s arms and put him up on his shoulders while all the great state of Maryland screamed his name.”
Nathan Scott nearly made it all the way to the NBA on the strength of that one game. But for some, it was that first year out of high school that was more memorable.
“That was a great year,” Darron de Guise, who played with Scott on the Cobras, recalls. “We couldn’t believe that a guy that good was playing in that league with us. I mean, I know he was paying his dues after that point shaving scandal. But we really lucked out with him. And his brother. There was no way a guy as smart as Lucas Scott would have hung out coaching junior college ball with us unless he had a damn good reason.”
For all intents and purposes, it seems like that good reason was a repaired and fortified brotherly relationship.
Most of the gory details of the many things that brought Lucas and Nathan Scott closer together are detailed, presumably somewhat accurately in An Unkindness of Ravens. Certainly, the news clippings and arrest records of their father, Dan Scott, seem to correlate with the narrative there.
Besides from Lucas’ closeness with his sister-in-law, the death of their shared uncle, Keith Scott seems to be what sealed the bond between two brothers. The shared estrangement from their father, ended their estrangement from each other.
Ironically, it is the late Dan Scott himself who offers us the most insight into the brothers’ relationship after high school. Nathan, of course became a public figure. Lucas however, despite his enviable success as an author, cancelled his second book tour shortly after it was booked and hasn’t been reliably seen since his wedding to Peyton Sawyer.
Their father’s television show, Scott Free, was perhaps the one place other than a Sports Centre deep dive you would find any discussion of the brothers in the same sentence. Dan Scott talked frequently about his regrets on that show. One of the most poignant episodes in an otherwise highly staged production was the episode he spent exploring brotherhood.
“It was one of my most profound regrets that Nathan and Lucas didn’t know each other growing up. I feel this pain more so now that I know how close they became in my absence.”
Nathan Scott, for those not in the know, emancipated himself at the age of seventeen. The courthouse records from Tree Hill are practically a Scott family history book.
“Those boys needed each other, just as I realised, I needed my brother. A need that is only made greater by absence. I take pride now in knowing what great things my boys have accomplished together. Even if I have not, by my own doing, been around to witness it.”
He wasn’t wrong.
The headlines the day after the state championship read:
SCOTT BROTHERS BRING HOME STATE CHAMPIONSHIP
The photo attached shows numbers 22 and 23 embracing. Lucas is wearing the jersey that once belonged to their uncle.
Nathan is wearing the number that had always belonged to him alone.
[9]
It’s a Friday. The last Friday of the season, and I’m not in Tree Hill, I’m in Charlotte, North Carolina to watch the state championship final. Do you even have to ask who’s playing?
The Tree Hill Ravens are cheered on by their state championship winning cheer squad. Their breakout star is a skinny blonde freshman by the name of Sawyer Scott.
Yet, the star most of North Carolina has come out to see tonight is James Scott. In the stands, I am surrounded not just by fans holding up homemade signs painted with ‘JAMIE’ but also those who are not dressed in Tree Hill blue waving the number twelve in the air.
There is clearly a lot of love left for a hometown favourite Bobcat.
“It was so sad when he retired,” I hear someone say. “Such a shame about his back.”
“I was glad for his family,” another voice chimes in. “But boy, did we miss him that season.”
There is a general sentiment expressed that in four years’ time every one expects the Bobcats number twelve jersey to be filled once more by a Scott.
At a press conference, just last week, James Scott announced that he would be playing college ball for the University of Maryland. His scholarship to that school is not, however, athletic. It’s academic. Go figure.
After all these months, the full majesty of the Scott dynasty is only just starting to dawn on me. Despite some horrible times, it’s clear that this family deserves the adoration they receive.
It’s still ten minutes before the cheerleaders kick off the start of the show. Already the arena is packed. But rows of near courtside seats have yet to be taken. I zoom in on them using my phone, and see stickers across the backs of them announcing the seats have been sponsored tonight by Baker Man.
Those same seats remain empty until the game almost starts.
I recognise the Bakers first. Julian Baker carries an enormous bucket of popcorn, two drinks, and his wife’s handbag. Brooke Baker is signing something a young teenager has thrust had her.
Next, I see Skills Taylor, and his wife, who I am reliably informed is called Bevin. She looks remarkably like the office clerk who was determined to interrupt my snooping all those months ago. I decide to let that one go for now.
At this point, it is appropriate to mention that the McFaddens did not make it to the state championship, due to the birth of their first child, a daughter. I seriously doubt either will read this article, but they have my congratulations regardless.
As for the rest of Jamie Scott’s support crew, I hear them before I see them.
The crowd still goes wild for hometown hero Nathan Scott. From afar, he looks a little sheepish, ducking his head even as he offers the crowds a paltry wave. His wife, no stranger to a crowd either, merely laughs, tugging her husband along and into their seats.
They are closely followed by a pair of blonde heads I excitedly recognise as Lucas and Peyton Scott. They don’t receive the same wild adoration, but they look more than pleased about that. A few more adults trickle in behind them. I recognise Clay Evans, Nathan’s business partner, and his wife Quinn. A few more look like Tree Hill locals whose names I have not uncovered in my investigation.
Almost all the adults of Tree Hill take a back seat as the rest of their party comes traipsing in.
The Baker twins, Jude and Davis. Logan Evans, holding his little sister by the hand. I recognise the Mirskey-Taylor children, here to support their older half-brother, Nathan Mirskey-Smith, the Ravens’ starting small forward.
And then the hoard of Scott children.
There are jokes made all around me about exactly how much Nathan Scott enjoys his wife’s company. Neither are yet forty, and since the birth of James, Haley and Nathan Scott have been listed on four more birth certificates. A waspish looking woman next to me suggest they might yet have another to sign.
“Does Haley Scott look pregnant again to you?”
I have to shake my head. I still make a mental note to look into that in nine months’ time.
By all accounts, Nathan Scott does really love his wife.
All up the crowd totals eleven children. Lucas Scott’s second daughter is sandwiched between two of her cousins protectively.
You wouldn’t think, looking at the sight, that this is a family that has gone through some truly unspeakable times. They look like any other family of small-town North Carolinians, excited and nervous for Friday night’s big game. The scars of the past don’t show in public, is my guess.
They’re still there, but maybe time, family, the game that they all clearly love has softened them.
I see Lucas say something to his younger brother that makes him throw his head back, laughing and makes prompts his sister-in-law to punch him in the arm. When the cheer teams kick the night off, I see them cheer for their friend, niece, daughter.
I see them all cheer hard for the boys from their hometown down on the court tonight. Nathan Scott’s face is projected onto the big screen as Jamie Scott runs out to play his final game of Tree Hill High basketball.
It makes all of it seem like, at least to him, it was worth it a thousand times over.
[10]
I have some final notes.
What reporter doesn’t?
Firstly, this article in no way covers the full scope of what happened to Lucas, Nathan and their friends and family in Tree Hill. I suspect no one work will ever be able to truly do that.
The second retired jersey, #44, belonged to Quentin Fields. Eagle eyed sports fans will know it’s the number stitched on every pair of custom Nathan Scott shoes, all of which are, by now, collector’s items. Fields was tragically killed before his athletic career could truly flourish, gunned down in a senseless act of violence. His little brother Andre Fields played alongside Jamie Scott for the entirety of their high school careers in jersey #28- the number of points his brother Quentin scored in his last game for Tree Hill.
Lucas Scott’s latest novel, When Fields Flew, was given the best reviews of any of his works. It has been described as a both a moving tribute to and a cutting examination of high school athletes in small town America, as well as an emotional indictment of gun violence.
When I read it, I cried.
The dedication reads:
To Coach Durham, who let me believe in basketball, and always, always to #44.
You flew, Q.
A gallery of jerseys bearing the name Scott have now been retired. Nathan’s #23, Lucas’ #3, as well as Keith Scott’s #22. The latest addition is #12. Jamie Scott replaced his father as all-time leading scorer halfway through his senior season. He has since added over a hundred points to that total.
Dan Scott’s jersey, I am told, has been retired, but is not displayed. He wore #33, and passed away from complications with a gunshot wound ten years ago. I am informed he was surrounded by his family when he passed.
Karen Roe plays a small role in this article, though her role in the lives of both Scott boys cannot be understated. She is married now, to a New Zealand entrepreneur, with a daughter she shares with the late Keith Scott. Lily Roe Scott at the time of this epilogue is an award-winning wildlife photographer, having travelled the world with her mother and stepfather. As far as I can tell, she played no sports, and never resided in Tree Hill. She was awarded a full scholarship to Victoria University of Wellington, in New Zealand, though as of publishing I have been informed Miss Scott deferred her acceptance as she is presently on location in Africa shooting for National Geographic.
Nathan’s Mother, Deborah Lee, has been explicitly omitted from this article. That is as much as this author is allowed to say on the matter.
Nathan Scott has never talked openly about his childhood, but I have recently learnt that him and business partner Clay Evans work on the board of PlayWell, an organisation that aims to reduce the impact of student athlete burnout and advocates for player welfare, particularly where parents are involved.
Lucas Scott’s literary agent’s office answers any questions about his past, family or date of his next novel with a firm ‘no comment.’ However, on my travels around Tree Hill I did encounter a highly amusing comic strip in the local paper authored by one P.S. It detailed artist’s mundane frustrations with her loving, if somewhat dithering husband. I like to imagine the P.S. Stands for Peyton Scott.
Birth records from Tree Hill inform me that Sawyer Scott was joined five years after her birth by Harper Karen Scott.
Nathan and Haley Scott remain pillars of the Tree Hill community. They own local businesses, contribute to events and charities and are involved in both the cultural and sporting life of the town as advisors and benefactors. Their personal fortune was well-managed despite the end of Scott’s lucrative NBA career, and I am told the family lives comfortably, though certainly not in excess. Nathan is a sports agent and co-director of Fortitude, an athlete-first sports agency. Haley Scott briefly returned to teaching before retiring to run Karen’s Café, a local institution owned by the Scott and Baker families.
Following the birth of their son Jamie, the Scotts have had four more children. A sixth child is apparently due any day now.
Oh, and the Tree Hill Ravens won the state championship.
The article, Holly realised, had been written at the time of the last time that State Championship banner had hung from the rafters of the Whitey Durham Field House. She was full of questions, all of a sudden.
It was hard to know who the heroes were in this town. Clearly, they were secretive. Their history was town history. And a small town hates an outsider.
She looks at the date the article came out.
Jamie Scott- he must have been Lydia’s older brother. She was a senior now. This article had come out seven years ago.
Holly didn’t follow basketball. She was just starting to think she might have to, living in this town. She punched the name into the search bar and was almost immediately rewarded with a Wikipedia page, and an official team profile.
Jamie Scott, wearing #12 for the Charlotte Bobcats, had re-signed this year for another three-year contract. Shooting guard, standing taller than his father at six feet, four inches. Holly couldn’t help but smile.
She clicked out of the article and on to the images tab.
The first one that catches her eye is filled with people. She clicks on it, and smiles. It’s from Scott’s debut game for the Bobcats, two years ago.
Jamie Scott towers over his father, and his diminutive mother at his first game for the Charlotte Bobcats. Haley Scott, who Holly recognises as a jolt is Mayor Scott, is holding a toddler by the hand and a baby in her arms. They are surrounded by the rest of the family.
Lydia Scott, Holly recognises straight away. She looks exactly like her older brother, but with her father’s dark hair.
There are three others, two boys who look like their father’s twins in a way that blonde-haired Jamie doesn’t, and another, younger girl, with her mother’s light hair and dark eyes.
The caption reads:
Bobcats shooting guard Jamie Scott, age twenty-two, with his father, ex-NBA point guard Nathan Scott and mother, Haley Scott. Also pictured are Scott’s siblings, Lydia (15), Charlie (14), Billy (12), Lucy (8), Oliver (4) and baby Leah (1 ).
Holly smiles.
It’s a cute family, cute enough to make something ache in her. Like a phantom limb. She’d read about those. She wondered if it could exist for a something that had never been there in the first place.
She didn’t have a lot of time to think about it, though. From outside, someone leant on the horn. Holly peered out the window. Margot and Courtenay waved at her.
The phantom pain disappeared, replaced by something much warmer.
A thought that hadn’t occurred to her yet occurred to her then: she could like it here.