Kings of the Court

by Alison Hughes

  “You’re in trouble!”

  “Suspended?”

  “Expelled?”

  “Okay, okay, you’re all very funny,” Mrs. Jackson said wearily. “Sameer, are you finished the short story?”

  “Yep,” said Sameer, who had finished reading the story and also written the essay on it, which wasn’t due for a month. Not a big fan of Language Arts, he liked to get his least-favorite things out of the way early.

  “Sandy,” Mrs. Jackson called in the direction of the speaker, “he’ll be right down.”

  Sameer shut Buzzer Beaters and Hail Marys: A Hundred Years of Professional Sports Jargon, Slang and Lingo, which he’d been reading furtively behind his textbook, and shoved it into his backpack.

  He walked down the empty halls to the office, feeling uneasy. He didn’t think he was in trouble, and he certainly wasn’t getting suspended or expelled, but he wondered what Mrs. Lee could possibly want to see him about. Marks? He was at the top of the class in everything except Language Arts, and even there he did pretty well. He wasn’t much of a reader of anything other than sports trivia and stats books—he couldn’t see the point of making up stories or, worse, writing about stories other people made up. This short story they were reading, for example. It was about wallpaper. Yellow wallpaper. What on earth was the point of that?

  Anyway, it couldn’t be about marks. What else were principals interested in? Absences? Nothing there. Lateness? Nope. He was always early. School property? He paused uneasily, wondering if Vijay had damaged or destroyed something important in a Gladiator-mascot frenzy. Sameer remembered Vijay thrashing at the gym door with his fake sword. And then he thought of the previous night’s game.

  The secretary glanced up when he entered the office.

  “Hi, I’m Sameer,” he said. “Mrs. Lee wanted to see me?”

  She nodded and returned to typing at her computer. “Just go on back. They’re waiting for you.”

  They? Who were they?

  Sameer smoothed a hand over his thatch of thick black hair.

  Down the hallway and to the left, the principal’s office door stood open. Vijay was sitting at a table, looking small and nervous. A big redheaded woman sat across from him. Her face and neck were blotchy, and her eyes were red and puffy. She gave him a watery smile.

  Wait…that’s Big Nate’s mom, thought Sameer.

  “Ah. Sameer. Good,” Mrs. Lee said. “Take a seat.” She got up and motioned him over to the table they were sitting at. Then she closed the office door.

  Sameer sat on the edge of the chair and pushed up his glasses.

  “So. Sameer. Vijay. The basketball game. Yesterday. At McGee. You were there?” Mrs. Lee shot this at them with her trademark rapid-fire delivery.

  They both nodded. Vijay swallowed nervously, his prominent Adam’s apple bobbing up and down.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he added.

  Suck-up, thought Sameer.

  “Well? How did it go?” Mrs. Lee was staring at them intently through her heavy glasses. It was like being under a microscope.

  Sameer and Vijay looked at each other. It had been a massacre. A disaster. A complete mess. Who was going to say that?

  “Well,” said Sameer slowly, “we lost. Badly. You want the score or—”

  “No, no,” said Mrs. Lee sharply. “I know we lost. Doesn’t matter.” She looked over at the blotchy woman. “Mrs. Schneider says Nathan told her that Coach Bosetti was out of control.”

  “Crazy. A crazy man!” Nate’s mom gulped, throwing her big hands in the air. “Nate said he was mean—meaner than usual.”

  Vijay pointed at Nate’s mom approvingly. “That’s it. You got it. Meaner. Crazier. Screamier.” He looked at Mrs. Lee with satisfaction, nodding as though he’d just explained everything. Mrs. Lee stared at him, then adjusted her chair so she was facing Sameer.

  “Sameer, I need your help. Explain what happened, please.”

  Sameer shifted uncomfortably. “Maybe you should talk to some of the guys on the team,” he said.

  “Oh, I have. There seems to be a general reluctance to talk.”

  Sameer could understand this. They had to deal with Coach Boss every day at practice.

  “Now I’m asking you,” Mrs. Lee said. “An impartial fan.”

  “So this is strictly confidential, right?” Sameer asked.

  “Yeah, no way at all this is getting back to Coach Boss?” Vijay asked. He had Coach Boss for phys ed this semester.

  Mrs. Lee nodded. “Absolutely private. Between us. I just want the truth.”

  “Okay, look, I don’t know why—personal issues, whatever—but Coach Boss seems to be increasingly out of control lately,” Sameer said.

  “Meaner,” offered Vijay. Mrs. Lee held up a hand in his direction without looking at him. Sameer continued.

  “But last night he was completely out of control. Absolutely. More so than usual. They were getting hammered. Hey, it’s McGee, right? Nobody beats them—nobody expects to beat them…”

  Mrs. Lee made an impatient gesture. “Yes, yes. Coach Bosetti. What did he do?”

  “The usual. Yelling. Screaming. Throwing his clipboard.”

  “And?”

  “He got a couple of technicals. Again.”

  “Ejected from the game?” asked Mrs. Lee.

  “Oh yeah,” Sameer said, remembering the menacing, lumbering figure walking straight across the court and crashing open both gym doors.

  “Why?” Mrs. Lee shot at him.

  “First technical was for screaming at the referee, which is nothing new. Second technical was for unsportsmanlike conduct.” Sameer glanced at Nate’s mom. “Against his own team.”

  “What exactly did he do, Sameer?”

  “He fired a ball at Nate’s head.”

  “There you go,” said Nate’s mom to Mrs. Lee, throwing out her arm and sitting back in her chair.

  “Hit him right smack in the nose!” said Vijay, relaxed now and happy to pile on. “We thought it was broken, because of all the blood. Turns out it wasn’t. Sameer and I ran and got, like, thousands of paper towels from the washroom. Took a whole stack to mop it all up. Pretty gross.”

  “It couldn’t have been accidental? He wasn’t, for example, passing him the ball?” Mrs. Lee asked.

  Sameer cleared his throat. “Uh, pretty sure not. He really wound up before the throw. And he screamed, ‘You ginger MORON!’ when he threw it.”

  Vijay stifled a giggle. “I didn’t hear that,” he said to Sameer. Then he looked nervously at Mrs. Lee and Mrs. Schneider. “Very inappropriate.”

  “To be honest, I think he aimed for the back of Nate’s head, but Nate sort of swung around and got it in the face. Sorry, Mrs. Schneider,” said Sameer. “I’m sure you don’t want to hear this. I’m just trying to be accurate.”

  “No, no, Shaheer. I’m very grateful to you,” Nate’s mom said.

  “Anyway,” Sameer said to Mrs. Lee, “that’s how it went.”

  “It’s mean and insulting! That’s what it is! Bullying! It’s probably even criminal,” said Mrs. Schneider in a wobbly voice. “Nate didn’t want me to come here. I knew he hadn’t been exactly enjoying basketball, but you know when your child, your child, comes home from a game with a bloody nose and two black eyes, you have to do something.”

  “Absolutely. Absolutely,” Mrs. Lee said, tapping one finger on the table. She looked very serious, her eyes narrowed. Mrs. Lee was tiny, even shorter than Sameer himself, but she was tough. Watching her face, Sameer felt a pang of something like pity for Coach Boss, who was probably, at this minute, blithely bullying somebody else or ineptly teaching some cowed class, unaware of what was coming.

  “Thank you, Sameer. Vijay. That’s it, I hope,” said Mrs. Lee.

  Vijay scrambled to his feet.

  “Um, one last thing,” said Sameer, tentatively holding up his index finger. “I guess you should probably know that Coach Boss drove off in the bus before the end of the game.”

  “
What?” Mrs. Lee and Mrs. Schneider spoke at the same time.

  “Nate didn’t tell me that,” said Mrs. Schneider, shocked.

  “It worked out okay though,” Sameer said quickly. “Some of the guys caught rides back with the girls’ team.” Sameer stared coldly at Vijay, who looked away.

  “And some of them took the bus back with me. I had a book of tickets in my backpack. Anyway, that’s it,” he said with relief.

  Mrs. Lee sighed and ran her hand over her hair.

  “All right, thank you, Sameer and Vijay. You can head back to class now, boys. And this whole thing? Absolutely hush-hush. Got me?”

  They nodded and escaped.

  SIX

  Evasive Action

  “Sameer, do you think we’ll get in trouble with Coach Boss?” whispered Vijay, grabbing Sameer’s arm when they were in the hall. “Seriously. Do you? I mean, the guy’s not exactly rational.”

  “Or even stable,” Sameer said. Like Vijay, he was starting to worry.

  When they’d been in Mrs. Lee’s office, it had been easy to spill everything. Mrs. Lee had encouraged them. They’d almost forgotten that Coach Boss was actually in the school, pretending to teach, unaware that he was being ratted out. Now, outside the safety of the principal’s office, Mrs. Lee was receding, and Coach Boss was looming very large.

  Sameer and Vijay looked at each other, and each thought the other looked worried.

  “Mrs. Lee said she’d keep what we said confidential,” said Sameer firmly. “She said that right off the bat.”

  “Yeah, she did, she did.” Vijay nodded with relief. “Also, fact is, you did most of the talking, so…”

  Sameer gave Vijay a withering look.

  “Nice, Vijay, nice. I only took over because you seem to have trouble with speaking. Screamier? I mean, that’s not even a word.”

  “You don’t have to get all snotty. All I’m saying is that it was you—”

  “Vijay! Mrs. Lee said she’d keep it all quiet. Obviously, we better shut up about it as well. And we better get back to class.”

  They had just started walking down the hall when they heard the beep that signaled an announcement was coming.

  Mrs. Lee’s crisp voice came over the school-wide intercom. “Mr. Bosetti, will you come to the office, please? Mr. Bosetti, to the office.”

  Vijay and Sameer froze.

  “Oh, man,” whimpered Vijay. “Coach Boss is coming to the office now! If he sees us he’ll know we…Let’s get out of here.”

  They sprinted wildly down the hall, faster than they had ever run in gym class. Vijay looked over his shoulder and slowed down a little so Sameer could keep up with him.

  “I was in Language Arts. Where were you?” panted Sameer.

  “Math,” gasped Vijay.

  They rounded the corner, slowing to swerve for a trolley of books outside the library. They were just picking up speed when a huge hand pushed open the door of a classroom up ahead.

  Sameer and Vijay skidded to a dead stop.

  “Coach Boss,” hissed Vijay, his fingers digging into Sameer’s arm.

  The rest of Coach Boss followed his hand through the door, but his head was turned to yell back into the classroom.

  “Page seventy-one!” he boomed. “Get to work. Hey! Tyson! That means you. Get it done! I’ll be back in a minute.”

  “Sameer,” Vijay whimpered, frozen, his eyes huge. Sameer had no time to weigh options. He acted on instinct—move away from the danger. He grabbed Vijay’s shirt and dragged him back around the corner, quickly scanned the hall and pulled him into a storage closet across from the library. He shut the door softly.

  “Gak! That practically choked me!” Vijay staggered back and crashed into a metal pail. It made an impossibly loud clanking noise as it swung around and around. Sameer dropped to his hands and knees, groped in the dark for the pail and stilled it.

  “Sorry, sorry, I’ll just—”

  “Shut. Up,” breathed Sameer.

  “Right,” whispered Vijay. “Gotcha.”

  They waited, out of breath and hearts hammering, as Coach Boss’s heavy footsteps passed the closet and continued down the hall.

  “I think he’s gone,” whispered Sameer after about a minute.

  “Are you sure? Like, sure sure?”

  “How can I be sure? I can’t see through doors, Vijay. But he must be down at Mrs. Lee’s office by now.” His voice was confident, but he had a fleeting, terrifying mental image of Coach Boss crouched outside the closet door. Ridiculous.

  “Maybe we should just stay here the rest of the day,” whispered Vijay. Their eyes had adjusted to the gloom, and he looked around the small room. “I bet we could. I bet nobody would care or even notice. I mean, we’d get hungry, and it kind of stinks in here, and possibly there are spiders, but still…”

  “We have to go now, while he’s in the office, before he comes back,” said Sameer in an urgent voice. He turned the handle noiselessly, opened the door a crack and peeked out. “All clear.”

  “Like, completely, absolutely clear clear?”

  Sameer ground his teeth and pulled Vijay out of the closet.

  They ran past Coach Boss’s class, which was loudly and happily not working on page seventy-one.

  “Math class never looked so good,” Vijay said as they finally reached his classroom and he leaned his head on the door.

  “I know,” Sameer said. “Hey, remember to keep it quiet about talking to Mrs. Lee. Don’t say anything to anyone, okay?”

  “Gotcha. I’m a vault. See you later, Sameer.”

  Sameer gratefully slipped back into his Language Arts class and sank into his seat. Everyone looked up, hoping for information, but he just shook his head, as if to say, “It was boring. It was nothing.” When everyone had gone back to their work, he took off his glasses and wiped his sleeve across his sweaty face.

  He pulled out his book of sports commentary, flipped to the index and looked up the word coach. There was a long line of headings under the word, which ranged from the positive inspiration on the bench and role model to the more negative useless and inept. Sameer ran his finger down the list. It stopped when he reached toxic, 324.

  He flipped pages, hunched down in his seat and started to read.

  SEVEN

  Hush-Hush

  “Hey, Sameer,” Gracie called at lunch, motioning him over. She was sitting with a group of friends. “So you and Vijay told Mrs. Lee all about the McGee game? How Coach Boss got tossed from the game for firing that ball at Nate’s head?”

  Sameer ground his teeth, thinking how much he would like to throw a ball at Vijay’s head.

  “Where did you get that idea?” he asked, a polite frozen smile on his face.

  “Vijay told us. He said Mrs. Lee called you guys in for some big conference. He said she was really grateful and promised you guys some kind of reward or something.”

  Sameer snorted. “Oh yeah, Cadillac Escalades all around! Seriously, Gracie? Does that sound like Mrs. Lee?”

  “Not really.” Gracie laughed, shaking her glossy hair. “So tell us what happened.”

  “Look. Mrs. Lee called us down to the office. Nate just happened to mention to his mom what happened, seeing as he arrived home looking like Frankenstein even though we cleaned him up as much as we could, and his mom told Mrs. Lee, even though Nate didn’t want her to. We were just, you know, witnesses. Corroborating the evidence.” Was corroborate the right word? Sameer wondered. Nobody called him on it.

  “Well, Coach Boss got in trouble, all right. He got called down to the office,” said another girl. “Didn’t you hear it?”

  “Me? Didn’t hear a thing,” said Sameer innocently.

  “I was in Coach Boss’s math class when he got called down,” said Simone. “He came back looking like he wanted to murder somebody.”

  “Huh,” said Sameer, his hands starting to sweat. “You know,” he said desperately, looking around the group of girls, “I’m thinking it’d be great if nob
ody here tells anybody else about this. Mrs. Lee said she’d keep it confidential, and we were supposed to as well. But Vijay…” Sameer bit back a wave of rage and forced a chuckle. “Well, you know Vijay. Quite a talker. Always has to be a big shot. Always wants to be the big hero.”

  “Okay, Sameer,” said Gracie, looking serious. “We’ll keep it secret, right?” Her friends nodded.

  “Thanks,” said Sameer. “It’s not like I don’t trust you. It’s just, well, you know how rumors get exaggerated around this place. Pretty soon it’ll be the cops landing a helicopter on the roof and swarming down the sides of the school to take down Coach Boss!”

  The girls laughed.

  Sameer walked away feeling happier. He thought he’d handled that pretty well. And Gracie and her friends had said they wouldn’t tell anyone else. He could trust them. Maybe this thing could be contained so it didn’t reach Coach Boss. He’d just gotten to his locker and reached for his lock when his friend Desmond ran in from outside. He saw Sameer and ran straight over.

  “Sameer, I heard Coach Boss half killed a few guys on the basketball team in the middle of the McGee game and is going to prison!”

  Sameer closed his eyes and banged his head gently on his locker.

  “Hey, Desmond, do you know where Vijay is?” he asked through gritted teeth.

  EIGHT

  Just Managing

  “Sameer. Sameer !” Gracie hissed the next morning, motioning him over to her locker.

  Oh no, what now? he thought. He trotted over, alarmed at the urgency in her tone. “Simone says they have a substitute teacher in math.” She looked at him expectantly.

  Sameer stared back in confusion. Why were they talking about Simone’s substitute teacher?

  “Well, you can sometimes goof off with a sub,” he said.

  Gracie crossed her arms and rolled her eyes. “Think, Sameer, think! A sub. For Coach Boss! He’s gone!”

  “What? What do you mean, gone? You mean, like, taking a day off?”

  “Nope. Gone,” Gracie said. “The sub said she was there indefinitely. So Boss has been fired or is on stress leave or is taking anger-management courses or something. Who knows? But he’s gone! Must have been the McGee game. And you and Vijay ratting him out to Mrs. Lee.”