Boot Camp (7 page)

“What do you mean by that?” he demanded.

“I watched you play yesterday.”

“Girl, you probably couldn't keep your eyes off me,” Jamal said with a smile.

“Yeah, must be nice to have a fantasy life,” Kia said, and everybody started to laugh. “I figure you don't know what a pass is because I didn't see you make one.”

“Shut up, you—”

“What's happening here?” Jerome asked as he walked over.

Everybody shut up. Nobody wanted to answer.

“We were just talking,” Jamal said.

“Pretty loud talking,” Jerome said.

“We were just trying to figure out how we can work as a team,” Kia said.

JYD shot us a big smile. “Aaahhh…now that's the challenge. Do you want to know what the secret is?”

We all nodded our heads.

“Come closer,” he said as he lowered his voice and motioned for us to come closer.

We all surrounded him, anxious to hear the secret.

“If I told you how to do it,” he whispered, “then it wouldn't be a secret anymore. You gotta figure it out for yourselves.”

“Hurry up!” Kia screamed. “Run harder!”

Jamal was the last relay runner—last for our team and the last period. Some of the other teams had already finished, but there were still six or seven others running. Jamal was running down the gym, threading the ball through his legs with each step—that was how everybody had to move for this drill. He was gaining on the three closest teams. He was actually pretty good. I probably wouldn't say that to him, and I
definitely
wouldn't say that to Kia.

Kia and Jamal had started the camp not liking each other and it was going to affect our team. As the day progressed, we finished last, or close to last in every event. I think they both wanted
to blame the other for our failures. I didn't think either was responsible. Every team had a couple of weak links. Neither Kia nor Jamal were one of those links.

Despite being last, Jamal wasn't giving up. I had to hand it to him. He was gaining, getting closer and closer. As he touched the wall and started back, I could see that he'd made the turn before three other teams. If he could pass just one more team, we could avoid having to do push-ups. I wanted to yell out encouragement, but I knew that would annoy Kia and I didn't want to upset her—well, not right now.

Jamal was digging deeper and deeper, moving faster and faster, getting closer and closer and—the ball bounced against his leg and skittered away from him!

“Ugggg!” Kia yelled at the top of her lungs.

I looked up. Jamal was just standing there, frozen, as still as a statue. Why wasn't he chasing after the ball? The first teams finished—to cheers and screams—while the last place teams all raced past Jamal. Slowly he started to move— at least he was moving now. He walked…no, he sauntered across the floor to where his ball had come to rest against the wall. He stopped over
top of it, drew back his foot, and then he kicked it the length of the gym! It flew through the air and smashed against the far wall with a thunderous crash.

The cheering stopped. The conversation stopped. The only sound in the gym was the ball as it bounced back across the floor. He picked up the ball, and then he began dribbling it— slowly—toward where we all stood. Every eye was on him, including the coaches. Their mouths were wide open, as if they couldn't believe what he had just done.

He handed the ball to the first kid in our line, and then he walked to the back.

Sergeant Push-Up walked to the front of the teams. “Five push-ups for the seventh place team,” he said, pointing at the group right beside us. “Ten for eighth place. Fifteen for the ninth place team, and finally, thirty push-ups for the last place team,” he said, pointing right at us.

“Thirty?” Kia questioned. “It's supposed to be twenty?”

“Did I say, thirty?” Sergeant Push-up asked. “I should have said
thirty-five
.”

“Thirty-five?” Kia gasped.

“Twenty for finishing last, plus ten for kicking
the ball and finally, another five for questioning what I just said.”

“That's not fair!” Jamal protested.

“Do you want to make it forty?” Sergeant Push-up asked.

“You can make it fifty if you want,” Jamal said defiantly.

“Fifty it is!”

Before Jamal could say anything else, Jerome held up his hands. “Time-out!” he yelled. “Everybody who has push-ups to do, finish them off, and then go get a drink and get ready to go home…everybody except this team,” he said, pointing at us.

I stood there with my teammates and waited as everybody else did their push-ups and walked away. I wanted to walk away—heck, I wanted the floor to just swallow me up.

“Sergeant Kevin, Sergeant Josh and Johnnie, could you leave as well, and make sure nobody enters the gym. We need some privacy,” Jerome said. The coaches all walked away.

“Everybody sit down,” Jerome said.

We all slumped to the floor. We waited quietly while everybody else gathered up their things from the bleachers and headed out to the foyer.

I turned around. Jamal was still standing, his arms folded across his chest, a scowl plastered across his face. Finally he sat down. I figured that was his way of doing what he was told but being defiant at the same time.

I leaned back, looked up, way up, to Jerome standing over top of us. From that angle he looked like the tallest man in the world, and the tallest man in the world didn't look too happy. What was he going to say to us?

“I thought you'd like a little privacy while you do your push-ups,” he said.

He turned and started to walk away. “That's fifty,” he said. “Unless you want to go for fiftyfive?”

“No, fifty is fine!” I exclaimed. I spun around and dropped into position and started doing the push-ups.

As I started pumping, I saw Kia do the same and then the other kids on the team—everybody except Jamal. He hadn't moved. The scowl was still planted firmly on his face.

“I'm not going to do no push-ups,” Jamal snarled.

“Why not?” Jerome asked.

“It's not
my
fault we finished last.”

“You finished last as a team, so you take your punishment as a team.”

“Well, it wasn't any of us who fumbled the ball!” Kia snapped as she paused between push-ups.

“The only reason I fumbled it was because you were all so slow you put me in a big hole,” he said, pointing his finger at the rest of us, “and I had to try to go too fast to make up for it.”

“And does that explain why you kicked it afterward?” she demanded.

“I kicked it because—”

“Enough!” Jerome said, breaking Jamal off mid-sentence. “From both of you.” He took a deep breath. “You don't have to do fifty push-ups.”

“We don't?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Now you have to do fiftyfive push-ups.”

“What?” I gasped.

“Yeah, five more for fighting amongst yourselves. There is nothing worse than members of a team fighting with each other.”

“But…but…,” I stammered.

“What if we don't do them?” Jamal asked.

“You don't do ‘em and your team can't play in the games tomorrow.”

“We're playing games?” Jamal asked.

“All afternoon,” Jerome said. “But you can't play ball if you don't finish your push-ups.”

Obviously that got his attention. I knew he didn't like doing drills. He came here to play ball.

“What's the point?” Jamal asked. “We're just going to lose anyway.”

“Whether you think you're going to win or lose, you're probably right,” Jerome said.

“What is that supposed to mean?” Jamal asked.

“It means,” Kia said, fielding the question, “that if you figure you're going to lose, you are going to lose. If you believe you're going to win, you probably will win.”

“Exactly!” Jerome said.

Kia smiled. Jamal scowled. Boy, could that kid ever scowl.

“You have to improve your
attitude
if you hope to increase your
altitude
,” Jerome said.

Jamal dropped the scowl and looked confused. I was confused as well. I turned to Kia, expecting an answer. She looked stunned too.

“Altitude,” Jerome said, answering the confused looks on our faces, “is how high you fly. You need to have a good attitude if you want to fly high. You have to believe.”

“I believe,” Jamal said.

“You do?” a couple of kids asked in unison. I was shocked as well.

He nodded his head. “I believe we have no chance of winning a game because we couldn't win any of the relay races.”

“But a game is different,” Kia said.

“How's that?” Jamal asked. “Didn't the relays involve passing and dribbling and shooting?”

“Yeah,” she said.

“And aren't those the things that you do in a game…at least the things
I
do in a game,” Jamal added.

I had to admit he had a point—a point so good even Kia didn't have a snappy comeback.

“So,” Jamal continued, “what's the point in doing the push-ups just so we can play a bunch of games we can't win anyway?”

Jerome didn't answer right away. That surprised me. I expected him to tell us we were as good as anybody else and had just as much of a chance to win and…but that wouldn't have been the truth…and I knew Jerome wasn't going to lie to us.

Finally he spoke. “The push-ups don't have anything to do with anything else. You got to do
those because that's just the way it is. Second, I think your team has enough talent it could win…if everybody worked together and played as a team.”

Like that was going to happen, I thought, but didn't say. Even if we had enough talent there was no way we were going to work as a team.

“And third, the coaches and I were talking. We're going to be making some slight adjustments to the teams.”

“You're going to be changing the teams?” Jamal asked.

“Adjusting them to make sure they're balanced and competitive,” Jerome explained.

“Now we're talking,” Jamal said. “Which team am I going to be on?”

“You're not going to be on any team if you don't finish your push-ups…that is, if you can handle them.”

“I can handle them,” Jamal said. “I could do a
hundred
and fifty-five push-ups.”

“I think you already have,” Jerome said and laughed.

He was probably right. If you totaled all the push-ups we'd already done it would have been that many.

“Just do fifty-five more.” He turned to me. “Nick, how many of those fifty-five have you already done?”

“Eleven.”

“Not bad. Nick's partway there. Anybody think they can get to fifty-five before him?”

Jamal spun around into position and started to do push-ups.

We were all on the floor, stretching and warming up to music. Jerome was working the soundboard. He started to perform in front of us like he was in concert. He'd mentioned last night that it still made him nervous being up in front of people. I couldn't get over the fact that he might be nervous in front of a bunch of kids. He played ball in front of tens of thousands of people and millions if you count the people watching on TV. Then again, I'd played ball in front of hundreds of people and that didn't make me nearly as nervous as making a speech in front of my class. I guess it
was
different. Either way, though, he didn't seem nervous—just good. Maybe when he was through being in the NBA he could be a DJ or rapper.

He was putting on a pretty good show. I was surprised by just how good Jerome was. I guess because I saw him as a basketball player, I hadn't thought of him as being able to rap.

“Not bad,” Sergeant Push-up said as he looked down at Kia and me sitting on the floor.

“I think he's pretty good,” I said.