Travel Team

by Mike Lupica

  Tess even came over, pretending she was the center.

  When they went inside for ice cream afterward, Mrs. Ross having shown up by then to pick up Ty, they all agreed to keep Ty joining the team a secret for a couple more days, until they made absolutely sure it was all right with the league, a kid switching teams this way, this late in the season. But both Danny’s mom and Ty’s mom were confident it was going to be all right, since Ty had never even played a league game for the Vikings.

  Even if his dad coached the team.

  That night in the kitchen Lily Ross said, “It’s funny, I was never interested in being a team mom until it was somebody else’s team.”

  Ali Walker said, “It’s about time.”

  Lily Ross said, “I was watching them from the car before. Our sons should have been together all along.”

  It was agreed that Danny would tell the rest of the Warriors on Saturday morning. Telling a couple of blabberfaces like the O’Brien twins any sooner would have been like hiring one of those skywriters you saw flying over the beach in the summer.

  Now it was Saturday morning.

  Danny wearing Number 3 in white, Ty wearing Number 1.

  They looked at each other in the living room, then both of them rolled their eyes.

  Ty said, “This is nuts.”

  Like, sick, Danny told him.

  They went upstairs to send out an instant-message to the rest of the Warriors, telling them that they’d added a pretty decent player for the big game.

  Danny took them into his mom’s classroom and passed out the uniforms there, once everybody was done high-fiving Ty and pounding him on the back as if he’d made his first three shots of the game.

  The guys thought the old-school uniforms were even cooler than some of the old-school NBA uniforms their parents could order for them online. Tess was the only one frowning, saying she wasn’t thrilled that the blue trim on the jerseys really didn’t match up with the blue of the Warriors’ shorts.

  Danny looked at her as if she’d grown another perfect nose.

  “I’m just making a fashion statement, is all,” she said.

  Danny said, “I’ll take the hit on the blue thing.”

  Colby went outside to change into her Number 4. When she came back in, she twirled around and said, “How do I look?”

  “Let’s ask Will,” Danny said, feeling good enough about the day to bust his best friend a little on Colby.

  Will playfully gave him a slap on the back, catching Danny right where he’d landed on the ice. Danny couldn’t help himself, he bent over as if Will had hit him from behind with an aluminum baseball bat.

  They were off to the side from everybody else, so only Will noticed how much pain Danny was in.

  “Dude,” Will said, “what’s that about?”

  “I fell last night in the driveway,” Danny whispered. “But don’t say anything to anybody, okay?”

  “I’d say I’ve got your back,” Will said, “but that doesn’t seem like such a hot idea.” Now he managed a whisper. “Can you really play?”

  “I never could go to my left, anyway.”

  Will said, “You go to your left better than any right-hander in town.”

  “What is this,” Danny said, “a practice debate in Miss Kimmet’s class?”

  There was still a lot of loud, excited chatter in the room when Danny tried—in vain—to get their attention, the way he had at practice that first night. When he couldn’t get anybody’s attention, he caught Tess’s eye, shook his head in resignation, and put two fingers to his lips.

  She did her whistle thing, and the room quieted like it did when any teacher walked into any classroom. Even Mrs. Ross and Mrs. Stoddard stopped gabbing over in the corner.

  Danny said, “They’re gonna want to wipe the floor with us, you all know that, right?”

  There were nods all around. “You got that right,” somebody said.

  “They would’ve wanted to do that even before Ty joined up with us, because they don’t think we’re even supposed to be on the same floor with them. But now it’s gonna be like the Civil War of Middletown or something.”

  He saw Will take a step forward, start to say something, then stop when Tess and Mrs. Stoddard both threatened him with pinching motions at the same time.

  Danny said, “You guys all know how much I hate making speeches. So I’m just gonna say this: Let’s do what my dad told us we might be able to do back at the beginning.”

  They were all staring at him.

  “Even though it’s only the first round of the play-offs,” he said, “let’s see if we can win the championship of all guys like us who ever got told they weren’t good enough.”

  They charged out of Mrs. Walker’s classroom and down the hall, running as hard as you did on the last day of school, just running this time toward the first round of the play-offs.

  Running, really, at the top of their lungs.

  When the Vikings took the court, Danny was positive they’d grown somehow since last Saturday. Da-Rod Rodriguez in particular looked even taller on the court than he had from the top row of the bleachers.

  Andy Mayne had his right ankle taped up so high you could see the white bandage above his high-top black Iversons, but that didn’t catch Danny’s eye as much as this:

  He seemed to have grown more than the inch that Danny had grown since October.

  The Warriors had come through the door next to the stage, so they didn’t have to pass the Vikings to start warming up at the stage end of St. Pat’s. That meant they didn’t have to pass Mr. Ross, either; he was standing under the basket at the opposite end, arms folded, watching the Vikings shoot layups as if that was maybe the most fascinating thing that would ever happen to him.

  When the Warriors got into their own layup line, Danny heard the loudest pregame cheer they’d ever gotten, and that’s when he noticed how full the bleachers already were. Down at the corner of them, directly across from the Vikings’ basket, was a television cameraman, and the guy who did the sports on Channel 14, the local all-news channel.

  After all the hey-little-guy taunts in his life, he had to admit this was pretty big stuff.

  Maybe that’s why his heart was beating as fast as it was.

  Tess was standing near the row of folding chairs that served as the Warriors’ bench. She was staring straight at him, and when she started to bring her hand up, Danny was terrified she might blow him a kiss. But she did something even better, something that got him revved a little more.

  She made a fist with her right hand and pumped it a couple of times.

  He went right back at her with a fist-pump of his own.

  Mr. Harden, Danny saw now, was right behind her. Michael said he’d been able to fly back from Florida because it was a weekend, but that he planned to sit in the stands and let Danny and Ali Walker and Tess Hewitt just keep doing what they were doing.

  Danny got out of the layup line for a second to run over and shake his hand and thank him for coming.

  “Just keep on keepin’ on,” Mr. Harden said to him.

  “Huh?”

  “Something people used to say—”

  “—back in the day?” Danny said.

  “One of those,” Mr. Harden said.

  Before he went back on the court, Danny asked if his mom was anywhere around and Mr. Harden said he hadn’t seen her. Mrs. Ross had driven Danny and Will to the game, but Ali Walker had said she’d be right behind them.

  “I’m sure she’s here somewhere,” Michael’s dad said, before adding, “take it right to these guys from the jump.”

  Danny took the Warriors out of the layup line and started the “Carolina” drill they always did before practices and games, two lines under the basket, everybody seeming to move at once, passing, shooting, rebounding, all of them in a pretty neat formation.

  When Danny noticed that the clock showed seven minutes and counting until the start of the game, he told the Warriors to get the rest of the balls
and just start shooting around.

  Will came out near half-court and stood next to him.

  “This is, like, ill, dude,” Will said.

  Danny said, “I think I’m the one who’s going to be sick.”

  “How’s your shoulder?”

  “Don’t feel a thing,” Danny lied.

  A ball bounced away from Steven O’Brien and Danny went to retrieve it. He reached down, stood up, and before he could pass it back to Steven found himself face-to-face with Teddy Moran.

  “If it isn’t Coach Mini-Me,” Teddy said, his face looking, as always, like he’d just smelled some rotten milk.

  “Teddy,” Danny said. He whipped the ball toward Steven and started to walk away and Teddy grabbed his right hand, smiling as he did so. To anyone watching, this didn’t look like anything more than a Viking wishing a Warrior luck.

  “You didn’t steal enough of our players to win the game,” Teddy said.

  “You have a good game, too,” Danny said.

  “Tell Ty Ross to watch himself today.”

  Danny smiled back at him now. “He’s right there, tough guy. Why don’t you go tell him yourself?”

  “Yeah, right,” Teddy said.

  “You Morans,” Danny said. “You sure do have a way with words.”

  He was walking with his back to the Vikings’ basket when he heard the gym go quiet, except for the bounce of all the balls, as if somebody had found a way to turn down just the crowd noise.

  He turned around and saw his mom just inside the middle door to the gym.

  Next to her, one crutch under his right arm, the left one up in the air a little bit as he tried to balance on his new cast, was Richie Walker.

  Danny knew that most of the people in this crowd knew who his dad was, and knew about the accident. Suddenly, they started to applaud.

  Danny wanted to run to his dad, right through the Vikings, but caught himself, and started to walk toward him instead.

  Richie Walker saw, shook his head, grinned. Then, looking pretty nimble for a guy on crutches, he picked the left crutch all the way off the ground and pointed it at Danny.

  Then he mouthed one word:

  Play.

  This time Danny understood him without any words at all.

  32

  “HE’S OKAY TO DO THIS?” DANNY SAID WHEN HIS MOM CAME OVER.

  They’d set his dad up with two folding chairs at the end of the bleachers, at the stage end. One for him to sit on, one to rest the cast on.

  “Just don’t go diving for any loose balls over there,” his mom said.

  “He’d said they were doing more stuff today.”

  “He lied, except for the part about the new cast, which they put on yesterday,” she said. “If the doctors hadn’t said okay, I would have had to bust him out.”

  “He can come over and coach, if he wants.”

  “He said you’re the coach.”

  The horn had sounded, meaning they were about to start. Danny huddled his teammates up, knelt down in the middle of the circle, took a deep breath, and just started rattling stuff off. Who was going to start. That he was going to bring Ty off the bench sometime in the first quarter, depending on how the game was going. Will and Oliver, almost at the same time, said Ty could start in place of them. Danny started to say something but Ty cut him off, saying they’d decided he should come off the bench, fit in that way.

  And, he said, he could be a bench coach when he was on the bench.

  Danny said, “I’m all out of pregame speeches. Anybody got any bright ideas?”

  Will Stoddard, looking serious for a change, as if he’d left the class clown back in Mrs. Walker’s classroom, said, “I do.”

  He looked down at Danny. “You’re the biggest kid here,” he said. “I just thought somebody needed to say that.”

  The Warriors responded to that by jumping up and down and going woof woof woof, like somebody’d let the dogs out.

  Danny remembered what his dad had said, and decided to steal the line for himself.

  “You never know what day might turn out to be the best day of your whole life,” he said.

  He gave them all a no-biggie shrug.

  He said, “How about we make it today?”

  The Vikings started Da-Rod, Jack Harty, Teddy Moran, Andy Mayne, and Daryll Mullins. Danny went with himself, Colby, Bren, Will, and Oliver Towne. Right before they had broken the huddle, Ty had said to Danny, “When you make it a triangle-and-two against Da-Rod, tell them to pack the triangle in tight.”

  Danny smiled. “I was hoping they’d allow us to use a triangle-and-four.”

  It was 8–4, Vikings, after four minutes.

  Danny had made the first basket of the game, sneaking behind Da-Rod Rodriguez and breaking away for a layup. Then Da-Rod, who was already giving Oliver Towne fits—Danny having Oliver try to shadow him—made three straight for the Vikings.

  Colby came back with a bomb from the corner, right near where Richie Walker was sitting, that made him pound one of his crutches on the floor.

  Daryll Mullins came right back for the Vikings, streaking down the lane and going up so high over Colby that Danny pictured him actually dunking the sucker for a second.

  They got a whistle when the ball went skipping through a door that wasn’t closed all the way. When they did, Danny motioned for Ty to go to the scorer’s table and come in for Oliver.

  “You take the big guy,” Danny said.

  Ty smiled, just because he was back in the game. “My pleasure,” he said.

  “You get tired, you tell me,” Danny said.

  Ty said, “I’m rested enough.”

  They tapped fists.

  Ty went over and stood with Will now, while the refs reset the clock, which had kept running when the ball had disappeared through the door.

  Danny couldn’t help himself, he looked over at Mr. Ross, who was staring across the court to where Ty and Will were, Ty laughing now at something Will had just said.

  Danny thought he’d look mad, but he didn’t. There was something else on his face, not a smile, just this curious kind of look.

  Tony the ref blew his whistle, meaning they were finally ready to go.

  Mr. Ross stood up then and said, “Could you wait a second, Tony?”

  His voice sounded loud in the gym.

  He leaned down and whispered something to Daryll Mullins’s dad, Daryll Senior, his assistant coach. Then he reached down next to his chair and handed Daryll Senior his clipboard.

  Then he waved for the Vikings to come over real fast, and now he was the one kneeling in a circle of players, talking and pointing. Now he was smiling. Tony the ref came over and Mr. Ross put a hand on his shoulder and leaned close to his ear.

  Then Mr. Ross folded up his folding chair and walked diagonally across the court toward the bleachers. And then Ty’s dad did something even more amazing than leaving the bench.

  He went over to where Richie Walker was and reached down and shook his hand and unfolded his chair and got ready to watch the rest of the game from over there.

  As great as Ty Ross was at basketball, as easy as he’d made it look from the time Danny first played with him in fifth-grade travel, he didn’t have superhuman powers. So he looked rusty on offense from the start, missing his first three shots, even turning the ball over a couple of times. He was giving Da-Rod Rodriguez all he wanted at the other end of the court, though, even keeping him off the boards, outsmarting him time after time when the ball was in the air and beating him to the right spot under the basket.

  But even if everybody else didn’t know how much he was pressing on offense, Danny could see it as clear as day.

  It wasn’t until the last minute of the first quarter, a fast break, that Ty showed everybody in the gym just who it was they were watching, and reminded Danny—who really didn’t need much reminding—why he’d wanted to hoop with Ty Ross in the first place.

  Will came up with a long rebound, beating Teddy Moran to the ball bec
ause Teddy had stood there waiting for it to come to him. The Vikings, sure Teddy was going to come up with the ball and keep them on offense, relaxed for just a second. By then, Will had passed the ball to Danny.

  Ty, who could always see a play happening about five seconds before it happened, took off for the other end of the court.

  Jack Harty had gotten back on defense, maybe because he’d never expected Teddy Moran to hustle after a ball.

  Danny came from his right with the ball, Ty from Jack’s left.

  Two-on-one.

  Danny didn’t want to be coming down the left side of the court. His left shoulder was aching constantly now, the way a toothache ached, and he was afraid that if Jack backed off to cover Ty, Danny might have to shoot a left-handed layup.

  He wasn’t sure at this point that he could even raise his arm high enough.

  If he went with his right hand, he was begging Jack to try to block his shot, even if Jack had to get back on Danny in a flash to do it.

  Danny was at full speed as he passed the free throw line. Jack backed off to cover Ty. Or so Danny thought.

  Jack Harty had suckered him. He only head-faked toward Ty, waited until Danny went into the air, and then came at him with arms that looked as tall as trees and seemed to be everywhere at once.

  Danny had already committed himself, was already in the air. But instead of putting up his shot anyway, instead of even trying to raise his left arm, he underhanded the ball—hard—underneath Jack Harty’s arms and off the backboard.

  It was a pass, not a shot.

  It was a pass that caromed perfectly off the top of the backboard, came right to Ty on the other side of the basket, Ty catching it and shooting it in the same motion, not even using the backboard himself, putting up a soft shot that was nothing but net.

  Like this was a move they’d spent their whole lives practicing.

  Vikings 12, Warriors 10.