Nikki on the Line

by Barbara Carroll Roberts

  Mom sucked in a sharp breath.

  “What?” I asked in a whisper.

  “Eight hundred dollars,” Mom whispered back. “Aren’t you listening?”

  “I know it’s a lot of money,” Coach Duval was saying. “But it covers a lot. Game uniforms, practice uniforms, rental fees for our practice gym, and registration fees for ten tournaments. Tournaments are on weekends, usually two games on Saturday and two on Sunday. A couple of tournaments will be out of town, so we’ll have some additional costs for hotels.”

  Parents started asking questions, but Coach Duval held up his hand. “I’ll tell you what. I’d like the girls to try on the sample uniforms over at the registration table. There’s a form for you to write down what size you need and what number you want on your jersey, because god forbid I have jerseys printed up with numbers you don’t like.”

  Mom grabbed my elbow and pulled me away. The other girls ran over to the uniforms, and the parents closed in around Coach Duval.

  “Nikki,” Mom said, her voice barely above a whisper. “I don’t have an extra eight hundred dollars just lying around. Plus hotel costs!” Her forehead crinkled into lines of concern. “Your other teams were always sixty or seventy dollars. And you only had one game each weekend.”

  “Those were county-league teams,” I said. “This is club ball. It’s different.”

  Mom rubbed her forehead. “Did you know it would be so expensive and take so much time?”

  I shook my head. But that wasn’t quite true. When I’d signed up, I’d read on the club website that there would be at least ten tournaments, and some of them might be in places like Philadelphia or Norfolk, so we’d have to stay overnight, but that sounded so fun I didn’t think about how much it might cost.

  Mom frowned and kept rubbing at the worry lines on her forehead. She looked at the parents, all asking questions, nodding, smiling big I want you to like me smiles at Coach Duval. She looked at the girls, all holding up uniforms, laughing, shouting out the numbers they wanted. Then she looked straight at me.

  “I’m so sorry, Nikki,” she said. “I can’t afford this. You can’t play on this team.”

  Ultimate Sacrifice

  Mom headed toward Coach Duval. “We need to tell the coach you won’t be able to play on the team so he can call back one of the other girls.”

  “No!” I grabbed her arm. “Please, Mom, please. I have to play on this team.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s the best club program. The high school coach said so.”

  “I’m sure there are other good teams.” Mom started to walk away, but I pulled her back.

  “What if all the club teams cost this much?” I said. “They all play in tournaments.”

  “Then you won’t play on a club team.”

  “But I have to! I have to play club if I want to make the high school team.”

  “Then maybe you won’t make the high school team.” Mom threw her hands in the air, her voice tight. “For goodness’ sake, Nikki. It’s just basketball.”

  I started to cry. “Please, Mom.”

  She stroked her hand down my arm. “Nikki, I’m sorry, but you have to be reasonable. We can’t afford this team.”

  I pulled at the sleeve of my T-shirt, trying to use it to wipe at my tears. “I haven’t spent the Christmas money Grandma and Grandpa gave me,” I said. “They always send me birthday money, too. We can use all that. And maybe I could ask them—”

  “No. You will not ask your grandparents to help pay for a basketball team.”

  “I could get a job.”

  Mom sighed. “Nikki, you’re not even fourteen yet. You have to be sixteen to get a job.”

  “I could walk people’s dogs or pick up dog doo in their yards or… or… Please, Mom, I’ll do anything. I won’t ask for new clothes. I won’t eat as much. I…”

  Mom rubbed the worry lines on her forehead and stared at the ceiling. She tapped her foot, looked over at Coach Duval, then back at me. “I’ll give you until Monday night to find a way to earn some money,” she said. “And I’ll take a look at our budget. Perhaps there’s something we can cut. But if you don’t figure out something by Monday night, we have to tell the coach you can’t play. We can’t let it go longer than that.”

  I grabbed the bottom of my T-shirt and wiped my face. “Can I try on a uniform?”

  Mom nodded. “I’m afraid I don’t see much point in that, but go ahead.”

  Most of the other players were already gathering up their stuff to leave, talking and laughing, but Adria still stood at the registration table. “What happened?” she said as I picked up a jersey to try on.

  “My mom doesn’t want me to be on the team. She didn’t realize it would take a lot more time than county league.” I wasn’t sure why I didn’t tell Adria the truth—it wasn’t any secret that her family had more money than mine—but somehow I didn’t want to say that this team cost too much.

  “My dad can drive you to practice and games if your mom doesn’t have time,” Adria said. “He’ll be going to all of them anyway. He can’t wait to see how Coach Duval does stuff.” She held out the form with the uniform sizes and numbers. “I saved number twenty-three for you. That JJ girl wanted it, but I wrote it down with your name first.”

  “Thanks,” I said. Twenty-three was Mia McCall’s number, the number I always wore. Now all I had to do was figure out a way to wear it on this team.

  I spent the rest of Saturday afternoon making flyers for my new dog-walking/dog-doo-cleanup service, then went around my neighborhood handing them to neighbors. Sam came along to “help,” which meant it took about twice as long as it needed to, because he kept doing stuff like dropping his stack of flyers, so we’d have to chase after them while they blew down the street.

  All our neighbors smiled at us and said the flyers looked “real nice,” but only one of them said she might be interested in having me walk her dog.

  Which meant the bus ride to school on Monday morning was an ordeal.

  All Adria wanted to talk about was the Action. How incredibly cool it was going to be to play on a team with so many great players, and how much she loved Kate, because you’d expect somebody as good as her to be stuck-up, but Kate wasn’t stuck-up at all, and how, since Kate and Taj were both taller than her, Adria might finally get to be a forward instead of a center like she always had to be in county league, and on and on and on.

  Lunch was the same.

  So was the bus ride home.

  And the more Adria talked about the Action, the more and more and more I wanted to be on that team. Not only because of how amazingly fun it would be to play with those girls. And not only because I needed to play on a club team if I wanted to be good enough to play in high school. But also… also if Adria was on that team and going to practice and playing in weekend tournaments and being friends with all the Action girls—if Adria was doing all that stuff, and I was doing none of it… I couldn’t stand to even think about that.

  Which meant I absolutely had to think of a way to pay for the Action. And I had to think of something fast.

  A lot of my friends made money babysitting, and I’d done some sitting for our neighbors. But I hated it. Little kids are so annoying, with their sticky hands and goopy faces and always wanting you to read the same book over and over and over. Still, if it would mean I could play on the Action, I’d babysit forever. The problem was, people always wanted sitters on weekends, and if I was playing in tournaments every weekend, I wouldn’t have time to babysit.

  “What would you do?” I asked Mia McCall when I got home from school.

  But Mia didn’t have a lot of ideas. And anyway, she’d probably never had to think about how to earn enough money to be on a basketball team. Her mom understood about basketball. Her mom hung a hoop on their back door when Mia was a little bitty kid. She even moved to different states and changed jobs so Mia could play on better teams. Mia’s mom got it.

  Why couldn’t my mom get i
t?

  I pulled off my jeans and stepped into my favorite old grubby sweats. I had two hours before Mom got home, two hours to figure out some way to pay for the Action, so I headed outside to shoot hoops and think.

  I tossed up some random shots, then I started my regular warm-up routine, standing in front of the hoop, the ball balanced on my left hand at eyebrow level, powering up with my legs, extending my arm, releasing the ball at the top of my stroke. Shoot like you’re letting a bird fly from your hand, Adria’s dad always said. Not like you’re throwing a rock at the basket.

  But that day, the ball might as well have been a rock. Or a brick. Because no matter how hard I tried to relax and just shoot, the Action and money and Mom and every unfair thing on earth stayed right at the front of my thoughts, like a giant standing between me and the hoop.

  Which meant my shooting sucked.

  The ball kept grazing the rim or bouncing back at me, so I had to keep going and going, shooting six or eight or ten one-handed shots from each spot before I swished three. Which meant my thinking sucked, too, because instead of thinking about how to pay for the Action, I kept thinking about how bad I was shooting.

  And when I started working on my midrange jumper, my shooting got even worse, the ball flying everywhere except inside the hoop. I ran to catch it before it crashed into the azaleas that lined our front walkway and jumped over our neighbor’s little hedge when the ball ricocheted onto their lawn, but I couldn’t run it down before it bounced out into the street in front of a school bus.

  I waited until the bus rumbled past, then ran across the street to grab my stupid ball and stomped back up my stupid driveway.

  The bus stopped at the corner, the door opened, and the safety patrol stepped out and held up her flag. A couple of moms walked toward the bus, taking the hands of little kids as they jumped down the last big step. Bigger kids got off and fanned out toward their houses. I knew a lot of them. They were kids I’d gone to school with all through elementary school, kids Sam went to school with now.

  I tossed my ball back and forth between my hands, watching the kids.…

  And that’s when it hit me.

  Sam didn’t get off that bus because he went to after-school-care at his elementary school. But what if he didn’t go to after-school-care? What if he got off that bus and came home, and I took care of him so that Mom didn’t have to pay for after-school-care?

  That would save a lot of money.

  A lot of money that might be enough to pay for the Northern Virginia Action.

  But, oh my god, could I do it? Could I spend every afternoon with Sam rocketing around me, bellowing in my ear, pestering me to help him build a starship with Legos or play some dumb video game? I squeezed my eyes shut—it would be awful. I’d probably go insane. But if it meant I could play on the Action, I’d take care of Sam every day for the rest of my life.

  I tossed my ball in the air and whooped and jumped around. And even though I had a bunch of homework and should have gone inside to work on it, there was no way I could sit still and think about anything besides the Action, so I kept shooting and shooting until Mom and Sam finally got home.

  I waved at them and ran toward the car before Mom even got into the garage, yelling, “I figured out how to pay for the Action!”

  Mom parked and got out, looking at me over the roof of the car.

  “I’ll take care of Sam after school so you won’t have to pay for after-school-care.”

  “Excuse me?” Mom laughed. “I must not be hearing you right.” She reached into the car and got her purse. “Let’s go inside.”

  So we trooped into the kitchen, me bouncing behind Mom, and Sam bouncing behind me. Mom set her purse on the counter, turned on the lights, and got a glass of water. “I seem to recall the last time we talked about you taking care of Sam after school, you were dead set against it.”

  “I know,” I said. “But I’ve changed my mind. If taking care of Sam would save enough money for me to play on the Action, that’s what I want to do.”

  Mom crossed her arms. “And have you thought about what taking care of Sam actually means?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me what you think it means.”

  “It means I’d have to meet him at the bus stop and fix a snack and help him with homework.”

  “Every day. Not just when you feel like it.”

  “I know.”

  Mom shook her head. “Nikki, think about how irritated and angry you get with Sam all the time.”

  “I won’t get angry!”

  She almost laughed.

  I grabbed Sam’s shoulders. “We can do this, can’t we, Sam? Don’t you want to come home on the bus instead of staying in after-school-care?”

  “Can we ride bikes?” Sam bounced from one foot to the other. “Can I play with Jeffrey and Omar sometimes?”

  “If your homework is done.” I turned back to Mom. “See? I can do this.”

  Mom raised an eyebrow. She turned away, opened the refrigerator, and took out the casserole she’d made the night before.

  “Sam, let’s promise,” I said. “I won’t yell at you, and you won’t bug me on purpose, okay?”

  Sam nodded so hard it looked like his head might fall off. “I promise.”

  But Mom frowned. She turned on the oven and leaned against the counter. “What happens if we try it and it doesn’t work? Have you thought of that? Because you won’t be able to change your mind. There are children on the waiting list for after-school-care. If we take Sam out, another child will take his place. He can’t go back.”

  “I won’t change my mind.”

  “You’ll still have your own homework to do. Plus all that basketball. You won’t have time for anything else.”

  “I don’t want to do anything else. All I want to do is play on the Action.” I took a slow, pre-free-throw breath. “Please, Mom. I told you I’d do anything to be able to play on the Action, and I meant it. I can do this. I can take care of Sam. I’ll do a good job.”

  “It’s really that important?”

  “It’s more important than anything.”

  Mom sighed. She shrugged off her jacket and hung it in the closet, then kicked out of her hideous clogs and stared at her feet, wriggling her toes around.

  I chewed on my lip.

  Sam bounced.

  “I don’t get it,” Mom said at last. “I don’t get how playing on this team, or any team, could possibly be so important to you. It’s the last thing I would have wanted to do when I was your age.” She shook her head. “I don’t know where you got the sports gene, Nikki. You sure didn’t get it from me.”

  She took hold of my shoulders and looked straight at me. “I’m serious now, Nikki. You cannot change your mind if we make this decision. No matter how frustrated you might get with Sam. No matter what else might happen.”

  “I know.”

  “And your grades cannot slip. School comes first. For both of you.”

  “I know.”

  Mom kept looking at me, looked over at Sam, then back at me. She shook her head. “I hope we don’t regret this.” She looked hard at me for another minute, then said, “All right.”

  I whooped. I grabbed Sam’s hands and we spun around the kitchen, chanting, “Action! Action! Action!” And even though I was still sore and bruised from the tryouts, I didn’t even care when I bashed my hips into the counters, because I’d never been so happy in my whole entire life.

  Roadkill

  Our Action practice was in the same high school gym as the tryouts. It didn’t seem quite as big as it had during tryouts because now the bleachers were pulled out from the walls. It had the same gleaming wood floor, though, and the same warm, musty smell. The parents who stayed to watch practice climbed up into the bleachers, but all of us girls sat in a big clump on the floor, tying our shoes and pulling our hair back and all that stuff.

  Adria pulled a brand-new pair of shoes out of her gym bag—bright white high-tops with little pi
nk and blue flecks along the sides of the soles. Taj and I each grabbed one.

  “Whoa,” I said. “These are so light. When’d you get them?”

  “Dad took me shopping last night,” Adria said. “To celebrate making the team.”

  “Man, these are pretty.” Taj turned the shoe around in her hands. “Looks like somebody dipped them in ice-cream sprinkles.”

  Adria laughed. “They better not melt when my feet start to sweat.”

  Autumn held up her hands to show us her lime-green nail polish, which JJ said looked “girlie” but all the rest of us said looked cool. Then Maura stood up—“Dude, you guys, check this out”—and spun a ball on the tip of one finger, tossed it up a few inches, and caught it, still spinning, on another finger. Kim-Ly and Jasmine clapped and hooted.

  By then, we all had our shoes on, ready to go, except for Linnae. She still sat on the floor, fighting with a complicated pair of ankle supports. “My mom’s making me wear these,” she said, wrapping a long Velcro strap over and under and around her foot and ankle. “She thinks I’ll turn an ankle and die.”

  “Ohmygod, don’t let my mom see those,” Jasmine said. “She always thinks I’ll get hurt. She wants me to quit basketball and join the chess club.”

  Kate said her dad would kill her if she quit basketball and joined the chess club, and Maura said, “Dude, chess? Really?” And we probably would have kept right on like that all night if Coach hadn’t blown his whistle.

  “I’m not one to waste practice time with a lot of talking,” he said. “But I want to go through a couple things before we start. So let me ask you something. How many of you were point guards on your other teams?”

  I raised my hand. So did Linnae, Maura, Kim-Ly, and JJ.

  “And how many of you were centers?”

  Kate, Adria, Taj, and Jasmine raised their hands.

  “Okay, great. We’ve got five point guards and four centers. Autumn, looks like you’ll play all the other positions.”