Nikki on the Line

by Barbara Carroll Roberts

  Everybody headed for their cars, but I hung back with Adria.

  We didn’t say anything for a minute, then Adria said, “You okay?”

  I nodded. “I guess I’ll have some pretty good bruises tomorrow.” I twisted my arm around to look at a big purple spot that was already showing on my elbow. “I guess we all will.”

  “Yeah.” She looked at her elbows, too.

  We stood silent for another minute, then I said, “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about working on three-pointers, Adria. And about Booker helping me. I just… I’d been playing so bad and I was afraid—”

  “I’m sorry I laughed about the black hole thing,” Adria said. She kicked at the gravel in the parking lot. “Oh god, you’re going to think I’m the meanest person in the world when I tell you this.”

  “Adria, I know you’re not the meanest person in the world.”

  She looked at me, her eyes sad. “I was glad Mr. Nyquist called you that. I was glad you were having such a hard time.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because… because you know how my dad always said you were the most important player on the team?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, that always made me so mad. Even though I knew he said it because you were the point guard and you had to lead the team, he was my dad. Why didn’t he say I was the most important? So then, when Coach Duval didn’t put you at point guard, even though I could see how upset you were and how much you were struggling, I was glad because… because you weren’t the most important player anymore.” She shook her head. “And then you started hanging out with Booker and…”

  We stood staring at each other and then… and then I burst out laughing.

  “Nikki! What are you laughing about?” Adria said.

  “Us! You were mad at me. I was mad at you.”

  “What were you mad at me for?”

  “For being tall! For getting new shoes and knowing so much more about basketball than I do and going to extra training and hanging out with Kate. And for not struggling to learn your new position.”

  “Are you kidding? Moving from center to forward? I don’t have any idea what I’m doing half the time.”

  I picked up my gym bag. “I wish you’d told me that.”

  “I didn’t want to admit it. Even to myself.”

  We started walking, following our parents, and dopey or not, I looped my arm back through Adria’s. “I hated not being friends,” I said.

  “Me too.” She hooked her arm tighter through mine. “Let’s don’t do that again.”

  “Duh,” I said. “Double-triple-quadruple-duh.”

  Shooter

  When we walked into the gym lobby the next morning, you would’ve thought our team name really was the Northern Virginia Roadkill.

  Jasmine was on crutches, with a bad ankle sprain, so she’d be on the bench for a few weeks. And even though Taj’s nose wasn’t broken, she had two amazing purple-and-green shiners, and her doctor said she shouldn’t play for a week or so, either. Autumn said she was ready to play, but she looked stiff and sore from hitting the floor on her back the day before. Even JJ was all bruised up.

  Booker had come with us. I’d told him all about the Blasters game on the way to the tournament, but when we got there, he looked around at my teammates and said, “Geez, I thought you were exaggerating.”

  “You want to sit with us while we put on our shoes and stuff?” I said.

  He shook his head and stuck his hands in his pockets. “I’ll hang with your mom and Sam.” Then he grinned at me. “Let’s see some field goal kicking, okay?”

  I smiled back. “Okay.”

  We had the first game that morning, so Coach led us straight to our court. But when we came through the doorway into the gym, we all stopped short, piling up against one another.

  Because there was a team already warming up on our court.

  The bright purple Philadelphia Chargers.

  The team we played against in our first game of our first tournament. The team with the giant bigger than our giant and the sharpshooter point guard.

  The team we played against when I played like a Black Hole.

  “Well, well, well,” Coach said. “I didn’t realize we’d be playing the Chargers this morning. This is going to be interesting.” He gathered us all together by our bench and told us to get our shoes on double-quick so we’d have extra time to warm up. And then he said, “Ladies, that purple team is in for a surprise. You’re a different team than you were when you played them before. Let’s have some fun.”

  I rubbed my hands up and down the sides of my shorts, bunching up the shiny fabric with my fingertips. Yeah, we were a different team. Two of our bigs were hurt and couldn’t play, and most of the rest of us were banged up. And… and what if the Chargers were still so good that I played like a Black Hole against them? And Mom and Sam and Booker were here to see me play like a Black Hole. And… I squeezed my eyes shut.

  “Nikki?” Adria grabbed my shoulder and shook it. “What are you doing? Get your shoes on. Look,” she said when I opened my eyes. “There’s nobody on a couple of the other courts yet. We can run over there and warm up our shooting.”

  I shoved my feet into my shoes and jumped up. I didn’t need to tie them to stand in front of the basket and shoot with one hand.

  We grabbed a ball from Coach’s bag and jogged over to an empty court.

  “You first.” Adria handed me the ball.

  I balanced it on my left hand, bent my knees, powered up, released the ball at the top of my stroke, and…swish, one. I kept going, three swishes in front of the hoop, three on each side, then Adria shot and I rebounded.

  Kate came out to join us. “Hey, look.” She pointed at a small group of people standing along the baseline of our court or sitting in a row of folding chairs that had been set up there, some of them watching us, some of them bent over their phones, juggling notebooks and coffee cups. Then a white-haired man in a green shirt came in and sat down in one of the chairs.

  “Is that the college scout who was at our first game?” I said.

  Kate nodded. “And those other people? They’re coaches.”

  “College coaches?” Adria said.

  And I said, “For an eighth-grade game?”

  “Yeah, go figure.” Kate laughed. “I bet they’re all like fourth assistants to the fourth assistant.”

  But then I saw something else—a woman in what I recognized as a Wilder University ball cap, and my mom waving at her, and her waving back at Mom. “That’s Becky Wheeler,” I said. “The head coach at Wilder University.”

  “Kate!” Mr. Nyquist’s voice wasn’t loud, but sharp and insistent. He walked toward us, pointing at the college coaches. “You see those coaches? They’re here to watch you.”

  And you know, if you asked me a thousand times why I said what I said next, I’d answer a thousand times that I had absolutely no idea. Because what I said was, “Becky Wheeler is here to watch me. I emailed her our tournament schedule.”

  Mr. Nyquist looked down at me like he thought I was not only the stupidest ant in the universe, but the ugliest one, too. For a second, I was afraid he might step on me.

  Then he looked back at Kate. “There are several coaches here from powerhouse programs. I sent them film, and they’re here to see you. So when the ball gets passed in to you under the hoop, I don’t want to see you kicking it back out. You take your shots. Every shot.”

  Kate said, “Dad—”

  “Every shot!”

  And then I said something else I can’t believe I said. I said, “If Kate takes every shot and never kicks the ball out, the whole defense will collapse in on her, and she won’t be able to shoot at all. If she kicks it out, and I make a basket, or Linnae does or JJ, then the defense can’t collapse, and Kate will be open the next time the ball comes in to her.”

  Then we all stood there for, like, ten hours while Mr. Nyquist and Kate and Adria stared at me. And then I said, “Basketba
ll’s a team game. That’s what Coach says, right? The Action plays team ball.”

  And then, thank god, Coach Duval blew his whistle for us to run our regular warm-up, and Kate and Adria and I sprinted away from Mr. Nyquist before he could say anything else. And you know what? This time, while we warmed up, Kate didn’t throw up into a trash can.

  When there was a minute left of warm-up time, Coach called us over. “All right, we’ve got all kinds of distractions here this morning. A team that beat us the first time around. A couple of injured teammates. Coaches watching. But we’re here for one reason. We’re here to play ball. So that’s what we’re going to focus on and that’s the only thing we’re going to focus on. You with me?”

  Kate chewed on the side of her thumb, Maura bounced on the balls of her feet, and all the rest of us nodded.

  “Starters,” Coach said. “Adria, Kate, Linnae, Maura, Nikki. And, ladies, I want to see you attack that hoop. All right, ‘Action’ on three. One, two, three.”

  “ACTION!”

  We ran onto the court and took our places for tip-off. The Chargers took their places, too, and the ref blew her whistle and tossed the ball up. Kate’s hand found the ball first and tipped it to Maura.

  We all took off to start our offense.

  I set up on the wing, down on the left side of the hoop, outside the three-point line. Maura fired the ball in to Kate, and the Chargers’ center stepped in behind her with her hands up. My defender collapsed in toward Kate, too, just like I told Mr. Nyquist she would. Kate held the ball a second, then she flicked the ball out to me. I caught it, and before I could think about Black Holes or Booker watching or coaches along the baseline or anything else, I squared my shoulders, stepped into my shot, jumped, and let the ball fly from my hand. It soared up in a long, high arc… and dropped through the net.

  The ref threw her hands in the air, signaling a three-pointer, and our bench exploded. Even Jasmine jumped up on one foot. The parents cheered and Sam and Booker whooped, and Coach said, “Yeah. That’s how it’s done.”

  I ran down the court to play defense, hustling, closing out, then sprinted back the other way when Kate grabbed a rebound, my hand in the air, looking for the outlet pass, hustling and hustling, and…

  Everything else fell away.

  All the yelling and cheering, the whistles screeching, the college coaches watching, Booker and Sam and Mom and Black Holes, and the Chargers coach hollering “Shooter!” every time the ball came to me—it all fell away. And now it was just me and the ball and the hoop and my teammates, out on that shiny wood floor, playing like we were connected. In the zone. Together.

  I know I shot more threes in that game and hit at least two and I know we won, but I couldn’t tell you what the score was or anything else about it other than that it was the most fun I’d ever had playing basketball in my whole entire life.

  When the game clock blared at the end of the game, we all whooped and jumped around, then lined up to slap hands and say “Good game” with the Chargers, then followed Coach out to the lobby. He talked to us for a few minutes, but I didn’t hear much of what he said. I was still too excited about having so much fun. But when the team meeting was over, Coach clamped his hand on my shoulder and said, “Good shooting, Lefty. Looks like you figured out how to not let what you can’t do stop you from doing what you can.”

  “I’m trying,” I said.

  He nodded. “Keep it up.”

  Then Mom and Sam and Booker were there, hugging me. All of them, even Booker, which, you know, was pretty embarrassing since I’m sure I was completely sweaty and gross.

  “I have a message for you from Becky Wheeler,” Mom said. “She can’t tell you herself—something about NCAA rules that don’t allow coaches to talk to young players. But she said she enjoyed watching you and that it was obvious you’ve been working hard. And she said you have a pretty shot.” Mom put her arm around my shoulders and pulled me close. “Must be those sports genes you didn’t get from me.”

  We had three hours before our next game, so we all hung out around a couple of big tables in the lobby. Adria and Kate and Booker and I all sat together—Sam, too, when he wasn’t running around with Kim-Ly’s little sisters or getting people to sign his chartreuse cast. We ate snacks and sandwiches and drank Gatorades and laughed at Maura (“Dude, you guys, check this out”) spinning basketballs on her fingers.

  My mom sat with Adria’s parents, talking and laughing, and Jasmine’s mom sat with Linnae’s mom, talking about ankle braces and mouth guards. “Ohmygod, Mom,” Jasmine said. “Don’t make me wear those. Not the mouth guard, anyway. Maybe the ankle braces would be okay.”

  Taj made goofy faces while we took pictures of her black eyes, and JJ relaced her shoes with navy-blue and orange laces, saying she guessed they could be lucky, too. Then she said, “Hey, Nikki, for real, what’s the deal with your eyes? What’s wrong with them?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with Nikki’s eyes!” Adria said, jumping up in JJ’s face.

  JJ stumbled back, looking at me. “Oh, okay, uh, sorry.”

  “It’s a genetic thing,” I said.

  And Booker said, “Heterochromia iridis.”

  Everybody looked at him.

  His face got red. “Our science teacher told us.”

  After that, Autumn decided Booker needed orange and blue nail polish on his thumbs, and Sam did, too. So we had to take pictures and laugh about that.

  And then Mr. Nyquist sat down next to Kate and said, not in his usual booming voice, “You played a nice game.” And I think that might have been the first time I saw Kate smile at her dad. And the first time he smiled back.

  Then Coach was standing in front of us, clapping his hands. “Ladies,” he said, “you remember at tryouts I told you I’ve been coaching club teams for twenty years? I’ve coached a lot of good teams in those years, and a couple of very good teams, but I’ve never coached a team better than this one.” He paused and looked around at us. “This team deserves to go to nationals.”

  We all whooped and cheered.

  “So listen up,” Coach said. “If we win this next game, we win the tournament. And that could give us an automatic bid to the national championships. But I’m not going to kid you—this is going to be a tough game. We’re playing a team from Delaware called the Lightning and they’re good. Real good. So let’s dig down deep. Let’s leave it all out there on the court. You ready?”

  We all bounced around and said, “Yeah!” and “Let’s go!” and “Action!”

  And I shouted extra loud, because even though Mom hadn’t said she’d let me keep playing—even though I might never play another game with the Action, let alone play with them at nationals—I was determined to do exactly what Coach said. I was determined to leave it all out there on the court.

  And when the game started, it looked like all the other Action girls felt the same way. We came out on fire.

  The first play of the game, Adria popped open under the basket, caught a pass from Kim-Ly, and put the ball in the hoop. Then Kim-Ly stole the Lightning’s inbound pass and took the ball straight back to the basket.

  We got back on defense and Kate blocked a shot and tipped the ball out to me, and I fired it up the court to Autumn. She took it in for a layup.

  One minute into the game, and we were up by six.

  The Lightning’s coach called a time-out.

  We were all feeling great, bouncing around, but when the refs whistled us back on the floor, a tougher Lightning team came out to meet us. They ran off fourteen straight points before we got ourselves back together, so instead of being up by six, now we were down by eight.

  And that’s how the game kept going—we’d go on a run, get a few points ahead, then they’d fight back with their own run and get back on top. Kate was a beast on the boards, getting a ton of rebounds, and Adria scored ten points in the first half, but my three-pointer wouldn’t fall. I shot three or four in the first half, and didn’t make any. I tried to
make up for it on the other end, playing the toughest defense I’d ever played, my butt down and my hands up, springing forward to close out fast on every girl I guarded.

  At halftime we were down by three and we were tired—playing two games in one day against really good teams was enough to make anybody tired, but playing two games in one day against really good teams when we only had eight players was getting close to exhausting.

  We sat on the bench, guzzling water, and Coach talked to us about strategy and which Lightning players to guard closer and stuff like that. Then, right before the buzzer sounded to start the second half, Jasmine, leaning on her crutches, and Taj, squinting at us through her shiners, stood up in front of us and said, “Dig deeper, you guys! You can do this! Come on, ‘Action’ on three. One, two, three.”

  “ACTION!”

  And we were back on the floor.

  The game stayed close. Coach subbed us in and out a lot, trying to give us little rests, and Taj and Jasmine kept up a steady pep talk from the bench.

  With five minutes to go in the game, I finally hit a three. And then I hit another, and we were up by two.

  The Lightning fought back, hitting some really nice shots, and with thirty seconds to go, we were down by one.

  Kate caught a pass under the basket, but her defender stepped in with her arms up, and Kate had nowhere to go. She pivoted away and passed the ball up to Adria, who drove toward the hoop, got stopped, and fired the ball out to me. My defender charged toward me. I shot-faked, getting the girl to jump up, trying to block the shot she thought was coming, and with the clock ticking fast toward zero, I shot-faked again. Kate’s defender ran at me, I zinged the ball back to Kate, and she turned, barely jumped, and put the ball in the hoop.

  The game clock blared.

  We won!

  I jumped and whooped and ran toward Adria and Kate, and we all jumped and whooped together.

  Then our whole team was out on the floor jumping and hugging—all of us, even Jasmine on her crutches—whistling and yelling and chanting, “Action! Action!” The tournament officials came in with the trophy, and we all had to take turns holding it, even Booker and Sam and Kim-Ly’s little sisters, posing for pictures, laughing and shouting and hugging some more.