Nikki on the Line

by Barbara Carroll Roberts

  Oh boy.

  I bent over my pancakes so Mom couldn’t see my face, because I knew I couldn’t hide how totally unhappy I was about the Action. I pulled her book toward me, looking for a way to change the subject. The book was called Oranges. “What’s this book about?” I held it up.

  “Oranges,” Mom said.

  “You’re reading a whole book about nothing but oranges?”

  “It’s fascinating.” Mom flipped the pancakes. “Did you know that oranges growing on the south side of a tree are sweeter than the oranges on the north side?”

  “Umm, no, Mom. I didn’t know that.”

  “I’m assuming that’s only true in the northern hemisphere, though, where the south side of a tree gets more direct sunlight. I expect it’s the opposite in the southern hemisphere.”

  “I’ve always thought so,” I said.

  Mom looked at me and we both cracked up.

  “I’m sorry for you that you don’t find oranges interesting,” Mom said, still laughing.

  Thunder exploded in the upstairs hallway, and Sam—in full soccer gear, cleats and all—vaulted down the stairs and crashed onto the kitchen floor, his feet shooting out from under him.

  “Sam!” Mom ran toward him. “You don’t wear cleats in the house! Are you hurt?”

  “No.”

  “Did you dent the floor?”

  Sam lifted his feet and looked at the floor. “I don’t think so.” He started to get up, but his cleats slipped against the floor again.

  “Take those off!” Mom glared at him.

  “Nikki, you wanna come to my soccer game?” Sam hollered, untying his cleats. “It’s my first one.”

  “I’m sorry, Sam, I can’t go today. I have to do homework. But, hey.” I held out my fist, and he ran over to give me a fist-bump. “Play hard and have fun, okay?”

  “Okay!”

  Mom scooted back to the stove. “I’m going to finish cooking these last couple of pancakes, Nikki, then we need to go. I’m sorry to leave you such a messy kitchen.”

  I’d just stuffed a big bite in my mouth, so I half mumbled, “That’s okay,” and waved my fork at her. “Thank you for making them.”

  After Mom and Sam left, I cleaned up the kitchen, then went up to my bedroom. I didn’t start my homework, though. What I did was sit on my bed and think about being benched.

  What was I going to do?

  I’d busted my butt to make this team. And as Mom said, I was continuing to bust my butt in every Roadkill practice. I was giving up all my afternoons to take care of Sam. I was turning in messy science projects that I wasn’t proud of, not studying enough for tests, skimping on other homework, too.

  So here was the question: Was I having so much fun on the Action that it made all that stuff worth it?

  I would have laughed, if I didn’t feel like crying.

  I slumped back against the wall. Was I having any fun?

  Well, yeah, I loved hanging out with the team. I liked all the girls. Well, I wouldn’t say I truly liked JJ, but now that she was bashing into girls on other teams, she didn’t bash into me as much, so I was at least getting along with her.

  And traveling to all those huge gyms was fun. Even practice was kind of fun, or at least funny sometimes, because it was so hard that a lot of the girls cracked jokes about it.

  It was the basketball that wasn’t fun.

  The playing. And it was playing basketball that I’d always loved most. Being out on the floor with my teammates, zinging the ball around, flowing across the court like we were connected.

  But I didn’t feel like that playing on the Action. On the Action, I was a Black Hole and it was no fun at all.

  I lay over on my side, grabbed my pillow, and hugged it.

  What was I going to do? Working so hard and giving up my free time, and now maybe Coach was going to bench me? And it wasn’t like I was all of a sudden going to grow a bunch and get super tall—I knew that from my stupid genetics project.

  Maybe… maybe I should just quit.

  Maybe I should give up on basketball.

  Maybe I should do what that recruiter guy said and go play softball.

  My chest ached—ached the way it had when I’d thought about what it would feel like if Mom were in prison or if my paper dad didn’t want to know me.

  I looked over at Mia. There was no point asking her what she’d do if she were in my place. No coach would ever say to her, I can’t put you on the floor if you won’t compete. And there was no way she’d ever, even once, thought about quitting because she was playing like a Black Hole.

  “But what if you were?” I said to Mia. “What if you were in a new league where everyone was bigger and faster than you?”

  But how could Mia answer that? She’d always been the best. The best player in the entire country when she was in high school. The best player in the country when she was in college. And now she was one of the absolute best players in the WNBA, which meant she was one of the absolute best players in the world.

  There wasn’t any league anywhere that Mia McCall could play in where she’d be going up against a bunch of players who were better than her.

  Well, unless she played in the NBA.

  “What would you do then?” I asked her. “What would you do if you were in the NBA, playing against men who were bigger and faster and stronger than you?

  I stared up at Mia, really looked at her, at the concentration on her face, at the total effort that showed in every one of her straining muscles, at her complete focus on lifting the ball toward the basket and putting it through the hoop.

  Then I tried to picture LeBron James standing between her and the basket with his arms up, ready to stuff her beautiful shot.

  “What would you do then?” I asked her. “What…”

  And then I knew.

  Just as surely as I knew Mia was having fun leaping toward the basket, I knew that if she were playing against LeBron James and couldn’t drive past him to the hoop, she’d have that same concentration on her face and that same effort in every muscle and… she’d shoot from outside. She’d shoot way before LeBron got anywhere near her.

  She’d shoot from the three-point line.

  And then I heard Coach, inside my head, say, Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do, and I realized Mia knew exactly what that meant.

  It meant that if LeBron were standing between her and the basket, she wouldn’t let him shut her down. She’d figure out a different way to compete.

  And then I heard another voice, that college scout’s voice: You’ve got a pretty shot, too. Just need to stay out of the trees. And I finally got it—the trees, duh, the tall players. He meant I needed to shoot from outside.

  And what did Coach say the day before? Not about benching me. The other thing—Here’s a pure shooter. Was that why he didn’t put me at point guard? Because he thought I was a good shooter?

  Yeah, but still, an outside shooter? “I’ve never been an outside shooter,” I said to Mia.

  And then it almost seemed like Mia really did answer me, because I heard one more voice inside my head. Booker’s voice: Yeah, so? Learn how.

  I sat up.

  How? How could I learn to be an outside shooter without someone to teach me? Without some kind of special training program or a dad who played in college?

  But then I thought of something else. Something I’d read in an article about Mia. Her dad did play basketball in college and even in the NBA, but he wasn’t in her life when she was growing up. He wasn’t there to teach her how to do a reverse layup or shoot a three. And even though her mom was athletic, she didn’t play basketball in college. She played volleyball.

  Obviously Mia had sports genes. She had great sports genes. But she didn’t grow up with a dad who could help her… just like me.

  I jumped up and ran downstairs to Mom’s office, yanked open the file drawer where she kept my paper dad, and pulled out the file marked Nikki, Donor. I flipped through the
pages until I found what I was looking for. My dad had been on the track team at the University of Virginia.

  My Dad Ran Track in College.

  He ran at UVA. Which meant he must have been a good runner. Maybe not good enough to be in the Olympics or anything, but still, really good.

  So even though Mom might be totally, completely clueless about everything having anything to do with sports, my paper dad was an athlete. An athlete who was good enough to Run in College.

  And I got half my genes from him.

  And that meant that even though I didn’t have a father who could show me how to do a reverse layup or shoot a three-pointer or take me to special training classes or ask college scouts to watch me play, I still had a dad—even if he was just a paper dad—who gave me something else.

  I had a dad who gave me his sports genes.

  Field Goal Kicker

  Ten minutes later, I stood out in our driveway, trying to figure out where the three-point line would be if I were standing on a real basketball court. But wherever I stood, thinking maybe this was the three-point line, or maybe that was it, the basket looked way, way, way far away.

  Finally I decided that wherever the three-point line might be, there wasn’t any point trying to shoot from there until I warmed up, so I stood right in front of the hoop and did my regular routine.

  When I finished that, I shot a few layups, then I went over to my favorite shooting spot, ten feet back from the basket, just left of center. And I stood there, bouncing my ball, thinking.

  How was I going to do this? How was I going to get from here, shooting close to the hoop, to way back there behind me somewhere?

  I took a step back from the basket, then another, and then I thought maybe that’s what I should do—start shooting from my favorite spot, then step back and shoot from there, then keep stepping back and see how far I could get before I couldn’t make a basket.

  I sure wished Mia were here to help me out and tell me if that was a good idea. Or Coach. Or (duh) Adria’s dad.

  I started texting Adria—but stopped. Did I really want to tell her I was trying to learn to shoot from the three-point line? What if I couldn’t do it? Would she laugh at me again? But I could really use some help.…

  Wait, what did Booker say the day I yelled at him? After he said I should learn to shoot threes? He said I could find people to help me if I wanted help. Did he mean he’d help me? He said he played basketball. Maybe he was a good shooter. Maybe he could help me.

  I found his number on my phone—we’d shared our numbers in science one day, in case, you know, we had to text about homework or something. I tapped his number, then immediately jabbed at my phone to stop the call—Oh god, what was I doing? This was so stupid—too late. Booker had already picked up.

  “Hey, Nikki,” he said. “What’s up?”

  I stood there frozen.

  “Nikki?”

  “Um,” I said. “Hi.”

  Silence.

  Then Booker said, “Nikki, did you call me for a reason or just to, like, breathe into the phone or something?”

  “Oh, um, yeah, I was thinking… uh…”

  “Yeah?”

  I took a deep breath, then said as fast as I could, “I was thinking about trying to learn to kick field goals and I was wondering if maybe, um, you might want to come over and maybe help me?”

  Booker laughed.

  “Oh, right, yeah, it’s a dumb idea. Sorry.”

  “No!” Booker said. “It’s not dumb. I’m laughing about kicking field goals.”

  “Oh.”

  “So no more black holes, huh?”

  I think I finally exhaled. “I don’t know. I might still be a black hole, but maybe I can be one that kicks field goals.”

  “Okay,” Booker said.

  “Okay?”

  “I’ll help. Or I’ll try to help, anyway.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. I have to mow the lawn. Then I’ll be over.”

  “Okay, um, thanks.”

  “Sure.”

  We hung up.

  Oh.

  My.

  God.

  What had I just done?

  Apart from the fact that I wasn’t allowed to have friends over when Mom wasn’t home, and apart from the fact that I had no idea how to shoot a three-pointer and was going to look like an idiot, I had just called the boy who told me my eyes were special, and now he was going to think I liked him, which I didn’t. I mean, I did, but Ohhhhhhh, why did I call him?

  I threw my ball at the basket. It whammoed off the backboard, banged against the front of the rim, and fell through the net.

  That made me laugh. If I could make a basket by hurling the ball at the hoop, maybe I could figure out how to shoot threes.

  “Okay,” I said to myself. “Don’t think about Booker. Get to work.” I looked up at my bedroom window. “Help me out, Mia, okay?”

  I picked up my ball, stood at my favorite spot, bounced the ball in front of me, caught it, squared my shoulders, and shot. Swish.

  I grabbed my ball again, went back to my favorite spot and took a step back. Then I repeated what I’d done—bounced the ball, caught it, squared up, shot. The ball tapped the backboard and dropped through the hoop. I ran over to catch it, went to my favorite spot, and took two steps back. Then same routine—bounce, catch, square up, shoot. The ball hit the backboard, rattled on the rim, and bounced out. I grabbed it, went to the same spot, and did it again. Same result. I did it again. Swish. I corralled the ball, went back to my favorite spot, took three steps back and shot. The ball hit the back of the rim, bounced up, and came down through the net. I ran to get it, then took four steps back from my favorite spot and stopped.

  I was pretty far from the hoop now, farther than I’d ever take a shot in a game. Or even in practice, if JJ wasn’t about to run me over. I bounced the ball, caught it, squared up, and shot. The ball flew from my hand, sailing in a long, high arc, hit the back of the rim, bounced against the front of the rim, then bounced out.

  I’d missed.

  But I hadn’t missed by much. My ball had hit the back of the rim. I collected my ball, went to the spot I’d just shot from, took another step back, and shot again. Same result—I missed. But not by much. And not because I couldn’t shoot that far.

  Could I actually do this? Could I learn to be an outside shooter?

  I looked around at my asphalt “court.” Where was the three-point line, anyway? How far was it from the basket?

  I ran into the house, plopped down in front of the computer in Mom’s office, and typed in, How far is the three-point line?

  And what came up was—it depends.

  Well, the screen didn’t actually say, It depends. It said for high school basketball the three-point line is 19 feet, 9 inches from the center of the basket; for college it’s 20 feet, 9 inches; for the WNBA it’s 22 feet, 1.75 inches; and for the NBA it’s 23 feet, 9 inches.

  Great. So which one should I use? Obviously I wasn’t in the NBA or the WNBA or college, but I wasn’t in high school, either.

  So then I looked at the court diagrams, and that made it clear, because I could see right away that on a high school court, the three-point line touches the small arc above the free throw line, just like on the courts we played on.

  I dug through the junk drawer in the kitchen, looking for a tape measure, while our poor old printer chugged away. Then I grabbed the diagram and ran back outside. I searched the shelves in the garage, moving gross, spiderwebby flowerpots and bags of plant food, until I found what I needed—Sam’s bucket of sidewalk chalk.

  I carried all my stuff over to the hoop, and that’s when Booker rode up the driveway. He leaned his bike against a tree and shook his hair back from his face, sending a spray of tiny green flakes sparkling into the sunlight.

  “You’re shedding grass,” I said.

  “What? Oh, yeah, that always happens.” He ran a hand through his hair, tossing more grass clippings into the air.
>
  I rotated my ball around my waist. “You don’t have to do this, you know. I mean, do you really want to help?”

  “Sure.”

  “You don’t think it’s dumb?”

  “No. Besides, you got me out of weed-whacking. I told my dad I needed to help a friend with a project. Dad thought that was ‘super.’” Booker grinned and made little air quotes with his fingers. “My folks are worried about me making friends.”

  “Why?”

  Booker shrugged. “I guess because I’ve only ever lived in one little town. They’re afraid I won’t ‘fit in.’” Air quotes again.

  “Were you worried about that?”

  “Kind of. Not anymore. I like it here. Kids are cool. School’s way better. A lot harder, but that’s okay.” He picked up the court diagram. “So what’s the plan?”

  “I want to mark the three-point line on the driveway. I need to figure out where the center of the basket is, then measure nineteen feet, nine inches from there.”

  “How accurate does it need to be?”

  “As accurate as I can make it, I guess.”

  Booker looked up at the basket. “You know how to make a plumb line?”

  I shook my head.

  “Well, what you do is put two straight sticks across the top of the rim, then tie a piece of string where the sticks cross, and tie a weight to the other end of the string. It’ll hang straight down and show you where the center of the basket is.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “My dad’s redoing the cabinets in our kitchen. I’ve been helping him.” He shook more grass out of his hair. “You have a ladder?”

  I nodded. “In the corner of the garage.”

  He went to get the ladder, and I ran inside to get scissors and a ball of twine. Then I ran back out to the garage shelves and reached behind the spiderwebby flowerpots for two bamboo plant stakes.

  Booker was already up on the ladder.

  I handed the plant stakes up to him and he set them on the basket rim. Then I tossed the string up, and he tied the end around the cross point of the sticks and dropped the string down through the net. I cut it off where it touched the driveway and tied that end around a piece of sidewalk chalk. When I let go, the string swung back and forth and back and forth until it finally stopped, and I used another piece of chalk to mark a big X on the asphalt right beneath the string.