Airball (2 page)

People who frequently turn out to be me.

Coach clapped his hands. “Let's show a little hustle.” He swung around and saw me standing at the front of the line. He stopped mid-clap. “You going first, Nickel?”

I swallowed. “Well, no, I just—”

“Sure he is, Coach,” said Bragger. “He's got a great shot—Brett McGrew's famous spinning layup.”

“
Brag
-ger.” I glared at him.

Coach chewed on his whistle. “Spinning layup, huh?” He glanced at Mrs. Zimmer, then turned back to me and narrowed his eyes. “Think you can pull it off?”

“Well, no, I—”

“Sure he can, Coach.” Bragger grinned at him, then leaned toward me. “It'll be okay, Kirby,” he whispered. “You've been practicing this layup since you were born.”

“But I never got it right.”

“Exactly. But now your butt's on the line. You
got
to make this shot. You'll have all that adrenaline pumping through your veins.” He kneaded my shoulders. “Trust the adrenaline, Kirby.”

Coach blew his whistle. “You two can do therapy on your own time,” he snarled. “I want to see this spinning layup.” He leaned forward till his nose practically touched mine. His hot breath whiffed out onto my upper lip. “And don't embarrass me.” He shoved a basketball into my gut.

I nodded and swallowed.

Coach licked his teeth. The other players crowded around. Mrs. Zimmer watched, her pen poised over her notebook.

“Dribble, Kirby,” Bragger whispered.

Dribble.
Right.

I thumped the ball in front of me and started running. At least, I think I was running. I could see one foot, then the other, shoot out in front of me. I could see the lines on the floor disappear behind me. I could hear the ball bouncing—
thonk, thonk, thonk
—perilously close to the toe of my right sneaker as my shoes
thwapp
ed against the wood.

Thonk.

Thwap.

Thonk.

Thwap.

With each step I knew I'd kick it. Kick it out of bounds and into the bleachers.

But I didn't. I kept dribbling. Dribbling and dribbling and dribbling, for miles it seemed, until I couldn't feel my arm, couldn't feel my hand pumping up and down, couldn't feel the nubby roughness of the ball.

“Shoot, Kirby!”

Shoot.
Right.

I pulled the ball up, took my final step, and leaped.

“There he goes.” Bragger's voice echoed through the rafters. “Brett McGrew's famous spinning layup.”

I spun, all right. Up and around and around again. I kept on spinning till my legs and feet were practically braided together. Then gravity kicked in, and down I came.

Splat.

Belly first. The ball looped out of bounds. I lay on the cold, polished wood, breathing shoe grit and floor wax.

Coach blew his whistle.

I peeled my cheek off the floor. I could see Mrs. Zimmer scribbling in her black book.

Mr. Dobbs shook his head. He unfolded himself from his seat and ambled across the gym toward the lobby.

“I'm not sure Brett McGrew himself could help this bunch,” he muttered as the door clanked shut behind him.

Three

Folks around here claim Brett McGrew could dribble before he could walk and could make a jump shot by the time he reached kindergarten. They say he got the nickname “Brett McNet” when he sank fifty-seven three-pointers in a row one morning during ninth-grade P.E. They say he grew to be six feet tall drinking warm milk straight from the cows on his daddy's dairy farm, then grew another nine inches doing pull-ups on the hay hook in the barn.

I don't know if all that's true. But I do know Brett McGrew never got the wind knocked out of him running in for an uncontested layup.

“You didn't look half bad going up,” Bragger said. “Gotta work on that dismount, though.”

We shuffled through a little whirlpool of brown leaves on the sidewalk. School had just let out, and Bragger and I were headed over to the Double Dribble Cafe for a Coke. I still had the permission slip tucked in my sock. The neatly stapled corner was rubbing a sore spot on my ankle.

I should've pulled it out right then. Pulled it out and let it blow away in the wind. Blow away with the leaves and the dust, down the street, past the grain elevator, and out of my life.

That would've been the smart thing.

Of course, that would've been littering, too, which, according to Grandma, is a sign of weak character, right up there with lying, cussing, and goaltending.

We reached the Double Dribble. Bragger swung the door open. The little bell jangled against the glass, and the aroma of warm onions and dead french fries billowed out at us. A table of farmers, in for their afternoon coffee, glanced up, saw we weren't worth stopping their jawing and guffawing for, and went back to their discussion of Lloyd Metcalf's fancy new combine.

Mrs. Snodgrass saw us, too, and started filling two glasses with ice and Coke. Bragger headed straight for the counter.

I squatted down by the glass case under the cash register. Inside were trading cards and pencils and little pennants that said, “I ate at the Double Dribble Cafe in Stuckey, Kansas, home of Brett McGrew.” The T-shirts said that, too. So did the menus, and if you wanted to keep your menu, Mrs. Snodgrass would sell it to you for three dollars.

There was only one thing Mrs. Snodgrass wouldn't sell, and I knew, because I'd asked so many times she wouldn't answer anymore. It was one particular menu lying in tissue paper in the center of the top shelf. It was yellowed and dog-eared and had a big ketchup stain down one side.

But that wasn't why she wouldn't sell it.

She wouldn't sell it because on the other side, right over S
IDE
O
RDERS
, was Brett McGrew's big, scrawling autograph:

To Mrs. Snodgrass, who makes the best

biscuits and gravy on the planet.

Brett “McNet” McGrew #5

The pen he wrote it with was lying in the tissue, too. Medium blue ballpoint. Brett McGrew's teeth marks on the cap.

I squinted at that menu, trying to find some resemblance between Brett McGrew's looping, confident signature and my own scratchy handwriting.

Mrs. Snodgrass thumped me on the head. “You're fogging up the glass again, Kirby.” Her Brillo-pad voice rattled in her chest. “Go on and drink your Coke. You got better stuff than that at home.”

She was right. I did. I had cards and mugs and posters and team schedules and a gym towel Eddie Poggemeyer swore his uncle caught during the last game of the Final Four when Brett McGrew flung it into the crowd after winning the NCAA Championship. Cost me sixteen bucks and a McNet Rookie Year NBA Frisbee, but it was worth it. It had Brett McGrew's dried sweat all over it.

I stood up and threaded my way through the tables to the counter. I slid onto the stool next to Bragger's. He'd already sucked his glass empty and was chewing on the ice.

“Grandma's going to faint when you tell her you're going out for basketball,” he said. “She'll sign your permission slip first, of course. Then she'll pass out cold.”

Yep. I could see it: Grandma, unconscious with joy.

I peeled the paper from one end of my straw. “Do me a favor, okay?” I blew on the straw. The paper shot off the end, flipped through the air, and landed in Bragger's glass. “Don't make a big deal out of it when we get to my house.”

Bragger fished the paper out of his ice. “Why?”

Why? Because sometimes the things you want just aren't possible, that's why. Sometimes they're not even good for you. Sometimes thinking about what
might
be, what's potentially possible in some far-off future, is better than finding out the thing you want most in the world doesn't want you back.

But that's not what I told Bragger. What I told Bragger was, “No reason. It's just, you know, I'm not exactly basketball material, as my amazing belly flop this morning demonstrated.”

Bragger shrugged. “Basketball players eat the floor all the time. On purpose, if they think they can get a charging foul called. You know what Coach says: ‘You don't get floor burns, you're not playing hard enough.'” He gave me a sideways grin. “He's going to love you.”

“Thanks.” I flipped ice at him.

But my heart wasn't in it.

It was funny. I'd been keeping this same secret for nearly thirteen years. And for most of that time, it had seemed like an ordinary part of my life. Like something that occasionally wanted to burst out, but for the most part stayed right where it belonged: buried inside my gut.

But now, today, ever since Coach had uttered those two fateful words—“Brett McGrew”—the stress had been building to the point where I thought it was going to start popping through my skin. Like water shooting through rust holes in a pipe.

I sucked in a long sip of Coke. And swallowed. “There's something else,” I said.

Bragger nodded. “I figured.”

“There's also”—I took a deep breath—“my father.”

Bragger looked at me. “Your
father?
”

His voice echoed through the Double Dribble, drowning out the country-and-western station blaring from the radio propped up on the Coke machine. The coffee drinkers stopped their jawing and guffawing. Mrs. Snodgrass came to a dead halt with one hand on the coffeepot and the other halfway in the pie case. They all stared at us for one petrifying moment, then shook their heads over the way kids these days act in public, and turned back to their own business.

I jabbed Bragger with my elbow. “Keep your voice down,” I hissed. “I'd rather not have my family's personal business spread across three counties by supper time.”

“Family business?” Bragger shook his head, obviously confused. But he did lower his voice. “What family business? I don't mean to be harsh, Kirb, but your family consists of you and Grandma. That's it. You don't have a father.”

“Everyone has a father.”

“Technically, yeah. But—and again, I don't mean to be harsh—he died. Before you were born. You never even met him. Nobody did. Not even Grandma.”

“Yes, she did.”

“She did?” He leaned closer, his eyes wide. “She told you?”

“No. She didn't have to. I know she met him because my father”—I glanced around to see if Mrs. Snodgrass was listening, but she was still busy filling the pie case—“because my father”—I sneaked a look at the coffee drinkers, who were still in deep discussion over the power seat on Lloyd Metcalf's combine—“because my father”—I lowered my voice to barely a whisper—“is Brett McGrew.”

There. I'd said it. It could stop popping through my skin.

“Brett McGrew?” Bragger blinked. Then nodded. “Good one, Kirb.” He thumped me in the arm. “You had me going there.”

“I'm not kidding.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“Think about it,” I said. “My middle name is Michael.”

“So?”

“So Brett McGrew's middle name is Michael.”

Bragger looked at me. “Duncan Webber's middle name is Michael. My dad's middle name is Michael. Heck, Coach's
first
name is Michael. Everybody's named Michael. And guess what? Brett McGrew is not their father.”

“No,” I said. “He's not. But he
is
mine.” I sucked up the rest of my Coke and thumped the glass down on the counter. “And I can prove it.”

Four

It was starting to get dark by the time we reached my yard, but the wind hadn't died down. It whistled through the tall elms that circled the big, old two-story house Grandma and I lived in and pelted Bragger and me with dust and leaves.

We clomped up the steps to the back porch. I swung the door open. The wind caught hold and about jerked it away from me. I held on with both hands as Bragger and I squeezed inside, then hauled it shut and latched it. The wind rattled against the glass like it wasn't finished with us yet. Like it was trying to beat its way inside to go another round.

We draped our jackets over the mound of old coats hanging on hooks beside the upright freezer, then tromped into the house.

Grandma was banging around, fixing supper. She tugged on the oven door. It screeched open, and a puff of smoke belched out. The smoke wrapped around her, the same color as her hair, so that for a second I couldn't see her head, only a cloud of smoke with skinny pants poking out the bottom.

Grandma waved the smoke away with a dish towel. Bragger and I headed straight for the back staircase.

“I'm home,” I said as we barreled up the steps.

“Nice to see you, too,” she hollered after us. “Don't get too involved in anything. Supper'll be ready soon.”

“We won't,” I hollered back.

Bragger and I bounded into my room and dumped our backpacks on my bottom bunk.

“Be quiet,” I said. “And take your shoes off.”

Bragger raised his eyebrows, but he didn't say anything.

We kicked our shoes under my bed and crept sock-footed across the big, square second-floor hall into my mother's old room. I eased the door shut behind us and waited till I heard the soft click of the latch before I flipped the light switch. Wicker furniture gleamed clean and white under the overhead light.

I stood there for a minute and took it in. My mother's hats hanging on the wooden rack above her antique iron bed. Her bulletin board bursting with music awards. Her cassette tapes lined up in a neat row beside a clunky old stereo that was invented before they invented CDs.

I ran my sock feet through the thick pink rug. With nobody actually living here, you'd think the room would be dusty and dim. But Grandma vacuumed and polished once a week. It was the only room she never made me help clean.