Airball (4 page)

It was a meatloaf, I realized. An enormous meatloaf.

In the shape of a basketball.

“Whoa,” said Bragger.

“What do you think?” said Grandma.

“It's, it's … wow,” I said.

Which was my standard mealtime response. My grandmother has many talents. Cooking isn't one of them. Nobody ever mentions this to her, of course. No sense hurting her feelings, especially after she's gone to so much trouble. She wouldn't believe it anyway. Criticism just leads to more creativity on her part, in an attempt to prove everybody wrong, and, as Bragger's dad says, if she gets too much more creative, we'll need our stomachs pumped.

But she'd obviously been cooking all afternoon, and now she stood clutching her masterpiece, her eyes shining with pride behind her steamed-over glasses.

“Seriously, Grandma,” I said. “It's the best meatloaf I've ever seen.”

Grandma nodded, her proud, shiny gaze landing on me. She made her way across the kitchen, the turkey roaster balanced carefully between her oven mitts. My grandmother isn't very big, maybe an inch taller than I am, and that meatloaf had a good ten pounds on her.

“Need some help?” I said.

“Nope. I got it. You two just find your places.”

She lowered the roaster onto the ancient chrome-legged kitchen table, in the spot she'd saved for it next to the gravy. She stood back and took a minute to admire her work. I knew she'd never reveal the secret of the orange ketchup coating, but I suspect she'd thrown some mustard into the mix.

What Grandma's meals lack in flavor and chewability, they make up for in sheer volume. I could barely see the Formica tabletop under all the bowls and platters she'd set out: lumpy mashed potatoes, lumpier gravy, a plate of sliced tomatoes, her crystal pickle dish full of limp home-canned pickles, her usual three-bean salad freshened up with a new ingredient that looked suspiciously like okra, carrot Jell-O that hadn't quite set up and was sloshing around in a recycled butter tub.

And the fifty-pound meatloaf.

Bragger and I took our usual places, while Grandma rummaged around in the junk drawer next to the sink. She pulled out a pen and shoved the drawer shut with her hip.

“So,” she said, “I didn't fix this big dinner for nothing. Are you going to give me that permission slip so I can sign it?”

I took a deep breath, looked at Bragger, and nodded. I dug the green stapled paper out of my sock, and handed it to her. She held it at arm's length and peered at it through her bifocals, obviously eager to sign me up for a season of humiliation.

She flipped to the second page and scanned the physical form. “I made an appointment for you with Doc Houston in the morning, so you'll be all set.”

She flipped back to the front page and clicked her pen. She scratched her even, no-frills signature across the bottom of the permission slip, clicked the pen again, and nodded.

And just like that, I was off to meet my destiny.

Seven

The lunch lady heaped a mound of toxic waste onto my tray and slid it across the cafeteria window. I clanked my fork and spoon into their slot, picked up the tray, and followed Bragger across the clatter and noise of the lunchroom.

He stopped when he reached The Hulk. The metal was rusted, the plasticized top was chipping off, and one leg was bent so crooked the lunch ladies had to stuff a wad of napkins under it to keep the whole thing from toppling over. It was the most beat-up table in the cafeteria, shoved into the far corner under a light fixture that buzzed and flickered, an obvious threat to public safety. Nobody ever sat there unless they were unlucky enough to get to the lunchroom after all the other tables were filled up.

Today, as usual, The Hulk was empty. Perfect. Bragger and I needed to talk strategy, and we couldn't risk anybody hearing us. Over the weekend, we'd developed a basic plan to get me into a private conversation with Brett McGrew. Now we needed to finalize the details.

We glanced around to see who was within earshot. Eddie Poggemeyer and Russell Wiles were at the next table over, but they had their backs to us, plus they were too busy shooting peas out of their nostrils to notice what Bragger and I were doing.

We slid our trays onto the table and scooted into our chairs. I dropped my backpack to the floor.

Step One of The Plan was to make the basketball team. In Stuckey, population 334, this would be one of the easier accomplishments of my life. We had only twelve boys in the whole seventh grade, so as long as I showed up to practice, I would not only make the team, I might, as Bragger pointed out, see some playing time.

I'd have to guard against that.

Step Two: Make Brett McGrew sit up and take notice. Since I'd probably get only a second or two of McNet's time at the KU game, maybe long enough to shake his hand and say, “I'm really honored to—” before I got herded out of the way so McNet could shake hands with the next kid, I needed to find something, some piece of evidence, that would grab his attention in an instant. That would make him curious enough to at least listen to me.

“I've been thinking about this.” I poked my fork into the heap of toxic waste. Goulash, according to the lunch menu, but I'd never seen goulash with such a green tinge before, not even Grandma's on one of her more creative days. “The best evidence would be something visual. Something I could just hold up, sort of flash at him, no talking or explaining involved.”

“Right. Since talking and explaining isn't your strong suit.” Bragger spooned a glob of goulash into his mouth—he liked to live dangerously—and chewed thoughtfully for a moment. “The best thing to flash would be a picture of him that looks like you, at least a little bit. I mean, everybody says I look like my dad, right? But everybody also says I have my mom's smile. So we just need to find that one little part of Brett McGrew that looks like you.”

I rolled a pea around my tray as I thought about this. “And whatever that little part is, it probably looked more like me when it was my age.”

“Good point.” Bragger washed his goulash down with a gulp of milk and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Our mission, then, is to scour Stuckey for pictures of Brett McGrew from when he was thirteen. Which shouldn't be a problem. One thing this town's got plenty of is pictures of McNet.”

“Right.” I unzipped my backpack and pulled out a crisp new spiral notebook.

Bragger looked at me. “Making a list?”

I nodded.

He crushed his empty milk carton. “I figured.”

I opened the notebook to the first page and wrote
Places to Look for Pictures.

“Uh-oh,” Bragger groaned.

I looked up.

Duncan Webber, lunch tray in hand, hopeful smile stretched across his sweaty pink face, was headed straight toward Eddie and Russell. “Hey, guys.” He gave them a little wave as he reached their table. Leaned over like he was going to set his tray down.

Eddie skewered him with a look. “That seat's saved.”

Duncan blinked. “Oh. Okay.” He scootched over to the next chair.

Russell shook his head. “Don't even think about it, Webber.”

“Oh.” Duncan swallowed. “Okay.” He straightened up. Shot a panicked look around the lunchroom, looking for a seat that wasn't taken.

Bragger looked at me. I nodded and closed my notebook.

“Duncan.” Bragger motioned his head toward our table. “You can sit with us.”

Relief washed over Duncan's face. Followed by more panic as he realized where we were sitting. He eyed The Hulk, obviously weighing the pros and cons of eating lunch at the rickety beast. Hunger won out over social humiliation. He scrambled past Eddie and made his way toward an empty seat across from Bragger and me.

Unfortunately, this was Duncan we were talking about. Not a shining example of grace under pressure. He stumbled, and the next thing I saw was the napkin wad skidding free across the floor.

The Hulk teetered in space for a moment before the bent leg banged to the floor. My side of the table dropped like the heavy end of a seesaw. My tray slid south. I dropped my notebook and grabbed for it.

Duncan had been about to set his tray down when The Hulk lurched. His side of the table flew up. Knocked the tray out of Duncan's hands. The tray executed a perfect one-and-a-half gainer before—
whonk
—cracking my skull and sliding down my chest to my lap.

The clamor of the lunchroom ground to a dead stop. Everyone turned to stare. At me, The Hulk, and Duncan's goulash.

One of the lunchroom ladies huffed over, her hairnet trembling in her rage.

“Were you boys raised in a barn?” She planted her beefy fists on her hips. Glared at the goulash dripping from my face. “If you can't be more careful, you'll find yourselves eating in the principal's office.”

She thumped the high end of The Hulk down and shoved the napkin wad back under the bent leg. She straightened up. Shook a sausagelike finger at us.

“Lunch is a privilege. One you can lose.” She slapped a wet dishrag onto The Hulk next to me. “Make sure you clean up every bit of it, mister.”

A giggle erupted behind her. She turned toward Eddie's table.

“Did you have something to do with this, Mr. Poggemeyer?”

Eddie stopped giggling and gave her an offended, innocent look. “Me? No way.” He shot a snarl my way. “I never have anything to do with that table.”

The lunch lady wiped her hands on her apron and huffed back to the lunch line.

Duncan swallowed and sank into his chair. “I'm sorry, Kirby. I really am.”

“It's okay.” I picked a piece of macaroni from my eyelashes.

“No, it's not. Stuff like this always happens when I'm around.” Duncan glanced up at me. At his lunch plastered across my body. “And now I don't have anything to eat.”

I sighed and slid my lunch tray across the table to him.

“Have mine,” I said. “I'm not really hungry anymore.”

Eight

I was still picking goulash off my shirt when Bragger and I got to my house after school. I changed my clothes; then we holed up in my room, determined to find the perfect picture of Brett McGrew.

We started with my own collection. We spent that whole night and the next one rustling through scrapbooks, sports magazines, and souvenir game programs. We finally figured out I didn't have a single picture of Brett McGrew from before high school. But we also figured out where we
could
find pictures of him at that age: Stuckey Middle School, where, as luck would have it, Bragger and I were currently enrolled as seventh graders.

We snagged library passes during Social Studies the next day and combed through shelves of dusty yearbooks till we found the two from when Brett McGrew was in middle school. We hauled them down and made copies of every page Brett McGrew appeared on. That night we sorted through the Xeroxes, trying to find that one little part of thirteen-year-old Brett McGrew that looked like me.

We didn't find it. Or anything close. Not in the Xeroxes or in the middle school trophy cases we scoured after school the next day.

Which was disappointing, of course, but not as disappointing as I would have expected. Taking action,
doing
something, even something that so far wasn't working out, was better than drifting through each day, waiting for something to happen.

“Besides,” I told Bragger on Friday, when he came over to spend the night, “we've got three months left before the KU game, and we haven't begun to exhaust our research possibilities.” I consulted the list of
Places to Look for Pictures
in my notebook. “We've still got the public library downtown, where they store back issues of the Stuckey
Full Court Press.
There's surely pictures of thirteen-year-old Brett in that mess. And the trophy case at the high school. And the Internet, of course. The possibilities just stretch out ahead of us.”

And those possibilities were a lot more fun to think about than my other problem. The one I hadn't mentioned to Bragger. The one I tried not to mention to myself. Because this was it: What if Brett McGrew already knew I was his son?

And didn't care?

I wasn't sure any plan we came up with would cover that.

Nine

The older folks in town like to tell about the night Brett McGrew was born. They say the sky was clear and the moon was full, a moon that lay low on the horizon, big and round and orange, like a basketball. A giant basketball shining down on Stuckey. They say they remember it just like it was yesterday.

Grandma says those folks conveniently started remembering that moon after the coaching staff at the University of Kansas first took notice of Brett McGrew. McNet went to KU basketball camp the summer after his seventh-grade year. At the end of the week, when his parents came to pick him up, the head coach pulled them aside and told them they had a budding basketball star on their hands. He told them he was going to keep an eye on young Brett. He told them not to be surprised if the University of Kansas offered Brett McGrew a basketball scholarship when he got old enough. Which, of course, is exactly what they did.

And which, of course, explains why every boy in the entire seventh grade, all twelve of us, signed up for basketball. Eleven of those boys were hoping a basketball moon had been lying low in the sky, unnoticed, the night they were born. That they were budding young basketball stars waiting to be discovered. That the KU coaching staff would start recruiting them during their seventh-grade year, just like Brett McGrew. Especially now that the team was traveling all the way to Lawrence to be on TV with McNet during a KU game.

Me, I just wanted to fade into the metal folding chair farthest down the bench from Coach and stay there till basketball season was over, with nobody noticing my basketball skills—or embarrassing lack of basketball skills—at all. My best strategy was to look confident riding the bench. To appear as if I'd know exactly what I was doing if I ever got to play.