Travel Team (19 page)

“W
HAT FINALLY CONVINCED YOU
?” D
ANNY SAID AT THE KITCHEN TABLE
.

It was way past his bedtime, but his mom wanted to talk. And Danny knew by now that when she wanted to talk, the Walker house turned into the place where time stood still.

She had made them some real hot chocolate from scratch, boiling the milk in a pan on the stove, slowly stirring in the Hershey's chocolate from the can.

After she poured it into their mugs, she even threw a couple of marshmallows on top.

His mom thought microwaved hot chocolate was for sissies.

“What convinced me?” she said, pushing her marshmallows slowly around with a spoon. “I guess you'd have to say it was when your father hit me with, ‘We're one-and-nine with me coaching, how could the kid do any worse?' I have to admit, that one got a good laugh out of me.”

Danny said, “Not a lot of laughs around here lately.”

“No,” she said, “there haven't been.”

She saw that his cup was almost empty, got up without asking him if he wanted more, poured the last of the hot chocolate from the pan. Usually she guarded against any kind of chocolate intake around bedtime. Like she was the Chocolate Police.

Not tonight.

Danny took a look at her as she made sure not to spill any. A good look. His friends liked to needle him sometimes by telling him his mom was hot, knowing that would get a rise out of him. But he didn't need them to tell him that, he knew she was pretty, movie pretty, that was a given. You could count on that with her, the way you could count on her always wearing nice clothes, never really looking like a slob, even when it was just the two of them hanging around the house on what his mom would sometimes call slob weekends. And when he compared her to some of the other moms, it was no contest. Some of the other moms, it was like they'd packed it in, they didn't care how they looked anymore.

Ali Walker always cared.

But tonight he saw how tired she looked, noticed the bags under her eyes, what he thought of as worry bags.

She said, “I had been telling him—yelling at him—for most of the conversation about what a ridiculous idea this was.”

“I heard.”

“Figured,” she said. “But I didn't care, I meant it. I told him it was way too much pressure on a twelve-year-old boy, even one with supernatural basketball powers, and that on top of that, I wasn't sure the other parents would go for it.”

“What did Dad say to that?”

Ali Walker, elbow on the table, rested her cheek in her hand, as if keeping her head propped up. He could see it was going to be a fight to the finish now, her need to talk against her need to go to bed. “He did what he always used to do when I was yelling at him,” she said. “Waited me out.”

“Yeah, but when he finally said something, it must've been pretty good.” He reached over and plucked the marshmallow out of her cup and swallowed it.

“Hey,” she said.

“I could tell you didn't really want it.”

“What would I do without you?” she said.

Danny said, “Dad always says that it was harder turning you around on stuff than it used to be playing UConn on the road.”

“I know,” she said, and sighed. “Anyway,” she said, “he told me that this had been your team from the start, not his. That you knew it better than he did. That for all the normal screwing around the other kids did, they all took their lead from you, even through all the losing. That no matter how much they hung their heads, they didn't quit because you didn't quit.”

“He said that?”

“He did. Then he hit me with this: Kids always make the best game.”

“Wait a second,” Danny said, “that's my line.”

“He told me it was. And you know what? I knew he was right. Then he finished up by telling me that you might learn more about basketball doing this, even for a few games, than you've ever learned in your life. And then he said one last ultimate thing that sealed the deal for old Mom.”

“What?”

“He said that even he never had the guts to coach one of his own teams.”

She reached across the table now with both of her hands, with those long, pretty fingers, and made a motion with them for him to get his hands out there. He did.

His mom's hands were always warm.

“Truth or dare,” she said.

Danny said, “Truth.”

“You can do this?”

Danny made sure to look her in the eyes. “I can do this.”

“You're sure?”

“If it's okay with the guys—”

“—and Miss Colby—”

“—and Colby. If it's okay with them and the parents say they're good with it, yeah, so am I.”

“We're going to have a team meeting here, tomorrow night, seven-thirty,” Ali Walker said. “We'll run the whole thing up the flagpole, bud, and see who salutes.”

“You have some very weird expressions, Mom, have I ever mentioned that to you?”

She came around the table, pulled him up out of his chair, put her arms around him, leaned over as she did and put her face on top of his head.

“I grew an inch,” he said.

“I thought there was something different about you,” she said. “I just assumed it was the stature that comes with your new job.”

“Funny.”

“Go to bed,” she said. “And no more IM.”

Danny said, “Haven't you heard about how little sleep dedicated coaches get?”

“Not when they're in the seventh grade,” she said.

Tess was waiting on the sidewalk in front of the school when Danny and his mom came around from the teachers' parking lot. As soon as Ali Walker was gone, Tess said, “We're good to go.”

“Where?”

“Everybody on the team is completely fired up about you coaching,” she said. “With the possible exception of the wimp-face O'Brien twins.”

“What's their problem?”

“Not a problem, exactly. They just said what they say about practically everything.”

“What?”

“You're close,” Tess said. “Actually, it was what
ever.”

“You already conducted a poll this morning?”

“Last night, right after you IM'd me.”

Danny said, “Well aren't you a busy little bee?”

“
Queen
bee,” she said, giving her hair a little shake.

The Warriors all sat together at lunch, at the big table by the window facing the soccer fields. Before they got around to talking about their team, Will and Bren informed the group that Colorado boy—Andy Mayne—had suffered a severe high ankle sprain, worst kind, the day before, playing touch football in the parking lot after school.

“Black ice,” Will said. “Never saw it.”

“Heard he was lucky he didn't break his ankle instead of just twisting it like a pretzel,” Bren said.

“They've got him in some kind of soft-cast deal for now, so he doesn't make it any worse,” Will said.

“Might be back for the play-offs, might not,” Bren said.

“That means they'll only beat us by twenty points in the play-offs,” Will said.

“'Stead of forty,” Bren said.

“I don't want to talk about them,” Tess said. “I want to talk about us.”

Danny knew he probably had the goofy look on his face that he felt come over it when Tess Hewitt said or did something that really got to him, but he didn't care.

“Us?”
he said.

“Yes,” she said.
“Us.”
She looked at him and said, “What, you thought I was going to sit the big adventure out?”

Then she wanted to know if everybody had followed her online instructions, and kept their big fat stupid mouths shut around their parents about Danny coaching the team.

“Explain to me again why it has to be a surprise for all the mummies and mummified daddies,” Will said.

“It's just better if Mrs. Walker tells, is all. So nothing gets lost in translation.” She hit Will with her raised eyebrow and said, “Mrs. Walker,” she said, “is, like,
good
with words.”

“Go ahead,” Will said, trying to act wounded. “Lash out at the ones you care the most about even on this happy day.”

Bren said, “I'm asking the new coach for shorter practices.”

“And no suicides, ever,” Colby Danes said from across the table.

The Warriors applauded.

The O'Brien twins were dressed exactly the same today, so nobody had any idea which was which.

“Are we going to have to play more minutes?” one of them said.

The other one said, “This season feels too long already.”

“Hey, Mary-Kate and Ashley,” Will said to them. “Zip it.”

Colby said she had a question.

“What if the league says you can't coach, that we need a grown-up?”

Danny said, “My mom thought about that already, she says she's got a backup plan.”

“Oh, good,” Will said. “Now we go from Plan B to Plan C.”

Tess smiled now.

“No, Plan D,” she said. “For Danny.”

She held his hand under the table.

And he let her.

T
HE
W
ALKERS
'
DOORBELL RANG AT SIX
-
THIRTY
,
EVEN THOUGH THE PARENTS
' meeting wasn't scheduled to begin for another hour.

Ali Walker yelled down for Danny to get it, she was still getting dressed, and if it was somebody selling something, tell them it was too late to be coming around.

When he opened the front door, Mr. Ross was standing there.

“Hello, Danny,” he said.

“Mr. Ross.”

“Is your mom home? I saw the car.”

Danny jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “She's upstairs.”

“Would you mind if I come in? I've got something I want to say to both of you.”

Danny called up to his mom and told her Mr. Ross was here. Then, trying to think what she'd want him to do, he asked if he could take Mr. Ross's black overcoat, which felt as soft as a baby blanket as Danny started to hang it on the coat rack.

“Would you mind using that little hook up by the collar?” Mr. Ross said.

They went into the living room to wait for his mom. Mr. Ross sat down on the couch.

“I hear your dad is feeling much better,” he said.

Danny felt like saying, compared to
what
?

“I've been meaning to stop by the hospital and see him,” Mr. Ross said.

Danny said, “I'm sure he'd appreciate that,” only because he couldn't say what he really wanted to say, which was that his dad would appreciate that about as much as having his bones broken all over again.

Ali Walker came breezing into the room then, saying, “Well, isn't this a surprise.”

Mr. Ross got up and looked like he was leaning over to kiss her on the cheek when his mom stopped him by putting her hand out for him to shake, stopping him the way a crossing guard would have.

“I was going to call first,” Mr. Ross said. “But I had an errand to run and I was passing the house, and I just decided to drop by.”

Even Danny knew that was bull.

“So,” Ali said, “to what do we owe the honor?”

Danny was in one of the chairs on the other side of the coffee table from the couch, one of the two that they'd just had done over with new flowered covers that looked exactly like the old flowered covers to Danny. Ali Walker sat down in the other.

They both waited patiently for him to get to it.

“Well,” he said, “I came with an apology, and what I think is a pretty neat idea.”

Danny looked over at his mom, in her dark blue dress, hands folded in her lap. She smiled at Mr. Ross. Still waiting. Danny folded his hands in his lap and did the same.

Mr. Ross said, “First, I want to apologize to you, Danny. I don't know what my evaluators were thinking, but you should have been on the Vikings this season.”

His mom still didn't say anything, and neither did he.

“Sometimes,” he said, “adults don't know when to get out of the way when it comes to youth sports. And sometimes they don't know when to get
in
the way.”

Danny was staring, fascinated, at Mr. Ross's white shirt, whose collar looked as stiff as a board.

“What I'm saying,” Mr. Ross said, “is that I should have done something. And we all should have seen the greatness in you.”

Now Ali Walker spoke. “Tough to miss,” she said.

“I realize that now, Ali. I was so hell-bent on maintaining the integrity of the process—”

“—right, the
process
,” she said, nodding, as if trying to be helpful.

“—that I let a talented boy like the one sitting across from me not make a team he should have made.”

He cleared his throat.

“Anyway,” Mr. Ross said, “Richie said something to me that was absolutely correct, but I didn't want to hear. He said the best kids are supposed to make the team. And we all should have realized that Danny's always been one of the best kids in this town, despite—”

“—his size?” Ali Walker said.

Who was more helpful than her?

“—his size. Yes. But it seems this time his size worked against him for whatever reason—”

Holy
schnikeys,
Danny thought. A made-up Will word.
Whatever reason
? The reason, Mr. Rossface, was that you told them to make the team bigger.

“—and that's wrong.”

There was another silence. Danny had been watching
SportsCenter
on the kitchen set when Mr. Ross arrived, and he could still hear somebody in there screaming about something.

Danny had sat in on his mom's class a few times, she said she wanted him to see her work, to have a better understanding about what she did, why she loved it so much, why she had gone back to college to give herself a chance to do it for a living. And every time he saw her teach, he saw how she'd go out of her way to help out any kid struggling to find the right word or the right answer. Sort of like she was throwing the kid a life preserver.

Now she seemed perfectly willing to let Mr. Ross go under before she'd make this any easier for him.

“Which brings me to the second reason for my visit,” he said, “now that I understand there may be a problem with Danny's team.”

“The Warriors,” he said.

“Quite right, the Warriors. By problem, I mean insofar as your dad is going to be laid up for a while, and Ty says there may be a problem finding another parent willing to make the time commitment necessary to fill in for the rest of the season.”

Danny looked over at his mom. He wasn't sure if Mr. Ross saw her give one shake to her head—basically telling him to shut up—or not.

Danny got her meaning, though.

“So I thought Danny could come play for the Vikings,” Mr. Ross said. “Where he would have had the ball all along, if we hadn't dropped the ball.”

He looked at his watch, as if he needed something to do with his hands after his big announcement.

“Even with the loss of Ty and young Mr. Mayne—”

“Andy Mayne was their point guard, Mom.” Danny knew he was interrupting, which he was never supposed to do with grown-ups. But he wanted her to know. “He wrecked up his ankle yesterday. Might be out for the season.”

“That must have hurt,” Ali Walker said. “Both him and the Vikings, I mean.”

“Knowing we'd be getting Ty back for the play-offs,” Mr. Ross said, “I thought we had enough talent to make it out of the state and go all the way back to the nationals. And even without Andy, I think we still can, especially if I can convince Danny here to come aboard.”

His mom leaned forward. “What about the rest of Danny's team?” she said, in a pleasant-sounding voice.

“Well,” he said, “if they can find another coach, of course, they can go ahead and finish the season.” He shrugged and made this gesture with his palms turned up. Like: Who cares? “And if they don't, well, they'd only be missing a handful of meaningless games. I'm sure that even Danny would admit that they haven't exactly been tearing up the league.”

Ali Walker answered that one by turning to face Danny.

“My husband always said that it's not the team you start with that matters, it's the one you end up with,” she said. “Isn't that right, sweetheart?”

He'd almost missed the question, all he heard after “my husband”—which she never ever said anymore—was blah blah blah.

“Dad says he wants to see who's out there and what they're doing the last two minutes of the game, not the first two.”

“I didn't mean any disrespect by what I said about the other Warriors,” Mr. Ross said. “Really, no offense, to either one of you.”

“None taken,” Ali Walker said.

“Danny's different from the others,” Mr. Ross said.

“He was in October, too,” she said, and stood up. “I've got some people coming over. I'll leave you and Danny alone, this is his decision, then I'll come back and see you out, Jeff.”

She left them there.

“I finally figured out what you and Ty have known all along,” Mr. Ross said. Giving him a weird grin that made him look like a jack-o'-lantern, as if the two of them were buds all of a sudden. “You two knotheads should be playing together.”

Danny couldn't help it then.

He laughed.

“Did I say something funny, Danny?”

“Not really,” he said. “It just kind of occurred to me that you're the biggest guy in our town, Mr. Ross. Seriously.”

“Oh, I don't know about that.”

“And here you are talking to me like
I'm
the biggest guy in town all of a sudden.”

“I'm offering you a chance to play for a winning team.”

“I'll take my chances with my team,” Danny said. “Even
against
your team.”

He stood up, came around the table, stuck his hand out, made eye contact the way his mom had taught him.

“But, sir?”

“Yes, Danny?”

“Thank you
so
much for stopping by.”

Most of the kids on the team sat on the living-room floor. The parents sat on the couch, the two extra flowered chairs Ali Walker had brought in from the front hall, the four wooden chairs she brought in from the kitchen; the rest just stood around drinking coffee or wine or soft drinks. The Warriors were all drinking Gatorades out of plastic bottles. Tess Hewitt was with them, having come with Molly Stoddard and Will.

Danny's mom said she appreciated everybody taking time out to do this on a school night, and would do everything in her power to keep the proceedings brief.

Will Stoddard raised a hand. “Take as much time as you need, Mrs. Walker. I haven't done Spanish yet.”

His mother smiled down at him like he was the most precious, wonderful boy in the whole world, then pinched his upper arm hard enough to make him yelp.

Danny leaned over and whispered to Tess, “You do not
ever
want to get the arm pinch from Mrs. Stoddard.”

When Ali was convinced everybody had arrived, she laid out Richie's plan for them. She said that she knew that there were enough parents on the team with enough free time that they could probably find a way to share the responsibilities of coaching the Warriors. But that Richie frankly didn't think that was good enough, that the kids were starting to come together, turning into the team he'd hoped they could be all along, and that the coach had to be someone who not only knew them, strengths and weaknesses, but also knew basketball.

And that in his opinion the one who fit the bill best was Danny.

Will said, “Please hold your applause until the end.”

Molly only faked the pinch, but Will spazzed away from her anyway.

Mrs. O'Brien, the twins' mom, who'd always reminded Danny of a hummingbird with short black hair, said, “A
child
? Coaching the other children? I just don't know how that would
look
, frankly.”

One of the twins, Danny thought it was Steven, he did the most whining of the two, said, “But Mom, you said you didn't care if one of the lunch ladies coached the team as long as you got us out of the house on weekends.”

Danny bit down on the knuckles of his right hand, but then all of the adults in the room were laughing, so he did, too.

Mrs. O'Brien gave Steven a death look and said, “Mommy was
joking,
honey. But we'll
discuss
all that in the
car
later.”

It turned out that Mr. Harden was there, having flown back for the night from his case in Florida. He said, “I've been around this team more than anybody, with the exception of the players, of course. And from the start, Richie called Danny his coach on the floor. So I don't see his job description really changing all that much.”

Molly Stoddard said, “I called over to the league office today. I didn't tell them why I was calling, just said that we might have some problems with logistics before the season was over, and was there an actual league rule about having an adult on the bench. And they said that there had to be at least one.”

Ali Walker said, “That would be me.”

Jerry Harden said, “
You're
going to be the bench coach?”

“Just filling in until you get back from West Palm,” she said. “And if you don't make it back, I'll do it the rest of the way.” She smiled. “I've learned from the best, after all,” she said. “The former coach and his potential replacement.”