Nikki on the Line

by Barbara Carroll Roberts

  No luck. There were already kids in his room. But at least they were talking to one another, not reading or studying. Maybe they wouldn’t hear me.

  “Hey there, Nikki,” Mr. Bukowski said when he saw me. “What’s up?”

  “Um,” I said. “Um…”

  “Yes?”

  “Um, well… you know the family tree project?”

  “Yes.”

  “I…” I rubbed my hands up and down the sides of my jeans, feeling the little ridges of the seams. “I can’t do it.”

  “Oh?”

  I shook my head.

  “Do you care to tell me why?”

  My face was getting hot. “My father… um… my father was a sp—”

  Booker was suddenly standing beside me. “Mr. Bukowski, can I talk to you about the family tree project?”

  Mr. Bukowski rocked back in his chair. “Booker, did you notice I was talking with Nikki?”

  “Oh, uh, sorry.” Booker glanced at me, then looked back at Mr. Bukowski. “Should I talk with you later?”

  “That depends,” Mr. Bukowski said. “Are you here to tell me you can’t do the assignment?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Mr. Bukowski shook his head, took off his glasses, wiped them with a tissue slowly, then put his glasses back on, stared at the surface of his desk, and muttered under his breath, “Why didn’t I think about this? Must be getting old.” He looked up at us. “Neither of you lives in a family with two biological parents, right?”

  Booker and I nodded.

  “Hey, I’m sorry, guys. I obviously didn’t think this assignment all the way through. Apparently even great teachers like me make stupid mistakes.” He laughed and stood up. “I hope you didn’t spend too much time worrying about it.”

  “Just all night,” Booker said.

  “Really?” Mr. Bukowski looked at me.

  I nodded.

  “Oh, darn. I truly am sorry.” He picked up a pencil and beat a little rat-a-tat on his desk. “Okay, let’s see, how about if you pick a topic related to genetics that interests you? Write a report or do a poster-board display or a PowerPoint. Sound good?”

  We both nodded, even though, duh, who would ever say writing a report sounded “good”?

  “And, hey,” Mr. Bukowski said, “I’m sure there are other kids who want to do a different kind of project. Remind me in class if I forget to mention it, okay?”

  The first bell rang.

  I still had to get to my locker before homeroom, so I walked fast, nearly trotting, zigging and zagging through the packs of kids in the hallway, but Booker stayed beside me.

  “I know what you should do your project on,” he said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Your eyes.”

  I stopped. Which made four kids slam into me, two of whom had to cuss me out before they shoved past.

  I crossed my arms. And stared at Booker.

  All my life people had been saying stupid stuff about my eyes. Like, “What’s wrong with your eyes?” or “Hey, your eyes are different colors.” Or my favorite, “Wow, did you know your eyes are different colors?” Like maybe I looked in the mirror every day and didn’t notice I had one green eye and one brown eye.

  When I was a little kid, I started squinting up my eyes as small as I could, hoping people would stop asking me about them. But then they asked why I was squinting, so I gave that up and accepted the fact that I had two different-colored eyes and people were going to say stupid stuff about them because, I guess, people like saying stupid stuff.

  “You think weird eyes are genetic?” I said.

  Booker shook his hair back from his face. “Well, eye color’s genetic, I guess. Just like hair color and, I dunno, the way your chin looks, the shape of your nose, all that stuff.”

  I couldn’t help putting my hand on my nose, which was a little pointy. Like my mom’s. “Maybe I should do my report on noses.”

  “Huh-uh. You should do it on your eyes.” Booker glanced around the hallway, then down at the floor, then looked straight back at me. “And your eyes aren’t weird,” he said. “Just different. Just… special.”

  He spun away from me, disappearing into the mob of kids in the hall.

  And I stood there, staring after him, thinking, Did he just say that? That my eyes are special? And then the second bell rang and I realized I was late for class.

  Hustle Your Butt Off

  For the rest of the week, every time I looked at Booker during science, he seemed to be hiding behind the long fringe of hair hanging across the side of his face.

  Not that I looked at him all that often or anything.

  Really.

  Otherwise, it was a regular school week—writing prompts, Pearl Harbor, homework. And that stupid genetics project hanging over my head.

  Also it rained a lot, like it always does in March, which meant I couldn’t go out in our driveway after school to practice my pull-up jumper from just left of the free throw line, the shot I wanted Coach Duval to see. So instead, I brought my basketball into the kitchen to work on my ball-handling. I cleaned it first to make sure it wouldn’t leave little dotted ball tracks all over the floor, because, well, even though Mom had never actually told me I couldn’t play basketball in the house, I didn’t see any reason to make it obvious.

  On Friday night, after dinner and after Sam and I cleaned up the kitchen, I plopped down on the sofa next to Mom. “Can you take me to the tryout tomorrow morning?”

  Mom looked up from a book that, from its cover, seemed to be about worms and compost piles. “Are you talking to me?” Mom said.

  “I’m trying to.”

  She set her book on her lap, and I repeated my question.

  “Sure,” Mom said. “But don’t you want to go with Adria and Mr. Lawson? Usually you like to go with them.”

  I shook my head. “If I make the team, you’ll need to be there to get all the information. If I don’t make the team…”

  Mom smiled. “I don’t think you need to worry about that. You’ve always made the team.”

  “Mr. Lawson was always the coach.”

  “Isn’t he still the coach?”

  “No.”

  Mom sat back against the sofa cushions. “I didn’t realize that.”

  “That’s because you never listen when I talk about basketball.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Yeah?” I picked up a throw pillow and punched it into shape. “What kind of team am I trying out for?”

  Mom closed her book, holding a finger in her place. “I’m not that clueless. A basketball team.”

  “Uh-huh, what kind of basketball team?”

  “Are there different kinds of teams?”

  I whacked Mom’s leg with the pillow. “See? I’ve only told you about this five or six times. It’s a club team. It’s way better than county league, and way harder to make the team.”

  Mom sighed. “I’m sorry, Nikki. I don’t mean to be so distracted.”

  “I know.” I punched the pillow back into shape again and balanced it on one corner against the arm of the sofa. “Are we starting a compost pile?”

  “Hmm?”

  I pointed at her book.

  “Oh, maybe. Did you know that some worm species can double their population in three months?”

  “No, actually I didn’t know that, Mom. But, wow, that’s fascinating.”

  She laughed and whacked my leg with her book.

  “Tryout’s at ten o’clock tomorrow,” I said, standing up. “I want to get there early, okay? And can Sam go to Jeffrey’s or someplace? I don’t want him bugging me.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  Coach Duval looked up at the clock on the gym wall when Mom and I pushed through the big doors on Saturday morning. “You know the tryout doesn’t start for half an hour?”

  I nodded. “I want to warm up my shooting. Is that okay?”

  “Sure. Need a ball?”

  “I brought one.”

  “Oka
y, go to it.” He walked over to Mom and they talked for a few minutes. I hoped she wasn’t telling him about worms.

  I jogged onto the court and stood up close to a basket to do my warm-up shooting, right arm down at my side, left arm doing all the work, going through my whole routine, three swishes from each spot, taking a step away from the basket, and three swishes from each spot again.

  Other girls and parents came in, and other balls bounced and banged off rims of other baskets, and then a man’s voice said, “Who’s your shooting coach?”

  I kept shooting, counting swishes.

  “Who’s your shooting coach?” the man’s voice said again, louder this time.

  I turned.

  Kate’s dad stood behind me, with Kate beside him. “Wow,” she said, “you have really nice form.”

  Her dad glared at her, then turned his hard gaze back on me. “Who’s your shooting coach?”

  “Um.” I felt truly ant-like with Kate’s giant dad staring down at me. “Adria’s dad has always been my coach.”

  He frowned and exhaled a quick, exasperated breath. “Who’s Adria’s dad?”

  I looked around the gym, saw Adria and her father coming through the door, and pointed. “The man in the Dickinson College sweatshirt.”

  Kate’s dad looked where I pointed, cocked his head, then looked down at me. “He’s that girl’s father?”

  I nodded.

  “I thought he was your father.”

  I stared up at him.

  It wasn’t the first time someone had made that mistake. Since Mr. Lawson had always been our basketball coach, he and Adria and I spent a lot of time together, which meant a lot of people saw us together, and a lot of those people, when they looked at us, saw what they expected to see. I mean, I had straight light brown hair and the kind of white skin that tans easily. Mr. Lawson had straight blond hair and the kind of white skin that never tans. And Adria had dark curly hair and golden-brown skin. Like her mom.

  But if you actually looked at us, really looked at us, instead of just skimming across the color of our skin, you’d realize that Adria looked exactly like her dad—long, oval face; high forehead; straight, sharp jaw. My face was round—round cheeks, round chin, freckles across the bridge of my nose. I looked nothing like Mr. Lawson.

  I was glad Adria wasn’t standing with us, because it ticked her off when people thought her dad was my dad. Kind of ticked me off, too. “He’s not my father,” I said.

  “Hunh.” Kate’s dad turned and walked toward Mr. Lawson.

  I bounced my ball, trying to remember where I was in my shooting count.

  “You want to keep shooting?” Kate said. “I’ll rebound.”

  “Sure.”

  Shooting went a lot faster with Kate rebounding, especially since I only missed a couple of shots. Then we switched and I rebounded for her. She didn’t miss any.

  “Hey, you guys.” Adria hopped onto the court, still tying one shoe, her long, skinny arms sticking out like wings. “Can I shoot with you?”

  Kate said, “Sure,” and I said, “No way,” and Kate looked at me like she couldn’t believe I said that.

  Adria grabbed my ball and shot it in a lazy, sloppy way. The ball clanged off the rim.

  “Brick,” I said, and Adria and I cracked up.

  Kate caught the rebound and tossed the ball back to me. “I guess you guys are friends.”

  “Since kindergarten,” I said. “We’ve always played on the same teams.”

  “You’re so lucky. I’ve never played on a team with my friends,” Kate said.

  I rotated my ball around my waist. “The man who gave out the tryout numbers said you always play with older girls.”

  Kate nodded. “I begged my dad not to make me this year. Last year I played on a ninth-grade team and all the girls hated me. Most of them wouldn’t even talk to me when we were off the court.”

  “I bet you were better than them,” I said.

  “I don’t know.” Kate bounced her ball. “You guys are already so much nicer than anybody on my last team. I really hope we all make this team.”

  “I don’t think you or Adria need to worry,” I said. “But there are a lot of good guards. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.”

  “Okay, listen.” Kate stepped closer to Adria and me, and dropped her voice down to a whisper. “My dad said I shouldn’t tell anyone this, but…” She glanced toward the parents. “He asked Coach Duval what he’s looking for at tryouts. And Coach said he’s looking for good skills and team play, but more than anything else, he’s looking for hustle. He said he doesn’t care how good a girl is—if she doesn’t hustle her butt off, he doesn’t want her on his team.”

  A whistle blew.

  “Line up, ladies,” Coach Duval called. “Same as last Saturday. Layups. Right hand first.”

  “Let’s hustle our butts off,” Kate said.

  And then, for the next two hours, that’s exactly what I did. Hustled my butt off.

  All through the layups and drills I went all out, as fast as I could, even running between skill stations instead of walking like most of the girls, even retrieving other girls’ loose balls. When we started to scrimmage, and Kim-Ly stole the ball from one of my teammates and flew up the court, I raced after her, fought off a bigger girl for the rebound, and took an elbow to the eye in the process. And when the “Dude” girl spun away from me with a slick move, I scrambled after her and dove to bat the ball free from behind, hitting the floor on my elbows and knees and getting back up with floor burns on both elbows.

  My calf muscles cramped, and a blister the size of Virginia grew on my heel, and my lungs ached and burned, but I kept going, pushing harder and harder, telling myself to move my feet and get my backside down and attack the hoop and hustle, hustle, hustle, until my lungs felt like they might catch fire and explode.

  And then, finally, Coach Duval blew his whistle and motioned us over, and even though I thought I might collapse in a puddle of sweat if I didn’t lie down right then, I ran over, elbowed my way between two giraffes, and planted myself right in front of Coach Duval.

  “This is the hardest part of any tryout,” he said, “because I have to let some of you go. Every one of you played well, and I’ve seen lots of talent and lots of effort, but I can’t keep thirty girls on a basketball team. So I’d like these girls to step over to the registration table.”

  He looked down at his clipboard. “Kate Nyquist, Adria Lawson, Taj Turriago, Maura O’Brien, Kim-Ly Tran, Jasmine Taylor-Jones, Linnae Rubalow, JJ Packer, Autumn Milbourne.” Coach Duval paused, running his finger down his clipboard.

  I was having trouble hearing by that point, because my ears had started to ring and my throat was closing up and tears burned so hot in my eyes that Coach Duval was a tree-sized blur in front of me.

  But then he said something else, and even though his voice sounded like it was underwater, floating toward me slow and deep, what he said sounded like “Nikki Doyle.”

  Then a hand grabbed my arm and pulled me back through the tall girls, and I took a breath, finally, and it almost sounded like a sob, and the hand belonged to Adria, and she was saying, “We made it! Nikki, we made it!” She kept pulling me away from the big group standing around Coach Duval, all silent and still now, toward the small group on the other side of the gym, where girls laughed and hugged, and the girl who called everybody “Dude” jumped around, high-fiving and fist-bumping so hard she almost knocked over a couple of girls.

  I couldn’t help feeling sorry for the girls in the big group, all gathering up their stuff now, finding their parents, wiping their eyes, trying to get out of the gym as fast as they could, but I also couldn’t help feeling fantastic.

  I’d made it!

  I’d hustled and hustled until I thought I might die, and I’d made it.

  “Ladies.” Coach Duval’s deep voice cut through our noise. “Welcome to the Action. We’ve got the makings of a fine team here, so I hope you’re all ready to work hard. Go get yo
ur parents. We’ve got things to talk about.”

  Kate’s dad and a couple of other parents were already walking over, and the parents who weren’t were at least standing up. Except my mom, of course. She still sat in her folding chair, her head bent over her book.

  I jogged across the court, calling, “Mom, Mom,” then finally said, “Carolyn!”

  She looked up.

  “Mom, I made it!”

  I could tell from the way she looked at me, which was totally blank, that her head was still inside the book, and I was afraid she was going to say she just needed to finish a paragraph. But finally she kind of woke up and smiled, stood up, and we hurried back across the gym.

  “First things first,” Coach Duval said. “Practice will be Tuesday and Thursday nights, seven o’clock to nine.” He kept talking—tournament schedules, team parents—but I was only half listening. I was way more interested in checking out my new teammates.

  Besides Kate and Adria, there were two other tall girls. One was Taj, the girl who was such a good shot-blocker. She had copper-colored skin and wore her hair in natural curls, short on the sides and longer on top, which made her look even taller than she was. The other tall girl, Jasmine, wore long box braids that she’d gathered into a thick ponytail. She was the girl who’d elbowed me in the eye when we both went up for a rebound, but she’d said she was sorry and asked if I was okay when we came off the court and even offered to get me an ice pack, which I thought was really nice, considering we were competing for a spot on the same team.

  The next-tallest girl was Autumn. She had reddish-brown hair twisted into a loose, floppy bun on top of her head and the kind of pinkish-white skin that flushed deep red from exercise, making her look like she had about the worst sunburn you ever saw. She was also the only girl on the floor wearing nail polish—bright pink to match her pink T-shirt and shoelaces.

  The guards were me (yes!); superfast Kim-Ly; Maura, the bouncing “Dude” girl with the wild red hair; Linnae, the girl with the cornrows and wicked jump shot; and JJ-the-bulldog-girl. She had the same kind of coloring I had—white skin that tanned easily. Our hair was different, though. Mine was light brown. Hers was blue.