Summer Ball (11 page)

D
R.
B
RADLEY SAID THAT JUST BECAUSE THE
X
-RAY WAS CLEAR DIDN'T
necessarily mean Danny was in the clear.

“I think it's probably just a bad sprain,” he said. “But a sprain isn't going to show up on these pretty pictures.”

Danny knew that from his dad. He knew a lot about knees from his dad. Richie Walker told war stories all the time about how much basketball had banged him around even before he had the car accident that ended his career. He told Danny that he finally gave up on hoping doctors would find reasons why his knees hurt the way they did—all that mattered in the end was that they hurt.

He sat there thinking about his dad, all the pain he'd gone through in his life, not just in his knees, and felt worse than ever.

“There is a little swelling,” Dr. Bradley said, looking at Danny's knee, at the last of the swelling that had been there since Rasheed had speed-bumped him. “But it doesn't look too bad to me.”

“I don't know about that,” Danny said. “I just know it's killing me.”

Dr. Bradley touched the side of the knee again, and Danny winced.

“You're sure?”

“I'm not making it up,” Danny said.

I
did
hurt the knee, he thought. Just not today….

“Take it easy, son, I didn't say you were,” Dr. Bradley said. “If it hurts the way you say it does, maybe what we should do is run you over to the hospital in Portland for an MRI. Just to be on the safe side.”

Danny said, “I'm gonna need to talk to my parents about that.”

“About the MRI, you mean? Sure, no problem.”

“No,” Danny said. He was sitting on the examining table. “About my knee. My dad's got his own ideas about stuff.”

“I'm not sure I understand.”

“No offense, Dr. Bradley, but I think he might want to have his own doctor look at it,” Danny said.

Dr. Bradley shut off the computer screen he'd been using to show Danny the two angles of the X-rays he'd taken.

“How old are you?” he said.

“Thirteen. Almost fourteen.”

Dr. Bradley smiled. “Even the thirteen-going-on-fourteens want a second opinion,” he said.

“My dad thinks he knows more than doctors, is all. Maybe because he's known so many in his life.”

“Are you sure you want to go to all the trouble of flying home, though?” Dr. Bradley said.

“I'm not saying I want to do that,” Danny said. “I just think they might want me to.”

“Why don't we talk about it after you call your dad?” Dr. Bradley asked. Danny said he was good with that.

“Let me know what he says,” Dr. Bradley said. “And you stay off that leg as much as possible for the rest of the day. Keep as much ice on it as you can stand.”

He helped Danny off the table and walked him over to the main office. When they got there, Dr. Bradley told Jeff LeBow's sister, Sue, that it was all right for Danny to make a couple of phone calls, even if it wasn't the designated time for that. This was the guy who'd gotten hurt.

Danny was all set to make collect calls from the pay phone, but Sue said he could use hers, showed him how to get a long-distance line.

He got the answering machine at home, didn't leave a message, tried his mom's cell instead. He heard his mom's voice saying she wasn't going to have her cell with her the rest of the afternoon, she was out on a hike with Horizons kids—underprivileged kids from New York City who came out to live with families in Middletown for a couple of weeks every summer and attend a camp she helped run though St. Patrick's School. She said wouldn't be back until at least five o'clock.

Danny told Sue he'd come back later and that if he couldn't get his mom then, maybe he'd shoot her an e-mail if that was all right. Then he walked back to Gampel, ice pack in his hand, taking it slow, taking the long way down there, along the woods, so he didn't have to pass any of the courts.

So nobody would ask him how he was doing.

The only person in Gampel at four-thirty was Nick Pinto, lying on his bed, music playing from his speakers.

“Hey,” Danny said, “shouldn't you be working?”

“Coach Ed's guys are at The House, scrimmaging the Bulls,” Nick said. “They already had a couple of refs when we got over there, so I decided to come back here and chill.”

He sat up, making room on the bed for Danny, who'd brought his ice pack back with him. Nick was wearing a Stonehill T-shirt with the sleeves cut off, a pair of Knicks shorts that went to his knees, high-top Nikes with no socks, at least no socks that Danny could see.

“How's it feeling?” Nick said, pointing to Danny's knee.

“Not great,” Danny said. “Dr. Bradley said it's a bad sprain. He wants to take an MRI, but says he has to wait until the swelling goes down.”

“Looks like it already has, actually.”

He doesn't seem real concerned about me
, Danny thought. “Well, it hasn't gone down enough,” he said. “And it's still real sore. And stiff, too.”

Danny moved the ice a little, covering the area where the swelling had been in the first place. “I guess it was my rotten luck, hitting it in almost the exact same spot. That ever happen to you?”

“No.”

“I just thought—”

“I'm a fast healer,” Nick said. “You know how it is with us little guys, worrying somebody might take our spot. I get knocked down, I bounce right back up.”

“I'm usually the same way,” Danny said. “Until today.”

“Until today,” Nick said. He gave Danny a look that Danny couldn't really read, like he knew something Danny didn't know. “Anything else you want to tell me about today?”

“About what?”

“Like I said. Anything at all. About camp. About this so-called injury.”

“What's that mean, so-called?” Danny said. “Are you saying I'm not really hurt?”

“I'm saying I saw the play.”

“So that's it,” Danny said. “You think I'm faking.”

“I didn't say that,” Nick said. “You did.”

“You don't know me,” Danny said, shaking his head. “You think you do, because you're small, too. But you don't know me. And you don't know what my knee feels like. Rasheed landed right on me.”

“And then you rolled like a champ,” Nick said. “It's what little guys like us do. The big guys have to know how to sky. We have to know how to fall.”

Who was this guy? Ed Powers Junior?

“I'm just wondering how you're gonna play it from here,” Nick said. “You know, bail and somehow save face.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Seriously,” Nick said. “Because nobody's gonna believe what happened today is enough for you to quit the whole rest of camp.”

“I'm not looking to quit,” Danny said. “I got hurt, is all.”

“Right. I forgot.”

“Anyway, what's the big deal if I go home for a couple of days and have my own doctor look at it?”

“Because if you do, you're never coming back,” Nick said.

He leaned forward suddenly, his face close to Danny's, and said, “You cannot do this. Do you hear me? You cannot quit.”

“I'm not quitting. How many times do I have to tell you?”

“Keep telling yourself that,” Nick said, as if the conversation bored him all of a sudden. “Let me know what you decide. You want to get out of here that bad, I'll drive your sorry butt to the airport.”

He hopped off his bed, starting to walk toward the front door.

Then he stopped and turned around.

“One more thing,” Nick said. “You want to tell Zach what his hero's got planned, or should I?”

He left Danny sitting there.

 

The afternoon session, Danny knew, had to be ending any minute. He figured he had time to go back up the hill, give his mom another shout, maybe she was back on the cell a few minutes earlier than she said she'd be.

He brought some change with him this time, so he could have the privacy of the phone booth if his mom was back on the cell. She wasn't. Same greeting as before, his mom sounding as happy talking about being on a hike as she would have been if his dad had bought her a new car. This time he left a message, said he'd banged up his knee today, nothing serious, don't worry, but maybe she could give a call to the office when she got a chance, somebody would come find him.

Then he went into the office, asked Sue if it would be all right to get on one of the computers and back up the message with an e-mail. Sometimes his mom checked her e-mails when she got home before she even checked her phone messages.

Danny liked to joke with his mom, ask her if she had a secret buddy list for IM-ing that he didn't know about.

She'd smile at him, give him one of her Mom looks and say, “That's for me to know and for you to find out, buddy.”

Danny went to the computer room—six Dells in there—and sat down at the first one inside the door.

He hadn't been online since he left Middletown and had seventy-eight new messages. He was about to go through them, see if there was anything worth reading, when he saw that somebody was trying to Instant Message him.

He clicked on the message flag, then the box came on the screen asking him if he wanted to accept an IM from ConTessa44.

Tess.

Danny felt himself smiling for the first time all day. Or maybe all week.

He answered the question about whether or not he wanted to accept her message out loud in the empty room.

“Heck, yeah.”

 

C
ON
T
ESSA
44: Hey stranger.

He wasn't usually the best typist in the world, or very fast.

But he was now.

C
ROSSOVER
2: Is that really you?

He waited, feeling like a dope being this excited, realizing he was holding his breath.

C
ON
T
ESSA
44: No my evil twin.

C
ROSSOVER
2: Ha ha

He started to type something else. As he did, the message came up in red that his buddy was typing something, too. So it was like the old days now, him and Tess Hewitt trying to beat each other to the next funny comment.

Only she wasn't trying to be funny.

Just Tess.

C
ON
T
ESSA
44: So how are you stranger? How's camp?

C
ROSSOVER
2: Great.

He waited, getting the “Your buddy is typing” message.

C
ON
T
ESSA
44: Great as in offthecharts travel team great?

That great?

C
ROSSOVER
2: Well getting there I guess.

This wait seemed to be longer.

C
ON
T
ESSA
44: You guess? You never guess in bball fella. You always have the right answer. Before they even ask the question sometimes.

C
ROSSOVER
2: I used to.

C
ON
T
ESSA
44: USED TO????? Past tense.

C
ROSSOVER
2: Maybe just tense.

C
ON
T
ESSA
44: Hey you. Something wrong?

Truth or dare? Tell her the truth now, or not.

Danny decided on the truth.

He needed to tell somebody the truth today.

C
ROSSOVER
2: Hate it here. Got hurt today.

He didn't tell her he was leaving.

This time Danny waited for what seemed like an hour while his buddy was typing.

C
ON
T
ESSA
44: Come on Walker. Only a week. How bad can it be? It'll get better. Then you'll win. Like always.

C
ROSSOVER
2: Not this time. No no no.