Toby Wheeler

by Thatcher Heldring

  “What were the Landusky twins doing at Tompkins Park with a jump rope and a dog collar?”

  Raj shrugged. “All I know is what I heard.”

  Coach cleared his throat and looked at me and Raj. “Is everyone clear on what to do?”

  We all nodded.

  “Are there any questions?”

  “What about offense?” Roy asked.

  Coach checked his watch. “What about offense?”

  “Is JJ going to take all the shots again?”

  Everyone was silent.

  “For Pete’s sake, Morelli!” Coach barked at last. “We’ve been through this before. We run the offense through JJ because he is our primary scoring threat. If the rest of you crash the boards and move without the ball, your shots will come off passes and misses.”

  “If he ever misses,” Roy grumbled.

  “That’s exactly my point, Morelli. Remember what I said at the beginning of the season. This is about twelve people being a part of something bigger than any one person. If you have a problem with that, you need to ask yourself what you’re doing on this team.”

  Coach gave us a moment to think about that before pulling us together for a pregame cheer.

  “Come on, Chuckers!” Ruben said loudly. “We can do this! It’s time to shock the world. No more losing. Shock the world!” When nobody spoke, Ruben said, “Shock the world!”

  “Shock the world,” we repeated. Nobody was sure how loudly to chant. We were chanting rookies.

  We tried once more. Then Coach said it was time to take the court. I jumped up and down like a boxer. Even if Coach never put me in the game, I had to be ready for Vinny Pesto. I had promised him Pilchuck would be for real this season. It was time to start proving it.

  The gym at Hamilton Middle School was called the Cage. The bleachers came right down to the court, leaving just enough room for the benches. With the low ceilings and bars over the windows, the room felt more like a prison yard than a place to play basketball. Or at least how I pictured a prison yard would look. We had just entered the gym when Coach stopped, snapped his fingers, pivoted, and, spying me, said, “Shoot. I forgot my clipboard in the locker room. Wheeler, do me a favor and grab it. And see if you can find a water bottle while you’re at it.”

  At the moment, I was scanning the gym for Vinny Pesto, hoping that either he would not see me, or, if he did, that he would not realize he was seeing the last man on the bench. I was trying to look like I belonged by jogging slowly, not smiling, and basically doing anything possible to fit in with the others. So when Coach asked me to do an errand, he touched a nerve.

  “Why me?” I asked.

  Coach answered sharply. “Because I asked you to.”

  I lowered my head and spoke quietly. “Sorry, Coach.”

  “It’s too late for sorry, son.” He got right in my face. “Listen to me. Do you want to contribute to the success of this team?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then you better get used to one idea right now. Your attitude is your contribution. When I tell you to do something, you don’t ask why, you do it. You got that?”

  I nodded.

  “Good. Now get back in that locker room and find my clipboard.”

  I saw what was happening. Coach might have said find my clipboard, but he was really saying stay away from my daughter. There was no doubt about it. He was punishing me. Obviously, Megan had come home from school yesterday with my jacket and Coach had discovered whose it was.

  Coming back from the locker room, I came face to face with Vinny Pesto, who looked at the clipboard and water bottle in my hands and began laughing hysterically. It was my worst fear.

  We were standing directly in front of the gigantic display case full of the trophies Hamilton athletic teams had won over the years. Front and center were the basketball trophies.

  “I thought I saw you getting off the bus,” Vinny said. Carefully, he wiped a tiny smudge from the glass. “Then I thought, Nah, that couldn’t be Toby the Gym Rat, not in an actual uniform. But now it all makes sense—you couldn’t play basketball, so they made you an equipment manager.”

  I was in no mood for his sorry trash talk. I breathed on the glass and was pleased to see a foggy spot stick. Then I drew an L in the smudge—for loser. “Are you finished, Pesto?” I asked. “I have somewhere to be.”

  Vinny used his jersey to clear the smudge. “Where—the bench?”

  “I’ll see you on the court, Vinny,” I said with another breath on the glass.

  We stared at each other. Neither of us wanted to leave the other alone in front of the trophy case. Finally, Raj poked his head into the hallway and said, “It’s game time, Toby,” and we moved slowly toward the court.

  “You first,” said Vinny, eyeing the glass.

  “After you, Miss,” I said.

  Later, sitting in my seat during a disastrous first half, I felt as though the whole world was against me. All I wanted to do was wipe that smirk from Vinny’s face—and a championship of our own was the only way to do it. But as long as my place on the bench was the basketball equivalent of Pluto, there was nothing I could do except keep my seat warm, fetch water bottles, and leave breath marks on Hamilton’s trophy case.

  Roy did his best to contain Pesto. He fought through screens, tried to cut off passes, and kept a hand in his face on jump shots. In the paint, our big men were no match for the Landusky twins. Coach Applewhite stood on the sideline, hollering for Khalil and McKlusky to force Melvin and Marvin away from the basket, but it was no use. Hamilton was beating us inside and out. JJ had fifteen points, but it wasn’t enough.

  Coach called two time-outs in the fourth quarter. During the first time-out, he encouraged JJ to keep shooting. The others he comanded, “Move with or without the basketball! Find a way to get open. Use your screens. Make your cuts.”

  Megan was on the outer edge of the huddle. When Coach paused, she added, shouting over the crowd noise, “Try to force their big men to bring the ball upcourt—they might turn the ball over.”

  I’m not sure if Megan’s speaking up ticked off some of the guys because she was a girl, because she was Coach’s daughter, or because we were losing, but her suggestion definitely stepped on some toes. And Roy let it be known. “What is she—a coach?” he said in earshot of Megan, Coach, and the whole team. “Why is she always around? Shouldn’t she be with her own team?” I think Roy knew the girls’ games were mostly on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Besides, that wasn’t really the point.

  Coach was starting to overheat. “For crying out loud, Morelli, this is not the time or the place to discuss this. You worry about what you have to do out there.”

  “I’m just sayin’ what everyone’s thinking.”

  Megan shrank away. It had never occurred to me to question her role. I just thought it was nice having her on the end of the bench.

  A few minutes later, Coach called the second time-out. He had some things to say about the offense. “As long as JJ has nobody to pass to, the defense is going to keep coming at him with that double-team. I want you guys to think!”

  “So it’s our fault we’re losing?” asked Roy, pointing to the scoreboard.

  Coach exploded. He kicked the chair closest to his feet so hard, Raj had to jump to avoid being hit. “Morelli! You’re finished! Pick up your stuff and get out of my sight. Now!”

  Roy marched off, but not before getting in the last word. “Just so you know, there’s more than one person on this team. And we’re not in college, and we don’t all just care about winning!”

  Coach watched Roy leave. For a moment, he seemed lost. Rattled. Then he looked at the rest of us and got down to business. “We’re going to stay in the box-and-one,” he said. “McKlusky, you and Khalil have got to shut those big guys down. I don’t care if you have to grow ten inches before the end of the time-out. Do you hear me? Raj, you stay on the perimeter. JJ, can you shut down that Pesto kid for the rest of the night?”

  JJ said, “I can do
it, Coach.”

  Coach took a deep breath. Did he know we needed a fifth player on the court? He became animated again as the buzzer blew. “Who’s mad?” he yelled.

  Nobody spoke. Coach was not just yelling. He was erupting.

  “I’m mad!” Coach went on. “I’m so mad I want to break this chair in two. I want to put on a jersey and go out on that court and kick someone’s butt myself! Unfortunately, they won’t let me play in this game. That means someone else is going to have to go out there and do it. So who’s mad?”

  I was wide-eyed. So was everyone else. But I guess nobody wanted to be sent to the locker room, because there was no answer to the question. Instead, some guys looked at each other. A few just looked at their shoes. Coach slammed his clipboard to the floor and turned his back on us. When he turned to face us again, he sounded desperate. “Well, since the rest of you guys won’t do it, and I have to stay here on the sideline, I guess we might as well try something new.” Then he tugged me by the loose front of my jersey. “Wheeler, get your butt out there and do something.”

  I was too juiced to be nervous. Seeing Coach fired up in the fourth quarter of a game we were losing by nineteen points was like a shot of electricity. He could have sat back and let the clock run out; but he didn’t. He was coaching like he still thought we could win. That was why I was too excited to think straight.

  The buzzer blew and I ran directly onto the court.

  JJ stopped me. “You have to check in,” he said.

  “Right,” I said, feeling my face go beet red.

  It was our ball. JJ dribbled upcourt. He passed the ball to Raj on the wing. I waited on the opposite wing with Khalil. Our only job was to spread out the court so the defense had no chance to help on JJ, which was fine with me. Sure, I wanted to score. But those first minutes on the court during an actual game were a blur. I had always thought that when Coach sent me into a game, I would pause to soak it in. Savor the moment. But everything happened so quickly that the sounds of the game were suddenly unfamiliar. When I sat on the bench, it was easy to pick up distinct voices. Now I was deaf. Even though I was just a few feet away, the voices all merged into one distant hum. Playing with a ref was strange too, and for the first time, I realized how far I was from the rec center.

  The play unfolded cleanly. McKlusky came up from the post to set a screen for JJ, who cut to the block. Raj dribbled around a second screen from McKlusky. With a third screen, JJ shed his man, took a pass from Raj, and lofted a jump shot that fell short. Marvin, the left-handed Landusky twin, snagged the rebound and flipped an outlet pass to a guard, and Hamilton pushed the ball upcourt, but not before we recovered and forced them into their half-court offense. I picked up the guy who had guarded me. JJ picked up Vinny and shadowed him from one wing, across the baseline, and up to the other wing, fighting through screens as he went.

  I had sworn to Vinny we would be on the court together—and now we were. Of course, it was only the first step—I still had to hit the winning shot in his face at the end of the championship game. And even though it was kind of tough to trash-talk a guy I wasn’t guarding, I couldn’t let this moment pass without Pesto hearing from me. “You gotta deal with me now, Vinny. I’m here and I’m gonna be there at the end.”

  “Go back to the rec center, gym rat.”

  “You first, ch—”

  “Toby!” JJ yelled. He was pointing to my man. I spun around to see that he had broken toward the corner, where Khalil was using every pound of his body to keep Melvin Landusky away from the basket. Suddenly Melvin set a screen for the guard and then rolled to the high post. But Khalil stayed near the low block. I raced to catch up with my man, leaving Melvin wide open on the elbow, where he caught a pass and nailed a short jumper.

  I didn’t think Coach could get any madder than he already was, but he did. As soon as he could, he sent Ruben back in and yanked me to the bench. “What did I say in the locker room?” he demanded. “About the box-and-one?”

  My mind went blank. The only thing I remembered was Raj whispering something to me about the Landusky twins and a mountain lion.

  Coach rubbed his forehead. “Wheeler, how the heck am I supposed to put you in the game if you don’t even know what defense we’re playing? You were supposed to be in a zone out there. Do you remember what a zone is?”

  “Yeah, you guard an area instead of a man.”

  “Then how did that big fella get wide open in the middle of the court?”

  “I thought we were playing man-to-man.”

  “Did you hear me when I explained the box-and-one before the game?”

  “Um…” I glanced at my shoes.

  “In a box-and-one, four of you are playing zone. But you followed your man. You weren’t listening.” Coach sighed. “Wheeler, I don’t care where you sit on the bench. You have to be ready to play at all times. Otherwise, you’re just taking up space. I didn’t put you on the team just to take up space.”

  The game ended. I was mad at myself. I hadn’t single-handedly cost us the game, but I had screwed up. Again. And this time I had screwed up in front of Vinny Pesto. As it turned out, I wasn’t the only person upset. When we were sitting in silence in the locker room later, Ruben slammed his fist into a locker, denting it.

  Mellowing after his tirades on the court, Coach said, “Ruben, part of competition is learning to lose.”

  “I don’t want to learn how to lose,” Ruben fired back. “I want the rest of these guys to learn how to win. I’m sick of losing. We’re better than this.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” said Coach. He loosened his tie and pushed a stray hair back into place.

  Ruben turned to us. “We’ve got two weeks off now. We’re 0 and 3 with seven games left. One more loss and we’re done and it’s another year without a championship for Pilchuck.”

  Coach nodded at Ruben, then slipped out the door, leaving us alone.

  Ruben stood on a bench. “We gotta start playing like a team. We aren’t helping each other on defense. We’re not talking on the court. The only noise I hear is about who took how many shots. That ends tonight,” he said, looking at Roy. “I don’t care whether you’re a captain, a general, or the twelfth man. The next game is the start of a new season for everybody. From now on, we play as a team, and we win as a team.”

  I looked around the gym. I was surprised to see JJ nodding along with Ruben and clapping quietly—almost to himself. Other guys were doing the same thing. There were no more hanging heads. Soon everyone was clapping.

  Raj shouted, “Let’s do it, Chuckers!”

  “Let’s win, baby,” added Trashman.

  “One more thing,” Ruben said. “We’re gonna see these guys again. And next time, we’re gonna win.”

  17

  We gathered in the hallway outside the locker room. In a minute, we would be boarding the bus back to Pilchuck. Tempers had cooled. Most of the team and some of the fans were planning to go for pizza when we got home. I had already cleared it with my parents. When Megan heard that, she went up to Coach. I watched as she asked, then begged to go.

  “You are so overbearing,” Megan said. “Why do you have to know where I am all the time?”

  “Because I’m your father and that’s my job.”

  “We’re just going for pizza, Dad.”

  “That’s how it starts,” Coach answered, nodding.

  But Megan refused to give up. Coach pulled her farther away from the group, probably to explain some new Dr. Barb special he had seen about what happened to girls who ate pizza after basketball games. Then I guessed he asked Megan, “Who else is going?”

  Megan pointed to Valerie.

  “Anyone else?”

  She looked over her shoulder. And pointed at me!

  I tried to duck behind McKlusky. But Coach had tracked Megan’s finger and had spied me easily. I waved, trying to look innocent. Before Coach could come after me, though, Mrs. Applewhite appeared with his coat. Megan explained the situation. Her mom
nodded, overruling Coach. “Be home by eleven,” she said.

  “Ten-forty-five,” Coach said.

  “I will,” Megan promised.

  She ran over to me. “Ready?” she asked.

  Seeing that Coach was gone, I relaxed and said, “I am now.”

  We boarded the bus and took our seats. Megan sat in front with Valerie. I found a seat to myself halfway back. As the bus rolled along the highway, winding with the river below, I replayed my first minutes of game time. Okay, so I wasn’t an all-star yet. But I had been on the court, wearing a uniform, in front of real fans. I’d come a long way for a gym rat. And even though I missed the action at the rec center, after a taste of a real game, I wanted more.

  The bus was turning onto Verlot Street when JJ sat down next to me. “Hey, man,” he said, surprising me. How long had it been since he had started a conversation? Weeks at least. “Do you think it’d be cool with your folks if I crashed at your place tonight?”

  “Is your dad out of town?”

  “No. That’s the problem. He’s waiting for me with a videotape of the game. I already know I went 0 for 50. I don’t need him to remind me.”

  That made me think about what Roy had said earlier—that this wasn’t college and that winning wasn’t everything. College was big bucks and big crowds and superstars on television. And tons of pressure to win. Eighth grade wasn’t supposed to be like that. But we did have a star and we did play to win. I wondered who was right, Roy or Ruben—or Coach. Would I rather sit on the bench and cheer the guys who gave us the best chance to win—or play my fair share of minutes even if it meant we might not be as competitive? If we kept losing, it wouldn’t matter. One thing was sure, JJ didn’t make being the star seem like very much fun—to judge by the look on his face. It wasn’t quite desperation, but it was close.

  I took my time answering him, because I wasn’t sure how to feel about all this. I didn’t know whether to be happy because JJ wanted to hang out at my house—something he hadn’t done since before summer—or to be suspicious that he was only doing it to avoid a lecture from his dad. And then I decided that this was what friends were for—to forgive and to help each other. So I held out my hand and said, “Sure. It’d be cool.”