Nikki on the Line

by Barbara Carroll Roberts

  Booker tossed me the ball, and I managed to swing my hand up and around, the way I would to shoot my warm-up shots. I bounced over to the hoop, holding the handle with my right hand, the ball balanced on my left hand, then I bounced, bounced, bounced, and, on the up bounce, extended my arm and flicked my wrist, and the ball arced up and dropped through the net.

  “No way!” Booker shouted, and fell over on the lawn. “No way! No way!”

  I bounced in a big circle, whooping and laughing.

  “That was unreal.” He sat up. “I can’t believe you made that shot.”

  I jumped off the pogo stick, still laughing. “It was pretty unreal. Too bad I can’t use a pogo stick in a game. I could shoot way up above everybody.”

  Booker looked at his watch. “Oh man, I gotta go. My folks decided we should all take golf lessons.”

  “That sounds fun,” I said.

  He got on his bike and rode a circle around me before heading down the driveway. “Not as fun as pogo basketball.”

  I went inside and made myself a turkey sandwich and thought about how, even though Booker didn’t share any DNA with his parents, he’d still inherited their funny-and-nice genes.

  I tried calling Adria again, but she still didn’t answer, which was annoying. How could she be that mad at me? I mean, come on, she’d been spending a bunch of time with Kate. Did she expect me to just hang out by myself?

  I set my phone on the counter and ate my sandwich—chewing a lot harder than I needed to—and decided I didn’t have time to think about Adria right then. The only thing I had time for was figuring out how I could train myself to not jump forward when I was shooting threes.

  By the time I finished eating, I had an idea. I ran back out to the garage and searched around for the little plastic cones we’d gotten when I was on my kindergarten soccer team. I finally found them, wedged behind an old hose on the shelves, covered with about a hundred times more spiderwebs than Mom’s flowerpots.

  Ick.

  I picked up the cones with the very tips of my fingers, ran out of the garage, threw the cones on the lawn, and rolled them around with my foot to scrape the spiderwebs off on the grass.

  Then I set them in a row a foot inside the three-point line—if I kicked over a cone when I shot, I’d know I was still jumping forward. Which is exactly what I did on my first three shots. I went back closer to the basket to get my form right again, then back to the three-point line, focusing harder on keeping that form, and only kicked over a cone once in five shots.

  Then I kept going like that, moving the cones around to shoot from different spots along the three-point arc, shooting closer to the basket to get my form right again if I kicked over the cones, chasing down my rebounds, trotting back, squaring up, shooting again. I kept shooting from each spot until I hit a three, which sometimes only took six or seven tries and sometimes took twenty. When I got all the way around the arc, shooting from ten different spots, I started back the other way.

  Mom came out with some lemonade and stayed to rebound for a while, but by that time I was getting really tired. I missed my shots and kicked over the cones ten times in a row.

  “Let’s take a break,” Mom said. “You can help me get the laundry started.”

  “Some break,” I said, but we both laughed.

  I went in with Mom and helped her sort the laundry, then ate a banana and drank some juice and thought really hard about how good it would feel to lie down on the couch and watch TV until suppertime, but instead I filled a water bottle and headed back outside.

  To give my left arm a little more rest, I shot some right-handed layups, then I marched back to the three-point line and started back around the arc. But this time, I didn’t stay in each of my ten spots until I made a three, I took ten shots from each place and moved on, even if I didn’t make a basket.

  And guess what: There were only three places where I didn’t make a three-pointer. In a couple of places, I made two, and when I shot from the very top of the arc, I made three, which maybe doesn’t sound like all that many—three baskets out of ten tries—but it felt fantastic to me. And what was also fantastic was that I only kicked over the cones a couple of times.

  Sam came blasting up the street at some point, and I talked him into rebounding for me again, then pretty soon after that I heard the side door open, and Mom said, “Nikki, I think you should call it a day.”

  “I’m okay,” I said.

  “You’ve been shooting all day long. Think about how sore you were after your first practice with this team. If you practice any more today, you won’t be able to pick up a pencil tomorrow, let alone a basketball. Supper’s almost ready. Come on in and wash up.”

  And I have to say, that supper, which was just grilled chicken and green beans and pasta salad, tasted about as good as any supper I ever ate.

  My shower and my pajamas felt fantastic that night, too, and when I finally fell into bed, I think I was asleep before I even told Mia about my day.

  Sunday morning, Mom and Sam headed off to Sam’s soccer game. I was hoping Booker would come over, but he texted me to say his parents were going hiking along the Potomac and wanted him to go, too.

  You want to come? he said.

  Yeah, sounds fun, I texted back, but then I glanced out my bedroom window and saw my old, rusty hoop down in the driveway. I sighed and turned back to my phone. Better stay home and keep shooting, though. Only a week before next tournament.

  Okay. Good luck.

  Thanks.

  I frowned at my phone. Was this stupid? Going hiking with Booker and his funny parents would be way more fun than standing out in the driveway by myself shooting threes over and over, chasing rebounds, getting a sore arm. I let my thumb hover over Booker’s phone number, almost pushed it three times… but then I looked up at Mia, at her straining muscles, at her determination. And I heard Coach’s voice—Heading into the big tournaments now. Can’t put you on the floor if you won’t compete.

  I dropped my phone on my bed, pulled on my shoes, and ran outside.

  In Case That Other Horrible, Awful Day Wasn’t Horrible and Awful Enough

  Monday morning I got on the school bus with a tired left arm. But, man, I was happy inside—happy that I worked so hard on my three-pointer over the weekend and maybe made enough progress that I’d be ready to shoot some in the tournament that was coming up the next weekend. I was pretty happy about having so much fun with Booker and his parents, too.

  But all those happy feelings disappeared when Adria got on the bus.

  Because, for the first time since the second day of kindergarten, Adria didn’t walk down the aisle and drop into the seat next to me. For the first time since the second day of kindergarten, she climbed the bus steps, glanced around, and sat in an empty seat near the front of the bus.

  Oh boy.

  I sat through three more stops, staring at the back of Adria’s head, then at the last stop before we got to school, I got up, plowed forward past the kids getting on, and sat down next to her.

  She folded her arms and looked out the window.

  “You want to talk about it?” I said.

  She whipped her head around and glared at me. “Why didn’t you just tell me you didn’t want to hang out with me anymore?”

  “What?”

  “What do you mean, ‘What?’ You can’t come over to my house after school because you have to take care of Sam? And, oh, I can’t come over to your house because you can’t have friends over when your mom’s not there? But, gee, Booker can come over. Because Booker’s helping you with a project. Really? Why’d you lie to me?”

  “I didn’t lie! I… I…” I pulled my hands through my hair.

  “Yeah.” Adria turned back to the window. “So he’s your boyfriend now?”

  “No!” I slumped down in the seat. “He’s… he’s helping me learn to shoot three-pointers.”

  “Oh, right. Because he’s an expert at that?” She shook her head. “That’s pathetic, Nikki.
You didn’t think my dad could help you?”

  “No, it’s not that. I… I wanted to ask your dad to help me, but I…”

  The bus bumped into the school parking lot, and Adria picked up her backpack. “You what?”

  “I didn’t want to tell you about it in case I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want you to laugh at me.”

  “Nikki, that is so lame. Why would I laugh at you for that?”

  “Because you did before! When I told you about Mr. Nyquist calling me a black hole.”

  “What? Nikki, get over yourself!” She grabbed the back of the seat in front of us, pulled herself up, and shoved past me. “I laughed because it was funny.”

  “It wasn’t to me,” I said.

  Adria turned back and looked at me for a second… and then she was gone.

  After that beginning, I didn’t think the day could get much worse, but I was wrong about that.

  In homeroom, our teacher passed out third-quarter report cards. She said, “Open them after you get home, please.”

  Yeah, right. Like anybody was going to do that.

  I held mine under my desk and opened it as quietly as I could.

  C in history, B in everything else except PE. I got an A in PE.

  Which, you know, wouldn’t seem like a total catastrophe, right? Except for the fact that on my first-quarter and second-quarter report cards, I got a B in history and an A in everything else.

  Great.

  At lunchtime, for the first time since the first day of kindergarten, Adria and I didn’t sit together. She sat with Mary Katherine Pentangeli and her friends, and I sat with some of the girls from our science class. Adria and I didn’t sit together on the bus ride home, either.

  But as upset as I was about Adria and as much as I dreaded showing Mom my report card, as soon as I got home I headed straight out to our driveway with my basketball. I had work to do. I couldn’t waste time worrying.

  Booker couldn’t come over because he had too much homework, so it was just Sam and me. He came blasting up the street like usual, but instead of shouting out the fabulous third-grade news, he waved a piece of paper over his head. “Nikki! Nikki! Guess what! I got all A’s on my report card. First time ever!”

  I grabbed him and swung him around. “Sam, I love you! I think you just saved my butt!”

  “Really?”

  “My report card isn’t good. Let’s show Mom yours first.”

  “Okay!” Sam yelled. “You want to ride bikes?”

  “I need to keep working on my shooting this week. Can you jump on your pogo stick?”

  I’d already done my warm-up shooting, so I set out my little orange cones inside the three-point line and got to work. And even with all the bad stuff that happened that day, my shooting went pretty well. I didn’t kick over any cones and I made a couple of threes from each of my spots around the arc. I was feeling so good I said, “Hey, Sam, bounce around inside the three-point line, okay? I can pretend you’re a tall player that I have to shoot over.”

  Sam bounced over and I kept shooting. And it worked. I had to try so hard to ignore Sam and concentrate on what I was doing that my shooting actually got better. Pretty soon Sam was whooping and yelling, taking one hand off the pogo stick to wave at me, but I stayed focused—stepping into my shot, letting the ball fly, collecting it after it fell through the net or chasing the rebounds, then back to the three-point line to do it again. Sam jumped and jumped and laughed and yelled, and then… and then I put up a shot that didn’t fly like a bird—it streaked like a jet, smacked the front of the rim, and shot straight back, and before I could yell “Look out!” it slammed into the pogo stick at the exact second Sam bounced up. The pogo stick exploded away from him, and he stuck his hand out to break his fall and crashed onto the driveway.

  “Sam!” I ran to him.

  He rolled over, his face pinched tight, eyes squeezed shut. When he opened them and looked at me, tears ran down the sides of his face.

  “Are you okay?” I kneeled down.

  “My arm kind of hurts.” He tried to sit up, winced, and lay back down. “Good thing I was wearing my helmet.”

  I almost laughed. “Show me where your arm hurts.”

  He pointed at his left wrist, and I bent down to look at it, looked at his right wrist, then back at the left. It had already started to swell.

  I sat back on my heels. “I think I better call Mom.”

  I stayed home while Mom took Sam to the emergency room. I did homework and tried to get dinner started. And worried.

  It was almost eight o’clock before I heard the garage door open, then Sam blasted into the kitchen with his arm in a sling and a brace on his wrist.

  “Nikki, look!” he hollered. “I got a sling! Nobody in my class has had a sling before. And when the swelling goes down, I’ll get a cast! I’m going to get a chartreuse one like Kritika’s!”

  I’m not sure I’d ever seen anyone so happy about a broken arm.

  Mom didn’t look as happy as Sam when she came in, though. She kicked off her clogs, hung up her jacket, and got a glass of water. “Oh, you made a salad,” she said, looking at a bowl on the counter. “Thank you.”

  “It’s not fancy,” I said. “Just lettuce and carrots and tomatoes.”

  “Unfancy is fine.”

  “I set the table, too.”

  Mom smiled a tired-looking smile and sat down at the counter next to me. She rubbed at her forehead. “I can’t remember what I was planning to make for dinner.”

  “There’s a pizza in the freezer. I could make that.”

  “Yeah, pizza!” Sam called from the family room.

  Mom nodded. “Pizza will be fine.”

  I got the pizza out of the freezer, read the directions, and turned on the oven. “Is it a bad break in Sam’s arm, Mom?”

  “No, thank heaven. A small crack in the ulna.”

  “Which is?”

  “One of the bones in his forearm.” She rubbed at her forehead some more. “Tell me again how this happened, Nikki.”

  So I told her, leaving out the part about all the laughing and whooping and how hard I had to concentrate to ignore Sam.

  She shook her head. “It doesn’t seem like you made a very good decision, does it? Asking your brother to jump around in front of you.”

  “No,” I said. “It was stupid. I’m sorry, Mom. I’ll be more careful.”

  She went to change her clothes, and I put the pizza in the oven and took it back out when it was done, cut it into slices, put everything on the table, and called Mom and Sam. I even put a piece of pizza and some salad on Sam’s plate since he wouldn’t be able to serve himself.

  Mom sat down smiling. “I’m afraid fixing dinner doesn’t quite make up for a broken arm, but I appreciate your effort, Nikki.”

  We must have all been hungry, because we ate without saying much, until Sam finished his piece of pizza, jumped up, and shouted, “Oh, Mom! I GOT STRAIGHT A’s! Where’s my backpack, Nikki? Where’s my report card?”

  I got up and got his report card, thinking, Man, why couldn’t he have forgotten about this for a day or two? I handed his report card to Mom.

  “Well, this is happy news,” she said. “I’m proud of you, Sam. Good work. Did you get a report card today, Nikki?”

  “Yeah.” I fished it out of my backpack, handed it to her, dropped back into my chair, and closed my eyes. When I opened them, Mom was frowning at my report card.

  She looked at me. “Nikki, when I agreed to your taking care of Sam after school, we made a deal, didn’t we? Your top priority was to take care of your brother. And you would not let your schoolwork suffer. You agreed to that deal.”

  “I know.” I scrunched up my shoulders.

  “How do you think you’re doing?”

  “Not very well.”

  Mom set my report card on the table, picked it up, and set it down again. She pushed her plate to the side. “I’m afraid you’ve played your last game with the Northern Virginia Action.�
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  “Mom, no!” I jumped up. “You can’t do that! You can’t take me off the Action!”

  And Sam yelled, “No, Mommy! Don’t do that!”

  Mom sat back and spread her hands, palms up. “Do you think I’m happy about this? I can see how hard you’ve been working to succeed on this team, Nikki. Unfortunately, it looks like you’ve stopped working hard at school.”

  “I haven’t, Mom. I just…” I sat back down. “It was only the first couple of weeks of the Action season, when I was trying to get used to the practices that were so much harder than county league, and I was tired all the time, and I had that big genetics project and a big test in history. And I also had to figure out how much time I needed to spend with Sam on his homework and… and look at Sam’s report card, Mom. That’s the first time he ever got all A’s, right, Sam?”

  Sam nodded about eighteen times. “Nikki’s a way better homework helper than the helpers at after-school-care.”

  “See?” I said. “I’m doing a good job at that. And Sam and I have the time figured out now. We’re getting all our homework done.”

  Mom drummed her fingers on the table. “I hear what you’re saying, Nikki, but I’m afraid I’m not convinced. Your brother has a broken arm. Your grades are down. Put yourself in my place. What would you do?”

  “I’d give me another chance!” I was almost crying now. “I know I didn’t take care of Sam the way I should have today, but I won’t ever make that mistake again.”

  “Nikki made me wear my helmet!” Sam said.

  “See? At least I did that,” I said. “I’ll pull my grades up, Mom, I promise. I don’t want to get C’s. But please don’t take me off the team. I’m working so hard. I’m trying to do something I’ve never done before. You have to give me a chance to show Coach Duval that I won’t let what I can’t do stop me from doing what I can. Please, Mom. Please!”

  She didn’t say anything for a whole minute. Maybe longer, because it felt like five years.

  I grabbed my napkin and wiped at my eyes and chewed at my bottom lip.