Titan Clash

by Sigmund Brouwer

  Titan Clash

  Sigmund Brouwer

  orce sports

  Copyright © 2007 Sigmund Brouwer

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Brouwer, Sigmund, 1959-

  Titan clash / written by Sigmund Brouwer.

  (Orca sports)

  Electronic Monograph

  Issued also in print format.

  ISBN 9781551437231(pdf) -- ISBN 9781554697595 (epub)

  1. Basketball--Juvenile fiction. I. Title. II. Series.

  PS8553.R68467T57 2007 jC813’.54 C2006-907045-8

  Summary: On track for a college basketball scholarship, Jack’s world starts to crumble when his mother has a car accident and his father is arrested for fraud.

  First published in the United States, 2007

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2006940591

  Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  Cover design: Doug McCaffry

  Cover photography: Getty Images

  Author photo: Bill Bilsley

  In Canada:

  Orca Book Publishers

  PO Box 5626, Station B

  Victoria, BC Canada

  V8R 6S4

  In the United States:

  Orca Book Publishers

  PO Box 468

  Custer, WA USA

  98240-0468

  www.orcabook.com

  010 09 08 07 • 4 3 2 1

  chapter one

  I couldn’t tell whether the crowd in the gym was more excited about the basketball game or the chance to win a free pickup truck.

  I mean, Turner, Indiana, is definitely crazy about high school basketball. Our town has 7,954 people. And on this Saturday afternoon, like all game days, it seemed as if 7,950 of them had turned out to watch the season-opening game of the Turner High Titans. Stores and service stations had shut down for the afternoon. The babies, kids, parents and old people—even grumpy Mr. Broadworth in his wheelchair—made for one huge screaming crowd.

  I knew one person was definitely missing: Mom; she was in the hospital. And two other people I knew were absent were the Gould brothers, in jail for unpaid speeding tickets. But to give you an idea of how big high school basketball is in Turner, Sheriff Mackenzie had come to the game. He left the Gould brothers behind with a radio to listen to the play-by-play broadcast.

  And if that weren’t enough to fill the gym, there were another six hundred fans for the Wolford Wolves, our opponents, from a high school fifteen miles away. The high school band, the cheerleaders, and the television and radio crews added to the chaos.

  Along with one hundred and fifty gray pigeons. And one unusual-looking brown pigeon.

  Yes, pigeons. Around here, pigeons are a lot cheaper than doves. One hundred and fifty-one pigeons sat onstage in a large cage in front of the school band. They were about to be released as part of a promotion for Turner Chev Olds, the local car dealership where my dad worked as head accountant.

  I could see Dad from where I stood with the other players near the bench at the side of the court.

  Dad stood on the stage beside the pigeon cage with a man named Ike Bothwell. Ike and his brother, Ted, owned Turner Chev Olds. Ted wasn’t here—he never showed up for anything fun.

  Ike held a microphone, waiting for the ra-pa-pum marching band music to end. Seeing Dad and Ike together, I found it hard to believe they had been best friends since high school.

  Dad, with his dark hair and long lean face looked like Abe Lincoln without a beard. Dad wore what he always did—white shirt, black pants, black suspenders and a narrow black tie.

  Ike, with his usual unlit cigar in his left hand, was anything but tall and thin. His big black cowboy hat covered his bald head. His wide belly oozed over his belt like volcano lava hanging over the edge of a cliff. Ike’s checkered shirt, blue jeans and cowboy boots were his trademark. He always wore them during his late-night television commercials, where he lit a big cigar and told folks to “Come on down to Turner Chev Olds for the best old-fashioned deals in the state!” Except, Turner Chev Olds was losing money. I knew that from Dad. And that was the reason for the pigeons.

  Losing money or not, Ike was putting on a good face for the public. He grinned and tapped his feet to the band’s music.

  Dad just stood there with his arms crossed. He didn’t like the pigeon promotion idea. Even if he had liked it, his face would look set in stone.

  Ike was crazy about the idea. He, of course, had thought it up.

  The odd-looking brown pigeon had a little capsule attached to its leg by a tiny band of paper. Inside the capsule was a coupon that let whoever found it choose a brand-new pickup truck—for free. The way it was supposed to work was this: When the paper eventually tore, the capsule would fall from the pigeon’s leg. If someone found the capsule, they’d get a truck.

  That was the key word: If.

  Two days earlier, when we’d talked about the pigeons, Ike had laughed a big belly laugh and told me there was very little chance anyone would find the capsule. It could end up anywhere in the county—in a lake, a garbage dump, a pile of weeds, a rain gutter. The whole point, Ike had said, still laughing, was the free publicity the car dealership would get from the event.

  By the look of the crowd in the gym, his publicity plan was working. Television crews had their cameras all around. The slick Hollywood-type six o’clock newscaster from Fort Wayne’s biggest station—a hundred miles away—had positioned himself right in front of the stage.

  Everything was set. All that remained to be done was to release the pigeons—after opening the double doors at the end of the gym, so the pigeons could fly into the cloudless windy day outside. Then the basketball game would begin, which was all I really cared about.

  The rest of the guys on the Titans felt the same way. Looking down the line of blue uniforms, I could see that my teammates were restless. Some guys bobbed up and down on their toes. Others slapped their hands against their thighs. A couple of them glanced at the scoreboard and the huge 00–00 spelled out in tiny lightbulbs.

  Finally the music stopped with a few feeble wheezes from the trombones.

  Ike tapped the microphone. It squealed out some noise.

  He coughed into it to get our attention.

  “Folks!” he shouted. His voice was so loud several people winced. Ike, I guess, didn’t get the concept of a speaker system. “It’s time for the big kickoff of our biggest sales event of the year! Come on down to Turner Chev Olds for the best old-fashioned deals in the great state of Indiana! Zero down and a couple of hundred a month gets you a brand-new car!”

  “Just let ’em go, Ike!” someone shouted from the crowd. “Let ’em go!”

  “Yeah, Ike!” someone else shouted. “I want that free truck!”

  So did everybody else in town. Including my best friend, Tom Sawyer. Yes. Tom Sawyer. People bug him about his name all the time. The trouble is, he lives up to the name of Mark Twain’s famous character.

  I was worried about Tom.

  This morning he had told me he had a plan to win the free truck, but he wouldn’t give me any details. I hadn’t seen Tom in the gym. I was half afraid he was waiting outside with a shotgun, ready to shoot
the pigeons as they flew through the double doors.

  “Folks!” Ike Bothwell shouted again into the squealing microphone. “You ask, and Turner Chev Olds delivers. Will someone at the back please open the gym doors?”

  The school janitor pushed them open. The wide-open space made a hole of bright light against the fluorescent light inside the gym.

  Ike looked back at the high school band. The drummer nodded and started a long theatrical drumroll.

  Ike bowed, turned and opened the cage door.

  Nothing happened.

  Those pigeons stayed where they were.

  Ike looked at the crowd watching him and grinned stupidly.

  Still, the pigeons stayed inside the cage.

  Ike shrugged and walked around to the back of the cage.

  He waved his arms, trying to shoo them out.

  The pigeons didn’t budge.

  Ike took off his hat and waved it. Still, the pigeons stayed in the cage.

  Finally, Ike kicked at the back of the cage. It began to fall forward.

  He yelped, hooked his fingers around the bars of the cage and was pulled down with it.

  It fell, door down, with a loud bang. The pigeons inside finally began to flap around, but they were trapped. Feathers flew everywhere, but the birds had no place to go.

  Dad rolled his eyes. It was the only sign of emotion he ever showed. He does it with me when I’ve done something he doesn’t like. Which is often.

  Dad walked over and lifted Ike off the cage. Then, with the help of two trombone players, Dad got the cage upright.

  This time the pigeons made a beeline out the cage door. In a whirring explosion of gray, they burst into the gym and flew toward the open doors and daylight at the other end.

  And just as suddenly as the pigeons had exploded from the cage, my friend Tom Sawyer stepped into the doorway at the end of the gym. Armed with a giant butterfly net.

  chapter two

  In a flash, I understood Tom’s plan. He wasn’t going to shoot the brown pigeon with the capsule tied to its leg. He was going to try to catch it.

  Except his plan didn’t quite work.

  The pigeons, already scared by the falling cage, saw his dark outline in the light of the doorway. As one, they veered away from the open doors and back toward us.

  Then they scattered in all directions, frantic to find safety somewhere. But there was no place to land among the lights that hung from the gym ceiling. And there was no place to land among all the screaming, waving fans.

  Pigeons ducked and flew in all directions, like a swarm of oversized moths beating their wings around a porch light at night.

  I guess birds try to drop weight when they’re scared and flying away from danger. And there is one way for them to lose some weight quickly. With no warning, it began to rain.

  But it didn’t rain water.

  I saw it on the news later that night. I guess the shot was too good for the television station to resist. Their Hollywood-handsome newscaster might have been the first one to get hit.

  A big white smear landed on his nose and splattered his cheeks. He touched it with his fingers and stared at the mess with disbelief.

  Old Mr. Broadworth was another early victim. I looked his way just as it happened. Sitting in his wheelchair, he leaned his head back to watch the pigeons above him. When he tilted his head back, his mouth opened. One second he was looking up. The next second he was gagging and spitting and reaching into his pocket for his handkerchief.

  Within minutes, dozens of people had been bombed. There were squeaks and squeals and groans and outraged shouts.

  I checked the stage to see what Dad was doing.

  Ike, whose hat had fallen off when he’d knocked over the pigeon cage, had two white splats on his bowling-ball scalp. His eyes were as wide as if he had just swallowed a bug.

  But Dad merely stood quietly with his arms still crossed and no expression on his face.

  As I watched, a pigeon bombed him too, getting him squarely on the top of his head.

  Dad didn’t flinch. Dad didn’t move. He didn’t even shake his head in disgust. If I hadn’t seen him take a hit to the head, I would never have guessed it had happened. Of course, he might have had the same reaction if the NBA had just drafted me. Dad’s not very excitable.

  I turned my eyes back to the chaos.

  In the fifteen minutes it took to clear the gym, Tom Sawyer disappeared and the pigeons made the gym floor look like someone had taken a paintbrush and flicked white paint in every direction.

  It took another twenty minutes for the floor to be cleaned and the lineups at the bathroom to shorten as people waited their turn to wipe themselves off.

  Finally the game started.

  What a way to start a season.

  chapter three

  I couldn’t have known that night might be the peak of my season. Looking back on that first game, my guess would have been the opposite: that the season had a lot of promise.

  After all, this was my senior year. I wanted to play well and have a chance at a basketball scholarship. To me, every game was as important as a play-off game.

  I start at center. If I were a scout reporting on my game, I would say I’m not the slowest player, but I’m not the fastest either. I’m not taller than a lot of other players, nor a lot shorter. One of my strengths is also a weakness: My emotions stay even. I don’t get upset easily, but sometimes I don’t allow myself to take advantage of momentum. Another weakness is that I’m not fast at running straight ahead. But I can make up for that because I have quick hands and I study the NBA pros to copy some of their moves.

  From the opening tip-off, I was smoking hot. Even if I had to say so myself, instead of hearing it from someone else, like, say, my dad. He generally focuses on my mistakes, “to help me play better next game.” This time, though, I read it in the newspaper the next day.

  The article said I was a “significant factor” at both ends of the court. My jump shots seemed to zero in on the net. I always seemed to be in the right spot beneath the basket to snag rebounds.

  The game was going so well that early into the fourth quarter we were up 74–71, and I had scored thirty points.

  The crowd got crazier and crazier as the minutes ticked by. I hit two more jumpers and scored another four points at the free-throw line. I was in a zone of concentration where everything felt like it should drop with hardly more than a swish of the net.

  Every time I touched the ball, the cheering got louder and louder. I couldn’t figure it out.

  With five minutes left in the game, our team was up 87–86.

  Finally Chuck Murray, a guard, pounded me on the back and yelled, “You’re just four points away from the record!”

  I must have looked as surprised as I felt because he asked, “Didn’t you hear the announcer?”

  I shook my head, sweat dripping onto the floor at my feet. “No. I was just thinking basketball.”

  He grinned. “Well, keep thinking it. You’ve almost got the record for the most points scored in a single game. But the game’s not over, and we need you to knock down a couple more buckets.”

  But thoughts of the record threw off my concentration. My next shot didn’t even hit the backboard.

  There were three minutes left in the game. The Wolves scored coming back up the court, putting them ahead by one point.

  Chuck fired a bounce pass to me. This time I managed to get my mind off the record and back on the game. From the top of the circle, I nailed another basket.

  That put us back up 89–88.

  But our defense couldn’t stop them, and the Wolves answered with another basket. Down 89 to their 90 with less than a minute in the game.

  All I was thinking was win.

  We crossed the half-court line, firing passes around the perimeter. With ten seconds left on the clock, I got the ball.

  The crowd screamed for me to shoot.

  Nine seconds remained.

  I couldn’t s
hoot. Not with the game on the line and tight coverage from a guy who seemed twice my height.

  Eight seconds.

  I decided to try a new move I’d been working on.

  Because I’m right-handed, I began by dribbling the ball to my left, knowing my defender was likely to go for my fake because I would be taking it back to his stronger hand. I half spun and kept dribbling, keeping my body between me and the defender.

  Seven seconds.

  Now for the fake spin.

  I looked over my left shoulder, turning my body slightly as if I would be going that direction.

  That’s all it took. A subtle small move.

  By instinct the defender slid back to block my spin to the net. He only took a half step in that direction. But it was enough. I made my move in the opposite direction and drove to the basket, spinning the ball off my fingertips to the net.

  It hit the rim, rolled for what seemed like two hours, and then wobbled through.

  Two seconds later, the buzzer sounded. Titans, 91. Wolves, 90.

  Our victory. My single-game scoring record.

  I looked for Dad in the stands among the yelling, cheering fans. He gave me a short nod. Then all I saw was his back as he walked toward the gym doors.

  chapter four

  At twenty minutes after eleven the following Monday morning, I thought I heard my name over the school intercom.

  But I wasn’t sure if I had heard correctly because I was in the middle of a physics problem I had been trying to figure out for fifteen minutes. It was something about a cannonball that had been shot upward at an angle of forty-five degrees with an initial speed of one hundred miles an hour. Like how was it going to help me in life to know how long that cannonball would stay in the air and how far it would go before it landed?

  I looked around. I had never been called to the office before. Sure enough, kids were looking back at me. So I must have heard right.

  “Hey, Jack,” one of the guys hooted from the back, “you’re busted!”

  I gathered my books in a pile and threw them in my backpack.

  “That’s right,” I said. “Big bank robbery this weekend. How’d they know it was me?”