Travel Team (10 page)

His dad never talked about the car accident that nearly killed him. Never, never, never. This was as close as he ever got, what losing control of his car on the wet road had done to him, how it made him feel. The whole thing feeling as if it were right next door to them.

“But why do you want to coach us?” Danny said. “We're gonna stink.”

“You don't know that. And I have to say, if you act like you're giving up after just one practice, the other guys are gonna do the exact same thing, and we're all wasting our time here.”

“I'm not giving up.”

“I watched you today, Dan. You're the only one who acted like he hated basketball, every time you or somebody else would screw up.”

“Yeah,” Danny said, knowing he sounded just like his father.

“Yeah,” Richie said. “And you can't let it happen again, because I need you. Because I'm gonna put this team in
your
hands. Give you more responsibility than you've ever had in your life.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Danny saw his mom standing on the front porch, waving at them.

“What if I'm not good enough?” he said.

Richie said, “No, it was the other guys who told you you're not good enough.”

Danny sat there. “It was a bad day.”

“Let me tell you something I learned the hard way,” Richie said. “There's no such thing as a bad day if you're playing. On a team you weren't supposed to be on. In a season you weren't even supposed to have.”

“
We
weren't supposed to have.”

“There you go. Go take a shower and tell your mom I'll give her a call later and talk about the availability of the gym.”

Danny was going to tell him he loved him, the words were right there, ready to spill all over the dashboard.

But he didn't.

Because he never did.

He just got out and ran for the front door, trying to bluff his mom by looking happy.

It wouldn't occur to him until later that his dad still hadn't really explained why he was doing it.

T
HEY PRACTICED TWICE MORE DURING THE WEEK
,
EACH ONE A LITTLE LESS
awful than the first one.

But not by much.

It was the Saturday of Veterans Day weekend, most of the town at the parade. They had to practice in the morning today, insanely early in the morning, seven o'clock, because the theater had been taken over by the Science Fair and the Drama Club kids needed the gym at nine. Mr. Harden was playing on the skins team with Will and Bren and Matt. Danny's dad was moving stiffly around for Danny's team, the shirts, pretending he was playing center, just as a way of putting a bigger body on Matt in the scrimmage and making the sides look even.

Matt Fitzgerald moved about as fast as a traffic jam on the Long Island Expressway, so even though the best Richie Walker could do was limp-jog up and down the court himself, they could sort of keep up with each other.

They were about forty-five minutes into what was half game and half practice, Danny's dad stopping them every few minutes to give them one more variation on the offense he wanted them to use against a man-to-man.

It was then that Danny spotted Ty Ross standing just inside the double doors, at the opposite end from the stage. He was in his baggy white shorts, down to his knees, new McGrady blue-and-white sneakers you could spot from a mile away, a Middletown High T-shirt with the sleeves cut off, Ty apparently wanting to show off arms as skinny as his legs.

Danny gave him the chin-up nod, Ty did the same back.

When Richie Walker spotted Ty, he told everybody to take a water break and relax for a minute.

Danny and his dad walked over to Ty, Danny saying, “You must be in the wrong gym, dude.”

“Hey, Ty,” Richie said.

“Mr. Walker.” Ty ducked his head. “My mom was on her way over to Springs, she has to help them set up for some auction or something tonight. I was supposed to help her, but then I remembered that you guys practice early on Saturday.” He grinned. “She sort of gave me a reprieve.”

They all stood there for a moment, nobody knowing what to say about that. Then Richie said, “You want to play some?”

“Would that be okay?” Ty said.

Richie said, “If it's okay with your mom.”

“She's cool.”

Danny said, “What about your dad?”

Ty looked down at the McGradys, the left one untied. He was wearing those socks that barely made it above the top of your high-tops.

“He's playing tennis right now.”

Richie put a hand on his shoulder. “It's just basketball, son. But I don't want you to get into trouble with your father.”

“My mom said that as long as it was okay with you, it was okay with her, we—the Vikings—don't practice again until next Tuesday.”

“Well, then, thank you for coming, Ty, because you may have saved a broken-down old man's life. You play with Danny. And I am going to sit my worn-out butt down.”

Then he changed the teams around a little, stacking the other guys, making it Will, Bren, Matt, Michael Harden and his dad. He put Oliver Towne and the O'Brien twins with Danny and Ty.

“Let's play some damn ball,” Richie Walker said.

They started over, jumping it at center court, Ty against Matt. Ty back-tipped the ball to Danny and as soon as he did, Danny gave him the eye, Ty breaking toward their basket, Danny feeding him perfectly, Ty catching the long pass on one bounce and laying the ball in off the backboard.

As they ran back to set up on defense, Ty changed lanes so he could give Danny a quick low five. He was smiling over the play, as if they'd drawn it up beforehand.

Danny wasn't.

He's not the one in the wrong gym, Danny thought.

I am.

When practice was over, Ty used Will's ever-present cell to call his mother and ask if he could go with Will over to Danny's house.

Most of the other kids had beat it out of the gym when Richie had said they were done for the day. A bad sign, Danny knew, for a bunch of guys who were supposed to be there because of their burning love of the game.

Of course the only reason Danny'd had any fun was because he'd had Ty to pass to.

Ty said he was getting a busy signal on his mom's phone, but she was probably on her way, since her shift at Springs ended at nine, and there was a better chance of her robbing the King Kullen supermarket than there was of her being late for anything.

So they were all standing outside in front of the gym—Danny, his dad, Ty, Will—waiting for Mrs. Ross when Mr. Ross pulled up in his black Mercedes, left the car in the fire lane that was really just a drop-off spot in front of the gym, came up the stairs fast at them, taking the last steps two at a time.

“What's
he
doing here?”

He was talking to Richie about Ty, as if Ty weren't even there.

Richie said, “You should probably ask Ty that.”

“I'm asking you,” he said, pointing a finger at Richie, not quite touching him, but getting it up there near his face.

“Ty showed up and it was lucky he did, because we're short players. I asked if it was all right and he said that his mom said it was, she's the one who dropped him off.”

“My
wife,
” Mr. Ross said, “doesn't make our son's basketball decisions for him.”

Danny wasn't as interested in Ty's dad as he was in his own, wanting to see how he was going to play this, Mr. Ross bossing him now the way he liked to boss everybody else in town.

“You're making a big deal out of nothing,” Richie said, standing his ground, not backing up, keeping his voice calm. Putting his eyes on Mr. Ross and calmly keeping them there.

“He doesn't belong here.”

“He's twelve,” Richie said. “If he can find a game on a Saturday morning, he ought to be allowed to play in it, you ask me.”

Mr. Ross said, “You think I can't see what you're doing here?”

“You mean other than getting up to ten kids so we could scrimmage.”

“Dad,” Ty said.

“Stay out of this.”

Richie said, “C'mon, Jeff. He didn't do anything wrong. I didn't do anything wrong. I told him that if he doesn't have a conflict with your team, he can practice with our team anytime he wants to.”

Then Richie said, “And backing up a second? What
do
you think I'm doing here?”

“You've made it abundantly clear by putting this team of yours together that you think some grave injustice was done to the kids who didn't make the cut. Well, I don't. And I don't want the other kids on the Vikings to even get the idea, from my son, that they have some sort of alternative if they don't like the way things are going.”

Richie Walker barked out a laugh. “You think I'm, like,
recruiting
your kid?”

Danny stood there, not moving, barely breathing, curious to see when Mr. Ross, the most important guy in Middletown, was going to figure out what a jackass he was making of himself, in front of them, in front of his son.

“You just coach your little team and I'll coach mine,” he said. He took Ty by the arm now and said, “Let's go.”

Danny was afraid that Ty was the one about to cry over basketball.

But he didn't.

Richie said, “Why don't you go easy on the boy?”

Mr. Ross stopped, turned around, nodding, a phony smile on his face. “You know,” he said, “there's nothing I like better than getting parenting advice from the experts.”

He and Ty went down the stairs to the car. When they got there, Mr. Ross stood on the passenger side and opened the door, waiting there until Ty was inside.

When the car was gone, Danny said to his dad, “He was pretty angry.”

And his dad said, “Only for the last twenty years or so.”

D
ANNY IMAGINED THE SCENE AT THE
R
OSS HOUSE AFTERWARD BEING SOME-THING
out of one of those
SmackDown!
wrestling shows, but Ty called the next morning and asked if Danny wanted to do something. “I thought you'd be under house arrest until Thanksgiving or something,” Danny said. “Now you get to do something with me?”

“It was a mom deal,” he said.

Then they put both their moms on the phone and told them to work it out.

“Hey, Lily,” Ali Walker said when Danny handed her the portable, then chatted with Lily Ross for a few minutes before she put her hand over the phone and said, “Do you want Ty to come here or do you want to go to his house?”

Danny waved his arms in front of him as if he'd been attacked by bees. “It's like going to the
big
house. No way, Mom. Here. Definitely.”

Mrs. Ross, who seemed way too nice to be married to who she was married to, brought Ty over after lunch. The two moms went into the kitchen for coffee and gossip, while Danny and Ty went upstairs and began putting together their own superteams on
NBA '05
, where the object was to have a final score of about 188–186.

Danny said, “How
did
you get to come over?”

He was on the bed with his controller, Ty slouched in a beanbag chair on the floor with his.

Ty said, “They had a big fight about it that lasted into the night. She said I could play with who I wanted to play with. He asked whose side was she on, his or your dad's. She said she wasn't aware there were different sides on everybody's children being happy. One of those.”

“My parents fight like that sometimes,” Danny said. “But that's because they're only together sometimes.”

Ty said, “Your team has my dad pissed, that's for sure, dude.”

Danny paused the game. “You've seen us. You think
your
team has anything to worry about?”

“He thinks your dad is trying to show him up.”

“I don't think it's like that. I think my dad, like, thinks this is something he had to do for me, even though he didn't.”

Ty said, “You guys just need a couple more players, you'll be pretty good.”

Danny said, “I know who the players are, too. Shaq and Duncan.”

“Really. You just need one guy to catch and shoot, and one guy to rebound.”

“Like I said. Shaq and Duncan.”

Danny unpaused the game.

In a soft voice, one you could barely hear over the PlayStation crowd noises in the bedroom, Ty said, “Dude? I'd rather play on your team.”

Danny didn't even look up from the game.

“I know.”

Then they went back to fantasy basketball, which was almost always a lot simpler than real life.

The next practice was Tuesday night.

Danny and the rest of the Rugrats—he couldn't get the name out of his head now, like they were a rock group—were waiting to get on the floor while the seventh-grade girls' travel team finished their own practice.

Will and Bren were on the stage, quietly dogging the girls as a way of entertaining each other, Will doing most of the talking, of course. Danny was up there with them for a few minutes, but then left, knowing that if they actually started bothering the girls, or were overheard by the girls' coach, Ms. Perry, one of the phys ed teachers from the high school, he'd be going down with them.

He went and sat with the other guys on the floor.

Richie Walker sat in a folding chair on the other side from them, legs stretched out in front of him, watching the girls.

Danny walked over there when the girls went past eight o'clock. Ms. Perry had shouted over and asked if it was all right if they went a few extra minutes, and Richie Walker said, go ahead, he was in no rush.

Danny said, “Even they're better than us.”

“Who is she?” Richie said.

Danny didn't have to ask who “she” meant.

“That's Colby.”

Colby Danes was out there doing what she always did in girls basketball, which meant scoring all the points, getting all the rebounds, passing like she was ready at twelve to go play for the women's team at UConn or Tennessee or one of those other colleges where the women's team was better and more famous than the men's. Danny had always thought of her as the girl player that Ty would have been, almost as tall as Ty, with her red hair in a ponytail, smiling her way through practice even when she'd occasionally do something wrong.

Another tall St. Pat's girl.

Richie said, “What do you think of her?”

“I think she's great,” Danny said. “For a girl.”

“She's great, period,” Richie said. “Those two knotheads making fun of her up on the stage ought to be paying attention to the way she plays. On account of, they might learn something.”

With that, Richie spun around suddenly and stared straight at Bren and Will, as if training a searchlight on them. They both froze, Will with his mouth still open.

Richie went back to staring at Colby Danes.

Really
staring.

“Dad?”

“Huh?”

“You seem pretty interested in Colby.”

“I just like watching people who know how to play. Girls or boys. That's all.”

Ms. Perry announced next basket and they were done for the night.

“You think your friend Colby—”

“—I wouldn't really call her a friend—”

“—would like to practice with the boys sometime?”

On the court, Colby got the ball near the basket and turned and made a baby hook over the girl guarding her, a Chinese girl from Springs. Emily Ming.

“Dad?” Danny said. “What are you doing?”

“Doing what your mom said people should do more of in this town. Thinking outside the box.”

“But she's a
girl
,” Danny said.

“Yeah,” Richie said, “a girl who knows what to do when you pass her the ball. A girl who can catch it and shoot it and go get it. And can run the court on her long legs almost as fast as you can, Dan the man.”

On the court, Ms. Perry blew her whistle and told the girls to bring it in. Danny's dad pulled himself out of his chair, picked up the bag of balls that had been sitting next to him.

“You know what she is, if we're strictly talking basketball here?”

“What?” Danny said.

“The girl of your dreams.”

Richie talked to Ms. Perry first. Ms. Perry told him to ask Colby's dad, Dr. Danes, who was standing with the rest of the girls' parents at the other end of the gym. Then Richie was standing with Colby and Dr. Danes and everybody was doing a lot of smiling and nodding and before you knew it, Colby was in the layup line with Danny and the guys.

Will whispered to Danny, “I knew nothing good was gonna come out of Annika playing golf with the boys.”

Behind them Bren said, “This is just for practice, right?”

Then Danny heard himself saying, “Let me ask you basketball geniuses a question: Could Colby make us any worse?”

“Okay,” Will said, “Walker has officially turned into the coach's son.”

In the first five minutes of the scrimmage, she set a great pick on Will, rolled off it perfectly, and took a smooth bounce pass from Danny for a layup. Like Stockton and Malone. The pick-and-roll.

Then she went down to the other end of the court, stole the ball from Michael Harden, passed it to Danny, who passed it right back to her, then watched as she beat everybody down the court for another easy layup.

Danny looked over at his dad, still standing with Dr. Danes.

Richie Walker, no expression on his face, shrugged.

It went like that for half an hour and then Dr. Danes yelled out to Colby that she had homework to do. Even that made Colby smile. “One more basket?” she said. “Please, Dad?”

“One more. But then that's it.”

Danny brought the ball up. He passed it on the wing to Colby. As she came up, Bren came from the other side and set a back-pick on Oliver Towne, who was guarding her now. Colby left-hand dribbled into the open, near the foul line, and had a wide-open shot.

When she went up for the shot, with everybody watching her, Danny cut for the basket from the other wing. Colby never stopped her shooting motion or seemed to even alter it as she went into the air, passing the ball off to Danny instead.

He caught it and, in the same motion, showing off a little—for a girl?—made a little scoop shot from the left side.

He looked over to see what Colby thought but she was already walking over to her dad.

When practice was over, Danny said to his dad, “Colby coming back?”

“Thursday,” he said.

“Who
is
going to pay for this great team of ours?” Danny said to his mom when he got home.

He'd asked his dad if he wanted to come in after practice, but he said he had to be somewhere. At ten o'clock, Danny just assumed the somewhere had to be Runyon's bar.

“Your father wrote a check to the school for the gym time,” his mom said, “I know that. Beyond that, if this thing keeps going forward, I assume he'll pass a hat with the parents for team uniforms, warm-ups, referees and whatnot. I forget all the costs, it's been a couple of years since I was a travel basketball mom.”

Ali Walker was sitting at the kitchen table, grading compositions. Danny had finished his homework and had been watching a show in the living room where the contestants tried to see how long they could keep live grasshoppers and crickets in their mouths.

“Don't worry about money,” she said. “Parents do that. You worry about school and sports. In that order, I might add.”

She looked up at him over her reading glasses, which always made her look more like Mrs. Walker the teacher than his mom.

“Is there something else on your mind?”

“I was just wondering if Dad's going to stay at the Inn the whole season, now that he's staying,” Danny said.

“He mentioned the other night that he might look into getting a small apartment somewhere if it was cheaper than the Inn.”

“'Cause I was thinking, he could stay—”

“No,” she said. “He could not stay here.”

She put down her reading glasses as she said it, for emphasis, a judge banging her gavel, case closed.

“So he's okay for money right now?”

“He says he is, that he'd had a few good months doing those shows of his before he got here.”

“You believe him?”

His mom said, “You don't?”

It was somewhere between a question and an observation.

“I just don't know what this whole deal is about sometimes,” he said.

“Well, I thought it was about putting together a team for a bunch of boys—”

“—and girls. I think Dad's fixing to put Colby on the team.”

That stopped her.

“
Your
father is going to put a
girl
on
his
basketball team?”

“He didn't come right out and say it. But he let Colby practice tonight and he says she's coming back on Thursday.”

Ali Walker said, “Will wonders never cease.”

“What's that mean?”

“It means your father, in his youth, was not exactly the biggest fan of girls' basketball.”

“She's pretty good, you know.”

“I know. For a girl.”

Danny said, “You were about to tell me something before I told you about Colby.”

“I was just going to say that I thought this was a team for a bunch of kids who'd been told by a bunch of adults they weren't good enough.” She gave him a long look, then said, “Or big enough.”

“He wants
us
to prove a point then?”

“Would you mind telling me what you're getting at here, Daniel Walker?”

“Sometimes I just think Dad's the one trying to prove some kind of point to somebody.”

“Maybe it's to you,” she said. “Ever think of that?”

Danny's thinking was more along these lines:

He wondered if the someone Richie Walker was trying to prove something to was himself.

C
ROSSOVER
2: Hey, picture girl. You there?

C
ON
T
ESSA
44: We're here 24/7.