Nikki on the Line

by Barbara Carroll Roberts

  “You okay?” I said.

  He nodded. “Are you?”

  “Yeah.” I pulled my sweatpants leg back down, being careful not to touch the lump on my shin. “You want to ride bikes?”

  The Most Embarrassing Thing in the Entire World

  At least I got to hang out at Adria’s on Sunday.

  I parked my bike in her garage, gave a quick little tap on the kitchen door, let myself in, and called out, “Hi, it’s me.” I don’t think anyone heard me, though, because Adria’s sisters were in the kitchen with what looked to be about half their high school dance team. Some of the girls were making cookies and the rest of them were dancing around to the music that blared from a speaker, shouting and laughing and pretty much making more noise than Sam could ever hope to make.

  “Hey, Nik,” one of Adria’s sisters called. “Want a cookie? Adria’s out back with Mom.”

  I waved at her and hurried out through their family room to the backyard. Adria was sprawled in a lounge chair, one leg draped over the chair arm, with a plate of cookies in her lap. Her mom sat on a high stool, her big sketch pad propped on an easel in front of her.

  “Well, there you are,” Mrs. Lawson said. “I haven’t seen you in forever.”

  I laughed. “I was here Friday after school.”

  “No, really?” Mrs. Lawson laughed, too, and pulled me into a quick hug. “It’s so nice to hug you girls when you’re not dripping sweat.”

  “Cookie?” Adria said, which sounded like “ookie?” because she was chewing.

  I held out my hand and Adria tossed one to me, holding her follow-through like she was shooting a basketball. I caught the cookie near my knee. “I think that would’ve been an air ball.”

  Adria shrugged and bit into another cookie.

  I looked over Mrs. Lawson’s shoulder at her sketch pad. It was covered with drawings of birds. Birds hanging on the bird feeder, birds pecking at the ground, birds perched on branches. “What are you working on?” I asked. “No, wait, let me guess. A picture book about birds?”

  She laughed. “Lots and lots of little birds. And a flamingo. Looks like I need a trip to the zoo.”

  Adria sat up. “Can we go with you?”

  “You’ll be in school,” Mrs. Lawson said.

  “We could miss a day,” Adria said. “Remember how we used to go with you when we were little?”

  “Yes, and I also remember never getting much work done when you were with me.” She held binoculars up to her eyes, pointing them at the forest behind their fence. “Oh, look at that cardinal puffing out his feathers. Doesn’t he look full of himself?” She set down the binoculars, pulled a pencil from over her ear, and with just a few quick lines, dashed out a sketch of a cardinal looking totally stuck-up.

  I hung behind her, watching her sketch more birds. Ever since Adria and I started playing at each other’s houses when we were in kindergarten, I’d loved watching Mrs. Lawson draw and paint. I always thought it was so cool that drawing and painting was her job. And that she didn’t have to get dressed up like my mom did when she went to work. She could wear whatever she wanted, which was usually something like what she had on right then—black leggings, a big paint-spattered shirt, and a bright purple scarf wrapped around her head to keep her hair back from her face. Without the scarf, her hair was a fantastic riot of dark curls that danced and swayed whenever she moved.

  Mrs. Lawson was from Brazil. No, actually her family was from Brazil. She’d only lived there as a baby, and whenever anyone asked her where she was from, she’d say, “Rhode Island,” because both her parents were professors at a fancy art school there, so that’s where she grew up. I also thought it was cool that there were so many artists in Mrs. Lawson’s family.

  Adria and both her sisters were good at art, too, but only her oldest sister wanted to be an artist. Her middle sister was into science, and Adria was like me—the only thing she wanted to do was play basketball.

  Adria stood up from her lounge chair and stretched, the empty cookie plate in one hand. “So are we going to spend all day watching Mom draw birds, or do you want to go shoot some hoops?”

  Mrs. Lawson picked up her binoculars and waggled her fingers at us. “You girls go do what you need to do.”

  I snagged another cookie when we walked back through the kitchen, and Adria grabbed a box of little Goldfish crackers.

  Out in the driveway we tossed the crackers to each other, trying to catch them in our mouths, and ended up laughing so hard we spit Goldfish crumbs all over the place. Then we got out our phones and a basketball and filmed each other taking goofy shots, tossing the ball up underhand, or kneeling on the ground and heaving the ball up at the hoop, or bouncing it off our heads like a soccer ball. When we couldn’t think of any more dumb shots, we played H-O-R-S-E, and I won the first game and Adria won the second.

  Then Mr. Lawson came out and said, “All right, let’s get you two ready for the final tryout.” He ran us through some drills, then played defense on us so I could work on ball-handling and Adria could work on shooting over a taller defender.

  And we talked. Talked and talked and talked about the tryout—the size of Coach Duval (Mr. Lawson thought he had to be six eight or six nine) and how it seemed like he’d be a good teaching coach. And Kate-the-giant-girl (“Six one or six two,” Mr. Lawson said) and how fun it was to play with her—“You were so lucky to be on her team,” Adria said. And JJ-the-bulldog-girl and how rough she played—“Do you believe she asked what was wrong with my eyes?” I said, and Mr. Lawson said, “Oh, for god’s sake, is that why you made that bad pass?” And the girl who was such a good three-point shooter—“She was a total lazy-butt on defense, though,” Adria said. And the goofy “Dude” girl, and superfast Kim-Ly, and a tall, skinny girl named Taj who could get way up in the air and block just about anybody’s shot.

  “For once I wasn’t the tallest girl on the court,” Adria said. “I didn’t have to feel like such a freak.”

  I swatted the ball at her. “I’d give anything to be a freak like you.”

  We all laughed, and Mr. Lawson patted my shoulder. “The point guard’s the most important player on the court.”

  Adria rolled her eyes. “Yeah, Dad, we know, the floor general.”

  Now Mr. Lawson patted Adria’s shoulder. “Sorry, honey, but it’s true. No point guard, no team.” He picked up the ball and tossed it to me. “Plus you’ve got that lefty thing going, Nikki. People don’t expect it. Always gave our team a secret weapon.” He dropped down into a defensive crouch. “Come on, let’s get back to work. You girls did great yesterday, but you can do better.”

  Boy, I hoped he was right.

  Adria and I were still talking about the Action tryout on the school bus Monday morning, and I was still thinking about it all through English, when I was supposed to be discussing Under a War-Torn Sky, and all through history, when I was supposed to be watching a movie about Pearl Harbor.

  Third period was science with Mr. Bukowski, my favorite subject and favorite teacher, but I was still having trouble paying attention, only half listening to the lecture.

  “Genotype,” Mr. Bukowski said, writing the word on the whiteboard, his raspy voice filling the classroom. “Who can tell me what a genotype is?”

  Several hands shot up.

  “Sunil.” Mr. Bukowski pointed at the boy who sat across from me at our lab table.

  “It’s the genes you have, isn’t it?” Sunil said.

  “Are you asking me or telling me?”

  “Uh, I’m telling you,” Sunil said, then more quietly, “I think.”

  “Well, you’re right. Genotype refers to the specific genes an individual has.” Mr. Bukowski turned back to the whiteboard. “Phenotype,” he said, writing that word, too. “Who can tell me what a phenotype is?”

  No hands went up.

  “Nobody? Not one of you has read ahead in your textbook?” Mr. Bukowski scanned the classroom. “Now, why doesn’t that surprise me?” He laughed
like he’d told a really funny joke, making his hair—which looked like an exact copy of Albert Einstein’s—vibrate around his head. “All right, phenotype refers to an individual’s appearance or behavior.”

  He turned and wrote the definitions on the whiteboard, and everybody opened their science notebooks to write them down.

  I opened mine, too, but I didn’t write anything down, because now I was thinking about what I needed to do to stand out at the next tryout. I was a good ball-handler, I knew that, and I had a sneaky crossover dribble. I wasn’t as quick with it as the “Dude” girl, but I could work on that after school this week. I was a pretty good shooter, too, especially if I was ten or twelve feet from the hoop, just left of the free throw line. I’d worked on that shot a lot because Adria’s dad said that if I got good at it, defenders wouldn’t be able to sag off me to double-team Adria. I had to make sure I showed Coach Duval that shot on Saturday.

  And then, all of a sudden, Mr. Bukowski’s voice said, “Nikki, do you have a suggestion?”

  I blinked at him, glanced at Adria, who sat at the next lab table, then blinked again.

  “Are you with us, Nikki?”

  “Um.”

  “Would you like me to repeat the question?”

  I nodded.

  “Can you name a common, inherited trait with a dominant and a recessive form that we can all easily observe when we look at someone?”

  Oh boy.

  “Do you remember we talked about this last week?”

  “Um.” I glanced at Sunil, who seemed to be pulling at his ear, then at Adria, who, weirdly, was really pulling at her ear, then at this new kid, Booker, who sat beside me. He’d pushed back his shaggy, sandy-colored hair and was rubbing at the side of his face, right next to his ear.

  My brain clicked. “Earlobes!”

  Mr. Bukowski smiled. “What about earlobes?”

  “Some people’s earlobes hang down a little bit and some people’s earlobes are attached to their heads right at the bottom of their ears.”

  “Excellent.” Mr. Bukowski turned back to the whiteboard and drew a series of little boxes with lines connecting groups of boxes together, explaining how you inherit half your genes from your mom and half from your dad and showed how your earlobe phenotype depends on your parents’ earlobe genotypes.

  I was still having trouble thinking about anything other than the Northern Virginia Action, but I at least copied down what was on the board. I also leaned toward Booker and whispered, “Thanks.”

  I think it was the only word I’d said to him, other than Hi when he first walked into our class the week before and Mr. Bukowski told him to sit next to me, since it was the only open stool in the classroom. Not that I didn’t want to talk to him or anything—it’s just that, well, I wasn’t that good at talking to boys, especially a boy who all the other girls in the class thought was cute. I mean, unless we were playing H-O-R-S-E in PE or something.

  Booker glanced at me and smiled—a kind of crooked smile with just one side of his mouth turning up. “Glad to help,” he said.

  Mr. Bukowski turned away from the whiteboard, dropping his marker on the tray. “And now we’re ready to talk about our genetics projects.”

  Everyone groaned.

  “Yes, yes, I know you can’t wait to get started.” Mr. Bukowski picked up a stack of papers and handed them out. “This project will be half your quarterly grade, so you’ll want to put in some time and effort, but I think you’re going to enjoy it. You’re each going to pick one of your easily identifiable inherited traits, such as dangling or attached earlobes, hitchhiker’s thumb, dimples, or one of the others listed on the assignment sheet. Then you’re going to make a phenotypic family tree, showing which form of this trait each of your relatives has. I want you to include as many family members as you can. Parents, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, cousins, grandparents, great-grandparents. You’ll give a classroom presentation, and we’ll hang your family trees in the science hallway.”

  Mr. Bukowski talked on, but I didn’t hear him. And it wasn’t because of the Northern Virginia Action or Coach Duval or giraffes or crossover dribbles.

  It was because now I saw an enormous family tree growing in front of me, with dangling and attached earlobes for Mom and Sam, Mom’s parents, her two brothers, and their children. And on my father’s side… on my father’s side, I saw a big, fat blank.

  No, worse than a blank.

  Two words.

  Sperm Donor.

  Oh.

  My.

  God.

  Of all the embarrassing things Mom had ever done to Sam and me—or ever would do to us—nothing could be more embarrassing than giving us dads who were sperm donors.

  What was I going to do?

  How could I bring a family tree to school with… with those words on it? And stand up in front of the class and say those words? And hang my family tree in the science hallway so everybody in the entire school could walk by and read about my Sperm Donor dad?

  I wanted to bury my head in my hands and scream.

  For a minute, I thought about making up a dad and his family, but in the same minute I realized I couldn’t do that. Half the kids in my class had known me since kindergarten, and they all knew I didn’t have a dad. They didn’t know why I didn’t have one—I’d always let everybody think my parents were divorced and my dad had moved far away or maybe died or something.

  Adria knew the truth, only because our moms were friends, and my mom didn’t see anything embarrassing about talking about the most embarrassing thing in the world. But I’d sworn Adria to secrecy.…

  Wait. That was it. I’d get Mom to call Mr. Bukowski and tell him I couldn’t do this assignment.

  Perfect solution.

  I hoped.

  Special

  “I have this assignment,” I said the minute Mom got home from work that evening, with Sam blasting into the kitchen behind her.

  But Mom threw a hand out in front of her, like a cop signaling Stop! and said, “Is it due tomorrow?”

  “No. But—”

  “Then I’m sorry, Nikki. I don’t have time to talk about it tonight. I have to give a presentation in the morning and I haven’t made a single slide yet. I brought home dinner.” She set a supermarket bag on the counter, and I looked inside—a still-warm rotisserie chicken, and mashed potatoes and green beans that just needed to be heated in the microwave.

  “Okay?” Mom said.

  “Okay.”

  She gave me a quick hug.

  “Nikki, guess what!” Sam bellowed. “Kritika got a puppy.”

  “Sam, please modulate yourself,” Mom said, and disappeared into her office.

  Great.

  After dinner and cleaning up the kitchen and doing my homework, I sat down on my bed to do what I usually do when I don’t know what to do, namely, have a little talk with Mia McCall.

  Well, not actually with Mia McCall. With my poster of Mia McCall.

  The poster showed Mia in her Minnesota Lynx uniform—just after she got drafted, first overall, to play in the WNBA—soaring up toward the basket with the ball in her hand, so far above the court her knees almost touched the shoulder of the LA Sparks player guarding her. At first I thought the picture was Photoshopped—like how could anybody jump that high? But it wasn’t Photoshopped. Mia McCall has a twenty-six-inch vertical leap, which is only two inches less than the average vertical leap of the men who play in the NBA.

  I know this because last summer Adria and I started watching WNBA games on TV, and her dad told us we should pick a favorite player to follow. Adria couldn’t decide between Candace Parker and Elena Delle Donne because they’re both tall, like her, but they’re also so athletic they can play just about any position, which is what Adria wanted to be able to do. So she followed both of them. Mr. Lawson said I should pick Sue Bird or Chelsea Gray or another really good point guard, but once I saw Mia play, I had to pick her.

  Mia’s a forward, like Candace Parker
and Elena Delle Donne, and it would have made more sense if I’d listened to Mr. Lawson and picked a point guard. But watching Mia play is like… it’s like…

  Okay, this probably sounds stupid, but my mom listens to classical music, which, honestly, I think is pretty boring most of the time, but there’s this one Beethoven symphony that has singing at the end of it. First one guy, then a couple of people, then this whole huge choir of people. They sing bigger and bigger, and the orchestra swells way up behind them, and the music pulls you straight up from the middle of your chest, and makes you want to fling your arms out from your sides and throw your head back and spin around and around and around in the absolute gloriousness of those voices.

  I asked Mom once what they were singing about—because they’re singing in German—and she said, Joy.

  And, yeah, that’s exactly what it’s like watching Mia McCall play basketball. Like listening to a huge choir of people singing out Beethoven’s version of joy.

  So anyway, there I sat, looking up at Mia, wondering what she would’ve done if she’d gotten a family-tree-of-earlobes assignment when she was in school, because I knew she’d grown up without a dad in her family, too. And as I looked at her, at the determination in her face, at the strain showing in her muscles, I could almost hear her say, Just deal with it.

  I slumped back against my pillows. Mia was right. I had to talk to Mr. Bukowski—that’s all there was to it. If I waited to talk to Mom the next night, she might be too busy again, and the longer I put off talking to Mr. Bukowski, the worse it would get. And I couldn’t just ignore the assignment. I’d never not done an assignment in my life.

  I’d have to talk to him.

  “I wish you could go with me,” I said to Mia. “But at least Adria will be there.”

  Except she wasn’t. She had a dentist appointment, which I remembered when she didn’t get on the bus at her stop the next morning.

  I thought about waiting till later. Maybe talking to Mr. Bukowski after class. But then there’d be a bunch of kids around. It was better to get it over with. So as soon as I got off the bus, I hurried to Mr. Bukowski’s room, hoping to get there before any of his homeroom kids came in.