Summer Ball

by Mike Lupica

  “Nah,” Danny said, “you don’t have to wait for the Ws to get called. Go start unpacking your stuff. I’ll be down there in a few minutes.”

  By now he was used to being in the front of every line, front row of every team picture and one of the last names to be called.

  So he waited in the grass while all the other names were called.

  Waited until he was the last kid out there.

  Waited until he realized his name wasn’t going to be called.

  When it was just the two of them left, Danny went over and introduced himself to Mr. LeBow, who immediately said, “Of course, you’re Danny Walker! Richie’s boy, right?”

  “Guilty.”

  “Well, nice to meet you, man,” he said. “I’ve heard a lot about you.” Then he told Danny to walk with him to the main building and they’d find out where he was supposed to be living for the next month.

  “I think I’m sort of supposed to be at Boston Garden,” Danny said.

  “Why’s that?”

  “My dad said he talked to somebody so that me and my friends could all room together.”

  “Oh.”

  Now that didn’t sound good.

  “See, the thing is, nobody talked to me,” Jeff LeBow said. “We usually like to mix everybody up as a way of enhancing the whole camp experience.”

  Danny said, “But my friends are together.”

  “Luck of the draw, pal.”

  They walked into a tiny office, where Jeff tossed his walkie-talkie on the couch and sat down in front of his laptop. He started furiously punching away at the keys, getting one new screen after another, until he said, “Oh.”

  Still not sounding good.

  “We’ve already got a Walker over at Boston Garden,” he said. “A Darren Walker. From Philadelphia. Somehow the computer must have gotten confused, the way computers do sometimes, and bumped you right out of there.” He picked up the phone on his desk, punched a couple of numbers, told whoever answered what the deal was.

  Then he didn’t say anything for what seemed like an hour to Danny. Finally, he said, “Okay, don’t do anything. Leave everybody where they are for now, and I’ll see what I can do at this end.”

  They were full up at Boston Garden, he said. Every bed. Like a sellout crowd, he said.

  “Mr. LeBow,” Danny said, “are you saying that I’m not going to be with my friends the whole time I’m here?”

  “No, no, no,” he said. “We’ve just got a thousand first-day things going on right now, is all. So just for the time being, we’re going to have to stick you someplace else.”

  He dialed another number.

  Staples Center was full up, too.

  And Madison Square Garden.

  The whole time they were sitting there, Danny heard voices crackling through on the walkie-talkie. People asking Jeff if he was there. Or saying “please come in, Jeff.” One time Danny even heard “Jeff, can you read me?”

  Jeff finally just pointed at the walkie-talkie, shook his head and said to Danny, “So it begins.”

  Then he said, “Do you by any chance have a name for the person your dad talked to? Because to be honest with you, Danny, we usually don’t make those sorts of exceptions, even if the kid is the son of an NBA player.”

  “If my dad says he did something, he did it,” Danny said.

  Jeff smiled, but it was the kind of smile you got from adults when they didn’t want to be having a particular conversation anymore.

  Like, Even if you’re right, I win. I’m older.

  “I’m sure he did, and the request just got lost in the shuffle,” he said. “Let me work on it, okay? My problem is that a lot of the kids, from all the bunkhouses, are scattered all over the grounds right now. And a lot of the kids in that particular house got in yesterday, which means they’re probably unpacked and settled in.”

  He went back to his computer, punched away at the keyboard again. “Well, here’s some good news at least.”

  I could use some right about now, Danny thought.

  Jeff said, “We’ve got a couple of extra beds at Gampel. We’ll put you there for tonight.”

  “Gampel?”

  “Gampel Pavilion,” Jeff LeBow said. “Named after the arena on the UConn campus.”

  “I know what it is,” Danny said. “But the college bunks are for the eleven-and twelve-year-olds, right?”

  “Right.”

  “But I’m thirteen.”

  “Like I said, we’re just putting you there for the time being with the younger guys. That’s okay for a night or two, right?”

  Now it was a night or two.

  “Sure,” Danny said.

  That’s what he said, anyway, because he wasn’t going to act like a baby over this. He’d only been at camp for about an hour.

  But what he thought was this: So it begins.

  It turned out that Nick Pinto was the counselor for Gampel. He was the only person still in there when Jeff LeBow brought Danny over, right before Jeff and his walkie-talkie left.

  “I’m like what they call hall monitors in college dorms,” Nick said. “Except, as you can see, there’s no halls in here.”

  Inside, it looked like a log cabin that had been turned into a place they were using for a massive sleepover. Gampel was broken up into all these little sections, three bunks to each section, each one with a small dresser next to it. Nick showed him the drawers, like lockers, under each bed. There were still lots of duffel bags on top of most of the beds. Hardly any were unpacked all the way, and there were sneakers spilling out of them, basketball shorts, T-shirts. Some kids had already set up their CD players on the tops of the dressers or were charging their iPods.

  Danny liked music fine and had his favorite singers like everybody else. He just wasn’t an iPod guy yet. Will said it was practically un-American.

  Nick checked out his list and took Danny to a far corner of Gampel, where a window faced out to Coffee Lake. Danny asked why it was called Coffee Lake.

  “Not a clue,” Nick said. “But this does happen to be the best view of it in the joint.”

  Of the two other beds back here, only one had a duffel bag on it.

  When Danny tossed his duffel on his bed, Nick said, “Ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “You ever been to camp before?”

  “No,” Danny said.

  “Ever been away anywhere on your own before? I mean, without a team?”

  “No,” Danny said. “But when I’ve got Will and Ty, I kind of do feel like I’ve got my team with me.”

  Thinking for one quick second that Tess Hewitt used to be on the same team.

  “I’m just saying,” Nick said, “that even though things got messed up for you, you’re gonna be fine. I’ve been going to sleepover camps since I was eight. This is the best one I’ve ever seen, by far.” He gestured around Gampel and said, “And as cribs go, this is as good as it gets here. Even for the older guys.”

  “Cribs?” Danny said.

  Nick gave him a friendly shove. “Man, you did need to get out of…where are you from, again?”

  “Middletown.”

  “You swear you never heard crib before?”

  Danny shrugged, shook his head.

  “Crib is where you put your head down, my brother. Where you do the throwdown with your stuff.”

  “Got it,” Danny said, and then Nick showed him where the showers and bathrooms were at the other end of Gampel, told him the rules about no cell phones—Danny told him no problem, his parents weren’t getting him one until next year—and respecting everybody’s property.

  Lights-out was at eleven every night, no exceptions, because everybody was supposed to be in the mess hall by seven for breakfast, which Nick said didn’t stink.

  “The other two guys in my…crib?” Danny said. “Do you know who they’re going to be?”

  “For now, you lucked out,” Nick said. “There’s only one. Boy named Zach Fox, from somewhere in Connecticut
—I forget the name of the town. He’s really small, but I watched him play a bit yesterday, and the little sucker’s fast. And good.”

  Gee, I’m happy for him, Danny thought.

  Nick asked if he needed anything else. Danny said, nah, he was good. Then he unzipped his duffel bag, thought about unpacking, then figured, What’s the point? I’m not going to be here that long. So he just got out his new sneaks, the old-school, all-white Barkleys his dad had bought for him at Foot Locker a few days ago, changed into his blue-and-gold Warriors shorts—the NBA Warriors, not his travel team Warriors—and went looking for Will and Ty.

  He walked past the outdoor courts, painted Celtic green, all of them with lights, Danny noticed. Half-court games, five-on-five, were being played on just about all of them at the moment, and Danny could not believe the size of some of the players. He knew that the oldest kids at Right Way were supposed to be fifteen, so he hoped against hope that some of the guys out there playing right now were counselors.

  Because the bigger ones were bigger than Ty, bigger than Tarik. They looked like men.

  He saw that there was one full-court game going on up ahead of him, on the court closest to the larger bunkhouses, and stopped to watch it for a second.

  That’s when he saw Rasheed Hill.

  Rasheed Hill from the Baltimore travel team and the travel finals.

  He was a lot taller than the last time Danny had seen him, when they’d shaken hands after the championship game. He still had the cornrows, and had gotten a few more tattoos, one even on his neck, just like Iverson. On the court now at Right Way, Rasheed out-jumped everybody for a rebound, put the ball behind his back on the dribble to get himself out of traffic, immediately pulled away from the pack of players around him, both on offense and defense, like he had a gear the rest of them didn’t have.

  He ended up with a two-on-one, his teammate on his left.

  The defender tried to come up on Rasheed at the free throw line, still trying to stay between Rasheed and the other guy on offense.

  When he did, like the exact same moment, Rasheed made this ball fake that was so good, sold it so well, that Danny was as sure he was going to pass as the defender was, because the defender suddenly backed up like crazy.

  Only he didn’t pass.

  He just put the ball out there and pulled it back in the same moment and used his last step off the dribble to beat the defender and lay the ball in—no backboard—left-handed.

  Danny found himself wishing he could TiVo the whole play, on the spot, and watch it again.

  As Rasheed ran back up the court, he saw Danny standing there.

  He didn’t act surprised to see him or even change expression.

  Not knowing what to do, Danny just put his hand up and said, “Hey.”

  Rasheed took a few steps toward him, then spoke loud enough for only Danny to hear.

  “Why don’t you come out here and see if you can foul me out with one of your little flops?” he said.

  Then he was back on defense, picking off the first pass he saw, taking it the other way.

  Danny walked away thinking, Well, are we having any fun yet?

  Welcome to Wrong Way.

  5

  DANNY FOUND WILL AND TY AND TARIK SHOOTING AROUND IN AS cool a gym—outside of a Dean Dome–type gym or the real Madison Square Garden—as he had ever seen in his life.

  He should have known as soon as he saw the sign outside, one that simply read THE HOUSE.

  It had a high, high ceiling, with all these wood beams up there and huge windows everywhere. They didn’t need to have the lights on, even in the late afternoon, because the sun was hitting the place exactly right, like there was a spotlight trained on it. The floor looked brand new, like someone had come in and polished it that morning.

  There were no games going on, just a bunch of guys shooting around at all the baskets, the ones at both ends of the court and the ones on the sides, maybe thirty or forty kids in all. The sound in here was something that had always been the kind of music Danny really liked the best:

  The squeak of sneakers, bounce of the balls, balls hitting rim and backboard, shouts, laughter.

  And the most awesome part of The House?

  They could pull back the walls on one side, the side facing Coffee Lake, like they were sliding doors. It made a backdrop for all this basketball like something you’d put up for a school play, like somebody had painted a picture of trees and water underneath blue sky that seemed to stretch all the way to Canada, which Danny knew came next after Maine.

  Will spotted Danny first and came running over.

  “You believe this place?” he said. “They should call it The Dream House.”

  “Where’ve you been, by the way?” Will continued. “We waited over at our bunk for as long as we could—”

  “As long as he could,” Ty said, “which means about two minutes.”

  “My room thing got all messed up,” Danny said. “They’ve got me over with the eleven-and twelve-year-olds for now.”

  “So when are they going to move you over with us?” Ty said.

  “Mr. LeBow made it sound like he was going to do it as soon as he could,” Danny said.

  “How ’bout you switch with me?” Tarik said. “That way you can be with your guys.”

  “Thanks,” Danny said. “But you’re not moving. And, besides, us guys includes you now.”

  “Word,” Tarik said, nodding.

  He seemed to have his own language, the way Will did. But already you could tell Will liked Tarik’s better.

  “Word,” Will said.

  It was getting close to dinner, so some of the other kids were starting to leave. It meant the four of them got a basket to themselves, the one at the far end of the court.

  “Hey, I forgot to tell you guys,” Danny said. “Guess who I saw playing on one of the outside courts?”

  “Who?” Will said.

  “Rasheed Hill.”

  “Rasheed from the Baltimore team? The one you flopped out of the game? No way!”

  “Way,” Danny said. “And I didn’t flop because I don’t flop.”

  “Whatever,” Will said. “I can’t believe the dude is here. Did he act like he misses me?”

  “I didn’t get that feeling,” Danny said. “Let’s just say he hasn’t let go on losing the finals yet.”

  “Tell him to get over it,” Will said.

  “You tell him,” Danny said.

  Will reached in then, flicked the ball away from Danny, drove in for a reverse layup, did a kind of shimmy that made Danny think he’d come down with the chills or something.

  “You know what I bet Rasheed wants from you before we leave here?” Will said. He looked at Danny, then at Ty.

  “A rematch,” Will said. “With you.”

  “Hold on,” Danny said. “What do you mean a rematch with me?”

  Will smiled and patted the back of his head, the way refs do when they call an offensive foul.

  “Hey,” he said, “Ty and I aren’t the ones who flopped on the poor kid.”

  Jeff LeBow came into the mess hall after their spaghetti dinner and announced that they were going to make this an instant movie night as soon as the dinner stuff got cleared and they could push the picnic tables out of the way and bring in a bunch of folding chairs. He said the movie the counselors had picked was National Treasure and seemed shocked when the kids cheered as if he’d just made a game-winning shot.

  A good sign, Danny thought.

  He and Will and Ty practically had National Treasure memorized by now.

  Jeff said that anybody who didn’t want to stay for the movie could scatter, as long as they were back at their bunks by ten o’clock.

  Will and Ty were up for the movie, even though the last time they’d watched it together was a couple of nights before they left for camp. Tarik wanted to stay, too. But Danny said it had been a long day no matter how you looked at it, that he was going back to Gampel to chill and would catch them
at breakfast.

  Gampel was pretty empty when he got there. Even Nick Pinto must have stayed for the movie. Danny heard some rap music coming from the end of the room near the showers, saw a couple of kids sitting next to each other on a bed, one of them working his PlayStation Portable hard, the other kid staring at the PSP as if it were the most fascinating thing he’d ever seen. One guy, he saw, had attached a small hoop over his bed and was shooting a small rubber ball into it, over and over again.

  When Danny got to the back corner where his bed was, he saw a boy who had to be Zach Fox, sitting with his back to the room, just staring out at the lake.

  “Hey,” Danny said.

  When Zach turned around, it was as if Danny was looking at a miniature version of himself. Same color hair. The kind of T-shirt with the sleeves cut off Danny liked to wear. Same Barkley sneaks, even. Unlaced, of course.

  Danny thought his eyes looked a little red.

  “Hey,” Zach said back.

  “You’re Zach, right?”

  The boy nodded. “And you’re Danny Walker.”

  They shook hands.

  “Didn’t want to watch the movie, huh?” Danny said.

  “I’ve seen it like a million times.”

  “How old are you?” Danny said. “I know Nick told me, but I forget.”

  “Eleven. In May. But people always think I’m even younger than that.”

  Danny smiled. “Tell me about it.”

  No response.

  All of a sudden, it had become a challenge, at least getting some kind of smile out of this guy.

  Danny said, “Man, I wasn’t even thinking about going to sleep-away camp when I was your age.”

  “Guess what?” Zach said. “Neither was I.”

  “C’mon,” Danny said, trying to make himself sound convincing, “this place looks like it could turn out to be pretty cool.”

  “It’s not going to be cool!” Zach shouted at Danny, way too loud, like a radio was way too loud sometimes when you first turned it on. “I hate it here!”

  “Hey, take it down a couple of notches,” Danny said.

  Zach did, but not nearly enough.

  “I don’t know anybody and I wanted to stay home and my parents made me come!”