Summer Ball (3 page)

Rasheed fouled out with three minutes to go, Danny drawing a charge on him. The Warriors were down six points at the time, but from there to the finish, it was the Danny Walker–Ty Ross show in the Dean Dome. Danny kept feeding Ty the ball, or sometimes just running isolation plays for him, and nobody could stop him.

And when it was all in, like they said on the poker shows, nobody could get in front of Danny Walker.

Danny was the one who finally put his team ahead for good with a steal and a layup. Then Ty sealed the deal with a bunch of free throws in the last minute, making them as easily as he did when he gave Danny and Will a good beatdown at McFeeley if the two of them were silly enough to challenge him to a free throw shooting contest.

After that, everything was in fast-forward mode. They did a satellite interview on Regis and Kelly. The whole team got to go to New York City and do a Top 10 list with David Letterman. They even visited the White House. The highlight of their visit, at least as far as Danny was concerned, was Will Stoddard asking the president if he had any game.

When the president had shaken Danny's hand, right before Danny presented him with a Warriors jersey that had the number 1 on the back, the president had said, “You sure are following in your dad's footsteps, aren't you, little guy?”

Danny thought that day,
Man, you can even get little-guyed by the president of the United States.

It was the beginning of the best year of his life. His dad got back together with his mom. Now his dad had decided to take the coach's job at Middletown, in addition to the weekend college basketball show he was doing for SIRIUS Satellite Radio. And, like the whipped cream on top of a brownie sundae, Ty had done his transfer thing so he could come play with Danny and Will and a lot of the other Warriors who were already attending St. Patrick's.

Basically, Danny Walker had still felt like he was getting carried around on everybody's shoulders.

Then came his varsity season at St. Pat's: six wins, seven losses, too many games when Danny didn't just feel like he got little-guyed by the other team but felt like some ninth grader on that team had made him disappear completely.

On top of that, Scott Welles moved to town.

So more than a year after the biggest win of his life, it didn't take some kind of nuclear scientist to figure out why he was feeling smaller than ever these days.

 

Will got up, saying to Danny, “You want to go to Subway with Ty and me?”

“Not hungry.”

“You pack yet for camp?” Ty said.

“Not yet.”

“You want to go see the new Vince Vaughn movie tonight?” Will said. “It's actually PG-13.”

“Not in the mood.”

“Not, not, not,” Will said. “You know you sound like a
knot
head lately, right?”

“Thank you.”

“Wait,” Will said, getting that look he got when he was sure he had come up with another brilliant idea. “Why don't I call Tess on her cell, tell her why you're moping around like the world-class mope of the universe, and ask her if she can do something to make you less jealous, just till we get to Maine?”

Will wasn't trying to be mean. He wasn't wired that way. There were just times when he knew, and Danny knew, that he just had to push Danny's buttons to get him to lighten up.

Do anything to get a smile out of him, no matter how challenging that seemed sometimes.

Like now.

“You know,” Danny said, “one of these days I'm going to figure out a way to out-annoy you.”

“It can't be done,” Will said.

Then he said he and Ty were going to Subway, and right then, whether Danny wanted to come along or not.

Danny preferred to stay and work a little more on his shot, said he was going to start getting his head right for Right Way now, so he'd be ready for the big boys next week.

“Got to bring my A game,” Danny said.

“On the worst day of your life,” Ty said quietly, meaning it, “you're an A-minus.”

Will said, “You sure you don't want me to talk to Tess?”

“Please go,” Danny said, then said something he said to Will all the time: “I'll pay you.”

“But you do plan to talk to her before we go, right?”

“Sure,” Danny said. “I just don't happen to feel like it right now.”

“Well,” Will said, “start feeling like it, Sparky. Because here she comes.”

S
HE WAS WEARING A WHITE, COLLARED TENNIS SHIRT AND WHITE TENNIS
shorts, carrying her racket, hair tied back into a ponytail. There were hard courts and clay courts at McFeeley, but you could see the hard courts from the basketball court. Tess must have been playing on the clay courts, on the other side of the big baseball field.

Probably with Mr. Perfect.

Danny watched her come toward him, happy to see her despite everything that had been going on—or not going on—but still thinking,
Man, her legs are longer than I am.

He heard Will and Ty yell “hey, Tess,” as they walked in the other direction, toward town.

“Hey,” she said when she got to Danny.

“Hey.”

Maybe he was Captain Klutz when it came to girls. Even this girl, who could walk around and be better looking than any girl in Middletown and still hang with the guys like a champ.

She dropped her racket into the grass, next to his big bottle of blue Gatorade. Danny always liked it better if they were sitting when they were together, because it made him feel like they were the same size.

“So,” she said, forcing a smile on him, “you guys ready to go?”

“Next Saturday,” he said. “Good old JetBlue from JFK to Portland. Then a bus to camp.”

“So you decided on the one in Maine.”

He hadn't talked to her since they'd made it official, chosen Right Way over a couple others Richie Walker had considered for Danny and the guys.

“We did,” he said.

“What town is it in?”

“Cedarville.”

For some reason, the name made Tess laugh. Hard. “Cedarville, Maine?” she said.

Danny said, “What's so funny?”

Tess said, “Nothing.”

“Something.”

“I'll tell you later,” she said, like this was just one more inside joke that girls were in on and boys weren't.

They sat there, Danny with his head back now, staring at the clouds moving slowly across a blue, blue sky.

“You must be excited,” Tess said.

“I guess.”

“You guess?” Tess said, sounding like the old Tess. “You'll be great up there. You haven't gotten to play a real game since the season ended. I know you, Walker. The way you look at things, there's basketball games, and there's killing time.”

“That's not true.”

“Totally true.”

The next thing just came out of him, like a dumb, dumb shot you knew you shouldn't have taken the second you hoisted it up. “Where's Scott? I thought the two of you did everything together these days.”

Tess didn't say anything right away, just stared at him until she finally said in this low voice, “Wow.”

“I just meant—”

“Pretty clear to me what you meant.”

“Maybe it came out wrong.”

“You think?”

There was another silence between them then, one that felt as big as McFeeley Park. Ever since they had known each other, from the first grade on, it had been like they could finish each other's sentences. Sometimes, when they were IM-ing at night, they would type almost the exact same thing at the exact same time. But when they were IM-ing each other every night. Before something had come between them.

Or somebody.

Maybe Will was right.

Maybe he was just jealous.

“Danny,” Tess said.

She hardly ever used his first name when they were talking, even on the computer. But when she did, she meant it was time for them to get serious.

Danny waited.

“Things shouldn't be this weird between us,” she said. “I mean, it is
us,
right?”

Danny had always figured that girls were smarter than boys when it came to understanding most things, figured that the only place where boys had them beat was sports and video games.

But Tess Hewitt was smarter than all of them.

“I don't know what you mean,” Danny said, even though he knew exactly what she meant, as usual.

“Yes, you do.”

Busted.

He said, “I'm not the one who changed everything.”

“You're saying I did?”

“Maybe I am.”

“You think this is all because of Scott, don't you?”

“You mean Mr. Perfect.”

It came out more sarcastic than he intended.

Another air ball.

“What, you're the only one who's supposed to be great at something?” she said. “I must have missed that chapter in
Danny Walker's Rules for Life.
”

She looked down and said, “In a way, you're the one who stopped hanging around with me.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“Once Ty started going to St. Patrick's, all of a sudden it had to be the four of us or none of us.”

“That's bull.”

“No, it isn't.”

He spun the ball on his finger again, then slapped it away from him. “No,” he said. “Uh-uh. Stuff changed when you started spending all your free time with Mr. Perfect.”

Tess shook her head. “It wasn't like that.”

“Looked that way from where I was.”

He knew he had to get out of this. But it was too late.

“You know what I really think?” Danny said. “If it's this easy for you to stop hanging around with me and start hanging around with somebody else, then maybe we were never really that close friends in the first place.”

Tess opened her mouth and closed it, her face redder than ever now.

“Maybe it just made you feel big, hanging around with the little guy,” he said.

She kept staring at him, eyes starting to fill up now, these little pink dots suddenly appearing all over her face. Danny was afraid she was going to start crying.

And he had never seen Tess cry.

Not the time her sled hit that tree when they were sledding in the winter at Middletown Golf Club and she'd broken her wrist. Not when Prankster, her first cat, had died. Not when she'd taken that tennis ball in the face a few weeks ago in a school match Danny had forced himself to watch, even if he hadn't told Tess he was going to be there.

He wanted to stop this now, in the worst way. The first time she cried in front of him, he didn't want it to be because of him.

He just didn't know how.

Neither did Tess. Who didn't cry, as close as she'd come, who just kept staring at him as she bent over to pick up her racket, her hand shaking a little.

He sat where he was, really not wanting to stand next to her today.

She left without a word, just turned and walked straight across the court. Danny suddenly wanted to yell for her to come back, tell her he was sorry for acting like a jerk. But just as he got up to do that, he saw Scott Welles, Mr. Perfect in his own perfect tennis clothes, looking like he hadn't even played yet, not even sweating, coming from the direction of the clay courts.

Tess stopped halfway between them.

Right before Scott got to her, she quickly turned around, just for a second, the sad look still on her face. Then Scott Welles took her racket from her, and the two of them walked through the main arch at McFeeley Park, like they were walking right out of Danny's summer.

 

As soon as they were gone, Danny collected his basketball, went back out on the court. It was usually his favorite thing, having a court like this all to himself. Just not today. Today, he stood on the half-court line and bounced the ball so hard, with both hands, it was like he was trying to put a meteor-size hole in it.

Danny dribbled the ball then, like a madman, up and down the court, putting it between his legs, behind his back, using his old double-crossover move, dribbling as well—almost—with his left hand as with his right.

He did this all nonstop, going up and back like there was a coach out there yelling at him to do it, and finally pulled up at the pond end of the court and drained a twenty-footer.

Nothing but net.

Was he some kind of moron, acting like he didn't want to get to camp, get away from here?

Get away from her?

Man, all of a sudden he couldn't wait to get to Maine. Maybe this is what he needed, to get mad about something the way he had gotten mad when he first got cut from travel.

Behind him now, he heard Will say, “Just for the record, are you winning the game against the imaginary player, or losing it?”

They must have wolfed their sandwiches.

Ty said, “Maybe he's replaying the game against Baltimore. Possession by possession.”

“Or
maybe
,” Will said, “he's going one-on-one with Scooter Welles,” before he quickly covered up and added, “Please don't hurt me.”

Danny said something his dad liked to say to him. “You guys want to talk, or you want to play?”

They played. Two against one. If you scored, you got to keep the ball. The rule was—well, there really weren't any rules. The two guys could come up and trap, or play a little zone defense, one up and one back. But if one of the two of them fouled, it counted as a basket for the guy with the ball.

First guy to whatever won.

It was usually Ty.

Sometimes Will would win if he was having one of his unconscious days from outside, no matter how far Danny and Ty pushed him away from the basket. Will still wasn't all that much bigger than Danny, even if he was a lot stronger. But he had made himself into a better shooter than ever. A
great
spot-up shooter. He couldn't defend very well, move his feet fast enough to cover fast guys. He was built more like a point guard; he just didn't have point-guard skills.

But if Will was open, he was money.

“My outs,” Danny said.

“Don't we even get to warm up after our delicious Southwestern Chicken subs?” Will said.

“No.”

“Thought so.”

Will stayed inside. Ty came outside and guarded Danny tight, maybe thinking about the shot Danny had drained as they were coming up the hill.

Danny started right, crossed over between his legs and went left.

Dusted him.

Will was waiting for him now in the paint.

He hung back, daring Danny to shoot.

No way.

Danny wasn't in any mood to pull up today. He was taking this sucker to the hoop.

Bring. It. On.

He stutter-stepped now, the little move he made when he was setting himself to shoot from the outside, shoot his little step-back fade.

Will bit and moved out on him.

All Danny needed was a step.

All he ever needed was a step.

He was past Will now, going hard to the right side of the basket, planting his left foot, getting ready to attempt the kind of shot he always did when he was in there with the tall trees, one that was half scoop, half hook.

He could feel Will on his side, but behind him just enough.

Too late, bud.

Danny let the ball go, putting just the right spin on it.

Will blocked the ball so hard and so far Danny was afraid it was going to roll all the way down to the ducks.

Will, who could never get one of Danny's shots.

“Woo hooo!” Will Stoddard yelled.

The ball hadn't stopped rolling yet. Danny watched it and thought,
Well, that's not a very good omen
.

He had no idea.