Toby Wheeler

by Thatcher Heldring

  19

  The next morning, Coach met me at the front door of school. He was dressed in gray pants and a green sweater. We walked down the empty hallway to the gym office. When we were seated across from each other, he looked me in the eye and asked, “Toby, did you think I was punishing you because you were spending time with my daughter?”

  I felt like a dope. “Sort of. Yes, sir.”

  He put his elbows on his desk and laced his hands so that both pointer fingers were aimed at me like a gun. “You should know that decisions I make about basketball have nothing to do with Megan,” he began. “I put you on the roster because I saw something that day at the rec center. And I put you on the bench because you needed to develop as a basketball player. I did the same thing a hundred times with college walk-ons. When I see a kid with talent and heart, I give him a chance. Sometimes the experiment pays off, sometimes it doesn’t. You have a chance to be one of the good ones, Wheeler, but only if you’re willing to work on every aspect of your game.”

  I was eager to show him how hard I could work and relieved to be back on his good side. “I am, Coach,” I promised. “And I’m sorry if I hurt Megan’s feelings.”

  He tapped the framed picture next to his clipboard. “The fact that Megan reacted the way she did only means she cares about what you think. She’s a tough kid, but she bruises.”

  She bruises? Coach has been watching too much Dr. Barb, I thought. “The point is, I can’t protect her forever, no matter how much I’d like to.” Coach looked up at the wall like an actor trying to remember his next line. “So I promised not to hover over her like an overbearing spy every time she’s around a boy.” He cleared his throat, then said, “You’re probably wondering why I asked you to come in this morning.”

  “Is it my two-handed jumper?”

  “That’s part of it,” Coach replied. “Look, this is my first year with this team too. I’ve had to make a lot of adjustments. Sometimes I forget you guys aren’t playing for a trip to the Final Four. Or that you’re still learning.” He picked up a pencil and began tapping it on his desk. “What I’m trying to say here is that I’m still learning—just like you. Anyway, the other night I realized I needed to make some changes.”

  “So Roy was right?” I asked.

  Coach gripped the pencil tightly. I thought he might snap it. “In his own way, yeah, Morelli was right.”

  First all that business about Megan’s feelings and now Morelli was right? I wondered if Coach was going soft. “What does this have to do with me, Coach?”

  “What do I always say about this team, Toby?”

  “‘Do it again’?”

  Coach shook his head. “It takes twelve of you to win. And I need you to be ready to play—just in case. I thought you could use a private lesson to catch up.”

  “Like tutoring?” I asked.

  Coach nodded. “Like tutoring.” Suddenly, we heard footsteps outside the office. The door began to open. Coach smiled. “And here’s your tutor now,” he said as Megan walked in.

  At first I thought Coach was joking. But nobody was laughing.

  “Hey, look,” I said as I followed her out of the office. “I’m really sorry about the note and everything. I got some bad advice from someone who turned out to not exactly be the world’s leading expert on this stuff. And not to blame the victim or anything, but you were the one who said your dad was a little paranoid, so I guess you could say we’re both at fault. Anyway, I’m ready to bury the hatchet if you are.”

  When we got to the gym, I saw there was a line of cones down the middle of the court spread a few feet apart. Megan still had not responded to my apology. Instead, she walked to the sideline and pulled something from her pocket.

  Suddenly the silence of the gym was shattered by the shriek of a whistle. Startled, I jumped high enough to dunk. “What’d you do that for?”

  Megan let the whistle fall around her neck. “Practice is in session.”

  “Where’s Coach?” I asked.

  “He’s in his office. Doing paperwork. Today I’m your coach.”

  Oh, great. A coach with a score to settle, and a whistle—a bad combination.

  We began with a game called Around the World. Megan said it was a shooting drill, which sounded fine to me until I realized she was lying. The goal of Around the World was to make it around the perimeter of the paint without missing. Megan handed me the basketball and told me to start on the left low-block—just two feet from the basket. I banked in a shot, then tried a shot from four feet. Easy enough, right? Clank. I missed.

  Megan blew the whistle again. “Down and back once!”

  “Down and back where?”

  “To the other end of the gym and back, gym rat. Run!”

  “You can’t make me run. Who do you think—”

  Megan blew the whistle, more loudly this time.

  I ran.

  When I was done running, Megan told me to start over. “This time,” she said, “try shooting with one hand.”

  “Why?”

  “Because your form is atrocious, that’s why. When you shoot, only your strong hand should be behind the ball. The other hand should be on the side of the ball, guiding it, but barely touching it. For the close shots, just practice flicking the wrist on your shooting hand. We’ll add the other hand for the longer shots.”

  It took ten tries, but eventually I made it around the world without missing. Shooting with one hand behind the ball felt weird at first, but after six or seven sprints to the end of the gym and back, I was open to anything.

  “Next up,” said Megan, “dribbling.”

  “I know how to dribble.”

  “Like you knew how to shoot?”

  “At least I know how to subtract negative numbers.”

  Megan blew the whistle. “Down and back!”

  “I didn’t do anything!”

  “You insulted the coach. Run!”

  “You run.”

  Megan blew the whistle, more loudly still.

  I ran.

  Five minutes later, I was weaving between the cones, dribbling as I went from one end of the court to the other. “That wasn’t so hard,” I said.

  “Do it again,” said Megan. “This time watch my hands. When I say ‘How many?’ you tell me how many fingers I’m holding up.”

  “If I keep looking up, how am I supposed to see the ball?”

  Megan huffed. “The point is to dribble with your hands, not your eyes. How do you think good guards find open men? Not by looking at their shoes…duh.”

  I had dribbled between one pair of cones when Megan called, “How many?”

  Looking up, I saw she had raised three fingers. “Three,” I yelled as the ball went off my foot.

  The whistle blew. Down and back.

  “Dribble with your fingertips,” Megan said. “And keep the ball closer to your body.”

  More dribbling. More cones. More fingers. More running.

  “Trust your hands!” Megan yelled.

  I dribbled without looking down.

  “Good,” said Megan. “Now do it with your left hand.”

  We kept this up all day. We worked on shooting. We worked on passing. We worked on rebounds. Megan even rolled out a television and made me watch a movie about the motion offense. When I asked her if she had any popcorn, she blew the whistle and said, “Run!”

  By the afternoon, I was looking forward to being back with Coach.

  When Megan was satisfied with my progress, we sat side by side on the bleachers, staring in silence at the basketball court. I took the fact that she was sitting near me to mean that all was forgiven. I sure hoped so. I was too tired to run any more wind sprints.

  20

  Even though we had been practicing all day, Megan and I decided to race down to the rec center to catch the last half hour of open gym. Plus, she said there was someone she thought I should talk to. When I pestered her to tell me who, she just said, “You’ll see.”

  On the way the
re, she mentioned that Raj and McKlusky were going to the girls’ game later in the week—she had heard the news from Cassandra and Melanie. “Are they going to ask them to the Winter Blast?” she asked.

  “They’re going to try,” I said, although who knew if Raj and McKlusky could seal the deal on their first attempt?

  “When?” Megan asked as we walked along Verlot Street.

  “After one of your basketball games.”

  Megan turned to me. “You should come too, Toby. We’re playing really well. But we need more fans.”

  “Sure, I’ll come,” I said, excited about the invitation.

  We were standing on the corner, waiting for the light.

  Megan shifted her bag. “So, um, are you going to ask anyone? To the Blast?”

  “I can’t dance,” I said, both because it was true and because it was easier than explaining the truth, which was that if I was going to ask anyone it would be her, but only if someone gave me a shot of courage.

  “You couldn’t dribble with your left hand, either,” she said. “Compared to that, dancing is easy.”

  “I’ll think about it,” I promised.

  She nodded. “By the way, I don’t think I’m going to sit on the bench anymore,” she said.

  “What—why not? You mean because of what Roy said?”

  “They don’t want me there. I’m not helping. I should just sit in the stands. It’ll be better for everyone that way.”

  “Not me!”

  Megan stood still and looked me in the eye. “Really?” she asked.

  “Really,” I repeated. “You just have to make yourself valuable.”

  “Look who’s talking,” Megan replied.

  “Hey—I put up with your tutoring, didn’t I?” I was joking, but I had to admit, Megan had a point.

  As we pushed open the doors of the rec center, I felt like I was going back to a classroom I had left behind years ago. There were good memories, but everything seemed a half size too small.

  Megan went to the office to call her mom. I went to the basketball court. The gym was quiet. No full-court action. Just a mellow game of three-on-three and a few people standing around talking. I was scanning the gym searching for whoever Megan had brought me here to see when, from the sideline, I heard someone say, “What’s the matter, gym rat, did your team finally realize what a scrub you are? Or did Coach Applesauce send you for water again?”

  I looked over and saw Vinny Pesto. “It’s Applewhite, you pinhead.”

  Vinny strutted up to me. “I saw the standings the other day. Looks like Pilchuck is in the basement—again.”

  “So we’re off to a slow start.”

  “You’re 0 and 3, scrub,” Vinny reminded me. He ran his hand through his porcupine hair. “Why don’t you just accept it? Pilchuck isn’t even going to make the play-offs. You’re not going to be in the championship game and nobody is hitting any game-winning shot in my face.”

  “We’re gonna win, Pesto. And I’m gonna be there.”

  “Then what are you doing back here?” he asked. “Is the benchwarmer not getting much PT?”

  I had to give it to Vinny. The guy knew which buttons to push. Even worse, I choked on the comeback. “It takes twelve guys to win one game,” I said.

  Vinny turned away, laughing. “Spoken like a true benchwarmer.”

  “I’ll see you in January, chump!” I called after him.

  A moment later, Megan appeared. “What did you promise this time?”

  “Nothing new,” I said. “So where’s this mystery man?”

  Megan looked around, then pointed. At the far end of the court, shooting free throws by himself, was a tall man wearing two knee braces and purple shorts.

  Old Dude.

  “That’s who we came to see?” I whispered to Megan. “Old Dude?”

  Megan gave me her patented I can’t believe I have to explain this to you look and said, “His name is not Old Dude, Toby. It’s Dr. Dinkins. And he happens to be a basketball legend.”

  “Never heard of him. Did he play in the NBA?”

  “No.”

  “Overseas?”

  “No.”

  “Where did he go to college?”

  “Milton College.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “It doesn’t exist anymore.”

  “Was he any good?”

  “Hardly.”

  “Was the team any good?”

  “Terrible.”

  “This is your big idea? To bring me to talk to a guy who never played except on a lousy team at a school that doesn’t even exist?”

  Old Dude—I mean Dr. Dinkins—saw us and waved. “Hello, Megan,” he said. “How’s your season going?”

  “We’ve got a good team. We’re even starting to get some crowds,” said Megan. “Dr. Dinkins, you remember Toby Wheeler. From open gym?”

  Old Dude—Megan could call him the King of Pilchuck for all I cared, he’d always be Old Dude to me—nodded and said, “You haven’t been around much, Toby.”

  “Toby is on the school team,” Megan explained.

  “Barely,” I added. “I’m the twelfth man. If I were any farther down the bench, I’d be in the snack stand selling hot dogs.”

  Old Dude snapped the basketball to me. “So you’re a fellow pinerider?”

  “A what rider?”

  “Pine,” Old Dude said. “Pinerider is another word for benchwarmer. But it means much more, if you ask me.”

  “You were on the bench?” I asked.

  “If I’d been any farther down the bench, I would have been in the parking lot giving directions to the highway.”

  “But you played in college. Being a benchwarmer in college is as good as being a starter in high school. It means you could play—right?”

  “Let me tell you something about Milton College. Back then, there were fewer than two thousand students in the whole school, so we were in the lowest division. The basement. We played in the worst conference in the country, too. And in my first three years, we never finished better than last place.”

  “Let me get this straight. For three years, you were the worst player, on the worst team, in the worst conference, in the worst division in the country?”

  Old Dude nodded. “I was the worst college basketball player in America.”

  “Tell him about your senior year,” Megan said.

  “After three years of sitting on the bench, I was ready to throw in the towel. But the day I went into the coach’s office to quit, he told me about Landon Doozie.”

  “Doozie was his real name? Come on.”

  “Not only that—Landon Doozie was the most promising freshman ever recruited to play at Milton. Coach thought Doozie could turn the whole program around—put him and the school on the map. There was just one problem. Landon Doozie was what you might call a head case. Terrible grades. Couldn’t get to practice on time to save his life. Disappeared for days without a word. But when he got on the court, he was unstoppable. Anyway, Coach asked me to stick around as a mentor. To keep the kid in line. For some reason, Doozie listened to me.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Coach got his wish. Landon Doozie turned the program around overnight. Took us straight to the conference championship game.”

  “Did you get to play a lot that season?”

  “Four minutes,” said Old Dude. “In the last game of the regular season. We were up by thirty. Coach leaned down the bench and said, ‘Dinkins, get in there.’”

  “Did you score?”

  “I did a lot more than that. In four minutes, I took seven shots, made two of them, added a free throw, blocked a shot, grabbed two rebounds, turned the ball over three times, and bloodied my lip diving for a loose ball.”

  “But your team was up by thirty!”

  “When you’re a pinerider, Toby, you play every second like it’s your last. Every minute to you or me is like a full game to a starter. Our time is that much more precious.”

  “What
happened in the championship game?”

  “It was close in the beginning. We couldn’t shake the other team. Their leading scorer, McAllister, was all over Landon, trying to provoke him, but Landon kept his cool. Then in the second quarter, McAllister and Doozie went chest to chest over a bump. I stood up to get Doozie’s attention. That’s when McAllister turns to me and says, ‘Back off.’ Well, the ref had had enough. He teed up McAllister not once but twice. And just like that the other guys had lost their star player. We cruised the rest of the way. Best year of my life.”

  “But you only got to play four minutes.”

  “True. On the other hand, without me, who knows, maybe Doozie would have done something foolish along the way and messed up the season for all of us. Or if McAllister had gotten the best of him in that game, maybe we would have ended up losing. The point is, Toby, I found a way to make a difference without ever touching the ball.”

  “It sounds good when you put it like that, but most of the time it feels like I don’t even exist on the team.”

  “Do you know what the secret of being the twelfth man is?”

  “No.”

  “You’re the one guy on the team the fans really relate to. They see someone like Doozie and they see someone they wish they could be. But they see someone like you or me and they see someone they know they could be. We’re human. That’s why the benchwarmer is always a crowd favorite. The crowd wants to see him do well because they see him as one of their own. So your job is to get out there and give them something to cheer about. That’s what separates the pineriders from the benchwarmers. We know our role. We do it well. And when push comes to shove, we rise to the occasion. You’re a pinerider, Toby. When your time comes, be ready.”

  Monday was a good day for Mom and a bad day for Dad. The local paper had run a front-page feature on Sunday about Butte Peak and the Landover Lumber Company. Mom wasn’t quoted or anything, but I knew she had been trying to get the story in print for a while. The article described how clear-cuts affected streams and rivers. There were diagrams and everything. The article made me pretty convinced the clear-cut was a bad idea, until I came home from practice and saw Dad slumped on the couch, his shirt untucked and his tie undone. Mom was sitting next to him. She was holding his hand. They were speaking softly. I could hear her apologizing, which surprised me. I had been thinking of this as a competition, like me and Pesto in a pickup game. But here was Mom, the winner, consoling Dad. I tried to picture Pesto apologizing to me after a game. And then I realized that what I was seeing between Mom and Dad was not about winning and losing. It was about family. At the end of the day, they were on the same team. And nothing that could happen to the south slope of Butte Peak would change that.