Bouncing Back

by Scott Ostler

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 by Scott Ostler

  Cover art copyright © 2019 by Cliff Nielsen. Cover design by Marcie Lawrence. Cover copyright © 2019 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  Little, Brown and Company

  Hachette Book Group

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  First Edition: October 2019

  Little, Brown and Company is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Little, Brown name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Ostler, Scott, author.

  Title: Bouncing back / by Scott Ostler.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Little, Brown and Company, 2019. |

  Summary: Orphaned thirteen-year-old Carlos learns what it truly means to be a teammate when he must help save his new wheelchair basketball team’s gym from destruction.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018060496 | ISBN 9780316524742 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780316524735 (ebook) | ISBN 9780316524759 (library edition ebook)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Basketball—Fiction. | People with disabilities—Fiction. | Wheelchairs—Fiction. | Orphans—Fiction. | Mexican Americans—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.O846 Bo 2019 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018060496

  ISBNs: 978-0-316-52474-2 (hardcover), 978-0-316-52473-5 (ebook)

  E3-20190814-JV-NF-ORI

  Contents

  COVER

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  DEDICATION

  1: WELCOME TO THE PALACE

  2: NO PLACE TO HIDE

  3: PANCAKES

  4: SEVENTH WHEEL

  5: ME AND STOMPER

  6: CON MAN

  7: THE BUS

  8: LOCKED OUT

  9: WET AND WORRIED

  10: ABOUT BULLIES

  11: DISARMING STOMPER

  12: HEY, STOMPER

  13: COACHIN’ HIM UP

  14: DIRTY WORK

  15: BYE-BYE BUCCANEERS

  16: WHAT WOULD GANDHI DO?

  17: FLASHBACKS

  18: TO THE BREEZE

  19: STOMPER’S BUTT ON THE LINE

  20: MEET MAYOR MCCHEESEY

  21: GLOOMY SATURDAY

  22: DIRTY TRICKS

  23: BENCHED

  24: DIGGING DEEP

  25: MIA THE REJECT

  26: BIG NEWS AT FREDDIE SPAGHETTI

  27: MIA’S BIG IDEA

  28: SPIES IN THE TREES

  29: THE LONG WEEKEND

  30: STOMPER’S OUT

  31: LOCKDOWN

  32: THE PALACE’S DAYS ARE NUMBERED

  33: THE OLD HEAD FAKE

  34: THE NIGHTMARE

  35: BIG BERTHA

  36: WHAT THE HECK HAPPENED?

  37: THE ZEN OF STATE

  38: GIVE-AND-GO

  39: BASKETBALL

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  DISCOVER MORE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  To my wife, Kathy, whose belief in the project and in the author from start to finish made all the difference.

  To my mom, Betty, for a lifetime of love and encouragement.

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  Tap here to learn more.

  WELCOME TO THE PALACE

  AUNT ROSIE HADN’T EVEN PARKED THE VAN YET, AND I already wanted her to turn around and take us home. This was a bad idea. I could feel it.

  Bay City is a pretty small town, but in the year I’d lived here, I had never been to this part of it, down by the railroad tracks. No reason to go. Nothing here but some abandoned shops and warehouses, a few dumpy homes overrun with weeds, and a junky car here and there.

  And the gym. If you could call it that.

  It looked like a gigantic soup can cut in half the long way and dropped into the middle of a playground. Above the double front doors was an old neon sign that said THE PALACE. There was a bird’s nest inside the P and it looked like the sign hadn’t been lit in, like, fifty years. The heavy morning fog made the ugly old building look even gloomier.

  “Not much of a palace,” my aunt said jokingly. I’m pretty sure she could tell I wasn’t thrilled to be here.

  Maybe it wasn’t too late for us to just start the car, drive back up the hill, and go meet Uncle Augie for breakfast at the Stack Shack. But I couldn’t do that to Aunt Rosie. I didn’t have much hope that this was going to work out, but I knew she did.

  Inside, the gym wasn’t as bad as I expected—it was worse. It was cold outside, but it was colder inside. I saw what looked like a big heater in the corner, but one hose was disconnected, and there were cobwebs all over it. There was a funky, musty smell. The lights were on, but it still seemed kind of dark.

  And it was noisy. Along with bouncing balls and kids talking, music was booming out of a speaker by the little set of bleachers—some awful, whiny song about Kansas City. Six kids were already out on the court. One girl looked familiar—she might have been in one of my classes, although she didn’t use a wheelchair at school.

  When I played basketball before, our bright, new gym had been like home. I was with my best friends. That seemed like a million years ago, not just one.

  Now it was me and a bunch of kids I didn’t know. In wheelchairs.

  A man in a wheelchair rolled over to us. “Hi, Rosie. Hi, Carlos,” he said. “Welcome back to basketball.”

  “Thanks, Coach,” Aunt Rosie replied for me, flashing an encouraging smile my way. Trooper Bennett had called Aunt Rosie a month earlier and told her he coached a thirteen-and-under wheelchair basketball team, and they would like to invite me to check it out. He called back a couple more times to talk about the program, and about me.

  Rosie and Augie didn’t insist, but they asked that I give it a try.

  No thanks, I’d rather just sit home, watch TV, and mope—that wasn’t going to cut it.

  So here we were. Sitting around the house watching TV seemed like a much better plan.

  I knew I could probably talk Rosie into leaving right then. But her excitement and hope kept me rooted to the spot. Maybe I could just watch the practice. Then at least I could say, “Hey, I gave it a shot.”

  “Let’s get you into a basketball chair, Carlos,” Trooper said.

  I gritted my teeth as Coach and one of the dads transferred me to a basketball wheelchair, a stripped-down chair designed for speed and movement. The seat was low and the wheels angled in at the top, “To make it faster and more stable,” the dad explained. “It will feel a little strange at first, because it’s so light. Your regular chair is like a passenger plane, and this chair is like a fighter jet. We strap you in with this lap belt because that makes the chair more responsive to your body movements.”

  He was right about it feeling strange. For one thing, since the seat was lower, the basket
seemed even higher. I couldn’t imagine playing basketball in this thing.

  “Whaddaya do best, Carlos?” Trooper asked. “What’s your game? Shooting? Rebounding? Passing?”

  I shrugged. “Shooting, I guess.”

  Then I felt dumb. I used to be a good shooter, best in the league. But that was back when I could jump and touch the bottom of the net. Now the rim looked like it was fifty feet high instead of ten.

  Trooper tossed me a ball and said, “Go ahead and shoot around, Carlos, get warm. Once we start practice, feel free to just watch if you want, check it out. When you’re ready, we’ll put you out there. Don’t expect to feel comfortable right away, but I know you’ve played a lot of basketball, you’ll catch on quicker than you think. It’s the same game.”

  Right. Just like everything in my life is the same as it was before.

  I put the ball on my lap and pushed slowly out onto the court, looking for an empty basket. Maybe I could get through the whole practice without anyone really noticing me. Then go home and do something more fun, like algebra homework.

  Nope.

  A kid rolled up to me, looking way too peppy. “Hey, I’m James,” he said. “What’s your name?”

  I think I cringed. “Carlos.”

  “Welcome to the Palace, Carlos,” he said. “Wanna shoot?”

  I shrugged.

  “Go ahead and take some shots, I’ll rebound for a while. That’ll help me get warmed up.”

  I took a shot. Holy cow. Airball! Then another. My shots weren’t coming within three feet of the rim.

  Every shot was crazy short. That guy was supposed to be rebounding for me, but what he was doing instead was scrambling after my airballs as they bounced across the floor. It was like when you’re at the carnival and you try to win a stuffed animal by throwing baseballs at the metal bottles, but the bottles are super heavy and they don’t fall, and the harder you try, the madder and more embarrassed you get.

  I was glad my old teammates weren’t here to see this. Cooper the Hooper, they used to call me. I took all the shots—or most of them. I was what they call a gunner, but my teammates didn’t mind, because nobody in the league could shoot like I could.

  That seemed like a million years ago. When you’re new to life in a wheelchair, you run into situations that are frustrating and embarrassing. I was getting better at shrugging off that kind of stuff. But Cooper the Hooper not being able to reach the hoop? My face was burning.

  I fired up another three or four pathetic misses. James laughed, then quickly said, “Sorry, Carlos.” He rolled over by me, spinning the ball on his index finger. I saw that he was a double amputee, both lower legs gone from just below the knees.

  “I’m not laughing at you, I’m laughing at me,” he said. “I was just remembering my very first shot,” he said. “I shot an airball, of course. Trooper was sitting right over there. The ball took one big bounce and knocked the cup of coffee out of his hand and it splashed all over him.”

  James laughed again, but my eyes got wide. Embarrassing yourself like that didn’t seem funny to me, and neither did messing with a coach. I glanced over at Trooper. With his buzz cut and serious expression, he looked like an army drill sergeant. I remembered he told Rosie that this wasn’t just recreation; it was competitive basketball.

  “Was he mad?” I asked.

  “Oh, man,” James said. “When that coffee went flying, I froze, and everyone in the gym stopped what they were doing and stared. Trooper looked at me, looked at his shirt and pants, soaked. He looked back at me and started laughing his butt off. He laughed so hard he got tears in his eyes. Then he said, ‘Son, I think your shot needs a little work. Let me show you a couple things.’”

  James tossed me the ball and said, “So let me show you a couple of the things. If that’s cool?”

  I kind of nodded.

  “The shooting motion is different from what you’re used to,” he said. “All arm and wrist.”

  He motioned for me to shoot.

  “Try keeping your right elbow closer to your side. It might seem easier to shoot with two hands, but you’ll be a much better shooter in the long run with one.”

  I shot another airball, and he nodded.

  “Good. Nice wrist flip.”

  “Really?” I said. “That looked terrible!”

  James just smiled.

  I huffed. “How long did it take you?”

  “To do what? Make a shot?”

  I nodded.

  “I went oh-for-two,” he said.

  “You missed your first two shots? I’ve already missed more than that.”

  “No, dude, I missed every shot my first two practices. Then I quit. I could see that basketball was not my sport. I was already pretty good at wheelchair track-and-field, why do something I was bad at?” He put up a shot from the free-throw line. Swish.

  “Yep,” James said. “I went home and cried. Told my parents I was done with basketball. They said, ‘Just go to one more practice, give it one more try. If you still hate it, you can quit.’ That’s all I wanted to do, make it through that one more practice, so I could quit.”

  He rolled out to the top of the key, spun his chair, and tossed up a twenty-footer. It looked so easy. Long arc. Another swish. “That was four years ago,” he said.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Something clicked. I realized I loved basketball. Everything about it. Even the stuff I couldn’t do. Especially the stuff I couldn’t do.”

  That seemed weird. I used to be good at one thing, shooting, and that’s all I ever practiced.

  “How did you finally…”

  “Make a basket?” he said. “Well, that third practice, we scrimmaged and I had a couple wide-open layups, but I passed off. Trooper blew his whistle. He said, ‘James, I like the way you get to the hoop. Next time you have an open shot and don’t take it, you owe me five laps around the court.”

  He tossed me the ball.

  “So I shot. And missed. Easy shots. Every miss, Trooper said, ‘Beautiful, keep shooting, unless you want to do laps.’ My teammates kept passing me the ball and saying, ‘Shoot, James!’ It got to be like a joke, a fun thing. That felt good.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a ball coming at me. I turned and caught it just before it smacked me in the side of the head. I tossed it back to that girl from my school. “Sorry!” she said. “Hot Rod got a little crazy with his passing.”

  “I can tell you’ve played a lot of ball,” James said, nodding. “Most guys, that pass hits ’em in the head. I bet you’d be good with pick-and-rolls, like where you have to see stuff and work the ball around, get open shots for everyone on the team. You’ll catch on to the shooting, but shooting’s just one part of the game, right?”

  Wrong. For Cooper the Hooper, shooting was 100 percent of the game. I passed only when necessary. It’s not like I was a selfish player. My old teammates wanted me to shoot.

  The coach’s whistle cut through the air.

  “Circle up, guys and gals,” Trooper said, and the six other players formed a half circle at midcourt. “Quick introduction before we get started. This is Carlos Cooper. He’s played a lot of basketball, but this is his first look at wheelchair ball. James, while I go get the clock ready, would you please give Carlos a rundown on our scroungy cast of characters?”

  Awkward. Why spend time on big introductions when I was just visiting?

  “All right, Carlos, you know me. James Douglas. I’m the old man on this team, I’ve been playing four years now. This is Hayley O’Brien. We call her Nails, because of her nails”—she held up her hands to show her fingernails, painted in bright, curving patterns—“and because she’s our toughest rebounder. You know, like, tough as nails?”

  Hayley didn’t look tough. Not very big, with pale skin and long, dark red hair. She smiled and nodded at me.

  Next was a kid with really light blond hair, spiky on top and maybe bleached. He was wearing a Grateful Dead T-shirt.

&
nbsp; “That’s Ronnie Barnes. Ronnie plays our music before and after practices on his speakers, so we call him DJ. That’s the shorter version. Full nickname: DJ Gluten Free, because of his diet. No donuts for DJ.”

  “Next, Mia Brooks.” The girl from my school. “She uses a chair only part-time. The rules say you can play if you have a disability that prevents you from playing able-bodied basketball, so we lucked out on that. I should warn you now about Mia’s screens.”

  “We call her the Reject,” DJ said. “You’ll learn all our secrets eventually.”

  She smiled like she was proud of that nickname, and said, “Hi, Carlos. I’m in your math class.”

  “Oh, right,” I said, which came out sounding kind of dumb, but she smiled anyway.

  James continued. “Then there’s Hot Rod Henderson. His real name is Harold, but he prefers Hot Rod, and who can blame him? Hot Rod is our intellectual.”

  Hot Rod wore dark-rim glasses, like a super serious student, and his dark black hair came down almost to his shoulders.

  “Yeah,” Hot Rod said, “Trooper calls me ‘the English Poet.’ Be careful around here, Carlos. If you read a book, these people think you’re like a rocket scientist.”

  “Yeah,” Mia said, “but one of those books you read is the encyclopedia.”

  The next kid blurted, “And Hot Rod’s the only one on our team who even knows what IQ stands for.”

  James said, “That’s Joe Borowski. Joe doesn’t even know how to spell IQ. We call him Jellybean. Or just Beans. Guess what his favorite snack is?”

  “Ding Dongs,” Jellybean said sarcastically.

  James clapped his hands. “Well, that’s our crew, Carlos. By the way, Coach has two rules: play hard and have fun. So, here we go. Ready, guys?”

  Everyone reached out and held hands around the circle. I hesitated, but James grabbed one hand and DJ—was it DJ?—grabbed the other.

  James said, “One—two—three…”

  Everyone shouted, “Buccaneers!”

  I felt like I was being initiated into a club I didn’t ask to join. I looked up at the clock on the wall. It said 9:20, which meant it was broken, and I wouldn’t be able to see how much closer I was to getting out of this jail. It was going to be a long four hours.