Nikki on the Line

by Barbara Carroll Roberts

  I was in the zone. Flowing with the game, feeling where my teammates were moving like there were strings between us, seeing the whole floor, all the girls, like a pattern, like a dance. The ball falling from my hand, booming off the floor, rising back up to skim my fingertips, boom, shh, boom, shh, boom, sure and steady as a pulse. The swish and rattle of the hoop. The shouts, the hands raised high for a pass. The grins, the fist-bumps. The joy.

  I could have played like that forever.

  And as it turned out, our team got to play a long time, because the first team to three baskets stayed on the floor, and another team came on to replace the losers. We won three games before we all got tired and Adria’s team beat us.

  The next time we got on the floor, things didn’t go quite so well. All the other teams had seen us play, for one thing, so they didn’t bother to guard our girl-who-couldn’t-catch and instead double-teamed Kate. Plus, in one game JJ-the-bulldog-girl guarded me, and her mom kept yelling, “Intense, JJ. Get intense,” and JJ must have been listening to her, because she plowed into me, whacked at my arms, and even grabbed my T-shirt to pull me off balance. And then, just as I was about to throw the ball in from the sideline, she picked that exact second to lean up in my face and say, “What’s wrong with your eyes?”

  I jerked and threw the ball straight to one of JJ’s teammates.

  Great.

  My team still won that game, because we had Kate. But in the next game, a girl on the other team with tight cornrow braids hit two quick midrange jumpers before we even took a shot.

  Kate grabbed the ball and took it out under the basket.

  “Let’s press,” the girl with the cornrows said, and her team closed in.

  I took the ball from Kate. “Go long,” I whispered. “I’ll hit you.”

  Kate looked at me kind of sideways. “Really?”

  “Yeah. Start at half-court, cut back toward me, then run for the other end.”

  Coach Duval blew his whistle. “Let’s go, ladies.”

  Kate sprinted to half-court, took a stutter-step, and kept running. I faked a pass to our girl-who-couldn’t-catch, then zinged a long pass up the court. Kate caught the ball on the run, turned, and jumped for an easy layup. She jogged back downcourt, pointing at me, and if I had even one teeny, tiny, little scrap of still-hating-her left inside me, it disappeared right then.

  Kate’s layup wasn’t enough to win that game, though. In the next play, the girl with the cornrows slid around her defender and pulled up for another short jumper, and that made three, and we were done.

  I walked off the court, breathing hard, looking for my water bottle.

  “Hey, Lefty.”

  I looked up, expecting to see Adria’s dad calling me, because he always called me Lefty. But it wasn’t him. It was Coach Duval. He waved me over.

  “You set up that play?” he said. “That long pass?”

  It was hard to tell from his expression if he liked the pass, or if he was about to tell me it was dumb because it was the kind of pass that was easy to intercept if you didn’t throw it hard and fast enough.

  But I nodded because, well, because I’d set it up.

  “Okay,” he said. Then he looked back at the court.

  I stood there for a minute, not sure if the conversation was over, but finally it felt weirder standing there than it did walking away without saying anything else, so I went and stood next to Kate and watched the other girls play.

  And started to count.

  Ten girls would make the team. Kate was one. So was Adria. And probably a girl I recognized from county league, Kim-Ly Tran, who flew up and down the court, darting between players, stealing the ball, streaking ahead of everyone else. What coach wouldn’t want a girl as fast as her? That made three. There were two other really good guards who also happened to be tall. Taller than me, anyway. One was the girl with the cornrows who was such a good shooter, and the other was this goofy girl with wild red hair who called everybody “Dude” and jumped around slapping hands with her teammates. But goofy or not, she could whip the ball around behind her back and between her legs and spin away from defenders, moves I could barely do at half speed in my driveway, let alone on the run with a defender on me. That made five. Then, besides Adria and Kate, there were two more really tall girls who were good rebounders and pretty good shooters. That made seven.

  Which left three spots.

  And twenty girls to fill them.

  In any tryout for any sport I’d ever played—basketball, softball, soccer, even lacrosse—I’d always known I’d be one of those three girls. But this time… this time I didn’t know.

  Sure, I’d made good passes, I’d been fine in the drills, I hadn’t made terrible mistakes.

  But had I stood out? Apart from being left-handed, apart from being a left-handed point guard, had I looked special?

  Was I one of the best?

  For the first time ever, I didn’t know.

  Some Kind of Heterozygote Advantage

  It was only a fifteen-minute car ride from the gym to my house, but my muscles had already stiffened up by the time I got out of Mr. Lawson’s car and thanked him for the ride.

  “Come over later. We can shoot around,” Adria said, pulling the elastic band from her hair and fluffing out her dark curls. She waved as they drove away.

  I hitched my gym bag up higher on my shoulder and started up the steps to our side porch—three little steps that suddenly looked like Mount Everest. I grabbed the handrail, hauled myself up, and after about ten hours, made it onto the porch.

  The door crashed open.

  I jumped sideways, but not quick enough, because my brother exploded out of the house like an eight-year-old rocket, hurtling straight into me. We went down in a heap.

  “Sam! Can’t you watch where you’re going?” I untangled my legs from his.

  “Sorry, Nikki.” He jumped up. “Sorry. Sorry. You okay?”

  “Yeah.” I rubbed at my legs, which were now even sorer than they’d been a minute ago.

  “Did you make the team?” Sam was already off the porch, sprinting into the garage. Two seconds later he sprang onto the driveway on his pogo stick, his hair flapping around his head. He looked like a giant bouncing mushroom.

  “No,” I hollered back.

  “Nikki?” Mom stood in the doorway, still wearing what she called her librarian uniform—dark dress slacks, bright-colored blouse, dark jacket. And a hideous pair of clogs. Weird, shiny, plasticky-looking clogs. Weird, swirly green plastic. They hurt your eyes to look at, which I’d told her a hundred times but she just shrugged and said she was happy to look professional from the knees up, but had to be comfortable from the ankles down.

  Like that made it okay to walk around looking so embarrassing.

  “What are you doing down there?” Mom said.

  I pushed myself up. “Run-in with Sam.”

  “She didn’t make the team!” Sam bellowed, bouncing in a big circle.

  “Oh no. I’m so sorry.” Mom reached toward me, but I was already bending down to retrieve my gym bag from where it had landed, underneath the old rocking chair.

  “It’s okay, Mom,” I said. “Nobody made it yet. There’s another tryout next Saturday.”

  “Oh. Did I know that already?”

  I sighed. “Remember, when I signed up, I told you there’d be two days of tryouts?”

  “Well, I don’t remember, but I suspect you told me.” She put her arm around my shoulders, even though I was pretty sure my T-shirt was totally sweaty and gross. “Come and get something to drink.”

  “Look!” Sam let go of his pogo stick and held his arms straight out, still bouncing. “No hands!” He bounced two more times, then the bottom of the pogo stick hit the edge of the driveway, and he flew off onto the lawn.

  I guess a lot of moms would have run over to pick him up and coo and stuff, but our mom was so used to Sam bashing into things she just folded her arms. “Any blood?”

  Sam looked at his
knees and twisted his arms around to look at his elbows. “No.”

  “Put your bike helmet on, please.”

  “Do I have to?”

  Mom just looked at him.

  “Okay, okay.” He ran into the garage.

  “And stay on the driveway.” Mom went back inside.

  I followed her, hung my gym bag on a hook in the laundry room, kicked off my shoes, and washed my hands at the kitchen sink. I tugged gently at the middle finger of my left hand, which I’d jammed a little in one of the scrimmages. I always seemed to jam that finger—probably because I reached for the ball first with my left hand.

  “Mom,” I said. “Why am I left-handed?”

  “It’s genetic.” Mom took a pitcher of lemonade out of the refrigerator, poured some into a glass, and handed it to me. “As a matter of fact, I read something the other day about left-handedness. Researchers think it might be linked to some kind of heterozygote advantage.”

  You know, sometimes having a mom who’s a university research librarian is a good thing, like when she helps you figure out how to find information for school projects and stuff. Sometimes it’s beyond annoying.

  “Thanks for clearing that up,” I said.

  “You’re welcome. And what that means, in case you’re wondering, is that they think left-handedness, or some trait it’s linked to, might have provided an evolutionary advantage.”

  I wiped lemonade off my chin with the back of my hand. “I hope it’s linked to a trait that’ll make me tall. I could use that advantage.”

  Mom smiled. “Don’t worry, Nikki. You’ll grow more.” She leaned against the counter. “So how did the tryout go? Did you have fun?”

  I gulped down more lemonade. “Tryouts are never really fun.”

  “No, I guess not. More like a job interview, I suppose. Stressful.”

  “Definitely stressful.”

  Mom smoothed some stray hairs away from my face. “I’m sure you played well. You always do.”

  “I hope so.” I leaned against her, letting my head drop onto her shoulder. “You wouldn’t believe how good some of the girls were.”

  She looped her arm around me and we stood like that for a minute or two. “Tired?” she said.

  I nodded into her shoulder.

  Mom turned her arm and looked at her watch. “Oh dear, I have to go.”

  “Where?”

  “I have a haircut appointment and I need to go to the grocery store. Please make sure Sam keeps his helmet on when he’s on his pogo stick.”

  “Wait, what? I have to watch Sam?”

  “Just for a few hours.”

  “But I told Adria I’d come over to shoot with her.”

  “I’m afraid that’ll have to wait.”

  “Can’t you just do the haircut and not the grocery store?”

  Mom picked up her purse and keys. “If I don’t go to the grocery store, you and Sam won’t have anything to pack for lunches this week.”

  “We could buy lunch in our cafeterias.”

  Mom raised an eyebrow. “Nikki, you know we run on a tight budget. If you buy lunch all week, we’ll have to give up something else. Like a movie. Or dinner at a restaurant. It won’t kill you to watch Sam for a little while.”

  I slumped into a chair. “It might.”

  Mom gave my shoulder a quick squeeze and headed out the door.

  “Wait!”

  She stuck her head back inside. “What?”

  “You cannot wear those clogs to the hair salon.”

  Mom laughed. She stepped out of her clogs, set them on the shoe rack by the door, and slipped into black flats. “Better?”

  “Better.”

  I made a sandwich and looked out the window to make sure Sam was still in the driveway, even though I could hear the sproing, sproing of the pogo stick. Then I sat at the kitchen counter, chewing my PB&J a lot harder than I needed to.

  Why couldn’t I have a family like Adria’s? With older sisters instead of an annoying little brother. And why couldn’t I have a dad like her dad, who loved basketball and would spend millions of hours out in the driveway with me, teaching me to dribble and shoot and playing one-on-one? Or even, just, why couldn’t I have a family with a dad? A dad who liked to hang out with Sam so I didn’t have to. Because, let’s face it, taking care of Sam was about the last thing I wanted to do right then.

  Or ever.

  When I started seventh grade last year and couldn’t go to after-school-care anymore because they didn’t have it in middle school, Mom thought it would be a great idea if Sam came home after school, too. I’d be there to take care of him and the two of us could get our homework done and spend time “bonding.” It took me two weeks to convince her that it would be a horrible idea, and that I’d be insane and Sam would be tied up and locked in his room every day when she got home. I think it was the tied-up part that finally convinced her.

  That didn’t get me out of weekend babysitting, though.

  I finished eating, cleaned up, then texted Adria that I couldn’t come over.

  Poop, she texted back.

  Double-poop.

  I shrugged into a sweatshirt, pulled on sneakers, and went outside.

  “Want to ride bikes?” Sam hollered.

  “Maybe later. I need to practice shooting.” I grabbed my basketball—my “Official WNBA” ball I’d gotten last Christmas—and dribbled it back and forth between my legs, jogging over to our hoop.

  It was an old hoop and, honestly, it was pretty ratty-looking, scratched up and rusty in places. Mom said it had already been there, planted in the ground beside the driveway, when she bought the house before I was born. But it was the right height and straight and level, and Mom had helped me hang a new net on it, so it worked fine.

  I stood in front of the basket to warm up with form-shooting, which is shooting with only one hand. It’s the way Adria’s dad started teaching us to shoot when we were little (on a lowered hoop, of course). You learn good shooting form now, he’d said, you won’t have bad habits to break later. Which is probably one of the reasons why Adria and I were better than the other girls when we showed up for our first team in second grade. It’s probably also one of the reasons why I always loved basketball—I was always good at it. And, you know, it’s fun to do stuff you’re good at.

  Was I good enough to make the Action, though?

  Oh man, I had to make this team. I’d been dreaming about making this team all winter long. Ever since Mr. Lawson took us to some games at the high school where Adria and I would go. Amazing games. The bleachers full of high school kids cheering and jumping around, a big scoreboard that lit up with the girls’ jersey numbers when they scored, even an announcer. But the actual games were the best part, because the girls were so, so, so good. The way they played together, zinging the ball around, knowing where another girl would be before she got there, running their plays like they were connected to one another, like they didn’t even have to think. Like they lived in the zone.

  And from the first time I saw them play, I wanted to be part of that team more than I’d ever wanted anything in my life. Because how amazingly fun would it be to play on a team that good?

  After one of the games, Mr. Lawson introduced Adria and me to the coach, and she told us we should play on a club team this spring if we wanted to be ready for high school ball and that the Action was the best club because they had great coaches.

  So, yeah, I had to make this Action team. Which meant I had to get to work.

  I squared my shoulders to the basket and started shooting, the ball balanced on my left hand at eye level, my right hand behind my back, bending my knees, then powering up, sending the ball toward the basket, holding my follow-through, and swish.

  I had a regular warm-up routine, shooting from right in front of the hoop, then from both sides, swishing three shots from each spot before I could move on. Then I’d take a step back from the basket and do the whole routine again. After that, I’d work on the fun stuff—layup
s, set shots, jumpers—but I always did form-shooting first.

  “Hey, Nikki, guess what!” Sam bounced up the driveway. “Mom says I get to play on a soccer team.”

  “That’s cool. You run around a lot in soccer.” My next shot clanged off the front of the rim.

  “That’s what Mom said.” Sam bounced up next to me, still talking, his voice going boing, boing, boing every time the pogo stick hit the driveway. “Jeffrey’s going to play, too. So’s Omar. We all want to be on the same team.”

  “Cool,” I said again, staying focused on the hoop, trying to screen out Sam’s chattering, balancing the ball on my left hand, bending my knees, sending up another shot…clang. “Sam, could you back off? Your pogoing’s distracting me.”

  “Sorry!” Sam bounced away. “I bounced a hundred in a row without falling off while you were inside. Wanna see me do it again?”

  “Sure, whatever.” Balancing the ball on my left hand, and sending up another shot, and swish. Two. And balancing the ball on my left hand, and—sproing, sproing, sproing behind me, and Sam’s voice, “eight, nine, ten”—and sending up another shot, and clang. Grabbing the rebound, and—sproing, sproing, sproing closer, “fifteen, sixteen, seventeen”—and balancing the ball on my left hand, and—sproing, sproing, sproing—and sending up another shot, and—

  Bam! Sam bounced up, directly into the ball as it left my fingers. He flew into the little hedge that separated our yard from our neighbor’s, and the pogo stick banged off my shin and landed on my foot.

  “Yow!” I grabbed my shin, stumbled sideways, and dropped down on the driveway. “Oh my god, Sam, you practically broke my leg.”

  “Sorry,” Sam said. “Sorry, sorry.”

  “You’re a walking disaster area, you know that?” I pulled up the leg of my sweatpants. “Look at that! There’s already a lump.”

  “I’m sorry, Nikki,” he said again. “I didn’t mean to.”

  I opened my mouth to yell at him some more, but stopped. Tears leaked from the corners of his eyes.