Nikki on the Line

by Barbara Carroll Roberts

  “Terrific!” Mr. Bukowski said when Booker finished. “Fascinating report.”

  The bell rang, and Mr. Bukowski asked Booker and Mary Katherine to stay after class, and the rest of us charged out the door, heading for lunch, which is usually my favorite part of the school day, other than PE.

  But that day lunch was an ordeal, because Adria was all fired up about my height charts.

  “Boy, your graphs gave me a lot to think about,” she said between bites of her sandwich. “You know how I’ve always felt like such a freak for being so tall?”

  “Yeah,” I said, with about as much enthusiasm as I’d say, Yeah, that’s a mud puddle, hoping Adria would take the hint that I didn’t want to talk about height anymore.

  She didn’t take the hint.

  “Remember how I used to cry in third grade when boys called me Monster-girl?”

  “Mm-hmm,” I said.

  Adria bit into an apple and crunched for a minute. “Now I get why my dad’s bugging me to work on ball-handling. He says girls my size are guards in college. I didn’t think he knew what he was talking about, but I guess he does. I’m two inches shorter than Taj and four inches shorter than Kate, and that girl on the Philadelphia Chargers team was taller than her. I’m a shrimp compared with those girls.”

  By that time, I was seriously considering pulling the ham out of my sandwich and throwing it at Adria. Fortunately Booker and Mary Katherine came rushing in and sat down next to us, which got Adria to finally shut up, and kept me from plastering my best friend with lunch meat and turning her into my ex–best friend.

  “Mr. Bukowski wants us to enter our projects in a science contest,” Mary Katherine said. “Can you believe it? Me? The girl who sucks at science? My dad’s going to freak. Who knew having a gigantic family would turn out to be a good thing?”

  “Do you actually know all those people?” I said.

  “Most of them.” Mary Katherine opened her lunch bag and pulled out a sandwich and corn chips. “You should see Thanksgiving at my house. This year we had sixty-three people, not counting babies. If you didn’t get food on your plate fast, it was gone.”

  “We had five people for Thanksgiving,” Booker said. “My mom, my dad, my two grandmas, and me.”

  “I can top that,” I said. “We had three. My mom, Sam, and me.”

  “How’d you eat a whole turkey with just three people?” Mary Katherine asked.

  “We didn’t. It was Sam’s turn to choose what we had for dinner, so we had tacos.”

  That made Mary Katherine laugh so hard she almost spit her corn chips all over the table, which sounds like a bad thing, but was actually a good thing, because it completely got Adria off the subject of what a shrimp she was—at five foot ten—which meant I didn’t have to lose my best friend that day.

  In Case Being a Black Hole Wasn’t Bad Enough

  Taking care of Sam got a little easier that week. We decided that twenty minutes was probably the right amount of time to ride bikes or kick a soccer ball around before we started our homework. Or if Sam wanted to jump on his pogo stick, I’d spend the twenty minutes shooting. It rained on Wednesday and we decided that whenever it rained, we could play a board game or build Lego stuff for twenty minutes. But no video games.

  Sam still yammered a mile a minute, which was still annoying, but making decisions together like that, coming up with our own “rules,” made us feel like our own little team. And on Thursday, when Booker rode by on his bike and Sam and I joined him on our bikes, he kind of joined our team, too, because when Sam said, “We can only ride bikes for twenty minutes,” Booker said, “That’s cool. I’ve got to get my homework started, too.”

  And, you know, it was almost fun.

  Or, actually, when Booker was with us, it was definitely fun. But otherwise, well, yeah—almost fun.

  But if taking care of Sam got easier that week, school sure didn’t. In history, we had a big end-of-unit test on World War II. And since I’d spent so much time on my genetics project, plus taking care of Sam, plus basketball, I’d hardly spent any time studying for the test. And—what a surprise—tests are a lot harder if you don’t study.

  My English teacher piled on the work, too, assigning an essay along with all the reading we always had to do, which kept me up late three times that week.

  And if all that wasn’t bad enough, I had to walk past my big height charts in the science hallway twice a day, which made me: one, cringe at how messy they were; two, worry about somebody asking me why I hadn’t done a family tree like almost everybody else; and, three, remember that I’d never be tall because of my parents’ stupid, not-tall genes.

  Basketball practice didn’t get easier that week, either. We had to make fifteen layups in a row with the heavy balls, for one thing. By the time we finished, my shoulders ached so bad I actually hoped my arms would fall off. Then we learned a new offensive pattern, and since I still wasn’t playing point guard, I kept getting confused about where I was supposed to be. And since I also kept worrying about everybody thinking I was a Black Hole, I made more mistakes. During water breaks I stood apart, running the play in my head.

  We had another tournament that weekend. Mom had planned to go, but Sam woke up with a fever Saturday morning, so they both had to stay home.

  “Play hard. Have fun,” they called as I ran out to get in the Lawsons’ car.

  And even though Mom didn’t usually have a clue about what was going on during games, I was bummed that she and Sam wouldn’t be at this tournament. It would have been nice having someone there cheering just for me.

  But as it turned out, when we got to the gym where the tournament was held, I was glad Mom wasn’t there. She would have hated it.

  The gym was called Maryland Hoop Heaven, which made us all think it would be a big, fancy gym. But the people who named it must have had a weird sense of humor, because Maryland Hoop Heaven was an old supermarket that had been gutted of all the freezer cases and cash registers and stuff, and now had a fake wood floor with twelve courts marked out on it. The ceiling was low, so it was even louder than the gym we’d played in the week before, and the lighting was the old supermarket lighting, which made weird pockets of light and shadow all over the courts. And to top it all off, instead of a snack bar, there was a group of women over in one corner cooking hot dogs and hamburgers on a bunch of little George Foreman grills. Standing inside Maryland Hoop Heaven made you feel like you were swimming in hamburger grease.

  “Eeeeewwww,” Kim-Ly and Taj said as soon as they came in, and Autumn said, “I can feel my face breaking out.”

  Coach chuckled. “Welcome to club ball, ladies,” he said. “Get used to playing in all kinds of places.”

  Dark and icky as the courts were, they didn’t turn out to be a problem, because there weren’t any teams in our age group nearly as good as the Philadelphia Chargers at this tournament. Which meant there weren’t any teams nearly as good as us. We won all our games easily.

  “What a waste of time,” I heard Mr. Nyquist say to Kate after our last game on Sunday. “I don’t know why I let you play on this team. You’re not going to improve your game playing against competition like that.”

  But I thought it was okay, because: one, playing against easy teams, I didn’t have to worry about doing something dumb and losing the game; and, two, since our bigs were almost always open under the hoop, I could keep passing the ball to them and didn’t have to worry about taking a bad shot when somebody had a better one.

  “Why aren’t you shooting, Lefty?” Coach asked me once when I came out of a game.

  “The bigs are wide open underneath,” I said.

  “All right, fair enough. But you can take a shot now and then. You don’t have to be quite so unselfish.”

  “Okay,” I said, even though, duh, I wasn’t being unselfish. I was trying not to be a Black Hole.

  “That was kind of a dumb tournament, wasn’t it?” Adria said when she got on the bus Monday morning. “I hope we
have better competition next weekend.”

  I shifted around in the seat to look at her. “That’s not what you said on the ride home yesterday. You said it was fun to be on a team that won so much.”

  “I know, but—” She pushed up the sleeves of her sweater. “We won’t get better if we play against bad teams.”

  “You sound like you’ve been listening to Mr. Nyquist.”

  Adria shrugged. “My dad talked with him a lot this weekend. They think we should play against ninth-grade teams.”

  The bus stopped and some kids got on, shuffled past us, and dropped into seats.

  “Do you think Mr. Nyquist knows a lot about basketball?” I asked.

  “My dad thinks he does.” Adria pulled an elastic band out of her backpack and gathered her hair into a bun, pulling a few curls loose around her face. “Hey, you want to come to my house after school? Kate’s coming over. She’s going to teach me to do a reverse layup.”

  I stared at her. “Kate’s coming over to your house? Since when are you such good friends?”

  Adria laughed. “What are you talking about, Nikki? We’re on the same team. We go to the same strength-and-conditioning class. I invited her over to hang out. Is that a problem?”

  I sighed. “No, it’s not a problem.”

  “So do you want to come over?”

  “Yeah, I want to come over.”

  “Okay, good.”

  “But I can’t.”

  “What? Why not?”

  I pulled at a thread on the sleeve of my sweatshirt. “I have to take care of Sam after school.”

  Adria rocked back, squinting at me. “No, you don’t. He goes to after-school-care.”

  “Not anymore.” I pulled harder at the loose thread.

  “Since when?”

  “Since the Action. With all the tournament fees and travel costs and everything, I made a deal with my mom that I’d take care of Sam after school so we could save the cost of after-school-care.”

  “Oh,” Adria said. “Well, poop. But I guess we’re kind of in the same boat on that. My dad told me that since he’s paying for all this, I should be scoring double digits every game. Yeah, right. Like that’s the easiest thing in the world to do.”

  I knew what she was doing. She was trying to make me feel better.

  But the thing was, I didn’t feel better. “We’re not in the same boat.”

  “What?”

  “We’re not in the same boat. Your dad wants you to score more. My mom couldn’t care less if I play basketball. You’re hanging out with Kate, going to strength-and-conditioning classes, learning to do reverse layups. I’m helping Sam multiply fractions and sound out big words. We’re not in the same boat. We’re not in the same ocean.”

  “Come on, Nikki,” Adria said. “You’re on the Action, same as me. Same as Kate. You’re just feeling sorry for yourself.”

  “That’s what you think?”

  “Well… you think I want to go to strength and conditioning?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “I… I don’t know. I mean, it’s fun going with Kate and all. But it’s just a workout. There are all kinds of workout routines on the internet. You could do one of those if you want to.” She pulled another curl loose from her bun. “You know what Coach said—you have to work hard if you want to get better.”

  “You think I’m not working hard enough?”

  Adria drummed her fingers on her leg. “I don’t know, Nikki. I mean… do you think you’re playing well?”

  “You don’t think so?”

  “Um.” Adria looked at the floor. “You don’t seem like yourself. You—”

  “Mr. Nyquist says I’m a black hole on the basketball court.”

  Adria sat back up. “What?”

  I nodded, expecting Adria to be as upset as I was about that. Expecting her to be outraged. To defend me against Kate’s scary dad.

  But that’s not what happened. What happened was that Adria burst out laughing. “A black hole on the basketball court? What a weird, goofy thing to say.”

  The bus lurched to a stop in the school parking lot, and Adria got up, still laughing. But I sat there while the other kids got off the bus, looking out the window, watching my best friend disappear into the crowd of kids pushing through the heavy glass doors at the front of our school.

  I didn’t have a lot to say at lunchtime, but Adria didn’t seem to notice. We were sitting near Mary Katherine Pentangeli and the group of girls she usually sat with, so Adria talked and laughed with them about boys and stuff. I ate my sandwich, then mumbled that I had homework to finish and went to the library and pretended to read a book.

  Adria and I didn’t have classes together in the afternoon, but on the bus ride home, she said, “Nikki, are you okay? You’re so quiet.”

  For a moment I thought about saying, I can’t believe you laughed about the black hole thing. It really hurt my feelings. But in the same moment I realized what a dumb, little-kid thing that would be to say.

  So instead I said, “Just tired. It takes a lot of energy to deal with Sam. I’m trying to save up.” I smiled to show I was joking around. Even though I wasn’t.

  “You sure you can’t come over?” Adria said. “Sam can come, too. He could play video games, or I bet Mom would let him paint or something while you and Kate and I shoot around.”

  I shook my head. “I promised my mom I’d help Sam get his homework done every afternoon.”

  “Kate and I could come over to your house for a little while.”

  I shook my head again. “You know my mom doesn’t let me have anyone over before she gets home.”

  “Oh yeah,” Adria said. “Well, poop.”

  And I said, “Double-poop,” which almost made it seem like things were okay-normal.

  But I think we both knew they weren’t.

  When I got home, I sat on my bed and looked at Mia McCall, soaring high above the court, muscles straining, every part of her focused on the ball and the hoop. So confident. So in control. I wanted to talk to her about Adria. About Mr. Nyquist. About being a Black Hole on the Basketball Court.

  But how could I?

  She was Mia McCall. How could she possibly understand?

  I decided to go outside to shoot, thinking it might make me feel better—or at least make me forget how bad I felt—but when I got out there, all I could think about was Adria in her driveway with Kate, learning to do reverse layups. So after one lame shot that didn’t even hit the rim, I grabbed my ball and sat down at the end of the driveway to watch for Sam. I pulled my sweatshirt hood over my head, because even though it was April, it was still chilly. Especially if you were sitting on cold asphalt, being miserable, instead of running around doing reverse layups with your new friend.

  What was going on? I mean, how could Adria laugh about Mr. Nyquist saying I was a Black Hole? She was my best friend. Had been my best friend since the first day of kindergarten, when we walked into the classroom, clinging to our mothers’ hands, wearing identical Hello Kitty T-shirts. How could she not understand how upset I was?

  But… but if Adria laughed about it, did that mean she thought Mr. Nyquist was right? He’d said, You know I’m right, to Kate. Did everybody really, truly think I was that awful?

  I pulled my hood tighter and rubbed my hands across my face.

  How had this happened?

  How could I all of a sudden be so bad at basketball? I’d been a really good point guard. I knew I had been. The best point guard in county league, Adria’s dad had said.

  But then a bad thought occurred to me, and I heard Adria’s voice on the bus the morning after the first Action practice—Of course he said we were the best. He’s my dad.

  And then an even worse thought came into my head, because I heard Adria say, Remember how we always said a lot of girls in county league were good athletes, but they weren’t really basketball players? They just played basketball in the winter to stay in shape for soccer or lacrosse.

  S
o… so maybe I was only a good basketball player compared with those girls. Compared with soccer and lacrosse players. Not actually good.

  Just like I was kind of tall compared with the girls in my science class, but not actually tall. Not compared with girls who played basketball.

  I bit on my bottom lip and stared so hard at my basketball it turned into an orange blur.

  “Hey, Nikki.”

  I looked up.

  Booker rode his bike into our driveway and got off. “What’re you doing?”

  “Waiting for Sam.”

  “Yeah, but how come you’re not shooting?”

  I could have said, I’m too tired or My hands are too cold, but what was the point of that? “I’m a black hole on the basketball court.”

  Booker laughed, just like Adria. But then, unlike Adria, when I didn’t laugh, too, he stopped and sat down next to me. “What are you talking about?”

  I tossed my basketball back and forth between my hands and didn’t say anything.

  We sat like that, both quiet, until Booker said, “What’s wrong, Nikki?”

  I shook my head. “Everything.”

  “Oh good, that’s specific. Easy to solve.”

  I glanced at him. “You’re real funny.”

  “I try to be.” He smiled. “But really, Nikki, what’s going on?”

  I sighed. “I suck at basketball.”

  “Yeah, right,” Booker said. “That’s why you’re on that big club team with Adria.”

  “Well, some people think I don’t belong there.”

  “What people?”

  “Adria, for one. She told me on the bus today that, basically, I suck and I need to work harder. And Kate’s dad said I’m a black hole.”