Summer Ball (4 page)

I
N THE BOARDING AREA AT
J
OHN
F. K
ENNEDY
A
IRPORT THEY'D MET
another kid on his way to Right Way. By the time they finally got on the plane, about a half hour later than they were supposed to, all the Middletown guys felt as if they had a new friend.

Tarik Meminger, from the Bronx, seemed to be permanently smiling, had awesome cornrows, was wearing a Derek Jeter number 2 Yankees jersey. Tarik was about the same size as Will but looked to outweigh him by a lot.

Please don't say you're a guard
, Danny thought.

So he asked Tarik what position he played. Will sometimes said Danny was more likely to ask that than somebody's full name.

“I may be wearing my man Derek's number 2,” he said, “but I mostly play the three.”

Meaning small forward.

“Wait a second,” Tarik said to them. “You guys are the travel team from out there on Long Island, right?”

Will said, “Guilty.”

Tarik said, “I was talking to the other two, actually.” But before Will even had a chance to act hurt or say something back, Tarik quickly put his fist out for a bump and said, “I'm just playin'.”

Tarik went over and changed his seat then, so they could all sit together. On the flight to Portland, it was as if he and Will were in the championship game of trying to outtalk each other.

The ride from the Portland airport, in an old miniature bus that Will said reminded him more of a stagecoach, took about an hour and a half. The driver, Nick Pinto, said he was one of the counselors at Right Way. When Danny asked where he played ball, Nick said he was a senior guard at Stonehill College in Massachusetts.

“D-2,” Nick said.

“I thought that was the strongest of the
Mighty Ducks
movies, frankly,” Will said.

“Oh, yeah,” Tarik said. “The one where the Iceland coach looked like he belonged in
Terminator.
And then the cute girl went into the goal at the end.”

“I still love her,” Will said.

Tarik said, “Makes that Lindsay Lohan look like a boy.”

Nick waited until they stopped. “Anyway,” he said, “D-2 is Division II. I could have gone to a couple of Division-I schools, but I didn't want to spend four years of college sitting next to the team manager.”

When he had picked them up at baggage claim, carrying a Right Way sign, Danny had noticed that Nick wasn't all that much bigger than Will and Ty. Now Danny just asked him how tall he was, flat out.

He always wanted to know.

“How tall do you think I am?” Nick said.

“Five-eight.”

“Nailed it, dude,” he said.

“It's a gift,” Danny said.

It seemed like they were only on the highway for about ten minutes before they started taking back roads up to Cedarville, with everybody in the red bus getting airborne again, Nick included, every time they hit a bump. Danny imagined a fight between the bumps and their seat belts that the seat belts were losing.

“You guys are from that travel team, right?” Nick said.

“Them, not me,” Tarik said. “The only travel games I play are ones you can get to on the 4 train.”

“I think I saw some of the final game on TV,” Nick said to Danny. “You were pretty awesome.”

Danny said, “Guess so.”

“Well, get ready to take it to the next level,” Nick said.

Danny found himself wondering if he was going to run into anybody this summer who didn't want him to take things to the next level.

“Because the deal is, just about everybody is awesome at Right Way.” Then Nick told them to sit back and enjoy the ride. Will asked if he really thought that was going to be possible without shock absorbers.

“Feel like I still
am
on the 4 train,” Tarik said.

They'd occasionally pass through another small town, but mostly it seemed as if they were just taking a long ride deeper and deeper into the woods. Tarik said at one point, “Oh, this is where all the trees are.”

Eventually the bus passed underneath a huge arch, like the one at the entrance to McFeeley, with
RIGHT WAY BASKETBALL CAMP
in white letters on the wooden beam across the top. Now they bumped more than ever up a narrow dirt road, the bus slowing to a crawl as the hill got steeper.

Finally the road leveled off, though, and they were inside Right Way. Danny immediately felt as if they were in some little village that somebody had carved out of a forest. There was a lake in the distance that looked as big and wide as the ocean.

And that wasn't the best part.

The best part was that there seemed to be basketball courts everywhere.

As if basketball had them completely surrounded.

“Okay,” he said to the other guys when they'd climbed out of the bus. “This might work.”

There was another bus, a full-size yellow bus, unloading kids in another part of the parking lot off to their right. Then another yellow bus came in right behind them. In a car lot way off to their left, Danny could see kids pulling duffel bags out of station wagons and SUVs. These must have been kids who lived close enough for their parents to drive them to Cedarville. He noticed license plates from Massachusetts and Connecticut and Maine, one Vermont, one New York.

Counselor types were everywhere, checking names off their lists, herding kids and parents into a grassy area in the middle of the courts. Beyond the courts, down near the lake, Danny could see a row of bunkhouses that reminded him of log cabins and what had to be the main gymnasium.

Nick said that some kids had come up a day early, on Friday, and that most of the other counselors had all been here for three or four days, getting the place ready. He said most of the college and high school coaches would be arriving the next day. They usually waited until the last minute to show up. It was different for all of them, Nick explained, depending on what kind of arrangement they had with the camp. He said some stayed for two weeks, some would be there the whole time.

“A few of the older college coaches are retired and don't have much to do anymore,” Nick said. “So they treat this like a paid vacation in Maine where they can still do their favorite thing.”

“What's that?” Danny said.

“Yell at basketball players,” he said.

Nick said he might have time to give them a quick tour, but just then they heard someone with a bullhorn welcoming them to Right Way, introducing himself in a squawky voice as Jeff LeBow, the camp director.

“As you can all see,” he said, walking through the crowd of people scattered on the grass, “I am
not
Josh Cameron. But he did pass me the ball occasionally when we were in the same backcourt at UConn.”

He had a big bald head, and Danny could already see beads of sweat popping up on it in the afternoon sun.

“I had four years of feeling like the most popular player in college basketball,” Jeff said. “Because no matter who we were playing, the other team's guards were always fighting over which one could get to guard me.”

That got a pretty good laugh.

Tarik said, “Bald dude gets off a got-em.”

“Got-em?” Will said.

“Somebody says something funny back home, we just look at each other and say ‘got 'em.'”

“Got it,” Will said.

“Now, Josh is going to show up before the end of this session,” Jeff continued. “And by the time he does, I promise every single one of you will be a better basketball player than you are right now.”

Then he said it was time to get everybody settled into the bunkhouse they'd be living in for the next month and that he was going to call out their names alphabetically. After each name he'd call out the name of an arena: Boston Garden, Madison Square Garden, Staples Center, Pauley Pavilion, Gampel Pavilion. Like that. Nick had informed them in the bus that the bunkhouses for the teenagers were named after NBA arenas. The ones with college names were for the younger kids.

Tarik was assigned to Boston Garden. So were Ty and Will, as expected. Danny and Will and Ty were all supposed to be rooming together—Richie Walker had said he'd worked it out with Josh Cameron's people beforehand.

“You want us to wait for you?” Ty said.

“Nah,” Danny said, “you don't have to wait for the Ws to get called. Go start unpacking your stuff. I'll be down there in a few minutes.”

By now he was used to being in the front of every line, front row of every team picture and one of the last names to be called.

So he waited in the grass while all the other names were called.

Waited until he was the last kid out there.

Waited until he realized his name wasn't going to be called.

 

When it was just the two of them left, Danny went over and introduced himself to Mr. LeBow, who immediately said, “Of course, you're Danny Walker! Richie's boy, right?”

“Guilty.”

“Well, nice to meet you, man,” he said. “I've heard a lot about you.” Then he told Danny to walk with him to the main building and they'd find out where he was supposed to be living for the next month.

“I think I'm sort of supposed to be at Boston Garden,” Danny said.

“Why's that?”

“My dad said he talked to somebody so that me and my friends could all room together.”

“Oh.”

Now that didn't sound good.

“See, the thing is, nobody talked to
me
,” Jeff LeBow said. “We usually like to mix everybody up as a way of enhancing the whole camp experience.”

Danny said, “But my friends are together.”

“Luck of the draw, pal.”

They walked into a tiny office, where Jeff tossed his walkie-talkie on the couch and sat down in front of his laptop. He started furiously punching away at the keys, getting one new screen after another, until he said, “Oh.”

Still not sounding good.

“We've already got a Walker over at Boston Garden,” he said. “A
Darren
Walker. From Philadelphia. Somehow the computer must have gotten confused, the way computers do sometimes, and bumped you right out of there.” He picked up the phone on his desk, punched a couple of numbers, told whoever answered what the deal was.

Then he didn't say anything for what seemed like an hour to Danny. Finally, he said, “Okay, don't do anything. Leave everybody where they are for now, and I'll see what I can do at this end.”

They were full up at Boston Garden, he said. Every bed. Like a sellout crowd, he said.

“Mr. LeBow,” Danny said, “are you saying that I'm not going to be with my friends the whole time I'm here?”

“No, no, no,” he said. “We've just got a thousand first-day things going on right now, is all. So just for the time being, we're going to have to stick you someplace else.”

He dialed another number.

Staples Center was full up, too.

And Madison Square Garden.

The whole time they were sitting there, Danny heard voices crackling through on the walkie-talkie. People asking Jeff if he was there. Or saying “please come in, Jeff.” One time Danny even heard “Jeff, can you read me?”

Jeff finally just pointed at the walkie-talkie, shook his head and said to Danny, “So it begins.”

Then he said, “Do you by any chance have a name for the person your dad talked to? Because to be honest with you, Danny, we usually don't make those sorts of exceptions, even if the kid is the son of an NBA player.”

“If my dad says he did something, he did it,” Danny said.

Jeff smiled, but it was the kind of smile you got from adults when they didn't want to be having a particular conversation anymore.

Like,
Even if you're right, I win. I'm older
.

“I'm sure he did, and the request just got lost in the shuffle,” he said. “Let me work on it, okay? My problem is that a lot of the kids, from all the bunkhouses, are scattered all over the grounds right now. And a lot of the kids in that particular house got in yesterday, which means they're probably unpacked and settled in.”

He went back to his computer, punched away at the keyboard again. “Well, here's some good news at least.”

I could use some right about now
, Danny thought.

Jeff said, “We've got a couple of extra beds at Gampel. We'll put you there for tonight.”

“Gampel?”

“Gampel Pavilion,” Jeff LeBow said. “Named after the arena on the UConn campus.”

“I know what it is,” Danny said. “But the college bunks are for the eleven-and twelve-year-olds, right?”