Travel Team

by Mike Lupica

  As they broke the huddle, Richie put a hand on Danny’s shoulder. “You can do this,” he said.

  “Is this the fun?” Danny said.

  “I’m pretty sure.”

  The guy guarding Colby didn’t bite when she stepped out on him. When she ran for the basket, he ran right with her, step for step. Nothing there.

  But she called for the ball the way she was supposed to, and Mullet Head turned his head for one second and, as he did, Danny crossed over to his left hand and broke by him and into the clear in the lane.

  At first he thought he was going to have a clear path to the basket. But Will had run to the corner too soon, and not deep enough into the corner, which brought his guy, a Hawaiian-looking guy, into the play. The Hawaiian-looking guy left Will and came over on Danny.

  Danny could hear Mullet Head yelling “Switch! Switch!” even though Will’s guy had already done that.

  Eight seconds left.

  Seven.

  Six.

  Danny wanted to dish one more time, to Colby, who was wide open now in the left corner, just because his first instinct was always to give it up.

  But he was worried that there might not be enough time.

  He was going to have to shoot it before the Hawaiian guy was in front of him and before Mullet Head got back in the play: The passer having to put it up.

  He was two steps inside the free throw line when he released the ball over the Hawaiian guy’s long left arm, which suddenly seemed be made of elastic; which seemed to keep growing like he was a comic-book guy.

  Danny released the ball in front of him, the way his dad had been teaching him, not off the shoulder, and felt like he’d put perfect rotation on the ball.

  Saw the last of the time disappear from the clock behind the basket as the ball came floating down toward that basket.

  Saw the ball catch a piece of the front rim, but softly, bouncing just slightly as it settled on the back of the rim, hanging there for what only felt like three or four hours, as if making up its mind about how this one was supposed to come out.

  Then it fell off like it had rolled off the end of the kitchen table.

  Hanesboro 39, Middletown 38.

  Final.

  His mom kept trying to cheer him up on the ride back to Middletown, he had to give her that.

  Somehow he felt like he was with some smiley-faced nurse trying to make him feel better about being at the doctor’s.

  “C’mon, it was a great game,” she said, “even if it didn’t come out the way you wanted.”

  “Ya think?”

  She had let him sit in the front seat. Technically, they both knew he didn’t weigh enough, wasn’t big enough, to get out of the backseat yet, even though he was twelve and just about everybody his age was sitting in the front seat with their parents. But she had said, ride with me today, I want the company. As if she knew making him sit by himself in the back today would make him feel worse than he did already.

  “You guys looked really good in the second half,” she said.

  Danny, sitting there with his ball in his lap, said, “Great.”

  “I would think,” she said, “that a game like this would have you excited about the rest of the season.”

  “That might be the only chance we have all season to win a game,” he said.

  “Get ’em next time. Right?”

  Danny turned to face her. “Mom?”

  “You want me to stop trying to cheer you up now.”

  “I’ll clear the dinner dishes for a week and load the dishwasher if you’ll stop trying to cheer me up.”

  “And take out the trash?”

  “Mom.”

  “Okay, okay, I’ll stop.”

  He went straight up to his room when they got home. Noticed when he got there that he’d left his computer on. Again.

  The IM box was up there and waiting for him, along with a message from Tess.

  CONTESSA44: Hey? You there? I heard about the game.

  Danny thought: God Bless America. It was one of his mom’s expressions when she wanted to swear. God Bless America, the air traffic control guys couldn’t track airplanes the way kids his age tracked travel basketball in Middletown.

  He heard the doodlely-doo now.

  A new message.

  Maybe she had radar tracking him, knowing he was back in his room.

  CONTESSA44: C’mon, you must be back by now from HanesUnderwearBoro.

  He walked over and shut off his computer and cranked up PlayStation2, then proceeded to stack one of his teams on NBA ’05 with all the best guys: Duncan, Iverson, Shaq, McGrady, Kidd, LeBron.

  The guys on the other team were all scrubs.

  He was going to get a sure thing somewhere today.

  God Bless America, why hadn’t that stupid shot fallen?

  He had let everybody on his team down. And he knew it was his team more than anybody else’s, there wouldn’t even be a stupid team, his dad wouldn’t even have invented the Warriors, if he hadn’t gotten cut from real travel.

  Real travel, he thought.

  As Will liked to say, Ain’t that the truth?

  I need you, his dad kept saying. Don’t you quit on me, his dad had said. Then, when he had a chance to make one stupid shot to win one stupid game, he couldn’t measure up.

  He got up suddenly, shut off his game, cranked up his computer, ignored another IM from Tess—he’d explain to her tomorrow why he hadn’t felt like talking—and Googled up the place where he could watch his dad dribble out the clock against L.A. in that championship game.

  Watched again as young Richie Walker was in complete control of everything: The clock, the game, himself, his team, the other team. The moment. Like he was the one alone in a driveway.

  He didn’t choke.

  Maybe you only got one nonchoking point guard per family, maybe that was it.

  Then he shut down the computer for the night, hearing one more IM jingle before he did. Tess, for sure. But he didn’t want her trying to cheer him up any more than he did his mom.

  It was definitely a girl deal, wanting to put a Band-Aid on the whole thing.

  He didn’t want to feel better tonight. He wanted to feel like crap. He wanted to remember what this felt like so that maybe—maybe, maybe, maybe—he wouldn’t let everybody down the next time.

  Danny remembered listening to his mom on the phone once, talking to one of her friends, saying that the best thing about youth sports was that an hour after the game ended, most kids couldn’t even remember the final score.

  Not this kid.

  Not this score.

  Hanesboro 39, Middletown 38.

  Final.

  God Bless America.

  18

  HIS MOM WAS MEETING WILL’S MOM FOR A GIRLS’ BRUNCH AFTER CHURCH ON Sunday. She asked if Danny wanted to be dropped at the Stoddards’ so he could hang with Will while she and Molly Stoddard went into town. He said, no, he wanted to meet up with Tess at McFeeley Park.

  He changed after church into jeans and sneaks and last year’s shooting shirt from sixth-grade travel, then grabbed his ball, knowing he’d get time to shoot around because Tess was always late.

  “Why don’t you show up a few minutes late, then you don’t have to wait for her?”

  Danny said, “Me waiting for her, that’s part of our whole deal.”

  “Oh,” his mom said. “Sometimes I forget I was a twelve-year-old girl once.”

  “Duh.”

  “But if you and Tess go into town, you’ll have to carry your ball with you.”

  “So?”

  “You don’t mind?”

  “I like carrying my ball with me.”

  She sighed. “And I know nothing of significance about twelve-year-old boys,” she said.

  When they drove through the high arch that was the entrance to McFeeley, she said, “You seem to be feeling better today.”

  “Only ’cause I couldn’t feel any worse.”

  “I know we’ve go
ne over this before,” she said, “but basketball isn’t a matter of life and death.”

  He smiled, to let her know he was playing, and said, “No, it’s much more serious than that.”

  She said she’d pick him up in front of the Candy Kitchen at four. Then she called out the window that she loved him. He waved good-bye as if he hadn’t heard.

  You never knew who might catch you telling your mom you loved her back.

  He heard the bounce of a single basketball as he came up the hill toward the big court at McFeeley. He couldn’t see who was up there right away—he was too short, the hill was way too steep—but as he got near the top he gave a little jump and saw that it was Ty Ross.

  Danny had told Tess he’d meet her by the tennis courts. He turned one last time and saw she wasn’t there yet, kept going toward the basketball court. Ty didn’t look up until he heard Danny bouncing the ball at the other end of the court.

  Having just come from church, he wasn’t sure whether he should be praying for stuff like this, but he was praying hard now that Ty Ross didn’t really hate his guts.

  Maybe there was a way they could talk basketball with each other the way he talked basketball with his dad when neither one of them knew what else to say.

  Danny thought: What would guys do if they couldn’t speak sports?

  “Hey,” Ty said.

  “Hey.”

  Danny could see his fingers sticking out of the top of what looked to be a pretty light cast, one that had more writing and graffiti-looking squiggles on it than some of the subway cars he’d see going past Shea Stadium when he’d go to a ball game there.

  It was pretty cold out, down to the high forties, his mom had said, but Ty was wearing a Knicks’ orange sweatshirt with the sleeves cut up to his shoulders, black sweats, and brand-new sneaks that Danny would have been able to spot a mile away.

  The new LeBrons from Nike.

  Ty turned away from Danny and pushed a simple layup toward the basket with his left hand, making it look like shooting with that hand was the most natural thing in the world.

  Holy crap, Danny thought, he looks better shooting with his weak hand than I do with my good one.

  Danny stood at half-court, holding his favorite ball, as Ty stepped back with his—same model, an Infusion—and made the same shot Danny had gagged on against Hanesboro.

  He’s better than me at basketball with a broken wrist.

  “Yo,” Danny said.

  Changing the conversation up a little.

  Ty turned.

  Then Danny just came out with it, knowing he’d better do it now before he lost his nerve.

  “I’m sorry,” Danny said. “I am so sorry about what happened, I’ve been trying to tell you—”

  Ty raised his right hand, his way of telling him to stop, forgetting that it was the hand with the cast on it.

  “I know,” he said.

  Danny kept going anyway.

  “Teddy had cheap-shotted me right before with an elbow, then he did it again under the basket, and I just reacted and gave him one back. But I never meant—”

  “I know all that,” Ty said.

  You had to drag things out of him the way you did with Richie Walker sometimes; Danny had been reminded of that just hanging around with Ty in his room that day.

  Ty Ross was really good at a lot of things—excellent at a lot of things—but conversation wasn’t one of them.

  “How do you know?” Danny said. “Teddy’s been telling everybody I did it on purpose.”

  Ty said, “His name should really be Teddy Moron.”

  “Thought you guys were buds.”

  “Not anymore.”

  “Because?” Danny dragged the word out the way Tess did sometimes.

  “Because once I stopped feeling sorry for myself I knew you weren’t the guy he wanted me to think you were.” Ty smiled. “He’s the guy he wanted me to think you were.”

  Danny bounced his ball in front of him, left hand to right hand to left hand. Feeling better for the first time since he’d missed the shot against Hanesboro.

  Maybe it was seeing Ty with the cast on his wrist, and realizing things weren’t so bad, after all, that missing a game-ender wasn’t an epic tragedy.

  Danny said, “Who told you about what happened before you fell?”

  “Tess,” Ty said.

  “You guys talk?”

  Ty laughed. “Now we do. My mom thought I should try something new while my wrist was getting better. Something not sports. We decided on that photography course at the Y. On Wednesdays?”

  Danny nodded. “The one Tess is in.”

  “The first one was last Wednesday. She grabbed me as soon as it was over, said I was gonna listen to something she had to say.” Ty made a whoosh sound. “Man, she’s got this way of getting you to do what she wants you to do.”

  “Ya think?”

  “Anyway, she told me what happened. And that I couldn’t blame you, because she wasn’t gonna allow it.”

  “She’s the best-looking girl our age in this whole town,” Danny said. “But she’s already got some mom in her.”

  Ty said, “Ya think?” He flipped another left-handed shot toward the basket, missed. The ball bounced away from him. “I got it,” Danny said, passing Ty his ball while he retrieved the other.

  “I’m supposed to be meeting her here,” Danny said.

  “I know.”

  Danny smiled. Imagining a cartoon lightbulb going on over his head. “She told you to be here.”

  Ty shrugged. “She said you’d expect her to be late.”

  Tess Hewitt. Secret Agent Girl.

  “She said she told you twelve, but wouldn’t be here until twelve-thirty,” Ty said. “You want to play H-O-R-S-E?”

  “I can’t shoot well enough left-handed,” Danny said. “’Course after yesterday, I’m not even positive I’m right-handed anymore.”

  He told Ty all about Hanesboro 39, Middletown 38.

  “You’ll make the next one,” Ty said. “That’s the way I always look at it.” He nodded at the basket. “I’ll shoot lefty, you shoot righty.”

  Danny said that if he lost, he was definitely quitting basketball. Ty said, fine, they could both take up photography.

  They played H-O-R-S-E and talked. Ty said he didn’t really know how fast his wrist would heal. Said he hoped he’d be able to get in a couple of games before the play-offs. In the Tri-Valley, he said, you didn’t have to set your official roster until the week the play-offs began. So even if he hadn’t played at all, his dad could still have him on the roster.

  When they were both at H-O-R-S, Danny said, “Your dad know you’re here, by the way?”

  “He’s out of town on bank business. My mom brought me.”

  “What would he do if he knew?”

  “Yell.”

  Ty twirled the ball on the tip of his left index finger as effortlessly as Richie Walker did.

  “He’s not so bad, really, my dad. He just tries too hard.”

  “With sports?”

  “With everything.”

  Danny said, “He doesn’t seem to like me very much.”

  “I don’t think it’s you,” he said. “It’s the whole thing. You. The Warriors. Your dad. My dad likes to be the biggest guy in town. Like he waited his whole life to be the biggest guy in town. Now there’s this bunch of little guys…”

  His voice trailed off.

  Danny shot and missed. Ty shot and missed. Down the hill, Danny could see Tess getting out of her mom’s Volvo station wagon.

  Danny dribbled to the spot where he’d missed against Hanesboro. Not that he was still fixed on that or anything. Then he shot the ball a little higher than usual, higher than he had yesterday, and hit nothing but net.

  Sure.

  Today he hits nothing but net.

  Ty missed, then missed the extra shot you get at the end of the game.

  “Good game,” Ty said.

  “That,” Danny said, knowing he wa
s getting off the kind of pun Tess usually did, “is a left-handed compliment.”

  Ty gave him a low five with his left hand as they heard Tess say, “Fancy meeting you boys here.”

  Tess: In a ponytail today. With some kind of long red sweater, one that went nearly to her knees, with the sleeves pushed up to her elbows. Tess in jeans and Timberland boots, the Timbys looking as new as Ty’s LeBrons.

  Carrying her camera.

  She snapped one of Ty and Danny standing there next to each other.

  “You two look like a team to me,” she said.

  “I wish,” Danny said.

  The three of them went down the hill, destination Candy Kitchen. Danny didn’t even mind walking between them, looking like their little brother.

  19

  THEY DECIDED TO SPEND CHRISTMAS TOGETHER, LIKE A REAL FAMILY.

  Or, Danny figured, as close to a real family as they were likely to get.

  His dad said he probably wouldn’t get up early enough for the opening of presents, telling Danny that the only part of him that was still a ballplayer—that still worked—was his body clock. But he said he would be there for Christmas dinner, the roast beef dinner with all the trimmings that Ali Walker had promised them, followed by strawberry shortcake for dessert, Danny’s favorite.

  According to his mom, dinner would be served at what she called a “soft two o’clock.”

  “What does ‘soft’ mean?” Danny asked.

  “It means that showing up on time, for anything other than basketball, has always been real hard for your father.”

  Christmas was still Christmas when his dad wasn’t around, when it was just him and his mom. But after all the waiting for it, all the anticipation, it sometimes seemed to be over for the two of them before Christmas Day was even over. They’d go over to have Christmas dinner with friends sometimes, families like Will’s and Bren’s that had four kids each in them, and there would be presents everywhere, under the tree and all over the house.

  It was smaller with him and his mom.

  Always came back to that.

  Danny didn’t know how much teachers made at St. Pat’s, or anywhere else, for that matter. Even if his mom told him what her salary was, he wasn’t sure he’d understand where it fit into the whole grand scheme of things. The one time it had come up, a couple of years ago, his mom had said, “I make more than a year’s allowance for you, and somewhat less than Michael Jordan used to make.” Then she laughed. She always went for a laugh when the subject was money, but Danny usually thought it was like the fake laughter you heard on television shows even when nothing funny was happening.