Hoop Crazy (9 page)

“Clearly?”

“Pretty clear.”

“How about us?” Kia asked.

“A little blurry, but pretty good.”

Kia bent down and picked up the ball.

“Catch!” she yelled.

Ned was still holding his glasses with one hand, but managed to grab the ball with the other. That impressed me.

“Obviously you saw the ball coming, okay.”

He nodded.

“In that case I want you to lose the glasses.”

“Lose them? My mother will kill me if I lose another pair of glasses!”

“No, no, you don't understand,” she said. “I don't want you to
lose
them, I want you to
lose
them.”

“She means she wants you not to wear your glasses while you're on the court,” I explained.

“Okay,” he said.

Kia took the glasses from him and put them down on the table.

“
Now
he looks like a ball player,” she said, and she was right.

“Nick, are you awake?” Ned asked.

I turned over in bed. “I was just drifting off.”

“I'm too nervous to sleep. Are you nervous?”

“Nope,” I said, and I wasn't, which was surprising.

“I guess you get used to it when you play all the time,” Ned said.

“I guess,” I said. Actually I was always nervous before a game, and
had
been really worried about this contest. Now there was nothing to be nervous about. We had no chance. We were just going down to have some fun.

“I was just thinking. What if we get to the finals and I screw up?” Ned asked.

I wanted to say something about us having no
chance of getting that far but didn't — what was the point of taking that away from him.

“You won't screw up,” I finally said.

“Thanks … but I could.”

“We won't let you screw up,” I said.

“Thanks.”

“We've worked hard the past few days. You've worked hard.”

“Thanks. And I have gotten better … right?”

“A lot better. You're a lot better than I was after only playing for four days.”

“Really?” he asked.

“Really. Of course I was only about five years old, but you've learned quickly.”

I rolled over and looked at Ned. He was lying on the little cot, his feet hanging over the edge, his arms folded under his head. Right beside the bed were his new shoes. His mother had gone out and bought them for him. They were his first pair of basketball shoes. It had been almost funny going with them to the store and helping to pick them out. It wasn't just Ned who didn't know anything about basketball.

“My mom said she was going to get my dad to build me a net when we get home,” Ned said.

“That's great.”

“I can practice my shooting.”

He really needed to practice his shooting. He could make an occasional shot — which was a lot
better than he could do three days ago — but it was still only an occasional shot. His shooting was so poor that we'd built almost all our plays around the idea that he wouldn't be putting up any shots.

“My mother said she'd even let me dribble the ball in the house in the kitchen.”

“Whatever you do, don't try that here,” I warned him. “My mother would kill you.”

“I'll try to remember.” He paused. “I have my new shoes, and I'll have a hoop, and I've got a ball. All I'll need is somebody to play basketball with.”

“That would be good.”

“How about you?”

“How about me what? I've got lots of people to play with.”

“I meant, would you like to come out and spend some time at my place?”

“You live on the other side of the country, it's not like I can ride my bike over before dinner,” I said.

“I know. My mother said it would be okay with her if you came back with us and spent some time.”

“In the forest?”

“In our house in the forest. It's really different than here, but beautiful.”

“I'm sure it is.”

“There's a stream not far from the house where we can go swimming and fishing, and we can go hiking, and there's a patch were we can pick fresh berries … and you don't have to worry because I know how to keep an eye open for the bears and —”

“You have bears?”

“Mostly black bears, but we have grizzlies around sometimes too.”

“I read something about how you should always wear a little bell when you're hiking in bear country because it scares them away. Is that true?” I asked.

“Yep. The bears hear the bell and go away. They're more afraid of you than you are of them,” Ned said.

“Do you wear a bell?”

“No.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“It scares away the bears, but it attracts the mountain lions because they want to see what's making the noise.”

“Mountain lions! You have mountain lions?”

“Not a lot, but some. But you don't have to worry, I can take care of you … the way you've taken care of me.”

“You know, Ned, I don't even know if my mother and father would let me go.”

“But if they did?” Ned asked.

“I guess that maybe I'd think about it,” I said. While part of me really didn't want to go, and another part was actually afraid to go, a big part of me thought that maybe it might be fun. Ned wasn't such a bad guy.

“I think what we better do is go to sleep,” I said. “Tomorrow is a big day and we have to be ready.”

“I'm ready. At least as ready as I can be, I guess.”

“Good, then let's go to sleep.”

I turned back toward the wall and tried to snuggle down into my sheets. I thought about what it would be like to be away from my family for a while, staying with Ned and his family, living out in the middle of the forest. It certainly wasn't the life I wanted to live. But maybe it would be fun for a week.

“Nick?” Ned called out.

I rolled over.

“Do you want to go out and shoot some baskets?”

I looked at the clock. It was almost midnight and judging from the quiet in the house everybody else was already asleep.

“Do you?” he asked. “It would help me sleep.”

I sat up. “Just for a little while.”

“I can't get over all the traffic,” Debbie commented.

“This is nothing,” my father said.

He and Ned's mother were driving me, Kia, Mark and Ned to the tournament. My mother hadn't come down — she said it made her too nervous to watch. She did, however, want us to call her after every game and tell her the score.

“There are just so many cars everywhere,” Debbie said. “I just can't get over it.”

“If you want to see traffic, you should try to drive downtown during rush hour on a weekday instead of on a Saturday morning,” my father continued.

“I just can't imagine what that would be like,” she said.

“Scary,” Ned said. “It would be scary.”

“Ned, you don't have your glasses,” his mother said from the front seat.

“I lost ‘em.”

“You lost another pair!” she exclaimed.

“No, no, he didn't lose them,” I said. “He means he's not using them. Right, Ned?”

“No, actually I did lose them. I couldn't find them when I got up this morning.”

“You had them last night,” I said. Ned had worn them when we went down to shoot hoops. “I think you left them on that little plastic table on our porch.”

“Are you all feeling good this morning?” my father asked.

“Great!” Kia said.

“Pretty good,” Ned added.

“Okay,” Mark said.

He wasn't going to be able to play, but he was coming to cheer us on. Mark was like that. He didn't need the crutches any more but he was still limping.

“And you, Nick?

“I just wish we had a little more time to practice our plays.”

“It seems like there never is enough time. Did you do the best that you could?” my father asked.

“We did,” I said, and we had.

Nobody could have practiced more than we had
over the past few days. That was the problem. We'd been preparing for days. Other people had spent weeks or months. And of course all our practice had been on our own. We didn't have anybody to play against, so we only hoped that what we'd planned would work.

“I think we're going to win,” Ned said.

“That's the attitude!” Debbie chirped. “Think positive!”

I was
positive
that we weren't going to win. Maybe Ned needed to be prepared for that … or maybe I could just keep my mouth shut and let him believe for a little bit longer.

“A positive attitude is good,” my father said, “but that has to be combined with a realistic attitude.”

Thank you, I thought, but didn't say anything.

“The best teams from across the whole city are going to be here today,” my father continued.

“We're not worried,” Kia said.

“I don't want you to worry. I just don't want you to be disappointed,” my father added.

I didn't think that would be a problem. When you don't expect to win any games, there isn't much that can disappoint you.

Our van slowed down and joined a line of cars waiting to go into the exhibition grounds.

“This is something I can't get used to,” Debbie said. “Waiting in line and being crowded in.”

“This isn't too bad,” my father said.

“Not bad for here maybe. Up where we come from if you pass more than two cars every hour it's rush hour.”

My father paid nine dollars to a parking attendant and eased the car into a spot in the lot. It was still only eight-thirty, a full hour before our first game, but already the lot was half filled.

“What do we do now?” I asked.

“We go and register,” my father said.

“I thought we'd already done that.”

“We sent in the registration forms. Now we have to let them know your team is here and they check your identification.”