Finally, Mom said, “All right. I’ll give you another chance. You can play in the tournament this weekend. But Booker will not come over after school. You don’t need any extra distractions. I want to see any graded work you get back this week, and I want to see your assignment book and the work you’ve done to complete your assignments. Every night. Then we’ll reevaluate.”
She stood and picked up our plates. “But I’m not making any promises, Nikki. You’ve got to earn back the privilege of playing on the Action.”
Game Time
The rest of that week was probably the longest four days of my life.
I don’t know how many times I texted Adria or tried to call her, but she kept right on ignoring me. And even though I’d been really mad at her—or at least really annoyed—during the past few weeks, we’d still been friends, you know? But now… now I didn’t know, and I felt like half of me had broken off.
And to make things worse, we got in trouble for not talking to each other at practice Tuesday night. We each missed a couple of passes and made mistakes on defense, mistakes we’d never make if we’d been talking.
“Nikki, Adria!” Coach called, his voice sharper than usual. “What’re you two doing?” He blew his whistle and stopped practice. “Ladies, there are a lot of things about basketball that are difficult to learn. Communicating with each other on the court is not one of them.”
And wasn’t that just great?
Having Mom go over my homework every night wasn’t a whole lot of fun, either. She made me fix every missed comma or clunky sentence in my English essay and quizzed me on the chapters I read in my history book. She even made me explain how I got my answers on my algebra homework. And all that time I worried and worried. Did she think I was working hard enough? Would she let me keep playing on the Action?
And on top of all that, I missed Booker. I mean, we still talked in science—when Mr. Bukowski wasn’t—but that wasn’t the same as hanging out together, talking and laughing and goofing around while I worked on my shooting, which was also harder without him rebounding or even just encouraging me to keep going when I missed a bunch of shots in a row.
I did keep going, though.
In all, from that first Sunday when Mia McCall took on LeBron James and I realized my father had given me his sports genes—that Sunday when I started learning to shoot three-pointers—then after school all through that week, then the next weekend, when I shot all day on both Saturday and Sunday, then after school all through the next week, I figured I’d spent thirty-eight hours working on my three-point shot, which, you know, compared with how much time Mia probably puts in, maybe wasn’t all that much. But still, I felt like I worked pretty hard. Actually, I felt like I worked really hard.
On Friday night I asked Mom if Booker could come with us to the tournament that weekend, since he’d helped me with my shooting so much, and she said yes.
“Let me ask,” Booker said when I called him. He called back a few minutes later and said, “I can’t tomorrow. Chores, chores, chores. And golf lessons. But maybe Sunday.”
“Okay.”
“So listen,” Booker said, “you have to shoot at least one three-pointer in every game, all right?”
It made me sweat just thinking about it. “All right,” I finally said.
“Promise?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. Put Sam on the phone.”
“Why?”
“I’m going to tell him you promised.”
At seven o’clock on Saturday morning, when Mom and Sam and I climbed into the car, heading for the Action’s first “big” tournament—the first tournament that would count toward whether or not we made it to nationals—I was already nervous. What if I airballed every shot? What if Kate or Adria or Taj were open down low and I didn’t see them and airballed a three? What if Linnae or Maura or even JJ had a clear path to the hoop, and I didn’t pass the ball and airballed a three?
Why had I ever thought I could do this?
Finally I fell asleep, thank god, and didn’t wake up until Mom pulled into the parking lot of the huge recreation center in Maryland that was hosting the tournament.
Most of the other Action families were already in the gym lobby when we walked in, grouped around a big table. The girls sat on the floor, putting on their shoes and braiding each other’s hair and stuff like that. In every other basketball game of my life, I would have sat down next to Adria and laughed and joked with her, but that day, I sat down between Linnae and Jasmine.
“Do you believe this?” Linnae said. She pulled two kneepads from her gym bag and shook them in front of Jasmine and me. “My mom saw Autumn take that bad fall in practice last week, so now she thinks I’m going to bruise my knees and die.”
“Ohmygod,” Jasmine said. “I hope my mom doesn’t notice those. And keep your mouth guard in your mouth today, okay, Linnae? Don’t pull it out and chew on it like Steph Curry. You did that Thursday night, and my parents talked the whole way home about all the money they’d spent on me at the orthodontist.”
“I’ll try,” Linnae said. “But that thing is so annoying.” She pulled out her ankle supports and began the long process of wrapping them up and down and around her ankles, shaking her head and muttering to herself about her mom being “such a whack job.”
Kate sat down in front of me. “I’m mad at you,” she said.
I think I almost started to cry—did I need one more person mad at me? “What did I do?”
“You painted a three-point line on your driveway, so my dad bought a stencil of the three-point line to paint on our driveway. He says I’m getting”—she lowered the pitch of her voice to sound like her dad—“outworked by that left-handed guard.”
That cracked me up. “Oh, yeah, like I’m ever going to be better than you.”
“You never know,” Kate said.
Coach stood up and clapped his hands to get our attention. “Game time, ladies.”
We gathered up our stuff and followed Coach down a hallway and into a gym where four games were finishing up on four courts, which seemed pretty calm compared with the other tournaments we’d played in. It was still plenty loud, though, especially since we could also hear the roar from the five other four-court gyms that opened off the main hallway.
We warmed up along one end of the gym, and Kate threw up into a trash can. Then the game clock blared, so we ran onto the court to warm up our shooting. Then the game clock blared again.
I didn’t start, but I hadn’t expected to, especially since we were playing a team from New York full of big, tall girls. But five minutes into the first half, with the score tied, Coach called me to sub in for JJ, who had already picked up two fouls. He clamped his hand onto my shoulder and said, “You ready?” I nodded, and the ref whistled me in.
“Go, Nikki!” Sam’s little-kid voice piped at me from the bleachers.
I hustled onto the court, got my butt down and my hands up, ready to play defense, but before I was even set, Kate blocked a shot and swatted the ball out to half-court. I jumped forward, grabbed the ball, and drove it all the way up the court for a layup.
Cheers erupted from our bench and bleachers.
And then it happened again. A blocked shot, a long outlet pass up the court that I caught and took in for a layup, left-handed this time, because a girl from the other team had sprinted down the court with me and was defending the right side of the basket.
I couldn’t believe it—at last, I’d done something right.
We were up by six at halftime, but the New York team battled back, and with three minutes to go we were tied. And then there I was, wide open behind the three-point line. Maura whipped the ball in to Jasmine, the defense collapsed toward her, and she zipped the ball back out to me. I heard Sam squeal, “Shoot, Nikki!” and I squared my shoulders and stepped into my shot… and passed the ball back to Maura.
I couldn’t do it.
Couldn’t risk an air ball.
Couldn’t take
the shot.
Coach subbed me out and put JJ in. She managed to muscle her way to the hoop for a layup, got fouled, and made her free throw. Then Taj and Kate took over. They each hit a couple of big shots and blocked a couple from the other team. And we pulled out a win.
We all jumped around and yelled, then trooped out to the lobby to wait for our next game.
“All right, ladies,” Coach said. “First one down. We win the next game, we’ll be in the top bracket tomorrow. Which is where we need to be to win the tournament, right? And why do we want to win the tournament?”
“Because we want to go to nationals!” Maura yelled, and all the rest of us whooped and clapped.
I texted Booker, Hit 2 layups!!
He texted back, Big deal. Shoot the 3.
I stuck my tongue out at my phone. Easy for him to say. He didn’t have to worry about shooting an air ball.
But still.
Why had I spent thirty-eight hours working on a three-point shot if I wasn’t going to try one in a game?
I sat down on the floor to take off my shoes and change my socks, and Sam sat down next to me.
“You promised to shoot a three-pointer in every game, Nikki,” he said.
“I know, Sam.” I stuffed my sweaty socks into my gym bag. “I got scared.”
He slipped his hand into mine. “Why would you get scared? Nobody’s going to hit you or anything if you miss.”
I couldn’t help laughing. “I guess you’re right about that.”
He held out the snack bag Mom had packed. “You want an apple?”
We each took an apple and sat there crunching together while I tried to squeeze every thought of air balls out of my head. I made myself focus instead on one thing—Mia taking on LeBron. Over and over, Mia pulling up at the three-point line before LeBron got close enough to block her shot, her face determined, her muscles straining, over and over and over.
Then Coach said, “Get your shoes on, ladies. Game time.” And we were back in the gym.
Our next game was against a team from Ohio called the Blasters. Their uniforms were yellow—the same yellow as the block of sulfur in the rock case in Mr. Bukowski’s classroom—with a burst of orange in the middle of their jerseys that looked like a bomb exploding. I guess they made their uniforms look like that on purpose, because, as it turned out, the Blasters played basketball like a bomb exploding on the court. JJ looked like a sissy next to them.
They shoved, they hacked, threw their elbows around on every rebound. They smashed into us when we tried to make layups, threw Linnae into the gym wall behind the basket, sent Jasmine hobbling off the court when she got hit midjump and came down sideways on her ankle. Then one of them slammed into Autumn when she jumped to shoot, knocking her feet out from under her. She hit the court flat on her back with a whomp that got players and coaches and parents from all the other games in the gym turning to see what happened.
Coach Duval stormed onto the court, shouting at the refs, “This isn’t football! Call a foul!” He helped Autumn up and half carried her to the bench, and Autumn’s mom—sweet, petite Autumn’s mom—stood up and screamed at the Blasters coach, “You are awful! What are you teaching your girls?”
He turned, looked up at her, and laughed. “I’m teaching them to play ball,” he shouted back.
And the game kept going.
We were halfway through the first half and we had two girls hurt, which meant we only had eight girls to finish the game. Then Taj went up for a rebound, and a Blaster caught her with an elbow, square on the bridge of her nose. Taj doubled over, her hands covering her face and blood gushing down the front of her jersey.
Taj’s dad said a bunch of words that would get me grounded, and her mom ran out of the gym and came back with a tournament official, who had a box of those instant ice packs you squeeze to make cold. He squeezed three packs and gave them to Jasmine and Autumn and Taj, who was now leaning back in her chair, holding a towel to her face. Then another tournament official came in, pulling on latex gloves, spraying a bottle of something at all the little splatters of Taj’s nose blood on the floor, then wiping it up with about fifty paper towels.
So now we had three injured players and seven girls to finish the game.
And I was in.
We battled back and forth and the score stayed close. Then I grabbed for a rebound and took an elbow to my ribs that knocked me sideways. But I held on to the ball, passed it out to Maura, and charged up the court after her.
She called a play, and we set up our offense, and the ball went inside to Adria, then out to JJ, back in to Kate down near the basket, then out to me on the wing, just outside the three-point line. Sam’s voice yelled, “Shoot!” and Mom’s voice yelled, “Shoot!” and Coach Duval’s voice yelled, “Shoot!” and I stepped and jumped and shot, and the ball arced up away from me… and fell through the net.
The ref threw her hands in the air like a football official signaling a touchdown, and our bench and bleachers cheered and yelled, and… and I had scored a three-pointer.
Oh. My. God.
Behind me, a deep voice boomed, “For crying out loud, Kate! Don’t kick the ball out. Take your shot!”
But Sam’s voice shrieked, “THREEEEEE!”
And Coach’s voice, quiet but cutting through all the rest, said, “Yeah.”
And honestly, I don’t have any idea what happened after that, but I have to think I played defense, then sprinted back up the court to run our offense, then played some more defense and some more offense, then the game clock blared for halftime.
We all dropped into our chairs and guzzled water, and Coach said, “All right, now you know the way they play. Tougher than tough. But we’re bigger than them, and we’re faster than them, and we’re better than them.” He paused, looking slowly down the bench, looking each of us square in the eyes. “You ready to take it to ’em?”
We nodded hard and said, “Yeah, Coach!” and “Let’s go!” and bounced up and down in our seats. Then we guzzled more water and showed each other our scrapes and bruises, and then the game clock blared, and Coach clapped his giant hands and said, “‘Action’ on three. One, two, three.”
“ACTION!”
And we were back on the floor, with Kate stuffing the Blasters’ shots, and Maura and Kim-Ly zinging the ball up the court for our outlet player, and Linnae or JJ or me grabbing their passes and jumping toward the hoop for layups, and Adria and Kate rocketing up behind us for a put-back if we missed. I tried two more three-pointers and made one, and I heard the Blasters coach yell at the girl guarding me, “Shut her down! Shut! Her! Down!”
By the middle of the second half, we were up by twelve, and the Blasters were mad as hornets.
Their coach and parents yelled and cussed, and the Blasters whacked at us harder and harder, and then, there I was behind the three-point line with no defender on me. Kim-Ly flipped the ball to me, and I stepped into my shot and let the ball sail from my hand… and a Blaster threw herself at me, hitting me in the face with her forearm and ramming her shoulder into my chest, smashing the air from my lungs. I flew backward, slamming into the line of empty metal chairs at the end of our bench. The chairs exploded up around me and crashed back down, clanging and screeching across the floor.
Everything stopped.
Every sound. Every movement. Every breath.
And then Adria was bending over me, shouting, “Nikki, Nikki, are you all right? Are you okay?” And her hands on my shoulders and her voice again, “Nikki!”
I blinked, grabbed her arm, and sat up.
Then Coach was kneeling beside me, holding up two fingers, asking me how many fingers I saw.
Somewhere behind him a whistle shrieked, and a ref yelled, “That’s enough! Clear the floor! Clear the floor! This game is over!”
A furious roar erupted from the Blasters’ side of the court, and tournament officials ran into the gym, and then Mom was there, bending over me, and Sam, too, crying, “Don’t die, Nikki!” and thr
owing himself into me so hard I fell over sideways again.
And that’s when I started laughing. “I’m not dying, Sam,” I said between breaths. “Hey, did my shot go in?”
Coach chuckled and shook his head. “Not even close.” He patted my knee. “That’s okay. The refs stopped the game. We get the win.” He stood up. “You just keep shooting, Lefty.”
Adria held out her hand to pull me up, and even though it probably looked really dopey, I kept hanging on to her arm, even when Coach gathered all the girls and families together.
“I haven’t seen a game that crazy in a long time,” he said. “But crazy games mean crazy parents, so before any of them start cursing at our girls, let’s get out of the gym. Grab your stuff. We’re going to stay together and we’ll walk as slow as the slowest one of us.”
Jasmine couldn’t walk at all by that point. Her ankle had swelled up to twice its normal size, so her dad and Taj’s dad linked their arms together to make a sling and carried her. And all the rest of us followed, packed tight together—the parents saying stuff like, “Unbelievable!” and “I’ve never seen anything like that!” and “What could that coach be thinking?” and us girls saying stuff like, “That was awesome!” and “Did you see Kate’s monster block on their center?” and Maura pounding me on the shoulder, which I suddenly realized really hurt, shouting, “Dude!” and throwing her hands in the air, and Coach and Kate’s dad coming up behind us like walking trees. The only crazy Blasters parents we ran into were two women coming out of the bathroom who called us some ugly names as we walked by, and JJ gave them a mean, scary glare.
When we got out to the parking lot, Taj’s family and Jasmine’s family went straight to their cars to go to an emergency clinic, but the rest of us grouped around Coach.
“Let’s hope we don’t see another team like that for a while,” he said.
“Or ever,” Autumn’s mom said.
Coach boosted his ball bag up on his shoulder. “But we got two wins, so that puts us in the upper bracket tomorrow. We’ll be playing against good teams and it looks like we’ll be down a couple players. So go home and get lots of rest.” He looked around at us. “I’m proud of you girls. See you in the morning.”
Nikki on the Line Page 20