Basketball (or Something Like It) (5 page)

Immediately there were the fights over numbers.

“I always get thirty-three.”

“So who cares? I want thirty-three.”

“Is there four? I want four.”

“Let me see. Move, fat ass.”

“I want Reggie Miller’s number. What’s Reggie Miller’s number?”

The little muscle coach was guarding the box.

“This will be done fairly,” he said. “First everyone needs to take three steps back and sit down.”

Everyone took one and a half steps back and sort of sat down. By this time Jeremy had figured there were uniforms in the huge cardboard box. The dad who had brought them in was now laying them out neatly on the floor. Jerseys, shorts, and even matching socks. Jeremy saw what the big deal was all about.

The uniforms were bright, shiny blue with a strip of thick white down the side. On the front of the shirt
NORTH BRIDGE
was written in a semicircle. On the back was the all-important number. The shorts and the socks were both bright blue with the matching white strip.

Jeremy looked down at the uniforms and around at the kids next to him. He only knew a couple of kids by name. He knew the tall coach was Coach C., which stood for something no one could pronounce. Coach C. didn’t seem to have a kid on the team. Jeremy knew the little coach with the muscle T-shirt was this guy Harrison’s father, Coach Neeley.

Coach C. said he would call each player up to pick
a uniform one at a time. Alphabetical order.

“But that’s not fair.”

“Tough,” Coach C. answered. He called out the first name, “Hank Adler.”

Hank went up and picked number three. Two boys groaned.

“Jeremy Binder,” the coach announced.

“Who’s Jeremy Binder?”

Somebody pointed when Jeremy stood up.

“Oh.” The boy settled back down.

Jeremy walked over to the uniforms lying out like a sale at the NBA store. They were like something he had dreamed of wearing when he made it to the pros. When he was playing for UCLA or Duke. Or Syracuse. When he was dreaming.

“Come on,” someone said behind him.

Jeremy bent down and grabbed one of the shirts. Number five. For Jason Kidd.

“Don’t forget the shorts. And socks,” Coach C. said. He handed Jeremy the rest of his uniform.

“Thanks,” Jeremy said.

“And that reminds me,” Coach Neeley said. “If you have blue-and-white basketball sneakers, wear them. Or if you are planning on getting new sneakers this season, buy blue ones.”

Jeremy looked down at his feet. He had the Jordans. Red and white. There was no way he could
ask his grandmother for another pair of sneakers. Anyway, that was stupid.

“We thought it would look good if we all presented ourselves as a unified team for our first game against Walton. It’s all about
team work,”
Coach Neeley said. Then he repeated his last sentence with the emphasis on the
all
instead of the
team
for some reason. “It’s
all
about teamwork.”

Teamwork? It would be nice if anyone on this team ever passed the ball. Jeremy knew kids like this back home. When they get a pass, the first thing they do is put it up, no matter where they are standing. Jeremy had never seen so many air balls. Whenever somebody stole the ball, they ran like an escaped convict down the court and missed the easy layup.

Sometimes the guard would just bring down the ball and drive to the hoop without ever passing once. And miss. Over and over again.

Jeremy looked at the silky uniform in his hands. It was soft as butter. It was beautiful, and it was going to give the other team the wrong impression.

No, on second thought, it was going to give the other team the correct impression. Jeremy knew Walton well. Central had played Walton lots of times. North Bridge was going to walk in looking like rich, spoiled kids who think they’re hot stuff, and Walton was going to want to kick their asses
even more than they were already.

Which is exactly what happened.

A
nabel’s mother was away in Cincinnati when Michael had his first game. She said she felt terrible but it was a big presentation. (It was always a
big
presentation. There were no
little
presentations to Anabel’s recollection.)

“Call me from the game,” she said as she was leaving. The airport limo had beeped twice from the driveway.

Michael was upset, Anabel knew. He was such a big baby. He ran upstairs and didn’t say good-bye. Their mother was supposed to be leaving the next day, but everything got moved up (everything always got moved up). It was worse for Michael that he thought his mother was going to be around than if he hadn’t expected it in the first place.

Anabel heard him in his room. The weird thing was how much more it bothered him than Anabel. She was a girl, for heaven’s sake, and he was the one crying. And the even weirder thing was she felt bad for Michael.

It was like he was so big and tough and such a great athlete and that was so important to him. It was like, that was who he was. He was Michael, the baseball player and Michael, the basketball player.

So when their mom couldn’t come to the game, he was nobody.

And even though Michael picked on her, and punched her in the arm on any occasion, knocked her hat off her head, stole cookies from her lunch bag, and cheated at video games, Anabel loved her brother. She loved him most when she felt bad for him. She decided to go to the game, even though it was a long trip.

Anabel sat in the stands and cheered extra loudly for the whole first half. That was when she noticed a very interesting thing. The parents of the kids who played a lot during the game sat near, or fairly close, to the parents of other kids who played a lot. Their position was near the bottom bleachers, dead center, directly behind the players’ bench. So they could shout out instructions.

The parents of kids who played some or a little sat together also, scattered about. They mostly cheered or yelled about bad calls.

But it was the parents of kids who got little or no
playing time at all that made the tightest, most secluded configuration. They sat close to the top, far to the left corner. And they complained. To one another.

Anabel had staked out the top bleachers a long time ago, back when her mother used to come to a game or two. She loved it up there. Her mother said she liked to lean back against the wall. Anabel liked to see the whole court, but no one could see her unless they turned around. But no one ever did. Most of the grown-ups didn’t like climbing so high. It was her spot, and that’s where she was sitting at Michael’s first game that year.

When all of a sudden, this old lady came up.

This old lady who had been sitting on the other team’s bleachers for the whole first half of the game. At halftime when all the parents got up to stretch their legs or go to the bathroom, this old lady made her way all the way up to the top bleacher and sat down right next to Anabel.

“Well,” the lady said, plopping herself down on the seat. “That was a long way up.”

Anabel wasn’t thrilled by the intrusion into her sacred space, but she was curious about who this lady was and why she had come from the other side to sit here.

“I guess I was on the wrong side, the whole time,”
the lady explained, although Anabel had never asked. “That is, if you think there is a right or a wrong side.”

“Well, this is the North Bridge side,” Anabel said. “Are you rooting for North Bridge or Walton?”

“I suppose I am. North Bridge, I mean,” the lady said. “My grandson is on this team.”

A very loud buzzer sounded to end halftime, and the referees called the teams to the floor. The lady looked around.

“The crowd seemed happier on the other side,” she said.

“That’s because they’re winning,” Anabel told her.

The lady laughed. She had a nice smile. She was a little fat and very gray. She was wearing ugly, stretchy pants and a too-colorful sweater. Anabel thought she looked familiar, too, but she couldn’t figure out from where.

“The other team must be pretty good,” the lady said.

“No, we’re just terrible,” Anabel said. Then she remembered. This was the lady from the post office. “We don’t play like a team. Every kid out there thinks he’s the best because that’s what his father told him. Nobody looks to pass. They just get the ball and shoot. Not one kid has set a pick. See that big kid, Joey?”

The lady nodded like she was really listening. Anabel thought it was nice to have someone to talk to again.

“The first rebound he got he just put it right back up.”

“That’s good, isn’t it?”

“It was the other team’s basket.”

The lady laughed again. She was an easy laugh. “Oh, yes. I saw that. At least he got it in.”

Anabel laughed, too. It
was
funny, in a pathetic sort of way.

“You know a lot about basketball,” the lady said.

“I watch it a lot on TV,” Anabel explained.

“You must play, too. I bet you’re really good,” the lady went on. “I can just tell.”

Anabel looked down at Michael. He was sitting on the bench, slouched down. He had kicked the bench when the coach called him in. He had just missed the last three shots he had taken. He had looked up at their dad each time. Anabel could just sense how awful he must feel.

“No,” Anabel said. “I don’t play.”

S
ince it had been an away game, the boys had to use the Walton girls’ locker room. The parents all waited in the lobby outside the gym. Slowly the boys trickled out of the other locker room door down the hall. Hank felt bad enough that they had lost their first game. He didn’t want to hear his dad’s interpretation. He really didn’t. But he couldn’t help it. His dad was talking to the other dads pretty loud.

“That coach doesn’t know the first thing about defense. Look how he positioned those kids.”

They had lost so badly. 54–21.

“He never had the right combination of kids out there,” Tyler Bischoff’s dad was saying.

“What credentials does this Coach C. have anyway?” Mr. King added in. His son Matt also played Pop Warner. Matt was one of those boys who was so big for his age that if he hadn’t played football, you would wonder why not.

“Who hired him?” Hank’s mother asked. “Oh, the boys are out.” She waved. “Hank, over here.”

Hank walked hanging his head. His eyes were rimmed in red. As soon as he got into the car, it surprised him, but he started to cry.

“What did that coach say to you?” his mother demanded.

“Nothing,” Hank said.

“Why are you so upset?” his father asked. He was trying to reverse the directions he had printed out from the computer and get them home.

“Because I suck,” Hank shouted. He felt like shouting.

“You do not,” his mother said. She turned around from the front seat to look at him. “You’re a great player.” Her voice turned soft.

“Don’t talk to me!” Hank yelled.

“You’ve just got to shoot the ball more,” his father said. He made a right turn into someone’s driveway and backed up to turn around. He had gone the wrong way. “You’re too tentative. You’ve got to shoot more.”

“The coach told us to pass more, so shut up,” Hank said. He didn’t even get in trouble for saying that.

Instead Hank’s mother and father looked at each other knowingly. Hank was a good athlete. A great athlete, wouldn’t you say? He had instincts. He was quick. He knew the game. It was obvious that poor coaching was at fault here.

N
athan’s parents didn’t come to the game. Nathan’s dad had too much work to do and was doing a pretty good job of trying to pretend basketball didn’t matter to him. Nathan’s mother thought the baby would just be so difficult that she wouldn’t get to sit and watch.

So his mother had gotten Nathan a ride with Wyatt Greman, who happened to live on the same street. Driving home from the game Wyatt’s parents were whispering, but what was the point? Wyatt and Nathan were sitting in the third seat of their huge Suburban. And the radio was on.

Nathan couldn’t hear what they were saying, but he didn’t have to. Wyatt hadn’t gotten off the bench more than three times (two more times than Nathan), and then only for about one minute. He lost the ball both times he came down the court. The coach pulled him and put Tyler Bischoff back in. At least Tyler got past half-court.

Then
they lost possession.

Wyatt’s parents were clearly upset. Their voices got louder just as the radio DJ decided to play a slow, quiet song.

“How can you expect a kid to sit for half an hour
and then jump up and be warmed and ready?”

“You know, Michael Morrisey played the whole game. I don’t think he sat once.”

“And Michael missed five baskets in the first quarter.”

“Who
is
this coach?”

“Well, Neeley’s dad is the assistant. That explains that.”

“So who is the head coach? That tall guy. Who hired him?”

“I don’t know. Nobody asked us.”

Wyatt looked embarrassed, but he didn’t say anything. There were earphones plugged into an outlet in the backseat. He put them on. He pointed to another pair on Nathan’s side.

Grateful, Nathan pressed the headset over his ears. Wyatt pushed a button and a small TV slowly opened from the console in the center ceiling of the car. It was about a forty-five minute ride back to North Bridge. Nathan tried to forget about the game. He was pretty confident no one had really noticed how bad he was.

The movie began. The film credits rolled across the tiny screen.

The game had been a big mess, really. No matter what the coach had told them to do, when each player got onto the court he dribbled the ball (the
coach told them not to dribble), never passed (the coach told them to pass right away), and shot (the coach said not to shoot until they had had at least three passes). It was a disaster. And it was noisy. You could hear Coach C. yelling from the bench.

“Pass. Pass the ball!”

And you could hear the referee, blowing his whistle and trying to help a little with some instructions.