Kings of the Court

by Alison Hughes

  “Really?” Mr. Williams sat up. “I’m very sorry, Sameer. That must have been terribly disappointing. You would have been a loyal, hardworking teammate.”

  Sameer shrugged.

  “When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions,” said Mr. Williams.

  “Meaning bad things come in bunches?” said Sameer.

  “Exactly! You put it well. Take, for instance, the Gladiators basketball team. It all started so well, things were really on track, and now it appears to be falling apart.” He held up a hand as Sameer tried to object. “Hear me out, Sameer. Or this school play. I thought it would be such fun, that there would be so much youthful energy and enthusiasm for the play.”

  “And there’s not?” Sameer asked, already sensing the answer.

  “Four students have shown up from my school-wide call for auditions. Four. And one of them doesn’t even want a role. She only wants to help with costumes. And nobody wants to be the king. Can you believe that? Henry the Fifth, the heroic king!” Mr. Williams brandished an imaginary sword before letting his arm fall.

  “Sucks,” said Sameer sympathetically. “But maybe Shakespeare is a little—I don’t know—complicated? Intimidating?”

  “Oh, I did think of that.” Mr. Williams leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “But I’ve stripped the play down to its barest of bare bones, a mere outline, and translated some of it into more modern language! I’ll narrate a voice-over, and the actors only need to memorize a few paragraphs each, just the main speeches. Mrs. Lee’s rather dampening advice was to keep it under forty-five minutes.” He sat back in his chair, looked out the black window and sighed. “But how I had imagined battle scenes! Pageantry! Ferocity! A Henry V that the kids would be proud of!”

  Sameer watched Mr. Williams straighten and push his hair behind his ears.

  “I’m sorry, Sameer, you don’t need to hear me whining about my little troubles. Now, about the basketball. We’re down to…how many players?”

  “Seven,” Sameer said, relieved they were back to a subject he knew something about.

  “Seven. And we need…how many?”

  “Well, only five play on the court at once. So we’ve got two subs.”

  “Not optimal.”

  “No.”

  “Be honest with me, Sameer,” Mr. Williams said, sitting forward with his hands gripping each other tightly. “Would it be better if we just scrapped the whole thing? I’ll be frank. I thought I would help out when Mrs. Lee seemed desperate to find somebody to coach, but I don’t feel that I’m at all the right person for the job. I’m not particularly athletic. I know almost nothing about basketball— although I have your binder, I’ve started watching the games on television, and I’ve been trying to learn from the girls’ very knowledgeable coach. But I still feel a bit of a fraud every time they call me Coach Will.”

  “Listen, Mr. Williams,” said Sameer, “all of the guys in that gym want you to stay. They want to play basketball. Look, sure, you’re…you’ve got a… different way of coaching than most people. But, for example, you hit the nail on the head that we desperately need to work on defense. And you understand people. And you’re not a screamer. And the guys like you.”

  Mr. Williams gnawed at his thumbnail, looking unconvinced.

  Sameer tried again.

  “So it looks like you have a question to ask yourself, Mr. Williams: To be or not to be a basketball coach? I don’t know what Shakespeare would’ve answered there, but he seemed like a pretty adventurous guy. A go-getter, a team player. In sports talk we’d say, ‘It ain’t over till it’s over.’ Meaning stick with it, because there’s still time for things to improve.”

  Mr. Williams gave a bark of laughter.

  “Sameer, you are a treasure.”

  “Nah,” said Sameer, smiling with pride at the compliment, “just a heck of an assistant coach.”

  SIXTEEN

  King of the Court

  The Gladiators lost by sixteen points to St. Paul later that week. On the quiet bus ride back to their school, Sameer pulled out the red binder Coach Will had returned to him. He flipped to the yellow tab where he’d saved a copy of the score sheet from every game that year.

  “Guys, listen up! The last time we played St. Paul, we lost by forty-two points. Forty-two points! The score was 28–70. Blowout, right? But today? The score was 16–32. Guys, we held St. Paul to thirty-two points! They’re fourth in the rankings!”

  “Their shots weren’t falling,” said Tom. “Maybe they just had a bad game.”

  “Or maybe,” argued Sameer, “we had a good game! Maybe we made their shots not fall.”

  “Sixteen points isn’t exactly lighting up the scoreboard,” said Kenneth.

  “No, but we scored sixteen without Anil and Rochon. And it was our defense that held them to thirty-two. That’s why their shots weren’t falling! Because we were right on them whenever they got the ball. Nate blocked seven shots! Guys! This was a good game!”

  Mr. Williams looked in the rearview mirror. “I have to agree with Sameer,” he called back. “I was proud of how hard you boys worked out there. You, ah, dug most deeply and gave 110 percent!”

  The guys grinned at each other. Mr. Williams had been doing that all week, awkwardly substituting sports clichés for his usual Shakespearean quotes. When Nate had blocked that last shot, Mr. Williams had jumped to his feet and shouted, “That is what I am talking about!”

  “I’m not sure, but I think I liked him more when he was the goth poet,” whispered Vijay.

  “Oh, he’s still the goth poet,” said Sameer.

  “Don’t be too sure,” said Vijay. “Check out the Gladiators sweatshirt he’s wearing. And I saw him in the bathroom trying on a ballcap. Imagine that for a minute, Sameer. Coach Will in a ballcap. All that long hair danglin’ out the back. Lame. Like, lame lame.”

  Sameer shrugged and went back to trying to decipher Vijay’s stats. “Vijay, what is this?”

  Vijay groaned. “Oh, man. Stats again? You know what, Sameer? I hate stats. I hate being manager. I thought it would be all important and impressive, but it’s not. Nobody’s impressed. Gracie hasn’t even mentioned it. It’s boring, and you might be surprized to hear this, but I don’t think I’m any good at it. It’s all ‘rebound’ this and ‘shot attempt’ that, and tick the stupid little box. I can’t even watch the game!”

  “I didn’t know you hated it that much.”

  “Well, I do. Like—”

  “Please don’t say, ‘Like, hate hate it.’ I got it.”

  “I miss being the Gladiators’ mascot,” Vijay said, idly scraping away at the frost on the bus window with his fingernail. “Now that was fun. Desmond sucks at it. Did you see him last home game? Wouldn’t wear the helmet and stood against the wall texting most of the game. No energy. No enthusiasm. No ‘Rrrraaaarrrgh!’ ” Vijay bared his teeth, shaking his fists above his head. “Gladiator energy, you know?” He dropped his arms by his sides and shook his head sadly.

  “You were really good at that,” Sameer said. “You always had the crowd eating out of your hand. You really got them going.”

  Vijay turned to him excitedly. “I did, didn’t I? It was fun. It was so much fun. They loved the Gladiator Chop—you know, the scissor chop with the arms? Everyone went wild with that one. Or Go Bananas, where I chucked bananas into the crowd.” Vijay smiled and leaned his head back on the seat. “Ah, there’s nothing like it, Sameer. When the crowd’s roaring and everyone’s looking at you and laughing at what you do…Yeah, I miss the crowd. I miss all that.”

  “Sounds like you’re a born performer,” Sameer said, correcting Vijay’s muddled addition in the number-of-assists column. Then he stopped, looked at Vijay and grabbed his arm. “Vijay, you’re a performer!”

  “Why are you all creepy-intense all of a sudden? Stop it—you’re freaking me out!”

  “Vijay, listen,” said Sameer slowly, the idea taking shape in his brain. “You would be perfect for th
e lead role in the school play. Henry V! You could be Henry V! The king of England!”

  “Get out of here.” Vijay shoved Sameer’s shoulder.

  “I’m serious, Vijay.”

  “Me? An actor?”

  “Why not you?”

  “True. I mean, I do have the face, right? The look, the voice, the presence.” Vijay sat up, straightening his skinny shoulders.

  “And clearly the ego,” said Sameer.

  “Why didn’t I think of this before? It’s so obvious.”

  “You do love being in front of an audience,” said Sameer.

  “An audience. Did you say it was the main part?”

  “Yeah, it’s the king. Henry the Fifth. It’s spelled Henry Vee, but V is the roman number for five. Anyway, he’s Henry the Fifth. That’s the title of the play. Henry V. The title-lead role.”

  “The titley-leader role…”

  “And it’s about some battle that Henry leads an army to.”

  “I do have the gladiator experience for the sword stuff! And the badminton fencing!” pointed out Vijay, sounding excited. “Wait, this Henry Five’s not one of those guys that kills people to get to be king, right? I mean, he’s a cool guy?”

  “I think the play is about him being a hero. That was the impression I got. And it’s fifth, not five. Henry the Fifth.”

  “A hero…” Vijay stared off into space, his mouth open. “Sameer, I think I’m going to do this thing. You know when you have a feeling in your gut—”

  “Yeah, Vijay, you’ve told me all about your gut feelings,” said Sameer wearily. “No more gut stuff, please.”

  “—and your gut says, ‘How can you not do this?’ And you say to your gut, ‘Gut, you’re right, it’s perfect.’ I’m going to do it. I’m definitely going to do it!”

  “Well? Tell him.” Sameer gestured to Mr. Williams in the driver’s seat.

  “Oh, yeah, that’s my director, right? Um, Coach Will?” called Vijay. Mr. Williams looked into the rearview mirror. “I hear you’ve got a vacancy for a king? For a king part? A guy called Henry Five?”

  “Henry the Fifth!” Sameer hissed irritably. “Jeez, Vijay.”

  “We are looking for a king, yes, Vijay,” said Mr. Williams, his eyebrows rising. “Are you saying you might be interested in the role?”

  “Yeah. I mean…” Vijay put on a lame English accent. “I am indeed, good sir!”

  The guys in the bus laughed.

  “Excellent!” Mr. Williams slapped the steering wheel. “I’m delighted, Your Majesty! Rehearsal tonight at 7:00 PM.”

  Vijay turned an excited face to Sameer.

  “Wow, he must know my work, hey? Did you hear that? Hired on the spot! Didn’t even need to audition!”

  “That’s great, Vijay. Great.”

  “And look, Sameer, about the manager thing—”

  “Don’t worry about it,” said Sameer, clutching the clipboard of useless-squiggle stats to his chest. “There are only a few games left. We’ll manage, no pun intended. And after all, you’ll have more important things to worry about.”

  Vijay was digging in his backpack. He pulled out his dollar-store gladiator sword.

  “What are you—? You actually carry that around with you, Vijay? Seriously?”

  “Yeah, never know when you’ll need it. Like now! Time to shake a spear! Get it? Shakespeare?”

  “Lame,” Sameer said, laughing.

  “Yes, Sameer,” Vijay said in a loud, theatrical, vaguely English-accented voice, standing in the aisle and brandishing the sword unsteadily as the bus lurched around a corner. “I will have more important things to worry about! Like ENGLAND! And VICTORY!”

  Sameer shook his head as the whole bus burst into applause.

  But he was smiling. And so were Mr. Williams’s eyes in the rearview mirror.

  SEVENTEEN

  Weight Training

  “Hi, Sameer. Hey, Vijay, saw you Shakespearing in the hall yesterday,” said Gracie.

  “Yeah?” Vijay gulped down a huge mouthful of sandwich. “You saw? Well, Williams saw my gladiator work and said, like, Vijay, man, only you can do it. We really need you for the lead role. Henry Five.”

  “The Fifth,” Sameer corrected quietly.

  “Yeah, Henry Five, the Fifth.” Vijay nodded significantly, like it was a sequel. “Lead role. No big deal.”

  “My friend Kayley’s in the play too,” said Gracie.

  “Oh, yeah, Kayley. She’s nice, even though she’s only a duke,” Vijay said dismissively. Sameer looked away as Vijay launched into a rambling explanation of how the play was really a macho slug fest, even though all the other parts were being played by girls.

  “Anyway, it looks kind of fun,” said Gracie. “Why are you guys rehearsing in the hall though?”

  “Ah, sound quality and space and—”

  “Oh yeah, the drama room is a dump,” Gracie said, her hands on her hips.

  “Possibly, but the hallway really brings Shakespeare to the people, you know.”

  “Oh brother,” said Gracie, rolling her eyes at Sameer and walking away.

  Vijay shook Sameer’s shoulder. “That was the longest conversation we’ve ever had! I think she was impressed. Did you think she was impressed?”

  “Oh yeah, Vijay. Swooning,” said Sameer absently. He was thinking.

  “So, Coach Williams is sick today, but we’ll be introducing a new component to our practice,” announced Sameer at practice. “Weight training.”

  “What? How?” asked Kyle. “There’s no weights. There’s no weight room.”

  “Yeah, Sameer, we going to be lifting each other?”

  “I pick Nikho!” yelled Hassan and Mohammed at the same time, dibsing the smallest guy on the team.

  “Okay, okay,” said Sameer. “Actually, that’s not a bad idea. Anyway, we’re going to be sort of combining a workout with something that needs to be done around here. Come with me.”

  He led them out of the gym. The girls’ basketball team was just rounding the corner of the hallway. Ms. Morrison, the girls’ coach, said, “Oh, good. Sameer. Everybody here?” Sameer nodded. “Great idea, by the way. Let’s go.”

  Mystified, the teams jogged after Ms. Morrison’s bobbing ponytail, down the arts hallway to the drama room.

  She turned at the door.

  “Listen up, teams!” she called over the babble of voices. “This is our weight training! We’re clearing the drama room. Poor Mr. Williams has been trying to put together a play in this mess. He’s cleared a little space, but he doesn’t know where anything goes. It’ll be a nice surprise for him to have it all cleaned up. Should’ve been done months ago. So let’s get in there and work hard! There’s, what, twenty of us? Let’s see it cleared in an hour. Everything out here, lined against the wall, please. Except any fold-up chairs you find. Stack those against the wall in the drama room.”

  Ms. Morrison barked further orders like a drill sergeant and had both teams working hard within minutes. The piles of boxes in the hallway grew. Ms. Morrison unlocked the art room and told a group of them to cart in all the old easels, canvases and supplies and stack them neatly in a corner.

  “Had to get Mrs. Lee to talk Mrs. Brezinski into taking all her old stuff back into the art room,” Ms. Morrison said to Sameer. “Artistic, yes. Cooperative, no.”

  Gary, the custodian, had wheeled a big recycling bin into the hall, and he and Ms. Morrison went through box after box.

  “Seriously, Gary, look at this. A box of exams from 1989!”

  Nikho found an ancient boom box with a tape still in it behind the stage. He plugged it in, and ’80s music filled the air as both teams worked up a sweat clearing the room.

  “Hey,” said Vijay with a big smile, awkwardly grooving to the music, “this feels like a party! Gracie,” he called across the room, “does it feel like a party to you?”

  “Would you help already, Vijay?” Gracie snapped, barely looking at him as she and another girl hauled a huge box into the hal
lway.

  “See? Gracie and me, we’re talking all the time now,” Vijay whispered to Sameer.

  “Three overhead projectors.” Ms. Morrison shook her head. “I wonder if the museum would want these.”

  Mr. Williams had been right. A large proper stage, raised three steps off the floor, emerged from the rubble. The stage and the wall behind it had once been painted black but were now a dingy, faded and chipped charcoal.

  “Hey, they must really have put on plays here once,” said Nikho to Sameer, dragging a long dusty roll of fabric into the hall. He pointed to the tangled hooks clamped to the material. “I think maybe this was the curtain.”

  “Still a few stage sets back here,” called Kenneth, flipping through a pile of old cardboard.

  “Better keep any drama-related things,” Sameer said. “Mr. Williams might need them.”

  They started a stash of useful drama stuff at the back of the room: a rolled-up canvas panel painted like a forest, a slab of plywood roughly cut in the shape of a car, three tall stage lamps that might work if the bulbs were changed, some long blue cardboard-cutout waves, a roll of yellow carpet with bricks sharpied on it.

  “The Yellow Brick Road!” said Gracie. “I bet they did The Wizard of Oz!”

  It became a scavenger hunt, with everyone digging and calling out their finds.

  “Orange flags! Nine of them! I think they’re the ones for the soccer field that Coach Boss freaked out about missing.”

  “A huge cardboard castle!”

  “A big painted mountain!”

  “Bucket of Monopoly money!”

  “Cardboard horses!”

  “A ratty old fur thing.” Sameer poked at it with a flagpole, assuring himself that it wasn’t a dead animal. “What is it? A rug? A blanket?” Sameer picked it up, shook it out and spread it out wide.

  Vijay snatched it from Sameer’s hands and draped it around his shoulders like a cape. He walked slowly to the middle of the dusty stage, threw out one arm and quoted his lines in a booming voice to the back of the room:

  “The fewer the men, the greater the share of the glory! Um…something, something…Oh, I know! I pray thee, don’t wish for one more guy!”