Basketball Disasters (11 page)

A few weeks ago Mason would have been thrilled at the thought of missing a whole week of basketball. He would have been glad to miss the whole season, to miss out on basketball completely for the rest of his life. But now it felt strange to think of the Fighting Bulldogs—
his
team—playing without him.

He hoped he would be better in time for the final game, the rematch against Dunk and the Killer Whales—in time to
beat
Dunk and the Killer Whales.

On Tuesday evening, Mason’s ankle hurt enough from limping on it all day at school that he stayed home with Dog while his dad and Brody headed off to basketball practice. He could picture Brody’s skip of enthusiasm as they neared the school; Brody was the only fourth-grade boy Mason knew who was actually capable of skipping. Mason could picture the arrival of the others, the warm-up stretches, the passing and shooting drills, the three-on-three.

At least his mother read to him as he lay on
the couch with his throbbing ankle and Dog on the floor listening, too. She liked to read him all the old-fashioned books she had loved when she was a little girl. Right now they were reading
Peter Pan
, the original book, not the Disney version, so that helped pass the time, even though Mason found his thoughts straying from Peter and Wendy to Brody and Nora.

“So how was it?” Mason asked as soon as his dad came through the door at eight-thirty.

“Great! We’re going to win a game one of these days, mark my words.”

Mason was glad for his dad’s report, though he wondered if the team should have moped a bit over the absence of their injured comrade.

“But everyone missed you,” his dad said then.

Was his dad saying it just to be nice?

“Did they?”

“Every time Brody made a good shot, he dedicated it to you. Really. He said, ‘That one was for Mason.’ ”

Mason felt himself beaming as broadly as Brody himself would have done.

Thursday was the day that Mrs. Taylor appeared in Coach Joe’s class to show the students how to make
cross-stitch samplers. Mason’s mother came in with Mrs. Taylor, to help her find the room and to serve as her cross-stitch-teaching assistant.

The previous week had been candle dipping. The custodian hadn’t yet gotten out all of the wax that Dunk had dripped onto the carpet.

“Hello, Mason! Hello, Brody!” Mrs. Taylor greeted the two of them by name, even though she had never met Brody before. Brody’s eyes widened with surprise, even though Mason had told him all about Thanksgiving dinner.

Mason noticed that Mrs. Taylor didn’t say, “Hi, Dunk,” even though she had to have been able to pick him out after her fateful spying that day. So Mrs. Taylor knew who Dunk was. But Dunk didn’t know who Mrs. Taylor was.

Each student was given a square of plain white fabric printed with a heart made out of little
x
’s.

“I don’t want to sew a heart,” Dunk said. “Hearts are for girls.”

Then Dunk apparently remembered that he didn’t want to sew
anything
.

“
Sewing
is for girls,” he added.

“Dunk,” Coach Joe said pleasantly.

“It’s true that in colonial times the women of the house did most of the sewing and cooking,” Mrs. Taylor said. “But a man would have been embarrassed indeed at not being able to do some simple sewing, at least enough to fasten on a button to keep his britches from falling down.”

The class laughed. Mason felt proud of Mrs. Taylor. Every student was then given a needle.

Mason wondered if this craft was going to turn out to be a bad idea. Needles were sharp. What if Dunk decided to test the sharpness of his needle on the hand of the boy sitting next to him?

Instead, Dunk promptly lost his needle. It rolled off his desk and onto the floor, and the gray carpet was needle-colored enough that Dunk couldn’t find it. The boy sitting next to him couldn’t find it either, although why that boy wanted to find it Mason wasn’t quite sure.

Just as Mrs. Taylor was about to hand Dunk a new needle, Nora spied the first one and gave it back to Dunk.

Threading the needles with a special kind of thread called embroidery floss took a few more minutes, and then learning how to tie a knot at the end
of the thread. Mason marveled at the patience of colonial people.

Finally the students started sewing, making one little stitch on each printed
x
, then another stitch to complete the
x
.

“No, Dunk,” Mason heard Mrs. Taylor say, “you need to have your knot on the back of your sampler. You want the messy side of your sampler to be the
back
.”

She helped Dunk rip out what he had done so far and start again.

“No, Dunk. You need to keep your stitches small. And neat. Like this.”

Brody’s heart was almost done. Nora had completed her heart several minutes ago.

“Don’t jab with the needle,” Mrs. Taylor told Dunk. “Just pull the thread through gently.”

Mason had only finished six
x
’s on his heart; he was spending too much time watching Dunk with Mrs. Taylor.

“Dunk, if you keep jabbing your needle that way, you’re going to stab your—”

A wail went up from Dunk’s table.

“—finger,” Mrs. Taylor said.

“It’s bleeding! My finger’s bleeding!”

“Who are you going to give your heart to?” Brody asked Mason. “I’m going to frame mine and give it to Albert.” Albert was Brody’s pet goldfish. “I’m going to hang it in my room right over his bowl.”

“I don’t think anyone’s going to want mine,” Mason said. His thread kept bunching and tangling, and he couldn’t make his stitches small and neat like Brody’s and Nora’s.

“Now there’s blood in my heart!” Dunk bellowed.

As the end of the sewing session drew near, Mason’s heart still had a long way to go.

“You can finish these up at home, if you need to,” Mrs. Taylor said. “You may keep the needle and take it with you.”

“Do finish them,” Coach Joe said. “Remember, we’re having our Colonial School Day next week. We’ll want to have all your crafts on display.”

However bad Mason’s botched heart looked, Mason was sure Dunk’s bloodstained heart looked even worse.

“No, Dunk,” Mrs. Taylor said. “Here, put your needle in your sampler
this
way, so you don’t lose it.”

Again
.

“Or stab yourself.”

Again
.

“Oh, and Dunk?” Mason heard her say, in a lower voice this time, so low that he could only hear it because he was straining his ears to listen.

“What?” Dunk asked sullenly.

“Keep your dog off my lawn. Do you hear?”

Then, with a warm smile at the class, Mrs. Taylor gathered up her sewing supplies and sailed out the door, followed by Mason’s mother, who turned and gave Mason one last smile before she went.

The second Saturday in December, from eleven a.m. to noon, was the hour when Mason officially learned how to cheer. Loudly. Embarrassingly. With all his heart. Stuck in his folding chair at the edge of the basketball court, it was the only thing he could do to help the Fighting Bulldogs win.

“Aw!” he moaned in disgust when Jonah called a foul against Kevin.

“Yes!” he shouted in triumph when Brody sank a great three-point shot to give the Bulldogs a 17–14 lead at the half. Despite his bandaged ankle, Mason couldn’t stop himself from jumping to his feet and doing his own version of a happy dance.

Mason hobbled out to join the halftime huddle.
Injured or non-injured, playing or not playing, he was still part of the team.

Coach Dad gave his best pep talk yet. Mason had noticed that his dad wasn’t relying on the coaching book so much anymore; he had even gone back to struggling with sudoku puzzles at the breakfast table.

“We can win this one,” Coach Dad said, “but only if we go out there not as Kevin, Jeremy, Matt, Brody, Dylan, Nora, Elise, Amy, and Tamara—and Mason—but as the Fighting Bulldogs.”

Mason was glad that his father had remembered to add his name to the list.

And the Bulldogs did win, 26–24.

Mason was hoarse from screaming.

But why, oh why, couldn’t he have been out there playing, too? It was a Bulldogs victory, yes, the team’s first win, but despite his dad’s great speech, it hadn’t been
Mason’s
victory. Unless yelling until you had a sore throat counted.

Which it sort of did.

But sort of didn’t.

Wednesday evening was the Plainfield Platters’ winter holiday concert: songs about dreidels and Santa
and snowmen and sleigh rides, even though it hadn’t snowed since that early snow at the end of October, when the new-fallen snow in the Taylors’ yard had been marred by Dog’s footprints.

Nowadays, when Mason saw Mrs. Taylor looking out from her upstairs window, he waved. He thought he could see her waving back.

But he still kept Dog out of her yard.

During the Platters concert, Mason was one of the kids who rang a handbell for “Silver Bells,” which he knew was a big thrill for his mother. Brody wore an elf costume for “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town,” which Mason knew was a big thrill for Brody. Puff the Plainfield Dragon was at the concert, looking festive in a Santa cap, which was a big thrill for the little kids in the audience. Mason got through the concert without any disastrous moments; that wasn’t exactly a big thrill for him, but it was definitely a relief.

Then it was Thursday, another day to gladden the heart of Brody: Colonial School Day for Coach Joe’s class.

Mason wore his regular clothes—jeans and a plain, solid-colored T-shirt. At least it was more colonial than a T-shirt from Disney World, not that
Mason owned such a thing. Brody wore jeans, too, with a button-down shirt and his three-cornered hat from Philadelphia.

Nora wore a long, old-fashioned-looking cotton dress and a sunbonnet, her straight dark hair fashioned in two neat braids, tied with hair ribbons.

“I didn’t think you’d wear a dress,” Mason said.

“You didn’t think I’d be on your basketball team, either,” Nora said.

To begin the school day, Coach Joe clanged a large bell set on his desk. He was dressed in a full eighteenth-century outfit, complete with breeches that fastened under his knees, long stockings, buckled shoes, and a ruffled shirt.

“Good morning, boys and girls,” Coach Joe said in a formal-sounding way.

“Good morning, Master Joseph!” the class chorused.

On each desk sat a small wooden-edged slate, a stick of chalk, and a scrap of rag for an eraser.

For math, the pupils wrote their sums on their slates. Master Joseph called on each student to stand up in turn by the side of his or her desk to recite. Everyone recited correctly, for in the corner of the room now stood a wooden stool crowned by a tall paper cone: the dreaded dunce cap.

Then Dunk, dressed in his ordinary clothes, got an easy answer wrong. Mason knew he had done it on purpose, to see if Master Joseph would really send him into the corner. Besides, Colonial School Day wouldn’t be fun if no one sat in the corner playing the role of the dunce.

“Master Duncan, did you study your sums last night?” Master Joseph asked with mock sternness.

“No,” Dunk said. For good measure, he stuck out his tongue.

“Master Duncan, I’m afraid I must punish you. I will not rap your knuckles with my ruler—today—but I will send you to the corner to sit on the dunce stool in disgrace.”

Laughing, Dunk swaggered over to the stool and hopped up on it so energetically that the stool tipped over, with Dunk upon it, sending Dunk sprawling onto the floor.

“Master Duncan,” Master Joseph said, “pray be more careful.”

Dunk rubbed his elbow, righted the stool, and climbed back onto it, less cheerfully this time.

“The cap, Master Duncan,” Master Joseph instructed. He didn’t chuckle as he said it. He made it sound like a real punishment in a real colonial school.

Scowling now, Dunk jerked the cap onto his head. The class started laughing. Dunk did look ridiculous sitting there perched on the stool with his peaked paper cap like a white witch’s hat without a brim.