Basketball (or Something Like It)
Page 10
Thomas looks down at his feet. He shifts his toes toward the basketball. The referee blows the whistle and hands the ball back to Thomas. This is it. Last chance.
It seems every great game comes down to a moment like this. Thomas lifts his right arm slowly, balancing the ball with his left. He stares hard at the basket as if he is visualizing his shot. He is thinking of something. He smiles. He bends his knees and jumps.
Someone in the bleachers has a camera and has just set the perfect angle and depth of field to capture the shooter, the basket, the court. Even the scoreboard with its yellow glowing numbers can be seen through the viewfinder. The clock stopped at three seconds. But just before the shutter snaps, a toddler in the next seat kicks out his foot in one quick jerking motion, tapping the camera just a tad. What is revealed when the photo comes up on the computer screen is a slightly tilted image of two hands poised in the air in perfect form; just behind them and somehow out of focus is the ball, hitting inside the rim of the basket before it drops into the net.
Hollis has two seconds left, but they never get the ball past the half-court line.
North Bridge wins. 51–50.
Amazing.
Hank
Nathan’s parents knew all along. At least, his mother did. Hank heard them talking about it after the game. He figured Nathan was going to have to face them. He wondered what Nathan’s dad must be thinking. He must have seen Nathan play. Or not play. And then play. Sort of. Badly.
Nathan’s dad must have figured it out.
Maybe not.
Parents don’t see the most obvious things half the time. Most of the time. They see what they think is important. They see what they want to see. Hank figured his parents probably saw him play the worst game of his life and get pulled out for good. They were probably dying right at this very moment. Planning to sell the house. Or hiring a professional at-home basketball coach. Or investing in some lacrosse equipment.
Hank could see Nathan’s parents standing together by the door, waiting for Nathan to come out of the locker room. He could just barely hear what they were saying. His dad looked confused. His mom didn’t.
“He was having fun,” Nathan’s mom was saying.
“That didn’t look like much fun,” his dad answered.
“He made the winning shot.”
“What game were you watching. Yeah, he made his second foul shot. It was a miracle. He’s terrible, Denise. He’s really terrible.”
“Yeah, he’s pretty terrible,” his mother said quietly.
And then all of a sudden, they started laughing. Hank could hear them. They seemed to share a secret between them that made everything funnier than it was. Even their little baby starting giggling. They moved on toward the exit. Hank stopped walking.
“What’s going on?” Nathan came up beside Hank.
“Your parents,” Hank said.
“Yeah, they must know about me now,” Nathan said.
The crowd for the next game were starting to pour into the gym. More parents climbing up the bleachers checking out the situation, looking for the right place to sit. A whole new set of kids took their seats on the bench. They looked like fifth graders, maybe. Ten and eleven year olds. Their coach was talking to them.
“This is it,” the coach was saying. He was kneeling on the floor in front of the bench with his clipboard resting on his knee.
“You’re not worried about telling them the truth anymore?” Hank asked Nathan as they started walking, making their way past the bleachers.
“Na,” Nathan said. “They don’t look too upset, do they? I think they knew all along anyway.”
“You do?”
“Yeah.”
The fifth-grade coach was still talking to his young team. “I don’t want any stupid mistakes out there. Connor! Are you paying attention? Listen up. This isn’t fun and games….”
Hank and Nathan looked at each other.
“What about you?” Nathan asked his friend. “What about your dad?”
Hank looked around. His parents weren’t in the gym. They must be waiting for him out in the hall or in the parking lot, even.
“What?” Hank asked, although he knew exactly what Nathan meant. It had been Hank’s chance. It would have been one of those games his dad was always talking about. It might have been one of those games for Hank, five seconds on the clock, fans on their feet, tied score….
Just like his dad always said when he was watching that one guy, that one moment, on TV
“Will your dad be mad at you?” Nathan interrupted his thoughts.
“He’ll get over it,” Hank said.
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
Hank and Nathan caught up to Nathan’s parents.
Hank watched Nathan’s dad put his arm around his son. They said hello to Hank, shook his hand, and then turned into the hall. Hank followed behind.
“Good game, son,” Nathan’s dad said. He was tall, Hank noticed.
“Dad?” Nathan started.
“You sure came through in the clutch,” his dad went on.
“Dad?”
“Yes? You have something to tell me?”
Nathan couldn’t see it, but Hank did. Right then, Nathan’s mother jabbed her elbow into her husband’s ribs. He sounded with a puff of air.
“Dad, I—” Nathan began again.
“You were wonderful, Nat,” his mother interrupted. “I’m so glad we came.”
“So am I,” his dad said. You could tell he really meant that.
When they headed out to their car, Hank could see they were all smiling and it made him smile, too.
Until he saw his parents’ car.
The engine was running. They were already inside. Not a good sign.
Hank
Hank knew his dad and mom weren’t going to be “mad” at him. They never got mad. It would be worse than that. They’d be disappointed.
As Hank walked toward his car, he thought about that.
Disappointment.
He coulda been a hero.
But then sometimes there is a moment when you decide there has to be, in fact, there is something more important than winning. More important than even playing. Hank opened the car door and slid into the backseat knowing he was right. Knowing he had done the right thing.
It was just starting to rain. It was one of those surprising, all of a sudden really heavy rains, with big loud drops pelting the windshield.
“Just in time,” his mother said.
His father flipped on the wipers. At least the sound would drown out his parents’ disappointment in him for the ride home, anyway.
But his dad didn’t shift the car into drive. Instead he turned around and leaned his arm on the back of the seat. “You did a really great thing out there for your friend,” he said.
Hank noticed his mother had tears in her eyes, but that didn’t mean anything; she cried all the time. She cried at phone company commercials. She cried when she walked in on the last minute and a half of a corny TV movie.
“You’re a very special boy,” his mother said.
“We couldn’t be more proud of you, Hank,” his dad told him.
And Hank knew he was a hero.
Jeremy
They never talked about it. Jeremy never said, “Hey, Hank, that was a really incredible thing you did for me out there. Sacrificing yourself so I could play.”
And then Hank would shrug and say, “That’s what friends do for each other.”
No, it never happened like that.
They never even mentioned it.
Jeremy looked up at his grandmother as she made her way down from the bleachers after the game. She was using the tops of other people’s heads to balance herself and apologizing the whole way. It was kind of funny. Jeremy smiled as he jingled the keys to his grandmother’s car in his pocket. He’d have to remember to put them back in the little box in the tall wooden thingy with hooks, where he was supposed to hang his sweatshirt, when he g
ot home.
The keys would always be there, which was good to know even though he didn’t feel like he needed them.
Jeremy was tired and sweaty. But he felt good. His grandmother was reaching the bottom step. Jeremy reached out and took her hand so she could step down onto the gym floor.
“What a good game, Jeremy. How exciting.” She was practically out of breath. “Do you want to stop and get some ice cream,” she asked.
“No, thanks,” he answered, and she didn’t press him.
Actually Jeremy was looking forward to getting home. He knew there was leftover homemade macaroni and cheese.
His favorite.
HIGH SCHOOL
OVERTIME
Anabel Morrisey is senior captain of the North Bridge girls’ basketball team. Her coach, Pat Trimboli, calls her a “pure shooter.” Scouts from several Division I women’s teams have come to watch her play. Yesterday she got a call from an assistant coach at the University of Connecticut. They want to meet and talk with her. It’s all pretty exciting.
Still, everyone says the most impressive thing about Anabel is her perspective on the whole thing. Her brother, Michael, is her personal trainer and her biggest fan. Her dad comes to every game, and her mom comes to as many as she can. Jeremy’s father did come back for real. It was one day somewhere between the end of middle school and the beginning of high school. Jeremy was playing in an AAU tournament upstate. Jeremy’s dad was standing in the back of the gym watching, just the way Jeremy had always imagined. And he was proud and amazed to see his son play, but by that time Jeremy had stopped looking for him. Jeremy never even saw him standing there.
He left before the end of the game, and only Jeremy’s grandmother saw him. She didn’t stop her son from leaving, and she never told Jeremy she had seen him. She thought, one day when he was old enough, maybe Jeremy would go and find his father. Maybe he wouldn’t.
Jeremy earned his varsity letter as a freshman in both basketball and track. He’s thinking of applying to Brown. They’ve seen his films. He’s interested in premed.
Hank played basketball on the high-school team for two seasons, but somewhere along the line he found that music was his passion. He had a garage band that practiced, of course, in his garage. His dad had the whole inside lined with special foam that made their recording sound better. And he had an electrician install an extra circuit box to accommodate the equipment. And just this month, Hank’s band has gotten two gigs in NYC.
The name of his band is Tuna Fish Railroad, for no reason at all.
Nathan didn’t play basketball anymore, except sometimes in gym class or outside in the summer. He played one more year in middle school, on the seventh-grade travel team, and then in eighth grade he didn’t make the team, which ended up being the best thing that could have happened. Nathan joined the debate team in eighth grade. He did so well that his guidance counselor suggested he join Future Business Leaders of America when he got to high school. Which he did. One thing lead to another, and a speech Nathan perfected in his public speaking class won him honorable mention at the FBLA regional competition. His speech was about teamwork. This year Nathan won first place in the public speaking category, and he is supposed to fly to Austin, Texas, for the national competition.
Nathan, Jeremy, and Hank went to every one of Anabel’s games that they could. Anabel and Nathan went to every one of Hank and Jeremy’s games. If they were watching, they sucked on oversized lollipops sold in the concession stand and screamed wildly for Jeremy and Hank or Anabel and all the other players on the North Bridge High school basketball teams.
But wherever they were, whatever was going on, they could always bring back that sixth-grade year with one little phrase.
“He was the only one open.”
And they would all crack up laughing. That was the year they began to realize what was important. And what was not.
So if Anabel was ever feeling down or “not good enough”; when Nathan needed to lighten up; when Hank was feeling too pressured; when Jeremy was feeling like he still didn’t belong, they’d shake hands with each other.
A bang, a wiggle, a thumb-touching thing, and a firm grip ending.
A promise.
And it was still theirs.
Other books by NORA RALEIGH BASKIN
In the Company of Crazies
Copyright
Harper Trophy® is a registered trademark of HarperCollins Publishers.
Basketball (or Something Like It)
Copyright 2005 by Nora Raleigh Baskin
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © JULY 2010 ISBN: 978-0-062-04415-0
www.harpercollinschildrens.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Baskin, Nora Raleigh.
Basketball (or something like it) / Nora Raleigh Baskin.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: Hank, Nathan, Jeremy, and Anabel deal with the realities of middle school basketball, including family pressure, a series of coaches with very different personalities and agendas, and what it means to be a team—and a friend.
ISBN-10: 0-06-059612-0
ISBN-13: 978-0-06-059612-5
[1. Basketball—Fiction. 2. Sportsmanship—Fiction.
3. Interpersonal relations—Fiction. 4. Self-realization—Fiction.
5. Family life—Connecticut—Fiction. 6. Connecticut—Fiction.]
I. Title.
PZ7.B29233Bas 2005 2004005743
[Fic]—dc22
Typography by Amy Ryan
First Harper Trophy edition, 2007
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