Summer Ball

by Mike Lupica

  He hadn’t talked to her since they’d made it official, chosen Right Way over a couple others Richie Walker had considered for Danny and the guys.

  “We did,” he said.

  “What town is it in?”

  “Cedarville.”

  For some reason, the name made Tess laugh. Hard. “Cedarville, Maine?” she said.

  Danny said, “What’s so funny?”

  Tess said, “Nothing.”

  “Something.”

  “I’ll tell you later,” she said, like this was just one more inside joke that girls were in on and boys weren’t.

  They sat there, Danny with his head back now, staring at the clouds moving slowly across a blue, blue sky.

  “You must be excited,” Tess said.

  “I guess.”

  “You guess?” Tess said, sounding like the old Tess. “You’ll be great up there. You haven’t gotten to play a real game since the season ended. I know you, Walker. The way you look at things, there’s basketball games, and there’s killing time.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Totally true.”

  The next thing just came out of him, like a dumb, dumb shot you knew you shouldn’t have taken the second you hoisted it up. “Where’s Scott? I thought the two of you did everything together these days.”

  Tess didn’t say anything right away, just stared at him until she finally said in this low voice, “Wow.”

  “I just meant—”

  “Pretty clear to me what you meant.”

  “Maybe it came out wrong.”

  “You think?”

  There was another silence between them then, one that felt as big as McFeeley Park. Ever since they had known each other, from the first grade on, it had been like they could finish each other’s sentences. Sometimes, when they were IM-ing at night, they would type almost the exact same thing at the exact same time. But when they were IM-ing each other every night. Before something had come between them.

  Or somebody.

  Maybe Will was right.

  Maybe he was just jealous.

  “Danny,” Tess said.

  She hardly ever used his first name when they were talking, even on the computer. But when she did, she meant it was time for them to get serious.

  Danny waited.

  “Things shouldn’t be this weird between us,” she said. “I mean, it is us, right?”

  Danny had always figured that girls were smarter than boys when it came to understanding most things, figured that the only place where boys had them beat was sports and video games.

  But Tess Hewitt was smarter than all of them.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Danny said, even though he knew exactly what she meant, as usual.

  “Yes, you do.”

  Busted.

  He said, “I’m not the one who changed everything.”

  “You’re saying I did?”

  “Maybe I am.”

  “You think this is all because of Scott, don’t you?”

  “You mean Mr. Perfect.”

  It came out more sarcastic than he intended.

  Another air ball.

  “What, you’re the only one who’s supposed to be great at something?” she said. “I must have missed that chapter in Danny Walker’s Rules for Life.”

  She looked down and said, “In a way, you’re the one who stopped hanging around with me.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Once Ty started going to St. Patrick’s, all of a sudden it had to be the four of us or none of us.”

  “That’s bull.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  He spun the ball on his finger again, then slapped it away from him. “No,” he said. “Uh-uh. Stuff changed when you started spending all your free time with Mr. Perfect.”

  Tess shook her head. “It wasn’t like that.”

  “Looked that way from where I was.”

  He knew he had to get out of this. But it was too late.

  “You know what I really think?” Danny said. “If it’s this easy for you to stop hanging around with me and start hanging around with somebody else, then maybe we were never really that close friends in the first place.”

  Tess opened her mouth and closed it, her face redder than ever now.

  “Maybe it just made you feel big, hanging around with the little guy,” he said.

  She kept staring at him, eyes starting to fill up now, these little pink dots suddenly appearing all over her face. Danny was afraid she was going to start crying.

  And he had never seen Tess cry.

  Not the time her sled hit that tree when they were sledding in the winter at Middletown Golf Club and she’d broken her wrist. Not when Prankster, her first cat, had died. Not when she’d taken that tennis ball in the face a few weeks ago in a school match Danny had forced himself to watch, even if he hadn’t told Tess he was going to be there.

  He wanted to stop this now, in the worst way. The first time she cried in front of him, he didn’t want it to be because of him.

  He just didn’t know how.

  Neither did Tess. Who didn’t cry, as close as she’d come, who just kept staring at him as she bent over to pick up her racket, her hand shaking a little.

  He sat where he was, really not wanting to stand next to her today.

  She left without a word, just turned and walked straight across the court. Danny suddenly wanted to yell for her to come back, tell her he was sorry for acting like a jerk. But just as he got up to do that, he saw Scott Welles, Mr. Perfect in his own perfect tennis clothes, looking like he hadn’t even played yet, not even sweating, coming from the direction of the clay courts.

  Tess stopped halfway between them.

  Right before Scott got to her, she quickly turned around, just for a second, the sad look still on her face. Then Scott Welles took her racket from her, and the two of them walked through the main arch at McFeeley Park, like they were walking right out of Danny’s summer.

  As soon as they were gone, Danny collected his basketball, went back out on the court. It was usually his favorite thing, having a court like this all to himself. Just not today. Today, he stood on the half-court line and bounced the ball so hard, with both hands, it was like he was trying to put a meteor-size hole in it.

  Danny dribbled the ball then, like a madman, up and down the court, putting it between his legs, behind his back, using his old double-crossover move, dribbling as well—almost—with his left hand as with his right.

  He did this all nonstop, going up and back like there was a coach out there yelling at him to do it, and finally pulled up at the pond end of the court and drained a twenty-footer.

  Nothing but net.

  Was he some kind of moron, acting like he didn’t want to get to camp, get away from here?

  Get away from her?

  Man, all of a sudden he couldn’t wait to get to Maine. Maybe this is what he needed, to get mad about something the way he had gotten mad when he first got cut from travel.

  Behind him now, he heard Will say, “Just for the record, are you winning the game against the imaginary player, or losing it?”

  They must have wolfed their sandwiches.

  Ty said, “Maybe he’s replaying the game against Baltimore. Possession by possession.”

  “Or maybe,” Will said, “he’s going one-on-one with Scooter Welles,” before he quickly covered up and added, “Please don’t hurt me.”

  Danny said something his dad liked to say to him. “You guys want to talk, or you want to play?”

  They played. Two against one. If you scored, you got to keep the ball. The rule was—well, there really weren’t any rules. The two guys could come up and trap, or play a little zone defense, one up and one back. But if one of the two of them fouled, it counted as a basket for the guy with the ball.

  First guy to whatever won.

  It was usually Ty.

  Sometimes Will would win if he was having one of his unconscious d
ays from outside, no matter how far Danny and Ty pushed him away from the basket. Will still wasn’t all that much bigger than Danny, even if he was a lot stronger. But he had made himself into a better shooter than ever. A great spot-up shooter. He couldn’t defend very well, move his feet fast enough to cover fast guys. He was built more like a point guard; he just didn’t have point-guard skills.

  But if Will was open, he was money.

  “My outs,” Danny said.

  “Don’t we even get to warm up after our delicious Southwestern Chicken subs?” Will said.

  “No.”

  “Thought so.”

  Will stayed inside. Ty came outside and guarded Danny tight, maybe thinking about the shot Danny had drained as they were coming up the hill.

  Danny started right, crossed over between his legs and went left.

  Dusted him.

  Will was waiting for him now in the paint.

  He hung back, daring Danny to shoot.

  No way.

  Danny wasn’t in any mood to pull up today. He was taking this sucker to the hoop.

  Bring. It. On.

  He stutter-stepped now, the little move he made when he was setting himself to shoot from the outside, shoot his little step-back fade.

  Will bit and moved out on him.

  All Danny needed was a step.

  All he ever needed was a step.

  He was past Will now, going hard to the right side of the basket, planting his left foot, getting ready to attempt the kind of shot he always did when he was in there with the tall trees, one that was half scoop, half hook.

  He could feel Will on his side, but behind him just enough.

  Too late, bud.

  Danny let the ball go, putting just the right spin on it.

  Will blocked the ball so hard and so far Danny was afraid it was going to roll all the way down to the ducks.

  Will, who could never get one of Danny’s shots.

  “Woo hooo!” Will Stoddard yelled.

  The ball hadn’t stopped rolling yet. Danny watched it and thought, Well, that’s not a very good omen.

  He had no idea.

  4

  IN THE BOARDING AREA AT JOHN F. KENNEDY AIRPORT THEY’D MET another kid on his way to Right Way. By the time they finally got on the plane, about a half hour later than they were supposed to, all the Middletown guys felt as if they had a new friend.

  Tarik Meminger, from the Bronx, seemed to be permanently smiling, had awesome cornrows, was wearing a Derek Jeter number 2 Yankees jersey. Tarik was about the same size as Will but looked to outweigh him by a lot.

  Please don’t say you’re a guard, Danny thought.

  So he asked Tarik what position he played. Will sometimes said Danny was more likely to ask that than somebody’s full name.

  “I may be wearing my man Derek’s number 2,” he said, “but I mostly play the three.”

  Meaning small forward.

  “Wait a second,” Tarik said to them. “You guys are the travel team from out there on Long Island, right?”

  Will said, “Guilty.”

  Tarik said, “I was talking to the other two, actually.” But before Will even had a chance to act hurt or say something back, Tarik quickly put his fist out for a bump and said, “I’m just playin’.”

  Tarik went over and changed his seat then, so they could all sit together. On the flight to Portland, it was as if he and Will were in the championship game of trying to outtalk each other.

  The ride from the Portland airport, in an old miniature bus that Will said reminded him more of a stagecoach, took about an hour and a half. The driver, Nick Pinto, said he was one of the counselors at Right Way. When Danny asked where he played ball, Nick said he was a senior guard at Stonehill College in Massachusetts.

  “D-2,” Nick said.

  “I thought that was the strongest of the Mighty Ducks movies, frankly,” Will said.

  “Oh, yeah,” Tarik said. “The one where the Iceland coach looked like he belonged in Terminator. And then the cute girl went into the goal at the end.”

  “I still love her,” Will said.

  Tarik said, “Makes that Lindsay Lohan look like a boy.”

  Nick waited until they stopped. “Anyway,” he said, “D-2 is Division II. I could have gone to a couple of Division-I schools, but I didn’t want to spend four years of college sitting next to the team manager.”

  When he had picked them up at baggage claim, carrying a Right Way sign, Danny had noticed that Nick wasn’t all that much bigger than Will and Ty. Now Danny just asked him how tall he was, flat out.

  He always wanted to know.

  “How tall do you think I am?” Nick said.

  “Five-eight.”

  “Nailed it, dude,” he said.

  “It’s a gift,” Danny said.

  It seemed like they were only on the highway for about ten minutes before they started taking back roads up to Cedarville, with everybody in the red bus getting airborne again, Nick included, every time they hit a bump. Danny imagined a fight between the bumps and their seat belts that the seat belts were losing.

  “You guys are from that travel team, right?” Nick said.

  “Them, not me,” Tarik said. “The only travel games I play are ones you can get to on the 4 train.”

  “I think I saw some of the final game on TV,” Nick said to Danny. “You were pretty awesome.”

  Danny said, “Guess so.”

  “Well, get ready to take it to the next level,” Nick said.

  Danny found himself wondering if he was going to run into anybody this summer who didn’t want him to take things to the next level.

  “Because the deal is, just about everybody is awesome at Right Way.” Then Nick told them to sit back and enjoy the ride. Will asked if he really thought that was going to be possible without shock absorbers.

  “Feel like I still am on the 4 train,” Tarik said.

  They’d occasionally pass through another small town, but mostly it seemed as if they were just taking a long ride deeper and deeper into the woods. Tarik said at one point, “Oh, this is where all the trees are.”

  Eventually the bus passed underneath a huge arch, like the one at the entrance to McFeeley, with RIGHT WAY BASKETBALL CAMP in white letters on the wooden beam across the top. Now they bumped more than ever up a narrow dirt road, the bus slowing to a crawl as the hill got steeper.

  Finally the road leveled off, though, and they were inside Right Way. Danny immediately felt as if they were in some little village that somebody had carved out of a forest. There was a lake in the distance that looked as big and wide as the ocean.

  And that wasn’t the best part.

  The best part was that there seemed to be basketball courts everywhere.

  As if basketball had them completely surrounded.

  “Okay,” he said to the other guys when they’d climbed out of the bus. “This might work.”

  There was another bus, a full-size yellow bus, unloading kids in another part of the parking lot off to their right. Then another yellow bus came in right behind them. In a car lot way off to their left, Danny could see kids pulling duffel bags out of station wagons and SUVs. These must have been kids who lived close enough for their parents to drive them to Cedarville. He noticed license plates from Massachusetts and Connecticut and Maine, one Vermont, one New York.

  Counselor types were everywhere, checking names off their lists, herding kids and parents into a grassy area in the middle of the courts. Beyond the courts, down near the lake, Danny could see a row of bunkhouses that reminded him of log cabins and what had to be the main gymnasium.

  Nick said that some kids had come up a day early, on Friday, and that most of the other counselors had all been here for three or four days, getting the place ready. He said most of the college and high school coaches would be arriving the next day. They usually waited until the last minute to show up. It was different for all of them, Nick explained, depending on what kind of arrangement the
y had with the camp. He said some stayed for two weeks, some would be there the whole time.

  “A few of the older college coaches are retired and don’t have much to do anymore,” Nick said. “So they treat this like a paid vacation in Maine where they can still do their favorite thing.”

  “What’s that?” Danny said.

  “Yell at basketball players,” he said.

  Nick said he might have time to give them a quick tour, but just then they heard someone with a bullhorn welcoming them to Right Way, introducing himself in a squawky voice as Jeff LeBow, the camp director.

  “As you can all see,” he said, walking through the crowd of people scattered on the grass, “I am not Josh Cameron. But he did pass me the ball occasionally when we were in the same backcourt at UConn.”

  He had a big bald head, and Danny could already see beads of sweat popping up on it in the afternoon sun.

  “I had four years of feeling like the most popular player in college basketball,” Jeff said. “Because no matter who we were playing, the other team’s guards were always fighting over which one could get to guard me.”

  That got a pretty good laugh.

  Tarik said, “Bald dude gets off a got-em.”

  “Got-em?” Will said.

  “Somebody says something funny back home, we just look at each other and say ‘got ’em.’”

  “Got it,” Will said.

  “Now, Josh is going to show up before the end of this session,” Jeff continued. “And by the time he does, I promise every single one of you will be a better basketball player than you are right now.”

  Then he said it was time to get everybody settled into the bunkhouse they’d be living in for the next month and that he was going to call out their names alphabetically. After each name he’d call out the name of an arena: Boston Garden, Madison Square Garden, Staples Center, Pauley Pavilion, Gampel Pavilion. Like that. Nick had informed them in the bus that the bunkhouses for the teenagers were named after NBA arenas. The ones with college names were for the younger kids.

  Tarik was assigned to Boston Garden. So were Ty and Will, as expected. Danny and Will and Ty were all supposed to be rooming together—Richie Walker had said he’d worked it out with Josh Cameron’s people beforehand.

  “You want us to wait for you?” Ty said.