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Authors: Thatcher Heldring

Toby Wheeler (8 page)

BOOK: Toby Wheeler
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13

O
ur second game was that Friday against Cedar Crest. I had played better in practice that week, but it still seemed like I was always in the wrong place at the wrong time on the court or doing some little thing incorrectly—like using a chest pass when I should have used a bounce pass. And Coach never missed a chance to let me hear about it. For a benchwarmer, I sure was getting an awful lot of heat. I wished Malcolm had kept his mouth shut on Monday about Megan being my girlfriend. I was getting restless on the bench. I wanted to get in an actual game, but if Coach thought there
was
some funny business between me and his daughter, then Raj and his cousin were right: I had no hope of ever leaving the bench. Even worse, our game against Hamilton was a week away. One look at me on the bench and Vinny Pesto would humiliate me.

The Cedar Crest game was close from the start. Both teams played physical basketball, and the refs were swallowing their whistles. The Cougars kept a hand in JJ’s face everywhere he went. He never saw a ray of daylight. He did his best to get off his shots, but with the slapping, the pulling, and the hand checks, most of them were off target. It didn’t help that Raj had four turnovers. “Where’s your head, Raj?” Coach shouted more than once.

Luckily, Ruben was a monster in the paint, shaking off guys twice his size for second-chance points. Thanks to him, we were still in it with seven minutes left in the fourth quarter.

“Coach,” said Roy during the next time-out, “they’re all over us. Can’t you say something to the refs?”

Shaking his head, Coach shouted, “Nothing you or I say to the refs is going to change the way the game is called! Just play your game. Take what the refs give you. If the other team pushes, push back. Contest
every
shot. Fight for every loose ball.”

“Their big men are too big. They’re like cedar trees,” Khalil gasped. “They’re shooting right over us.”

Everybody began talking at once. Except me. Coach held up his hands for quiet.

That was when I said, “They look tired.”

Everybody stared at me.

“Go on, Toby,” said Coach.

“They look tired. They’ve got their hands on their knees.”

“What are you saying?” Ruben asked.

What
was
I saying? My brain raced to catch up with my mouth. What do you do to a tired team in a close game? “We should press,” I said. “We’ve been running all those wind sprints. We might as well use the stamina.”

“He’s right,” said JJ. “We
should
press. Take them out of their half-court game. Force some turnovers.”

“Good call,” said Ruben. Everyone else nodded. For the first time, I felt like I was more important to the team than the ball rack.

Coach looked around the huddle. “Okay,” he said to everybody’s surprise, “let’s try a full-court press for three minutes. One-three-one. Raj at one point. Ruben, McKlusky, and Roy in the middle. Then JJ. Khalil, you take a breather.”

Khalil covered his head with a towel. “Phew.”

Who knows?
I thought as the team took the court again. Maybe they would build enough of a lead to get me in the game. Sure enough, the pace of the game accelerated. Both teams were trapping, stealing, and scoring off fast breaks.

We stayed ahead. With three minutes left, Cedar Crest inbounded the ball on the baseline to their center. He looked like a pair of stilts with arms and a head. As soon as Stilts caught the pass, Ruben and Raj raced over, yelling, “Trap, trap, trap!” Stilts panicked. Unable to dribble, he threw the ball up in the air like a hot brick. Ruben scooped it up and dashed to the hoop for two.

Ruben hopped sideways down the sideline, flapping his arms and nodding his head. He wasn’t showboating, exactly. He was playing to the crowd—to get them into the game.

We had the crowd. We had momentum.

The only things not going our way were the whistles.

“I think the ref must have a kid who goes to Cedar Crest,” I said to Megan after JJ was called for a touch foul, his fourth.

“One more and JJ is out of the game,” Megan said.

A minute later Raj was leading another fast break with JJ trailing. A step inside the free-throw line, he tossed the ball over his back into JJ’s hands, then stepped aside. That was when the Cedar Crest center moved into JJ’s path. There was a collision. The whistle blew. Then came the call: offensive foul.

Outrageous.

JJ was out of the game.

“Open your eyes, ref. You’re missing a great game,” I called.

Megan lowered her eyes. “Oh no, Toby.”

Suddenly the ref ran up to our bench, blew his whistle, and said, “Technical foul on Pilchuck, number…” He looked at me. I was still wearing my warm-up shirt. “What’s your number, son?” he asked.

“I…”

Malcolm lifted my shirt up. “Thirty-two,” he said.

“Two shots!” said the ref.

I couldn’t believe it. The first time my number had been called during a game and it was for this! Suddenly, I went from the invisible man to the man everyone wanted to pound into pulp.

“Oh, man!” Roy cried. “You gotta be kidding me.”

“That was not cool,” Khalil added.

“Not cool,” Ruben said.

Coach turned bright red so quickly, Megan had to run to him with a glass of water and tell him to sit until he caught his breath.

JJ wouldn’t even look at me. He was on the court, staring at the scoreboard and shaking his head.

Cedar Crest made the first free throw to pull within six. The second free throw was short. Khalil, who subbed in when JJ fouled out, got a hand on the rebound before the Cougars came up with possession. The Cedar Crest center pump-faked. Khalil leaned in, bumping him. The shot went up and fell in.

The whistle blew.

And one.

The lead was down to four.

After the free throw, the lead was down to three.

What had I done?

We never recovered. Cedar Crest seized the momentum. Ruben fought until the last second, but we ended up losing by four. The buzzer blew and the Cougars danced into the visitors’ locker room. The rest of my team stood near the court, dazed, before wandering away to change. I sat right where I had sat all night and would probably sit until the end of the season—on the end of the bench.

Behind me, the stands were emptying. Mom tapped me on the shoulder to tell me she and Dad would be waiting for me in the parking lot. Megan sat next to me tapping her feet on the wood floor. I guess there wasn’t much to say to a guy who had blown the game without even taking off his warm-up shirt.

JJ had just taken the seat on the other side of me when a voice tore through the half-empty gym. Across the court, JJ’s dad had cornered a man half his size: the ref who had whistled JJ for the fifth foul. “Don’t tell
me
the rules,” he growled. “I saw what was going on out there tonight.”

The ref tried to wiggle free.

“Are you blind?”

Most of the people left in the gym had turned their attention to the altercation. Inches now separated the ref from JJ’s dad. I had never seen a grown man punch another in real life.

Tossing aside his towel, JJ rose from his seat. He crossed the court and pulled his dad away, and to the relief of the ref, they left the gym.

“That was scary,” said Megan, gripping my wrist. She was trembling. Speaking of scary, walking our way from the scorer’s table was Coach Applewhite. Seeing that the situation with JJ’s dad was under control, he was looking for Megan.

I only had a few seconds.

Using my left hand to pry Megan’s hand from my wrist, I said, “You know, I really should be going.”

It was too late. Coach locked his eyes on me and said, “Wheeler, for crying out loud, what did I say earlier?”

Megan slipped away. She was right. I was toast.

“Sorry, Coach,” I said.

“Wheeler, if you can’t learn to follow instructions, how can I ever put you in a game? I told you it takes twelve of you to win and I meant it. You may not like your role but you still have a job to do. So you decide: Play by my rules or find something else to do with your time.”

         
14

S
ix days after Coach warned me to play by the rules, I was standing in a gravel parking lot at the state park with the rest of the eighth-grade class. We had just gotten off the bus, and everyone was scrambling around, gathering in groups, including Megan and Valerie. They had become friendly the day they had covered for each other in the hallway, and during the ride from school to the park had made plans to collect pine boughs together. That was our assignment for the afternoon. We were all supposed to collect one armful of fallen branches with the needles still on them. Then we were going to go back to school and weave wreaths for the retirement home, the fire station, the library, and other places that already had Christmas decorations coming out the wazoo.

“Toby!” Megan called. “Do you want to come with us?” She was wearing a red fleece jacket and yellow rain pants. If her shoes had been green instead of brown, she would have looked like a stoplight. As she waved, my mouth went a little dry. Yes, I wanted to go with them! But hovering nearby were JJ and Stephen. I reconsidered. Even with the invitation from Megan, I still would have felt like I was tagging along.

Twenty minutes later I was hiking with Raj through damp underbrush on the edge of a mountain trail. The air was chilly and there was nowhere to hide from the rain, but anything was better than being in class. And despite the cool, drippy weather, I was already sweating underneath my parka as I told Raj what had happened after the game the past Friday.

When I got to the part about Megan grabbing my wrist, Raj said, “Your wrist? That’s bad.”

“But what Coach saw was me lifting her hand off.”

Raj shook his head. “What did I tell you, Toby? Coach sees what he wants to see.”

I pushed back a shoulder-high branch and stepped around the tree. “Vinny was right,” I said under my breath. “I’m never going to get off the bench.”

“Ow!”
Behind me, Raj was brushing pine needles and sap from his face. “Watch it,” he said.

“Sorry,” I said.

“That’s okay.” Raj bent down to pick up a bough. We had stumbled into a pretty good pile of them. “Who’s Vinny?” he asked.

I told Raj about my vow to Vinny Pesto.

“Let me get this straight,” he said. “We have to beat Hamilton in the championship game?”

“And I have to be on the court. I forgot to mention that.”

“We’re 0 and 2, Toby!” Raj said as if he needed to remind me. “If we lose two more games, we aren’t even going to make the play-offs. What else did you promise him?”

“Only that I would hit the winning shot in his face.”

“So all we have to do is win seven of the next games, get our twelfth man on the court in the championship, and have him hit a last-second shot?”

“In Vinny Pesto’s face,” I added.

Raj whistled. “Good luck,” he said.

“What am I going to do?” I asked, hopping over a small stream running through a stand of sagging fir trees.

Raj took off his raincoat, laid it across a stump, and sat with a sigh. I did the same. We were just a few feet from the trail now.

“Take it one step at a time,” Raj said. “The first thing you have to do is make sure Coach knows there is nothing happening between you and Megan.” He gave me a look. “Which is the truth, right?”

“Um, as far as I know.”

“Good,” Raj said. “After that, all you have to do is make up for what happened against Cedar Crest.”

“How do I do that?”

“I’m not sure,” Raj admitted as he blew on his hands. “But we better think of something fast. Our game against Hamilton is Friday.”

I looked up, admiring the heights of the trees around me. Even though it wasn’t exactly tropical in the foothills of the mountains, I did like living so close to the wilderness. It made me feel like I was always a few minutes away from an adventure. It was at moments like these that I saw things Mom’s way and wanted to save every acre of forest possible. But I had also seen the old photographs on the walls in the library and come away believing that cutting down trees was just part of the history here. Like fishing in Alaska or making movies in Hollywood. I was just glad Mom and Dad never made me choose sides at home.

I was just picking up a pinecone to chuck at Raj when two people came down the trail—Melanie, ducking under overhanging branches, and Cassandra, high-stepping over roots and logs. Raj caught sight of Cassandra and turned sheet-white. I think if he had had time, he would have jumped behind the nearest tree. But Cassandra saw him and walked right over.

“Hi, Raj,” she said. “How’s it going?”

“Hi, Cassandra,” he said too loudly. “What are you doing here?”

Melanie and I smiled at each other.

Cassandra looked down at the branches in her hand. “Same as you, I guess. Collecting pine boughs.”

“Oh—right.”

“Well,” Cassandra said after about two minutes, “I guess I’ll see you later at school.”

“Or on the bus,” Raj blurted.

Oh, man, this guy was worse than me. How was he ever going to ask this girl to a dance? She might have to do it for him.

Cassandra started to leave, then stopped like she had remembered something she wanted to say. “Hey,” she said, “you guys should come to one of our games sometime. They’re a lot of fun.”

Raj bobbled his chin. “Yeah—okay,” he said.

Melanie followed Cassandra. “Bye, Toby. Bye, Raj. Say hi to McKlusky.”

When they were out of sight, Raj took a deep breath and said to me, “Well, I think that went pretty well.”

There was no time to discuss his “conversation” with Cassandra because a moment later, Megan came around the corner with Valerie. Laughing, Megan tucked her branches under one arm and waved.

“Here comes trouble,” said Raj.

“You’re making a big deal out of nothing.”

“We’ll see.”

Behind the girls came JJ, bearing two armloads of pine boughs. He made his way past the roots of a fallen tree, balancing carefully because he had no free hands. He nodded when he saw me, then kept going.

“How’s it going?” Megan asked me. She had stopped to tie her shoe.

“Not bad. Your dad made me do extra sprints yesterday.”

Megan smiled. “It just means he cares.”

“If he really cared, he would let me play. Of course, he might have to tape my mouth shut first.”

Megan stepped onto a rock to cross the small stream. “Why do you think he asked me to sit on the bench during your games?”

“I don’t know,” I said, pretending to think hard about the question, “maybe he thought you needed some help adding up the score.”

“I can add up the points you’ve scored so far this season.” Megan reached down from the rock to punch my shoulder. “Zero,” she said, and started to slip. She waved her arms around for balance, and then toppled into me before landing on the wet ground.

“What do you know?” said Valerie. “Toby Wheeler actually prevented an injury. That’s a first.”

Megan was unhurt, but she was half-soaked. I handed her my parka. “Here. I was sweating anyway.”

“Gross,” said Valerie.

“Thanks, Toby,” Megan said. Shivering, she replaced her wet jacket with the parka.

“No problem,” I said, holding back a branch. “There’s another pile of boughs just up here past this tree.”

Megan walked by me. I let go of the branch and followed her.

From behind us came a thwack and then,
“Yeowww!”

I turned around. Valerie was brushing pine needles from her face. A large red mark ran across her cheek.

Not again! Valerie was still glaring at me when Raj came over. “What are you doing?” he whispered frantically.

“It was an accident. I didn’t know she was there.”

“Not that,” he said, pointing past Valerie.
“That.”

“Megan?”

“Yes! Why did you give her your coat?”

“Her jacket was wet. What’s the big deal?”

Raj sounded very disappointed in me. “My cousin says when a girl borrows a piece of clothing from a guy it means she likes him. You were supposed to make her
not
like you. Then you come along with a dry raincoat and save her. What were you thinking?”

“She looked cold.”

Raj trudged away through the fallen branches. “You’ve done it now, Toby. I tried to warn you. But you’ve done it now.”

BOOK: Toby Wheeler
12.53Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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