“But I did work harder than everyone else, Dad.”
“I know. I know.” The ball was still spinning on his finger. He slapped it, fanning the flame. I loved seeing this side of him. Everything had always come so easy to him he’d never had to fight. But I knew he had it in him. It made me feel like we were a team. “But here’s the important thing,” he said. “Enjoy it, okay?”
I almost threw up. Was he really giving me the most-important-thing-is-to-have-fun speech? Now? Was he getting this? Was he grasping what I was capable of?
He came to his senses. “What the heck am I saying? Of course you’ll enjoy it. You’ll enjoy it when you’re kicking those boys’ butts out there.”
Damn right.
The Bells GM, Doug Braman, aka Stick-Up-His-Butt Braman, called later that afternoon. I’d left our home phone number with Coach Mack. Dad answered the kitchen phone and held the receiver between us.
Braman sounded tired. There were stories in the paper every morning about how he was going to be fired immediately after the season. “So we saw the video,” he said. “It was . . . unusual. We’re wondering if Beatrice might come down for another visit.”
I smirked. They still thought my name was Beatrice. Beatrice Trudeaux.
“You mean Elizabeth?” Dad said. “Lizzy?”
I imagined Braman in his office, covering the phone, gesturing like: Is this a joke, guys? Are you pranking me? This has to be a joke. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Lizzy. Coach Mack is a little hard of, um—he’s old.”
“Who’s ‘we’?” Dad asked.
“Pardon?”
“You said ‘we.’ We were wondering . . .”
“Oh. Right. Our scouting staff. And myself.”
“So, like a tryout?”
“Not exactly. This is”—there was that word again—“unusual. Let’s not call it anything. Let’s take it slow. Is Lizzy available? Sorry”—he remembered I was thirteen—“are you available, sir? Both of you?”
“You mean now?”
“Yes.”
Dad looked over at me.
I shrugged like, What the heck, let’s go.
“We’ll be there,” Dad said.
“Great,” Braman said. “And just to be clear, this is just, uh, a—I don’t know what it is. Can you not tell anyone about this? Can you not share that link, or perhaps take down the vid—”
Dad frowned. “We’re on our way, Doug.” He hung up. “Ready?”
“Yeah. Just gimme a few minutes to do my nails.”
“Ummm—”
“I’m kidding, Dad. Let’s go. Can Toby come?”
“What is he, your agent?”
“Actually, he kind of—”
“Yeah, yeah. Call him up. Let’s go.”
So we went to Philly for the second time that day, this time with proper adult supervision. Dad, stubborn as ever, parked in the General Lot, even though all the VIP spots were open.
Coach Mack greeted us at the entrance. He’d ironed his funeral suit, possibly while still wearing it. He went down the line, crushing all our hands. He held on to Dad’s hand a little longer. “The man, the myth,” he said. “It’s good to see ya.”
“You too, Coach.”
“Any chance we get a two-for-one deal? Father-daughter?”
“You’re gonna have a hard enough time signing her,” Dad said. “Plus, now you broke my hand, so I’m useless.”
I shook my head. Dad jokes . . .
Braman, the GM, was in his late fifties. He was salty on top and doughy in the middle. He had on a charcoal-black suit with no tie and white basketball sneakers. “Doug Braman,” he said. “You must be Lizzy. We saw your video.”
“My video,” Toby said.
“Right,” Braman said, peeking at his watch. “So how about you put up a few shots?”
“My pleasure,” I said. “Where you want me to shoot from?”
“Wherever you’re comfortable.”
“How about here?” I was ten feet behind the three-point line. Deep, as they say.
Braman peeked over at his scouts. “Sure,” he said, smirking.
I took a ball off the rack. I squared up.
“What are you doing?” Braman said.
“You said to shoot.”
“Yeah. But you’re facing the wrong way.”
I was facing the other hoop. Waaaaaaay deep. About sixty feet. “Am I?”
“You are.”
“Oh, wow.” I batted my eyelashes. “How silly of me. Gee, thanks, mister.”
He was losing patience.
The scouts were covering their mouths. Hiding their laughter.
To be honest, I wasn’t quite sure what I was doing. I was making it up as I went along—always my best self.
“Just shoot the ball,” Braman said.
I turned back to the closer basket, still over thirty feet away.
I shot.
The ball rocketed through the hoop.
Pure swish.
I made the same shot.
Again.
And again.
And again.
And again.
And again.
No one was laughing anymore.
Just then one of the Bells players, Alou Achebe, poked his head out of the tunnel. Achebe is the tallest player in pro basketball history. Seven seven. He gets his height from his mother, he says. She’s six ten. His father is only six eight.
He’s from Sudan.
Now my mouth was hanging open. Alou could reach up and grab the rim without jumping. The basketball gods had given him this great gift, but, like always, comedians that they are, they’d counterbalanced it. He was also probably the weakest player in NBA history. He had, as Dad once observed, a whole arm full of wrists.
“Alou,” Braman said. “We’ve got a rising young star here. Meet Lizzy Trudeaux.”
I extended my hand, but Alou ignored it. Instead, he leaned all the way down and draped his long arms around me. It was like hugging a giant coatrack.
“Pleasure to meet you,” he said. His voice was deep, his accent subtle.
Braman asked if he’d mind playing a little defense—“just for fun.”
“Sure,” Alou said. “But only a little.”
Coach Mack scoffed. That could’ve been the team’s official motto that year. Come see the Bells. We’ll play defense . . . but only a little.
Alou windmilled his arms to get loose. He had on light brown corduroy pants, brown slip-on shoes (size twenty-seven), and a cream-colored button-up shirt. All his clothes were custom-made, of course. “One-on-one?” he said to me.
I smiled. “Bring it.”
He reached down and plucked the ball from my hip, rolled it back like an apple.
“Ball in,” he said.
I was just behind the foul line. He was in the lane, arms half raised like he was wading into cold water.
“Game to three?” I said.
He smiled. “Sure, sure.”
I took two steps back, dribbling the ball between my legs each time, and shot.
He didn’t even bother lifting his arms.
Pure swish.
He smiled. “Nice shot. Nice shot.”
He carried the ball out to the foul line and turned.
“Oh no,” I said, circling outside him. “Winner’s out.”
“Make it, take it,” Toby called.
“Of course,” Alou said, smiling. “Of course.”
I started with the same move: two backward, between-the-legs dribbles, but this time I up-faked with my shoulders, causing him to lift his arms and hedge forward. While he was off balance, I made two hard dribbles to the left and pure-swished another.
The scouts exchanged looks.
Braman watched, arms crossed.
Alou rolled up his sleeves, one fold at a time. “You didn’t tell me she could shoot like this,” he said to Braman. Then, to me: “It reminds me of back home.”
He explained how the rims back in Sudan never had nets on them, so the ball pass
ed through in total silence. “You’ll have to teach me that trick,” he said.
We checked the ball again. I knew I needed to add at least one more move to the sequence this time. I made the same two moves then hesitated, causing him to lift slightly out of his stance, and made three more hard dribbles down to the baseline.
He lunged to block me.
Like I knew he would.
I waited for him to fly by then leaned back the other way, arm fully extended. I flipped it up—a finger roll. The ball floated up and up and up. A half second later, a shadow blurred from the baseline. The ball bounced into the stands.
Crap.
Somehow he’d recovered and blocked it. Spiked it like a volleyball.
I was stunned, but I guess I shouldn’t have been. It wasn’t as if my superpower prevented other players from exercising their superpowers. Pro sports players are really just a bunch of humans with superpowers. You just forget because they’re playing against one another, canceling one another out.
Toby retrieved the ball from the stands and heaved it back.
Relax, I thought. You’re up 2–0, and it’s still your ball.
We checked the ball, and right away I started dribbling backward. Alou stopped at the three-point line (there’s an invisible fence there that emits a high-pitched frequency that only centers can hear), but I kept backing up. I was nearing half-court now, the unofficial out-of-bounds line for a one-on-one game. I had plenty of space to shoot.
And yet . . .
Did I want to win this way? Backing up?
No.
I charged, full speed, right at him. I had no idea what I was going to do. No plan.
My mind was totally blank. But here was the important thing: I was the aggressor. I was moving forward. My action would force him to react, and based on his reaction I’d know what to do.
He took a step back, and I glimpsed my opening.
I cut hard to the right. That caused him to take a big, awkward step to his left. While he was midstride, I crossed over and ducked between his legs, like a video game character passing through a wall.
I came out the other side and banked in a wide-open layup.
3–0.
Game.
Alou couldn’t stop laughing.
I carried the ball over to where Dad and Toby were standing.
Toby flashed me a quick, eyes-wide thumbs-up.
Dad pulled me in beside him. A wizard-like move, if there ever was one.
Braman still had his arms crossed atop his soggy stomach. He moved his lips, but no words came out. Finally, he forced one out, round as an egg. “How?”
“Oh, come on,” Toby said, now reclined on the Bells’ bench, ankles crossed, hands behind his head like he owned the place. “Just get her a uniform already.”
“Wait,” Braman said. “Who the heck are you?”
“That’s Archimedes,” Coach Mack said. “He’s got a disease that makes him say dumb crap all the time.”
“I’m perfectly healthy, thanks,” Toby said, sitting up. “In fact, I’m her agent, so you’ll need to run the contract by me first.”
Braman closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. This was getting more ridiculous by the minute. “Excuse us, please.”
The scouts huddled, talking into their hands like secret service agents. (As scouts do.) “We’ll need to see a little more,” Braman said. “See how this . . . plays out.”
“Now or never,” Dad said. “This video’s already going bacterial.”
“You mean viral ?”
“Call it what you want. We’ve already got a tryout set up with New York tomorrow, Boston on Monday.”
BS, but they didn’t know it.
The scouts huddled again.
“Ten-day contract,” Braman said. “We’re willing—I can’t believe I’m saying this—we’re willing to offer a ten-day contract. But we need approval from upstairs.”
The Bells owner, Hal Kurtz, had to approve any new contracts. He was out of the country on business, Braman explained, “so it may take a week or so.”
“But there’s only two weeks left in the season,” I said.
“I know,” Braman said, exhausted. “And thank god.”
Looking back, I wonder if he signed me as a last-ditch attempt to save his job, or because he just didn’t give a crap anymore.
Whatever the reason, it was happening.
It was really happening.
Halftime
3rd Quarter
THE CONTRACT
Hal Kurtz—Bells Owner
Do I remember when Braman first called me with the Trudeaux thing? Sure I do. I was on my yacht down in St. Martin. No, Jamaica. No, the Dominican Republic. No, St. Martin. No, Bermuda. Anyway, it was nice out. My wife and I were on the yacht. The little one. The big one was in for repairs. So anyway, I’m out on the deck and my hands are all covered in sunscreen, so I have to answer my phone with my nose, and I say: “Doug, this had better be good.”
Doug Braman—Bells General Manager
It took a while to get Mr. Kurtz on the line. He was in an important business meeting, as I recall.
Hal Kurtz—Bells Owner
My wife was wearing one of those big floppy hats. She said: “What’d he want?” I said: “He wants me to sign a thirteen-year-old girl.” We both laughed our heads off. Even the dogs were laughing in their little orange life vests. Howling.
Doug Braman—Bells General Manager
He thought I was kidding at first. But then I sent him the video.
Dad was admiring the skyscrapers as the bus came out of the Lincoln Tunnel, into New York City, but I barely noticed them. I had my big headphones on, the ones meant to keep sound out. Toby’s face flickered in my mind as we crossed over Broadway—I imagined him bowing before a roaring audience, roses showering down—but I chased that thought away.
My first pro game, on national TV, was just a few hours away.
I had to focus.
Shootaround was at 9:00 a.m. A pro shootaround is basically a study hall—mostly, you just have to be there. All the players were in sweats. Coach Mack limped onto the court and went over the scouting reports.
I didn’t shoot, if you’re wondering. It wasn’t that I was scared. I knew that with my magic power I was better than all of them—maybe better than anyone who’d ever played. But still, it didn’t feel right to be out there showing off, you know? What had I done to earn this magical ability? To share the court with these pros?
I’d answered a freaking phone.
It’d be different when the actual game started, I told myself, when the bright lights came on and it was time to perform, to fulfill my destiny, but until then I just sat on the bench and watched. (I’m pretty sure they all thought I was a ball girl.)
One notable thing did happen at that shootaround. Something even my biggest fans, who’ve seen all my YouTube videos hundreds of times, don’t know.
While Dad was off somewhere calling out of work, Coach Mack came over and slumped beside me on the bench. He was still in his funeral suit with the pink flowered tie. He extended his heels onto the court, and I noticed that again he wasn’t wearing any socks with his dress shoes. His lips were moving, but I was still wearing my big headphones, so I couldn’t hear him. I uncovered one ear. “Huh?”
I thought he’d just come over to bust my chops, or to rest, but then he leaned forward and rubbed the back of his neck. “Listen, kid. There ain’t no good way to say this. Bad news. I can’t play ya.”
My chest tightened. “What?”
“Word just come down. Change a’ plans.”
The GM, he told me, had gotten cold feet.
“Braman knows he’s gonna be lookin’ for another job in two weeks. Doesn’t want this hangin’ over him. So looks like you’re on the bench tonight. Sorry to say.”
All I could think to say was, “But he saw, right?”
Coach Mack tilted his head up and closed his eyes. His eyelids were like rain-
soaked paper that’s dried out in the sun. “Listen,” he said. “It ain’t the worst thing. This all plays like I think it’s gonna, it’s gonna be big. Bigger than you know. We still got LA and Cleveland next week. This one don’t mean nothin’. Keep your head up, kid. Your time’s comin’.’ ”
I broke down and began bawling so hard Coach Mack didn’t know what to do. Actually—come on, you know me—that was what I felt like on the inside. Outwardly, I just bit my lip and clenched my fists and mumbled, “I understand, Coach.”
Dad came back and we followed my new teammates up the tunnel. Looking back over my shoulder at the arena—silent now, but soon to be filled with twenty thousand fans—I remembered one of the last things Mom ever told me, when I’d complained about a book having too many big words in it. She was always pushing me to read beyond my grade level—it was the only way to get better, she said, like playing against the older kids at the playground. Sitting at the foot of my bed, still dressed in her scrubs from work, she squeezed my hand. “It’s not supposed to be easy, Lizzy. You know that, right?”
Her ghost faded as I crossed into the locker room.
It felt like that lazy atmosphere before a movie starts—dim and warm and a little bit magical. Yes, I thought, marveling at the wood-paneled lockers. This is what a pro locker room’s supposed to be. Padded massage tables. Cold tubs. Hot tubs. A Great Pyramid of Ankle Tape. I carried my uniform down to the last stall and locked myself inside.
This was where the fantasy came apart again.
I cracked my elbow on the toilet-paper dispenser. My ancient shoelace snapped with a cloud of dust. The only thing that kept me from Incredible-Hulking the crap out of that stall was imagining Toby standing outside it.
Let’s go, Clark Kent. Hustle up in there. The bad guys are getting away.
To which I responded: Clark Kent didn’t have to put on a freaking sports bra.
To which he responded: Not young Clark Kent . . . but old Clark Kent with man boobs . . . .
I slid out of the stall. It wasn’t too late. The moment could still be salvaged. This was a big one—the moment I would first see myself in a pro jersey with my name on it! I stepped in front of the mirror like it was an oncoming car.
Lizzy Legend Page 7