Toby Wheeler (4 page)

         
6

M
y brain was running out of oxygen. Thoughts were coming slowly. All around me, guys were bent over clutching the bottom of their shorts, gasping for breath, dreading the whistle. My legs seemed ready to buckle any minute. How had I gotten myself into this?

I showed up for the first practice, that was how.

I looked up at the clock and prayed for four-thirty when practice was
supposed
to end. At least that was what Roy Morelli had promised me an hour earlier. We had been running nonstop since then. We hadn’t even touched a basketball! Back and forth, across the width of the gym we ran, again and again, until my sides ached and my lungs burned like coals.

Finally, at four-fifteen, Coach Applewhite brought out a basketball.
That’s more like it,
I thought.
Who’s up for some five-on-five?
Just the idea of playing an actual game revived me. This was my chance to show them what I could do.

Coach stood on the baseline and sized us up. His shirt was pressed free of wrinkles and tucked neatly into his slacks. His shoes were spotless too—polished enough to reflect light from the ceiling. When he walked, his hair stayed frozen in place—like each strand was afraid to defy the man who combed it. Add to all that a pair of wire-frame glasses, and nobody would ever guess he was a coach and not a regular teacher—or even the principal.

Coach held up the basketball. “Who wants it?” His voice was low and commanding.

Nobody moved. Figuring Coach wanted a captain to pick teams, I said, “I’ll do it.”

Coach looked surprised. “Wheeler. Be my guest.”

I stepped to the free-throw line. “I’ll take JJ.”

Embarrassed, JJ lowered his head.

The rest of the team laughed quietly.

Coach cleared his throat. “You’ll take JJ where?”

“Aren’t we choosing teams?”

More laughter from the baseline.

“Son, does this look like recess to you? This is how we finish practice. You shoot two free throws. If you make them both, we’re done. If you miss one, we run. If you miss two, we run a little more.”

I took a deep breath. It wasn’t as though I had never made a free throw before. You just bent the knees, aimed, and shot. So I did. My shot went up. It was straight. There was hope. Maybe I would be the hero after all. Then the ball dropped from the sky like a wounded duck, falling a foot short of the rim. Air ball.

“Oh, man,” Roy said. “Why did we let the rookie shoot the free throw?”

“Man, I wish the other benchwarmer hadn’t quit after tryouts,” said Khalil. “At least he could make a free throw.”

The other benchwarmer?
Why was Khalil comparing me to some benchwarmer? I guess he didn’t know Coach had
asked
me to come to practice.

“We’re gonna be here all day,” someone added.

I glanced at JJ, thinking he might get them off my back. But he was looking away. Suddenly, I felt like I was in battle. I was under attack and cut off from my backup. I had never had so many people mad at me at once.

When we were done with the next set of sprints, Coach waved me back to the line. I shot again. This time the ball hit the front of the rim and rolled in.

“It’s a miracle,” said Roy.

“What would be a miracle, Morelli,” Coach said to Roy, “is if you could keep your mouth shut long enough to make a free throw yourself.”

Roy trudged to the free-throw line and wasted no time missing his first shot. Running on fumes, we wheezed through another set of sprints. I stumbled across the baseline at 4:31, dizzy with exhaustion and thankful to be alive. I collapsed on the bench and found a bottle of water in my bag. I stretched my legs out. It was so nice to lie down. Looking up, I was surprised to see that the rest of the team was still standing on the baseline, most of them holding their sides and breathing hard. Maybe they were cooling down, or just hanging out. Their choice. I closed my eyes and congratulated myself on surviving the first practice. When my eyes opened, Coach’s face was nose to nose with mine.

“Wheeler, what in the world do you think you’re doing?”

“Just having a drink, sir.”

“Practice isn’t over.”

“But it’s past—”

“Past what, Wheeler? Past your bedtime?”

Still more laughter from the baseline.

“Sorry, sir.”

Coach’s mouth was turned down at the corners. He did not look as impressed as he had the other day at the rec center. I was beginning to think I had misunderstood his
invitation
. He handed me the ball. “Two more.”

Everyone groaned, including me. I didn’t want me on the line any more than they wanted me on the line!

“I guarantee you there will be a game this season that comes down to a free throw,” Coach said as my first shot tickled the twine. “The more comfortable you are making that shot in a pressure situation, the better. But it is even more important that all twelve of you be in shape. Conditioning wins championships, boys. Lesson number one for today. We don’t play basketball to get in shape. We get in shape to play basketball.” My second shot missed. He continued speaking as we ran. “We have ten games this season, not including playoffs, and I believe this team has a chance to win every single one of them if we work hard and play as a team.”

I had to push myself to get through the wind sprints, but I wasn’t the last one across the line. Raj led the way, with JJ, Roy, and Ruben darting on his heels. I was in the middle of the pack, huffing and puffing with Malcolm and McKlusky. Last place by a mile was Khalil, who chugged through his first lap but was wheezing badly when I looked back from the baseline. He was walking, too tired even to complain. That was when Ruben jogged over to him and guided him to the finish.

“Thanks, man,” Khalil gasped. “I thought I wasn’t going to make it.”

I felt bad for Khalil, but I was also relieved that someone was slower than me.

Coach cleared his throat. “I know I’m new here, but I want you to know I already see a lot of potential in this team. I want you to be winners,” he added, “not just for the sake of winning, but to experience what goes into winning: twelve individuals being a part of something bigger than any one person. Remember that: It takes twelve of you to win one game.”

Coach Applewhite let that sink in while he brought a mesh bag to the center of the gym. Inside the mesh bag were jerseys. Some green, some white, and some red. “These are your practice jerseys,” Coach explained. “First team wears green. Second team wears white. And there are two red jerseys for the reserves. I know we just started practicing, but I think it’s important for everybody to have a role on the team from the beginning.”

I felt a little sorry for whoever was going to wind up with a red shirt. But it was like Coach said, this was about more than any one person. I was pretty sure there was a white shirt in that bag for me. I didn’t think Coach would make me a starter right away, so second team made the most sense. After all, he had seen me at the rec center.

There was no surprise when the first three green jerseys went to JJ, Ruben, and Raj. The fourth green jersey went to Khalil and the fifth went to Roy, who played my position, shooting guard. McKlusky got the first white jersey. I sat up straight, waiting for Coach to call my name. The green team was huddled together, except for JJ, who stood apart like he was waiting for me to join him. But one after another, the white jerseys disappeared, until there were none left. This was not the way it was supposed to go. No way had I given up my life at the rec center to be a reserve on the basketball team. To sit at the end of the bench, watching JJ from the sideline like nothing had ever changed. No way. This was what was going through my head as Coach Applewhite handed the first red jersey to the seventh grader, Malcolm, then said, “And last but not least, Toby Wheeler.”

         
7

T
he next day in math class, Mr. Morales introduced a unit on geometry. Standing in front of the classroom in a tie, with his shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows, he explained the Pythagorean theorem. “If you know the lengths of two sides of a right triangle,” he said in a way that made me think he thought he had discovered the formula himself, “you can calculate the length of the third side with a simple equation.”

But my mind was not on triangles or rectangles or any angles at all. I had a problem, and no theorem was going to help me solve it. In one weekend, I had gone from a happy gym rat to the twelfth man on the basketball team. Sure, it was good to be on the team with JJ, and I was looking forward to road trips and stuff like that. But when was I going to
play
?

There was Vinny to worry about too. I had to work fast. Our third game of the season was against Hamilton. If Pesto saw me on the end of the bench, he would never let me hear the end of it. I might have to fake an injury.

The bell rang and everyone packed their bags and filed toward the door. Mr. Morales stopped me as I passed his desk. “Toby, hang out for a second. I want to ask you something.”

“I swear that sink was clogged when I went into the bathroom.”

“Not that. I want to ask you a favor. I have a new student in my prealgebra class. She just started yesterday and she needs a little help getting caught up with the material. Since you were one of my best algebra students, I thought perhaps you could be her tutor. Just for a couple of weeks.”

“Sure, Mr. Morales. I’ll help.”

Mr. Morales smiled as the door opened. “Here she is now. Toby, meet Megan Applewhite. Megan, this is Toby Wheeler, your math tutor.”

Holding her bag close to her chest and hovering cautiously on the edge of the classroom, Megan said, “We’ve met.”

I did a double take. What happened to the girl who set up the winning shot to beat Vinny Pesto? Or the girl with pizza sauce on her face at Corner Pizza? On Saturday her hair had been pulled back in a ponytail, and her gym shorts were covered in sweat. Today, her hair was parted straight down the middle and fell to her shoulders. Instead of a blue cotton T-shirt, she wore a button-down dress shirt, a dark skirt, and high-heel shoes. She still had the same blue eyes and freckles, though.

Because we were late, Mr. Morales gave us hall passes. As we were leaving the classroom, Megan looked down at her schedule, then up, then down, then up again. Finally she looked at me and asked, “Do you know where room two-twelve A is, Toby? This school is so big. I’m still getting used to it.”

“Follow me,” I said.

The bell had rung, so the hallway was empty. We walked quietly, the only sound the
click-clack
of Megan’s shoes. We had reached the corner when we heard footsteps. Coming around the bend were JJ and Valerie.

JJ was startled but seemed relieved not to be facing a teacher. Still, he dropped Valerie’s hand and retreated a half step toward a locker. “Toby. What are you doing here?” he said.

We have hall passes,
I thought.
What are
you
doing here?

I didn’t want to be nosy, though, so instead I said, “I’m showing Megan where room two-twelve A is.” That made me think of the class next door so I turned to Megan and added, “In sixth grade, JJ and I had music in room two-fourteen A, but we spent a lot of time out in the hallway—especially during rehearsals for the holiday recital. I was supposed to sing ‘Walking in a Winter Wonderland’ for my solo, only JJ gave me two candy canes to change the words to ‘walking in a woman’s underwear.’ From then on, every time we sang ‘Winter Wonderland,’ we started laughing so hard Mrs. Morrison would just point to the door without saying anything. Oh, man, it was the best. Remember, JJ?”

JJ twisted a beat-up songbook in his hands. He had no backpack or any other books. Obviously he and Valerie were not on their way to class. Glancing down the empty hallway, he said, “Yeah, Toby. I remember. That was pretty funny.”

Valerie smiled at Megan. “Are you new?”

“I just moved here,” Megan said.

“I like your skirt,” Valerie said.

“Thanks. What happened to your forehead?”

Remind me to thank Megan for
that
later.

Soon Megan and Valerie were speed-talking. Their voices had reached a pitch my ears could no longer detect. JJ had tuned out too. He was absentmindedly tapping the songbook against a locker, while I began twirling my elastic key chain around my pointer finger.

When Valerie gasped at the sound of a door closing, it was very startling. So startling that the key chain spun right off my finger and into Valerie’s cheek. It fell to the floor with a
plink,
but not before leaving a red mark underneath Valerie’s right eye. “Yeow!” she yelled. “Toby!”

The footsteps, which had been fading, stopped, then grew louder.

Valerie scooped up the key chain and threw it back at me. She missed and the keys rattled against a locker. That was the moment Coach Applewhite rounded the corner and zeroed in on us like a heat-seeking missile. Megan and I were in the clear. We had hall passes. But JJ and Valerie were busted.

“What’s going on here?” Coach asked, straightening his tie. “Megan, why aren’t you in class?”

“Relax, Dad. We have hall passes.”

“Megan,” Coach said sternly. “Not in school.”

“Sorry, Dad.”

When Valerie heard Megan call Coach Applewhite
dad,
she popped her head to the side. “No
way
.”

Coach peered at Valerie through his glasses. “Who’s this?” he asked.

“This is Valerie, my friend.”

Facing Valerie with his back to Megan, Coach asked, “Are you the one Megan had pizza with Sunday night?”

Megan nodded rapidly in Valerie’s direction and mouthed,
Say yes
.

Valerie never missed a beat. “Yup, that was me, Coach Applewhite.”

“And why aren’t you in class?”

“Sh-she was showing me where room two-twelve A was,” Megan sputtered.

Would Coach buy it? We held our breath. Slowly, he looked us all over once more, told everyone to go straight to class, then turned on his heel and marched away.

“
Phew,
” said Megan and Valerie at the same time. This caused them both to laugh hysterically. JJ and I looked at each other and shrugged. When the coast was clear, he and Valerie darted off down the hallway, then out the side door that led to the wooded area behind the school. I dropped Megan off at room 212A for earth science, then hustled around the corner to social studies. One thing bothered me. Megan had said the other night that I had nothing to worry about when it came to her father. But why then did she turn sheet-white and panic when Coach asked Valerie if she was the person Megan had been with on Sunday? If Megan had a reason to be nervous about her dad, didn’t I?