Travel Team (15 page)

He heard the doodlely-doo now.

A new message.

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

C
ON
T
ESSA
44: 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.

H
IS MOM WAS MEETING
W
ILL
'
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 gone 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 was 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.