by Scott Ostler
Hayley: It is fun! I thought it was interesting what Mr. Forrest of the Breeze told us, that the official inspection by Barker Projects was conducted before the mayor met with us.
Well, there’s more. The contract to build the new mini mall was awarded to Walkman Construction two days before the mayor met with us.
Hot Rod: That means that when the mayor came to the Palace and told us he was hoping to save it, he already had the inspection report and had a company signed up to tear the thing down and put up the mall?
Hayley: Looks like it. I went over the minutes of the weekly city council meetings last month. One councilperson told the mayor she was confused about the dates on the inspection report and the contract. The mayor said he didn’t yet have copies of the documents. Apparently, the council just took his word on the dates.
Jellybean: You should be able to trust the mayor, right?
Hayley: I guess it can get confusing. There’s a ton of things discussed at those meetings. Although one council member did challenge the mayor on the mall contract, asking him if it was a sweetheart deal.
Mia: What’s that mean?
Hot Rod: Kind of like an underhanded or sneaky deal. What did the mayor say, Hayley?
Hayley: The mayor said, “How can I have a sweetheart deal with someone I don’t even know?”
Carlos: Maybe the mayor and Mr. Walkman aren’t sweethearts, but they play golf together.
Mia: How do you know?
Carlos: Stomper told me.
DJ: Hayley, thanks for the info. You, too, Carlos. But I don’t see what good it does us. It’s not like we can take it to the newspaper.
I started to tell my teammates what I had just learned about the asbestos, but then I had an idea: Why not phone Mia and give her the scoop first? And maybe sneak in an apology.
MIA THE REJECT
IT STILL FELT LIKE A RAW DEAL THAT I HAD TO APOLOGIZE to Mia, but if that would get me back on the court, I didn’t have much choice.
I decided to do some research before calling her. I was positive I’d heard my teammates call her the Reject, so what was the big deal? Sure enough, I found a photo of her wearing her number 16 jersey, and underneath the picture the caption: Mia the Reject, #16.
How unfair was that? I get benched for being a bully because I called Mia a name she calls herself. Maybe she should be the one having to apologize to me.
Life isn’t fair. I reached for my phone, but before I touched it, it rang.
Caller ID: Mia.
Uh-oh. Maybe she was so mad she decided not to wait for an apology. I took a deep breath.
“Hey, Mia,” I said, hoping my voice sounded normal.
“Hey, Carlos. Got a minute?”
“Sure, what’s up?” I was trying to sound super casual, like I talked on the phone all the time to girls who might hate me.
“Well, I’m still mad about yesterday’s game,” Mia said. “I hated losing to those North County idiots.”
“Yeah,” I said. “We were better, but they were a lot bigger. We should have had the ref check their driver’s licenses.”
Mia laughed. “Agreed!” Then her voice got quieter. “But, uh, really the reason I called is because I try to be a good teammate, and I feel bad that we got into an argument.”
“Yeah, I feel bad, too,” I said. “And I have to apologize for the way I handled it. For the stuff I said. That wasn’t cool.”
Mia’s voice changed, got a tiny bit less friendly: “When you say you have to apologize, do you mean someone is making you apologize?”
“Uh, yes, but no,” I blurted. “What I mean is, Trooper kind of suggested I went too far, but…”
I paused to gather my thoughts.
“Forget about Trooper for a second, Carlos,” she said. “How do you feel?”
Whew.
“Well-l-l,” I said, starting to feel better about apologizing and less like a victim, “I feel like I wasn’t being a good teammate. Or a good, uh, friend.”
I had to wait for her response.
“Thanks, Carlos,” Mia said.
My head was still in a bit of a haze and I blurted, “I’m glad we’re working this out, because it’s not good for the team, you know? The last thing we need right now is for a couple of jerks to be—I mean, one jerk—to be… messing up team chemistry. And all that.”
“Besides,” Mia said, “we’re kind of stuck. It’s not like either one of us can go out and find another basketball team.”
Another laugh.
“Hey,” I said. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Maybe,” Mia said, making maybe sound like a fun word. “Give it a try.”
“I’ve heard a couple of our teammates call you that name—you know, the Reject. And you never seemed to get mad at them. So I was just wondering…”
“Ohhh,” she said. “Sometimes I forget that you haven’t been on the team long enough to know every player’s life story.”
“No, but I’d like to,” I said. That was a relief. Not because my apology was official now, but because I thought about how long it had been since I had a good friend my own age who I could just talk to. Then I thought about how, when I finally got a friend like that, I almost blew it.
“Well,” Mia said, “even the other Rats don’t know all the details behind the reason I chose 16, but here goes: You know I wear number 16. That’s how many foster homes I was in before I was adopted two years ago. I wear that number as a reminder of all the bouncing around I did.
“When I told Trooper why I wanted that number, Jellybean made a joke, like he always does. He was like, ‘Wow, Mia the Reject.’ Jellybean is never mean when he’s trying to be funny, so we all laughed, and it became an inside joke on the team.”
“Why did you move around so much?” I asked, then wondered if I was getting too personal.
I heard her sigh. “A lot of foster kids get moved around, Carlos. It’s not like nobody liked me. Most of the families were nice, but some foster parents do it because the government pays ’em, and it can be hard for a kid to, you know, feel like part of that family. I could have been the perfect child and still gotten shuffled around from family to family.”
“But sixteen families,” I said.
“Some of them I barely remember,” Mia said, “and they probably don’t remember me. A few of them didn’t even say goodbye. Eventually I started to feel like a piece of furniture.”
Without thinking, I blurted out, “Whoa.”
“What, Carlos?”
“If it wasn’t for my aunt and uncle, I might be in that foster system right now. Which sounds pretty horrible.”
“It wasn’t ideal, but it pretty much saved me. I never met my father, and my mother had severe drug problems. So ten years of foster care was a lot better than what some kids wind up with.”
“How did you not go crazy?” I asked.
“I am crazy, remember?” Mia said, teasing. “But all that moving around taught me a lot. Like, about people. Plus, I got really good at packing and keeping all my stuff folded up in one suitcase.”
“It must have been lonely,” I said. “Changing families all the time.”
“I always had my best friends with me—my books. One year I read forty.”
“What?” I said. “I don’t know if I’ve read forty books in my whole life. ”
“Books are great, but now I have something better—basketball, and my teammates.”
We talked and talked. I learned that Mia has a condition that sometimes makes it hard for her to straighten her arms and legs, but she still played able-bodied sports when she was younger. When she got to middle school, the girls’ basketball coach told her she couldn’t play because she was so small and frail that she might get hurt.
“Then I hit the lottery!” Mia exclaimed. “Two awesome women adopted me—my double moms. They found out about BARD and wheelchair basketball. I thought it was a crazy idea at first, since I can walk, although I use a chair sometimes.
“Troo
per came to our house to tell us about the team. I thought he would be like the middle-school coach, take one look at me and tell me to go out for the chess team.”
Mia paused. I could tell she was getting kind of emotional.
“Trooper talked about how his team played competitive basketball, and it was serious, and there was contact. Then he said to my moms, ‘Mia is ready for this.’ My mom asked him how he could be so sure. He said, ‘The whole time I’ve been talking about kids falling out of chairs, and tough practices, your daughter has been smiling.’”
Mia paused, then said, “I bet your aunt and uncle didn’t have to sell you on playing basketball, either.”
“Actually, they kind of did,” I said. “I was pretty sure I was done with sports forever. But I like your story better. It would make a great movie.”
“Oh, right,” Mia said. “We could call it The Revenge of the Reject!”
“I am sorry, Mia, for calling you that. It’s really a cool nickname, and I made it uncool.”
“Yeah,” Mia said, and paused. “But like Trooper always tells us: ‘You gotta grow some skin.’”
“I don’t think he means putting up with insults from your teammates,” I said.
“Maybe not. But this whole thing with us yelling at each other, and you calling me that name—it made me think. All that moving around I did, all that rejection, I always just brushed it aside. Maybe it kind of stuck somewhere in the back of my heart, and when you said that… But I know that wasn’t really you, Carlos, and I feel better that you apologized, and we talked it out.”
“So we’re good?” I asked, then quickly added, “Not just because I want Trooper to un-bench me. We need to be, like, you know, teammates again.”
“We’re super good.”
“Great,” I said. Then, “Hey, I almost forgot to tell you what I found out about the Palace and the asbestos!”
When I told Mia, she was shocked.
“That’s amazing, Carlos. I wonder if we should tell William. With what Hayley found and what you discovered, maybe the Breeze editor would change his mind and let William write the story after all?”
“William made it sound like it was dead,” I said, “but I guess it couldn’t hurt to let him know. I’ll email him.”
“Oops,” Mia said, “I have to go now, my dinner’s ready. Hey, since you had to listen to my life story, I want to hear yours sometime.”
“You’ll have to wait for the movie,” I said.
“Good luck on your report. Go, Rats!”
“Go, Rats,” I said, and I felt pretty good until I realized we might have only one game left as teammates.
BIG NEWS AT FREDDIE SPAGHETTI
THE FOLLOWING SATURDAY AFTER PRACTICE, MIA’S moms treated the team to lunch at Freddie Spaghetti. We were passing around the big salad bowl and breadsticks, grumbling about how we wished our home game the next day hadn’t been wiped out, when my phone buzzed with a text.
“It’s from William at the Breeze,” I said, and all conversation stopped as I read us the message.
Hi, Carlos. Thanks for that new information about the Palace. It’s still not a story for the Breeze, but call me when you can. I’ve got some info for you and the Rats.
“Call him and let’s find out,” Hot Rod said.
William picked up and I asked if I could put him on speaker for the team.
“Sure,” William said. “Hi, Rats. You guys are great detectives. But I won’t be writing about you or the Palace for the Breeze. In fact, I won’t be writing anything for the Breeze.”
Mia clapped her hand over her mouth and looked at me.
“William, you—you didn’t get fired, did you?” she asked.
“Technically, no,” William said. “The Breeze editor, Mr. Cook, said it is a layoff due to what he called budget-mandated staff downsizing.” William laughed and said, “So, yeah, I got fired.”
A gasp went up around the table.
“Oh no!” Mia moaned, “Please tell me it wasn’t because of us!”
“No, but yes,” William said. “I’ve been bugging Mr. Cook about the story, and I went to him again with the new stuff Carlos sent me earlier this week. I could tell my boss was starting to get annoyed, especially when I told him some of the things about the mayor and the Palace just didn’t add up.
“Look, it’s been harder and harder for me to work at the Breeze without feeling like I’m selling out. I walked into Mr. Cook’s office on Wednesday to resign, but he beat me to the punch and fired—downsized—me. Funny, I’m downsized but I feel bigger.”
Mia said, “But your family…”
“Yeah, unemployment is not ideal,” he said. “But I have some news. I interviewed yesterday at the Metro Independent. And they hired me, on a probationary basis.”
“Wow,” Hot Rod said. “That paper is twenty times bigger than the Breeze. Maybe the Independent would be interested in our story.”
“You must be psychic, Hot Rod,” William said. “The Independent editor in chief said she is very interested in the story.”
A cheer went up around the table, causing everyone at the parents’ table to look over.
“Uh, sorry,” William said. “I didn’t mean to get your hopes up. Even if I do write that story, it probably wouldn’t help you guys. The Independent would have to do a lot of source-checking and fact-checking. Best case, it would be a month before a story would actually run, and the demolition of your gym is scheduled for three weeks from today.”
Around the table, faces dropped. One month might as well be twenty years. By the time the story came out in the paper, the Palace would be history, and so would the Rollin’ Rats—except for State, which started four weeks from today, if we made it.
“Sorry,” William said, “but there’s no way to speed up the process. It started out as a simple human-interest story, but now it’s like a jigsaw puzzle with some of the pieces still missing.”
“Like what?” Mia asked.
“Well,” William said, “here’s one: I haven’t been able to find the owner of Barker Projects, the company that did the inspection report. I need to ask him about the asbestos in the report. I know his name is Pete Barker, but I can’t find any other info on him, and the company doesn’t have an address. The guy probably works out of his home. All I know is that he has to be a minority person, like African American or Latino.”
“Why?” Mia asked.
“Well, to comply with the city’s equal-opportunity contracting law on this job, Barker Projects has to be a minority-owned company.”
“Maybe we’re barking up the wrong tree,” Jellybean said, and everyone groaned.
A thought jumped into my head, and I laughed out loud.
Mia said, “What’s so funny, Carlos? Jellybean’s joke wasn’t that good.”
I shook my head. “It’s nothing. Just a stupid thought.”
“Tell us,” James demanded.
“I do know someone named Pete,” I said sheepishly, “and he’s a barker.”
“Is he a minority?” William asked.
“He’s a dog,” I said. “Stomper’s dog.”
“Pete the barker!” James snorted, and everyone laughed.
Then it got quiet, and William said, “I better go do some work. Enjoy your pizza and win your next game.”
MIA’S BIG IDEA
“CARLOS, WAIT,” MIA CALLED OUT. “I’VE GOT AN idea!”
We were leaving Freddie Spaghetti and I was already halfway down the block, almost to my bus stop. I turned and waited.
“Let’s go to the golf course tomorrow,” she said, walking up to me.
I gave her a look, like, What?
“Not to play golf,” she said. “Just to take some pictures. Our game is canceled, so at least we’ll get some exercise.”
It seemed odd, but Mia was so enthusiastic that she could have said, “Let’s rob a bank,” and it would have sounded like a fun idea.
I just looked at her and she continued. “I was thinkin
g about what Hayley told us about that city councilperson accusing the mayor of having a sweetheart deal with Stomper’s dad. And how Mr. Walkman’s company is fixing up the mayor’s house. Then you said those two guys play golf together every Sunday. That all sounds kinda sweetheart-ish, doesn’t it?”
“Sounds like the mayor’s a big fat liar,” I said, still curious about this strange conversation. “But there’s nothing we can do about it.”
“This is going to sound crazy,” Mia said—and that should have been my cue to tell her I had to go, since my bus was pulling up to the stop. But I listened, knowing there would be another bus in twenty minutes.
“But what if we could prove that the mayor and Stomper’s dad are sweethearts? Or at least pals? Get a picture of them playing golf together. Wouldn’t that help the story William is writing for the Metro Independent?”
“Uh, I guess,” I said, still puzzled. “But how would we get that picture? Just go out to the golf course and ask them to pose for us? Stomper’s dad is not too fond of me, by the way.”
“They’ll never see us,” Mia said, and now I was looking down the road to see if that next bus was coming early, so I could tell her I had to go.
I said, “Then how would we get a picture of them? Hide in the trees?”
“You’re reading my mind. Sort of.”
Just then one of Mia’s moms called out from in front of Freddie Spaghetti, “Come on, honey, we have to get home.”
“Just a sec, Mom,” she said. “Gotta tell Carlos something.”
She turned back to me and whispered, “My cousin Chad works at River Oaks, taking care of the golf carts and stuff. He let me drive a cart once, and I bet if I asked him, he’d let me—us—use a cart tomorrow, to drive around and take pictures of trees for a school report.”
She made it sound like a fun way to work on a school project. And it’s not like spending a couple of hours with Mia was a bad idea.
Still, it seemed a little sneaky, and I guess she saw I wasn’t completely sold.
“We’ll just be two kids in a golf cart, Carlos. Working on a school assignment.”