Nikki on the Line

by Barbara Carroll Roberts

  “Somebody’s dad called you a black hole?”

  “Not to my face. But I heard him.”

  “Geez, what a jerk.”

  “Yeah, he’s not exactly the nicest dad in the world. The thing is, though, he knows all about basketball. He got scholarship offers from all these big basketball schools. And he had this recruiter guy watch Kate play in our first game. He knows what he’s talking about.”

  Booker tapped his foot against the driveway. “Maybe.”

  “Well, the recruiter guy must know what he’s talking about or he wouldn’t be a recruiter.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “So after he watched our game he said I had a good arm and I should play softball.”

  “Oh, well, okay, why don’t you play softball, then?”

  “I hate softball!”

  Booker leaned away from me, eyebrows raised.

  Oh boy.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to yell at you. I just… I love basketball. I really, really love basketball. And I wanted to play on this team so bad and I need to play on this team to be good enough to make varsity in high school. But that recruiter guy? He said coaches always want tall girls, but small girls have to be really special for a coach to notice them. I always thought I was special because I was a left-handed point guard. But I’m not even good enough to play point guard on this team. Now I’m just a regular guard or a wing or something, and I’m terrible at that. Kate and Adria are talking about playing in college, and I’m not even going to be good enough to play in high school.”

  We sat there for a few minutes, staring at the street, not saying anything.

  Then Booker said, “You could be a field goal kicker.”

  “Booker, come on. You don’t kick field goals in basketball.”

  “No,” he said. “But players do other special stuff. Like shoot three-pointers.”

  “I can’t shoot three-pointers.”

  “You made one in your first practice.”

  “Oh, yeah, one. The only one I ever made in my life.”

  “So?” Booker said. “You made one. You can make more.”

  “No, I can’t. That was luck. I’ve never been an outside shooter.”

  “So? Learn how.”

  “What?” I yelled. “How am I going to learn how? Who’s going to teach me? I don’t have a dad who played in college. We don’t have the money for me to take extra classes like Kate and Adria. I’ve never been an outside shooter. I can’t just decide to turn into one!”

  Booker looked at me, not smiling his half smile, not shaking his hair back from his face. He got up. “Okay, well, whatever. I gotta go.” He swung onto his bike, then turned back. “You know, Nikki, you could probably find people to help you if you wanted to. But, like, you’d have to want to. Say hi to Sam for me.”

  Then he was gone.

  And I sat there.

  I threw my basketball onto the lawn, pulled my knees up in front of me, and covered my face with my hands.

  Oh. My. God.

  In one day—One Day—I’d found out my best friend might not actually be my best friend anymore and I’d screamed at my new friend. My new friend who was the only boy who had ever said anything to me like, Your eyes aren’t weird. Just different. Just… special. And now he was gone.

  And then, wouldn’t you know it, here came Sam’s bus rumbling down the street. It stopped at the corner, the door opened, and Sam exploded from the steps, hitting the ground running, bellowing, “Nikki! Nikki, guess what!”

  And wasn’t that the perfect way to end this perfectly horrible, awful, excruciating day?

  Working on My Lying

  Sam blasted up the street, hollering out all the amazing stuff that happened in third grade that day, but when he got to our driveway, I was still sitting there with my legs folded up in front of me, my elbows on my knees, and my hands cradling my face.

  He skidded to a stop. “What’s wrong, Nikki? You look sad.”

  I rubbed my face. “It’s been a bad day.”

  “You want to ride bikes?” he said. “It might make you feel better.”

  “No.”

  “You want to jump on my pogo stick?”

  I shook my head.

  “I could rebound for you.”

  “I don’t want to shoot.”

  Sam shifted his weight back and forth. Then he reached out and patted my head. “You want me to make some popcorn? I know how.”

  I couldn’t help smiling at that. “Sure.”

  So we went inside and Sam put a bag of popcorn in the microwave and I made sure he set the timer right.

  “You want to play a board game?” he asked.

  I shook my head.

  “Okay, I’ll get some Legos.” He started up the stairs, then turned back. “I hope you have a better day tomorrow, Nikki.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “It couldn’t be a lot worse.”

  And I guess it wasn’t. Worse, I mean. Nobody told me I was terrible at basketball, and I didn’t scream at anybody and make them hate me. But it wasn’t a lot better, either.

  For one thing, on the bus to and from school and all through lunch, Adria yammered on about how much fun she had learning to do reverse layups, even though she wasn’t good at it yet, and how funny Kate was when her dad wasn’t around. And no matter how many times I said stuff like, “Oh” or “Hunh,” or even looked out the window, she didn’t seem to get that I didn’t want to talk about this stuff. How could she be so oblivious?

  And Booker—Booker sat sideways on his lab stool, his back toward me, all through our science class. He didn’t talk to me between classes and he didn’t ride his bike over after school.

  And then, oh yeah, there was Action practice.

  I might be a bad player, but I was still on the team and still had to go to practice, so when Mom got home from work Tuesday night, I asked her if she could take me. I told her Adria and her dad were coming from someplace else and couldn’t pick me up. I told Adria that Mom wanted to see practice.

  Boy, I was getting good at lying.

  But I really, really needed someone there who didn’t think I was a Black Hole.

  Sam had to come, too, of course. He brought a book to read and some Legos to play with, but before we’d gotten halfway through our warm-up, he was down on the floor by the side of the court, watching us, trying to copy our exercises.

  “Is that your little brother?” Linnae asked me. “He’s so cute. Look at him over there Frankenstein-walking with us.”

  “You wouldn’t think he was cute if he was your brother,” I said, which, considering how nice Sam had been to me the day before and considering that he and I were now kind of our own little team, was a pretty crummy thing to say. But, well, yeah, I was feeling crummy.

  “Hey, I’d take a little brother any day,” Linnae said. “I’ve got two older brothers who think it’s funny to tease me until I cry.”

  Coach blew his whistle, which meant it was time for sprints and line drills and planks and sit-ups, so talking was done.

  And then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Coach walk over to Sam and squat down to talk to him. Then Mom jumped down from the bleachers and went over to talk with them, too. I expected Sam to stay in the bleachers after that, but then there he was setting out orange plastic cones for us to weave through in ball-handling drills, and there he was digging horrible, heavy yellow balls out of Coach’s ball bag, and there he was standing at the baseline, “helping” us count our twenty makes in a row while we ran the Rainbow Drill with the heavy balls.

  “Is that your little brother?” Autumn said, and Kim-Ly said, and Jasmine said. “He’s so cute.”

  “Dude!” Maura said to Sam every time she ran past him, slapping his hand.

  We did defense drills and rebound drills, learned a new press break, scrimmaged for half an hour, then shot our free throws.

  I made mine. So did Kate, Adria, Kim-Ly, and Autumn. Which meant we only had to run five up-and-back spri
nts at the end of practice, when we were all tired enough to fall down where we stood.

  I didn’t drop onto the gym floor next to Kate and Adria and laugh about being the Northern Virginia Roadkill when we finished, though. I sat on the bottom row of the bleachers to take off my shoes. Linnae and Maura sat down next to me, and Sam ran over to yammer a million miles a second about how much FUN he had and how much he LOVED our team and LOVED COACH DUVAL and LOVED coming to practice and COULDN’T WAIT to see us play in the tournament on Saturday.

  “You can be our mascot,” Linnae said.

  Sam hopped back and forth from one foot to the other. “What’s a mascot?”

  “It’s like a lucky charm, dude.” Maura threw Sam a fist-bump. “You can bring us good luck.”

  “Unlikely,” I said, and Maura and Linnae cracked up.

  When we got in the car after practice, Mom said, “It was nice of your coach to let Sam help.”

  I turned and looked at Sam in the back seat. “You owe me, big-time.”

  He grinned.

  Mom pulled out of the parking lot. “I can see why you’ve been so tired lately. That was quite a workout.”

  All I could do was laugh.

  “Does Coach Duval always push you that hard?”

  “Yeah. Sometimes harder.”

  Mom shook her head. “It’s certainly more exercise than I’d enjoy.” She glanced over at me and smiled. “But if you’re having fun on this team, all that hard work must be worth it.”

  We drove in silence the rest of the way home. Even Sam was quiet, which I thought was a miracle until I realized he was asleep. But the whole way home, and all through my shower and brushing my teeth and getting ready for bed, Mom’s words kept bouncing around in my head—hard work, worth it, fun.

  I got into bed and looked over at Mia. “Have you ever wondered if the hard work is worth it?” Would it be worth it even if you weren’t a good player? Even if people said you were a Black Hole on the court?

  But Mia couldn’t answer that, of course. No one would ever, ever, ever say that about her.

  I went to sleep still thinking about that stuff. I woke up thinking about it, too. And I kept right on thinking about it all through that week.

  I wanted to talk to Adria about it, because that’s what we always did—talked to each other about things that bothered us.

  But I couldn’t.

  She’d already told me I wasn’t working hard enough. Plus she was having all that fun doing extra work with Kate. How could I ask her if she thought the work was worth it? She’d laugh at me again.

  Talking to Sam about it was out. I mean, we might be almost-having-fun together after school, but who would ask a third grader for advice?

  And Mom? Talk to her about the trouble I was having on the Action? After begging her to let me play on this team? After making the Ultimate Sacrifice so we could afford it? Yeah, right.

  I had other friends, but they weren’t the kind of close friends I’d talk to about important stuff. And the other girls on the team—I didn’t know them very well, yet. Plus what if they all thought I was a Black Hole?

  So who, then? Booker?

  He’d kept his back to me in our science class all week.

  But on Friday, I decided I couldn’t stand having him mad at me anymore, so right before the bell rang for lunch, I leaned toward him and said, “I’m sorry I got so upset and yelled at you.”

  He was already shoving books into his backpack, but he stopped and turned toward me. “Thanks. I thought you were still mad at me.”

  “Mad at you?”

  “Yeah. Usually when somebody yells at you, you figure they’re mad at you.”

  “But I wasn’t mad at you. I was, um…” I twisted the hem of my T-shirt around my finger.

  “You were mad, and I happened to be there,” Booker said.

  “Yeah.” I looked up at him. “I was mad, and you happened to be there. That makes it even worse that I yelled at you, doesn’t it?”

  Booker pushed his hair back from his face. “It happens to everybody sometimes, I guess.”

  I picked up his science textbook and handed it to him. “I’m sorry I was such a jerk.”

  Booker nodded. “Thanks.”

  The bell rang and I thought maybe Booker would walk to the cafeteria with me and maybe I could talk with him some more, but as soon as we got out of the classroom, he headed toward a big group of guys. There was no way I was going to follow him over there.

  But at least Booker and I had made up. Or sort of made up. I wasn’t sure if he still wanted to be my friend, but at least he didn’t seem to hate me.

  That was a good thing.

  The other good thing was that, since Sam was so excited about seeing the Action play, Mom was planning to take me to the tournament that weekend.

  Which meant I didn’t have to make up more lies about why I couldn’t go with Adria and Mr. Lawson.

  Are We Having Fun Yet?

  The tournament that weekend was called a one-day run. Only two games, both of them on Saturday. The gym wasn’t as big as Maryland Hoop Heaven or the Baltimore sports center—only six courts with six games going on at the same time. But there were still plenty of players and coaches and parents and little kids filling the bleachers and the sidelines. Plenty of noise, too. Whistles screeching, parents cheering, balls booming off the floor. And even though the air didn’t smell like hamburger grease, it was still hot and thick and sweaty.

  Mom took hold of Sam’s hand as soon as we stepped inside. “Oh wow,” she said. “I’m beginning to understand what you meant about this league being different from county league.”

  “This gym’s small compared with the last two,” I said.

  “Wow,” Mom said again, but Sam pointed in five different directions, talking nonstop about how tall this girl was or that girl was and could he have some popcorn and—LOOK!—there was a team with chartreuse uniforms, and on and on.

  We found my team and climbed up the bleachers. Autumn pulled out ten new pairs of shoelaces. Each pair had one orange lace and one blue lace. We shouted “Thank you!” to Mrs. Milbourne, who sat down on the bottom bleacher bench instead of climbing the stairs in her lime-green heels, and started relacing our shoes. Except for JJ, of course, because her old white laces were “lucky.” Linnae pulled a mouth guard out of her gym bag and said, “Do you believe my mom’s making me wear this? She saw a girl get popped in the mouth last week, so now she thinks I’m going to lose a tooth and die.” And Jasmine said, “Ohmygod, don’t let my mom see that. She’ll make me wear one, too.”

  Adria came in with both of her parents, and Mrs. Lawson ran up the bleacher steps to hug me.

  “I don’t know what I think about this new team taking up all your time,” she said. “I truly haven’t seen you in forever.”

  I laughed. “Well, maybe not for a month.”

  “Seems like forever.” She gave my braid a little tug and sat down next to my mom.

  Adria sat down next to me, then Kate and her dad came in, and Kate climbed up the bleacher steps to sit with us. She opened her gym bag and pulled out a pair of shoes that looked exactly like Adria’s.

  “You got them!” Adria grabbed one of Kate’s shoes and held it up.

  “What?” Taj grabbed the other shoe. “More ice-cream sprinkle shoes? Okay, I am going to work on my dad about a pair of these shoes. They are so pretty.”

  “You should get some, too, Nikki,” Adria said. “We can all match.”

  “That brand never fits me,” I said. Which saved me from saying there was no way I could ask Mom for a new pair of basketball shoes.

  Then Coach stood up and said, “Game time, ladies,” which saved me from needing to say anything else.

  We clomped down to the floor, then ran through our warm-ups, and halfway through our Frankenstein walks Kate threw up in a trash can. Nobody else seemed to notice, but I ran over to see if she was okay.

  “Is that college scout guy here again?” I asked.<
br />
  Kate shook her head. “No.” She took a long drink of water. “Just regular nervousness, I guess. I’m okay now.”

  I glanced at her dad. He was setting up a video camera a few feet from the sideline.

  The horn on the game clock blew, so it was time for us to get on the court to run our shooting drills. Then the horn blew again, and it was time to start the game. We grouped around Coach and he named the starters—Kate, Jasmine, Autumn, Kim-Ly, me. Me? The other starters ran onto the court, but I stood rooted to the floor.

  “Nikki?” Coach said. “You going to play today or what?”

  “Sorry.” I ran onto the court.

  The ref blew her whistle and the game started, and I guess Coach must have listened to Mr. Nyquist and Mr. Lawson about signing us up to play tougher competition, because even though the other team didn’t have anyone as tall as Kate or Taj, they had something else.

  Half of them were as fast as Kim-Ly.

  The other half were faster.

  We spent the whole game scrambling to keep up, while the girls on the other team ran our legs off. If we could get the ball to Kate or Taj when they were close to the basket, they scored pretty easily. But it was hard to get a clean pass in to them, because the girls on the other team were so fast they could guard us really close. And if they intercepted a pass or got a rebound and sprinted toward their basket, it didn’t matter how many times Coach or Kate’s dad or JJ’s mom yelled, “STOP THE BALL,” the only one of us who had a prayer of catching them was Kim-Ly, and she spent so much time racing up and down the court she was sucking wind before we were five minutes into the game.

  That didn’t seem to matter to Sam. His high-pitched, little-kid voice kept calling, “Nikki, run faster,” which made a bunch of people on the sidelines laugh but didn’t help me one bit, because, duh, if I could run faster, I would.

  But, double-duh, I couldn’t.

  Plus I was still trying not to be a Black Hole, not get in anyone’s way or take a dumb shot when someone else might have a better one, and still over on the left side of the floor on offense—not up at the top of the key with the ball in my hands—feeling weird and out of place and useless. So I kept passing the ball as soon as it came to me, not looking to score, not even when Coach hollered, “Nikki, drive the baseline!” when I had an open lane to the hoop.