Toby Wheeler (9 page)

         
15

T
he next day I was standing in the hallway during lunch. In a few hours we were traveling to Hamilton Middle School for a showdown with the Harriers—and Vinny Pesto. Beating them would be tough, but at least we still had a chance to save our season.

My personal outlook was not so good. I was one more misstep from blowing any chance of ever getting into a game. Which was why when Raj came to me with the note from Megan, I took it seriously.

Thanks again for the parka. That was very sweet. I had to leave school for a few hours to do something. See you after the game maybe.

—
M

“Who gave you this?”

“It’s from your girlfriend,” said Raj. “She asked me to give it to you.”

“How many times do I have to tell you? Megan is
not
my girlfriend.”

“Look, Toby,” said Raj. “It doesn’t make any difference to me what you do. But if you want to stay on Coach’s good side, you need to end this right now.”

“You make it sound like it’s an emergency,” I said.

Raj put his hand on my shoulder. “Toby, I talked to my cousin. He says you’ve already passed the third stage.”

“The third stage?”

“The first stage is hand-on-hand contact. You passed the second stage when you lent her clothing. Now you’ve moved on to notes with just initials—the third stage.”

“I give up,” I said. “What do I do?”

“Something like this happened to my cousin once. His girlfriends send him notes all the time.”

“What did he do?”

Raj looked at his watch. “Do you have a pencil and paper? You have to let her down. But you have to let her down easy so she doesn’t get mad and make things even worse.”

Although my gut told me Raj was not exactly Pilchuck Middle School’s number one expert on girls, I listened to his advice. I had no choice. I had to get on Coach’s good side if I wanted to get in the game.

“Okay. What else?” I asked.

“Write her a note,” said Raj. “Notes are better than meeting in person. No big scenes.”

“What should I say?”

“Tell her you just want to be friends. But give her a reason. Girls
always
need a reason.”

A moment later, I fished a pencil from my bag and wrote:

M

Can we just be friends? I think you-know-who would want it that way.

—
T

“Good,” said Raj. “But it might help if you wrote something nice about her too.”

M

Can we just be friends? I think you-know-who would want it that way. You have a nice smile.

—T

“Too nice,” said Raj.

I thought for a moment, then wrote:

M

Can we just be friends? I think you-know-who would want it that way. You have a pretty nice smile.

—
T

Raj read the note. “Perfect.”

“Will you give it to her?” I asked. “I don’t want her to read it in front of me.”

“I’m not going to see her again today. But McKlusky has social studies with her fifth period. I’ll give it to him and he can give it to her.”

“Thanks—I think.”

“Toby, you’re doing the right thing. If you want to be anything on this team besides the twelfth man, Coach has to trust you. And if he can’t trust you with his daughter, why would he trust you with the basketball?”

         
16

R
iding the bus to a game was nothing like riding the bus to a field trip. Everybody had a double seat of his own. Most of the guys were spread out. Some, like JJ, were in their own worlds, listening to music and staring out the window as the bus chugged past picnic areas overlooking the river, forest-fire warning signs, and boarded-up roadside gas stations. Another group was gathered around Ruben in the back of the bus for a card game.

Since the Cedar Crest game, one of the only guys besides Raj not giving me the cold shoulder was Malcolm. He was sitting with his back against a window; I was facing him with my back against the opposite window. Malcolm beamed as he held his warm-up shirt for me to see.

“Trashman?” I asked. “Your nickname is Trashman?”

“Because Trashman takes out the trash.”

“You fool,” Roy yelled from the back. “It says Trashman because you only play during garbage time.”

At least he plays,
I thought, already picturing what Vinny Pesto would do when he saw me on the end of the bench. Probably point to his stupid championship patch while jogging past me. Or when we lined up to shake hands after the game, would he get in my face and say “Once a gym rat, always a gym rat” or something lame like that?

We were in the visitors’ locker room at Hamilton when McKlusky sat next to me. The way he exhaled, I could tell he was bent out of shape about something.

“I got your note,” he said at last.

“What note?”

McKlusky handed me the note I had written earlier.

“McKlusky, this note wasn’t for you.”

“It wasn’t?”

“No! It was for Megan. Who did you think M was?”

“Me.”

“You! Why would I tell
you
you had a nice smile?”

“Actually,
pretty
nice smile is what you said.”

“McKlusky! You never gave this note to Megan?”

JJ looked up from his locker. “Everything okay?”

McKlusky rolled his eyes as he walked away.

Raj appeared. “What was that all about?”

“McKlusky never gave Megan the note.”

“So she still likes you?”

“Yeah.” The situation was getting out of control.

Just then Coach Applewhite gathered us around the chalkboard, where he had sketched the outline of a basketball court. “The Hamilton Harriers are defending champions for a reason,” he said. “They have a guard named Vinny Pesto who can step back and hurt us from the perimeter or put it on the floor and penetrate.” Coach made a chalk mark near the top of the arc. “We also have to worry about the Landusky twins. Melvin and Marvin. Watch out. One of them is right-handed. The other is left-handed.” Two marks appeared in the paint. “Now, remember what we talked about this week. Morelli—you’re our best defender. Your job is to stick to Pesto. Now, as for the Landusky twins…”

Raj whispered to me, “I heard that when a mountain lion wandered into Tompkins Park last summer, the Landusky twins wrestled it to the ground and led it away with a jump rope and a dog collar.”

“What were the Landusky twins doing at Tompkins Park with a jump rope and a dog collar?”

Raj shrugged. “All I know is what I heard.”

Coach cleared his throat and looked at me and Raj. “Is everyone clear on what to do?”

We all nodded.

“Are there any questions?”

“What about offense?” Roy asked.

Coach checked his watch. “What
about
offense?”

“Is JJ going to take all the shots again?”

Everyone was silent.

“For Pete’s sake, Morelli!” Coach barked at last. “We’ve been through this before. We run the offense through JJ because he is our primary scoring threat. If the rest of you crash the boards and move without the ball, your shots will come off passes and misses.”

“If he ever misses,” Roy grumbled.

“That’s exactly my point, Morelli. Remember what I said at the beginning of the season. This is about twelve people being a part of something bigger than any one person. If you have a problem with that, you need to ask yourself what you’re doing on this team.”

Coach gave us a moment to think about that before pulling us together for a pregame cheer.

“Come on, Chuckers!” Ruben said loudly. “We can do this! It’s time to shock the world. No more losing. Shock the world!” When nobody spoke, Ruben said,
“Shock the world!”

“Shock the world,” we repeated. Nobody was sure how loudly to chant. We were chanting rookies.

We tried once more. Then Coach said it was time to take the court. I jumped up and down like a boxer. Even if Coach never put me in the game, I had to be ready for Vinny Pesto. I had promised him Pilchuck would be for real this season. It was time to start proving it.

The gym at Hamilton Middle School was called the Cage. The bleachers came right down to the court, leaving just enough room for the benches. With the low ceilings and bars over the windows, the room felt more like a prison yard than a place to play basketball. Or at least how I pictured a prison yard would look. We had just entered the gym when Coach stopped, snapped his fingers, pivoted, and, spying me, said, “Shoot. I forgot my clipboard in the locker room. Wheeler, do me a favor and grab it. And see if you can find a water bottle while you’re at it.”

At the moment, I was scanning the gym for Vinny Pesto, hoping that either he would not see me, or, if he did, that he would not realize he was seeing the last man on the bench. I was trying to look like I belonged by jogging slowly, not smiling, and basically doing anything possible to fit in with the others. So when Coach asked me to do an errand, he touched a nerve.

“Why me?” I asked.

Coach answered sharply. “Because I asked you to.”

I lowered my head and spoke quietly. “Sorry, Coach.”

“It’s too late for sorry, son.” He got right in my face. “Listen to me. Do you want to contribute to the success of this team?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then you better get used to one idea
right now.
Your attitude is your contribution. When I tell you to do something, you don’t ask
why,
you do it. You got that?”

I nodded.

“Good. Now get back in that locker room and find my clipboard.”

I saw what was happening. Coach might have said
find my clipboard,
but he was really saying
stay away from my daughter.
There was no doubt about it. He was punishing me. Obviously, Megan had come home from school yesterday with my jacket and Coach had discovered whose it was.

Coming back from the locker room, I came face to face with Vinny Pesto, who looked at the clipboard and water bottle in my hands and began laughing hysterically. It was my worst fear.

We were standing directly in front of the gigantic display case full of the trophies Hamilton athletic teams had won over the years. Front and center were the basketball trophies.

“I thought I saw you getting off the bus,” Vinny said. Carefully, he wiped a tiny smudge from the glass. “Then I thought,
Nah, that couldn’t be Toby the Gym Rat, not in an actual uniform.
But now it all makes sense—you couldn’t play basketball, so they made you an equipment manager.”

I was in no mood for his sorry trash talk. I breathed on the glass and was pleased to see a foggy spot stick. Then I drew an
L
in the smudge—for
loser.
“Are you finished, Pesto?” I asked. “I have somewhere to be.”

Vinny used his jersey to clear the smudge. “Where—the bench?”

“I’ll see you on the court, Vinny,” I said with another breath on the glass.

We stared at each other. Neither of us wanted to leave the other alone in front of the trophy case. Finally, Raj poked his head into the hallway and said, “It’s game time, Toby,” and we moved slowly toward the court.

“You first,” said Vinny, eyeing the glass.

“After you, Miss,” I said.

Later, sitting in my seat during a disastrous first half, I felt as though the whole world was against me. All I wanted to do was wipe that smirk from Vinny’s face—and a championship of our own was the only way to do it. But as long as my place on the bench was the basketball equivalent of Pluto, there was nothing I could do except keep my seat warm, fetch water bottles, and leave breath marks on Hamilton’s trophy case.

Roy did his best to contain Pesto. He fought through screens, tried to cut off passes, and kept a hand in his face on jump shots. In the paint, our big men were no match for the Landusky twins. Coach Applewhite stood on the sideline, hollering for Khalil and McKlusky to force Melvin and Marvin away from the basket, but it was no use. Hamilton was beating us inside and out. JJ had fifteen points, but it wasn’t enough.

Coach called two time-outs in the fourth quarter. During the first time-out, he encouraged JJ to keep shooting. The others he comanded, “Move with or without the basketball! Find a way to get open. Use your screens. Make your cuts.”

Megan was on the outer edge of the huddle. When Coach paused, she added, shouting over the crowd noise, “Try to force their big men to bring the ball upcourt—they might turn the ball over.”

I’m not sure if Megan’s speaking up ticked off some of the guys because she was a girl, because she was Coach’s daughter, or because we were losing, but her suggestion definitely stepped on some toes. And Roy let it be known. “What is she—a coach?” he said in earshot of Megan, Coach, and the whole team. “Why is she always around? Shouldn’t she be with her own team?” I think Roy knew the girls’ games were mostly on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Besides, that wasn’t really the point.

Coach was starting to overheat. “For crying out loud, Morelli, this is not the time or the place to discuss this. You worry about what you have to do out there.”

“I’m just sayin’ what everyone’s thinking.”

Megan shrank away. It had never occurred to me to question her role. I just thought it was nice having her on the end of the bench.

A few minutes later, Coach called the second time-out. He had some things to say about the offense. “As long as JJ has nobody to pass to, the defense is going to keep coming at him with that double-team. I want you guys to
think
!”

“So it’s
our
fault we’re losing?” asked Roy, pointing to the scoreboard.

Coach exploded. He kicked the chair closest to his feet so hard, Raj had to jump to avoid being hit.
“Morelli!
You’re finished! Pick up your stuff and get out of my sight.
Now!
”

Roy marched off, but not before getting in the last word. “Just so you know, there’s more than one person on this team. And we’re not in
college,
and we don’t all just care about
winning
!”

Coach watched Roy leave. For a moment, he seemed lost. Rattled. Then he looked at the rest of us and got down to business. “We’re going to stay in the box-and-one,” he said. “McKlusky, you and Khalil have got to shut those big guys down. I don’t care if you have to grow ten inches before the end of the time-out. Do you hear me? Raj, you stay on the perimeter. JJ, can you shut down that Pesto kid for the rest of the night?”

JJ said, “I can do it, Coach.”

Coach took a deep breath. Did he know we needed a fifth player on the court? He became animated again as the buzzer blew.
“Who’s mad?”
he yelled.

Nobody spoke. Coach was not just yelling. He was erupting.

“I’m mad!” Coach went on. “I’m so mad I want to break this chair in two. I want to put on a jersey and go out on that court and kick someone’s butt myself! Unfortunately, they won’t let me play in this game. That means someone else is going to have to go out there and do it. So who’s mad?”

I was wide-eyed. So was everyone else. But I guess nobody wanted to be sent to the locker room, because there was no answer to the question. Instead, some guys looked at each other. A few just looked at their shoes. Coach slammed his clipboard to the floor and turned his back on us. When he turned to face us again, he sounded desperate. “Well, since the rest of you guys won’t do it, and
I
have to stay here on the sideline, I guess we might as well try something new.” Then he tugged me by the loose front of my jersey. “Wheeler, get your butt out there and do something.”