Elliot Allagash (3 page)

Within three weeks of steady after-school playing I had led my Sacramento Kings to a world championship. By that time, Derrick
Phelps had broken every important record in the history of the NBA. He finished the season averaging eighty points a game. And he never missed a single minute of action, no matter how obviously fatigued his body became.

Every night while lying in bed, I imagined myself inside the game, holding a press conference as coach of my electronic Sacramento Kings.

“Where’d you discover this Derrick kid? He’s the next Michael Jordan!”

“He’s
better
than Jordan,” I’d say. “He’s doing things in this league that have never been done before. Things that have never been dreamed about.”

“Do you have any problems with his shot selection? Last night he attempted thirty-seven three-pointers, including nine from behind the half-court line. Isn’t that the mark of a selfish player?”

“You listen to me,” I’d say, pointing angrily at the imaginary reporter. “Phelps has brought more fans to this league than any player in its history. If he wants to shoot sixty-footers, well, I think he’s
earned
it.”

When I found Derrick Phelps, he was an inexperienced player with no respect in the league, and within one season, I’d transformed him into the most dominant superstar the sport had ever known. He was my greatest achievement.

I never told Elliot about any of this, but I think he would have understood. Of course, Elliot never played any video games himself. He didn’t have to.

• • •

I knew Elliot’s proposal was insane. Popularity wasn’t something that could be bought, like a pair of sneakers. It took
years
to acquire, or if you were Jessica, one physically intense summer. It was fun to imagine being popular: sitting wherever I wanted at lunch, playing two-player video games, humming without fear of violence. But those were just fantasies and my time at Glendale had taught me not to dwell on them.

Besides, my situation wasn’t nearly as dire as Elliot had suggested. Sure I wasn’t popular in the traditional sense, but people still respected me. In fact, I had just been invited to the most important social event of the year: Lance’s birthday party. The invitation had come a few days late and I had spent a whole weekend in panic mode, convinced I was one of the few people he’d left out. But eventually my mother had presented me with the glossy red card, signed by Lance himself. How bad could things be? I had been “cordially invited” to “Lance Cooper’s Slammin’ Swim Party.” As an afterthought, maybe. But who cared? Lance
wanted
me there. And that was honestly enough for me.

I dreaded the event itself, of course. I hadn’t appeared in front of my classmates in a bathing suit since the seventh-grade swim test. And the memory of that event was so terrifying it literally caused my face to sweat. On the morning of the party, I would almost definitely feign illness to avoid having to go. But that was beside the point. Lying awake in bed, with Lance Cooper’s invitation propped against my windowsill, I felt a contentment I hadn’t known in months. It was the first party I’d been invited to since enrolling at Glendale. And who knew? Maybe my life was starting to turn around.

I was about to fall asleep when an unmistakable odor drifted into my bedroom. My mother was baking something—something delicious. I instinctively hopped out of bed and groped my way down the darkened hall. It wasn’t until I saw the kitchen clock that I realized something was amiss. My mother
never
baked this late at night.

The kitchen was completely dark except for the faint, yellow glow of the oven light. I looked around for my mother, but she had gone into her bedroom to wait out the baking process. I peered into the oven incredulously. It didn’t make any sense: My mother was making cookies—an entire batch of peanut butter cookies—and I hadn’t been informed. I was about to knock on her door and confront her when I caught sight of a tin box on the counter. My mother had lined it with wax paper and attached a thank-you card to the lid. It was addressed to Mrs. Cooper.

Lance’s mom.

I flipped open the card.

I slunk back to my room, queasy with shame. My father had seemed so thrilled when I told him about Lance’s party at dinner. I wondered if he knew about my mother’s pathetic intervention—and the preconditions she had agreed to. I could picture Lance arguing
with his mom for three long days before reluctantly signing my invitation. I could picture him eating the cookies with his friends, explaining their sad origin.

It was eleven at night, way past any reasonable kid’s bedtime, but somehow I knew that Elliot would be up. I locked my door for the first time I could remember and quietly looked up his number in the directory.

“Okay,” I said. “When can we start?”

Elliot laughed.

“Immediately.”

• • •

“So, Vlad, you never played in the National Basketball Association?”

“Well…no. Not officially. But I practiced with the Pacers one summer, and I played with NBA players in the CBA.”

Elliot rolled his eyes.

“You’ll have to do,” he said.

The basketball player stared down at Elliot with huge, unblinking eyes. Vlad was probably the tallest person I had ever met and his limbs were frighteningly muscular. But he spoke with the quiet nervousness of a boy introducing himself on his first day of school. He dribbled his ball against the hard wood and the echo reverberated all around us. Elliot had rented out an entire YMCA and it was completely empty except for me, Elliot, and Vlad.

Elliot hadn’t told me where we were going after school; he’d just pushed me into the back of his limo. I asked him a few questions
on the ride over, but he had been too absorbed in phone calls to respond. When we got to the Y, he tossed me a bag of gym clothes—but otherwise he ignored me.

He was wearing a double-breasted gray suit with a blue handkerchief poking neatly out of one of the pockets.

“When does the coach select his roster?” he asked.

I shrugged.

He took out his cell phone and pressed a single button.

“Find out the exact date of Glendale’s eighth-grade basketball tryouts,” he told somebody. He closed the phone and put it back in his pocket.

“Well?” he said. “What are we waiting for?”

For the next hour or so, Vlad subjected me to a variety of basketball drills to assess my “skill level.” The first time I dribbled the ball—hurling it against the floor with two shaky hands—he gasped. He tried his best to remain professional, offering me polite encouragement after every botched layup, but I could sense the horror on his face. I’d later find out that Elliot was paying Vlad based entirely on my performance. If I failed to make the eighth-grade basketball team, he would forfeit a staggering amount of money.

After my second coughing fit, Vlad cut the drills short and walked me over to the bleachers. Elliot was engrossed in some kind of military history book—naval, from the looks of it—and it took us a few tries to get his attention.

“Well, how is he?” Elliot asked.

“He’s not bad,” Vlad said, forcing a smile. “He’s got heart.”

Elliot snapped his book shut and pointed his tiny index finger at Vlad’s face.

“Don’t bullshit me!” he shouted.

He waited a few moments for the echo to subside. Then he continued in quiet, measured tones.

“This isn’t about ‘feelings,’ Vlad. This isn’t about ‘self-esteem.’ This is about victory. I’m
paying
you for victory. Now give it to me straight: Can you train him to make the team? Or will I have to find somebody who can?”

Vlad sat down on the bleachers.

“Okay,” he said. “To be honest? It’s not going to be easy. This kid looks like he’s never played the game before, or even
seen
it played. And it’s not just his skill level. He’s a total mess, physically. For a fourteen-year-old, his lung capacity is
really
poor. And his gait…the way he runs…it’s crazy. When he first ran onto the court, I thought he was making some kind of joke. But he wasn’t. That’s actually how he runs.”

Elliot nodded.

“Okay,” he said. “So what’s it going to take?”

Vlad looked up at the rafters and let loose a long sigh.

“I’d say a
minimum
of two hours a day. Plus strength and conditioning. But that would just be for fundamentals. Without other players to scrimmage with, he’s not going to have a real sense of how the game is played.”

“Fine, we’ll get some other players.”

“How are you going to do
that?
I mean, you can’t just get an entire squad of—”

Elliot’s eyes narrowed.

“Here’s a thought,” he said.
“You
stop telling
me
what I can and cannot do. Did someone tell you about my situation? Who I am, how I operate, that sort of thing?”

Vlad nodded.

“Okay,” Elliot said. “Okay.”

He closed his eyes and massaged his temples.

“I’m sorry for yelling before,” he said. “I’m in a foul, black mood.”

He patted Vlad on his giant shoulder.

“Good work today.”

He flicked open his cell phone and whispered something into the receiver. A few seconds later, the gym doors opened and some frustrated middle-aged regulars filed onto the court.

“The court is now open to the public,” Elliot announced, wearily buttoning his long, black overcoat.

One of them started to ask him who he was and how he had managed to book their usual time slot, but his friends quieted him down. They sensed, somehow, what a mistake it would be to question Elliot.

• • •

“Tell them that you’ve been practicing,” Elliot said. “Tell them you’ve been working hard all summer and you want to join in their game.”

It was a Friday afternoon and Lance had organized his usual three-on-three game in John Jay Park. Most of the boys were clustering by the court in the hope that they’d get picked this week.
The girls were sitting on the bleachers eating French fries and pretending not to watch.

“What are you waiting for?” Elliot demanded. “Do as I say!”

I explained how hard it was to get one of the six slots, how even the best athletes in the eighth grade had to kiss up to Lance all week to be considered. There’s no way they’d select me, I told him, and even if they did, the game would be an embarrassment. I’d definitely made progress in my first five weeks of training: I finally understood what a double dribble was, and, judging from how much dessert my mother was offering me each night, I had lost a considerable amount of weight. But I still wasn’t anywhere close to being at their level.

“They won’t let me play,” I said. “You don’t know how it works.”

Elliot took two quick steps away from me and then sharply spun around.

“Okay,” he said. “For starters: Don’t you ever tell me that I don’t know how a thing
works.”

He paused for a moment, to let that sink in.

“You’re going to have to trust me,” he said. “My plan is too elaborate and ingenious for you to comprehend right now, but it is vital that you follow every step anyway. Now go over there and say, as loudly as you can, that you’ve been practicing basketball over the summer and that you wish to be selected.”

Elliot seemed adamant. I took a long swig of Pepsi to buy myself some time to think. As a rule, I tried to limit my contact with Lance. He had recently started to call me “Chunk-Style,” and I was terrified that if he uttered that nickname a few more times it
would enter common usage. Then again, Elliot had done so much for me in the past few weeks—I didn’t want him to think I was ungrateful. I put down my soda and started to walk toward the court.

“Wait!” Elliot whispered. “Who’s that alpha girl holding court on the bleachers? The smiley one with the stupid,
stupid
curls?”

“Oh, that’s Jessica,” I told him. “She’s the one I told you to rank higher on your list. She’s probably the most popular girl in the whole grade.”

“That’s right,” Elliot said. “They all look the same to me.”

He pointed at me.

“Make sure she hears.”

When I came back thirty seconds later, my cheeks were flushed and my eyeballs burned with tears.

“How did it go?” Elliot asked.

“He called me Chunk-Style and everybody heard. I can’t believe it…people are going to start calling me Chunk-Style. I’m Chunk-Style now. This is now my life.”

I looked across the playground. Someone passed Lance the ball and he immediately made a three-pointer. Elliot grinned and returned to his book.

“Why are you smiling?” I said. “He said
no
. It didn’t work.”

“Are you kidding?” he said. “It worked perfectly.”

• • •

Vlad handed me a basketball and manipulated my arms and legs until they were in the proper shooting position.

“Follow through this time,” he said. “And don’t forget about the backspin.”

I checked my grip, bent my knees, and let loose from the foul line. The ball slid off my fingertips, arced through the air, and whooshed through the middle of the net. I swiveled around to catch Elliot’s reaction, but he was too engrossed in his book to notice.

“Hey, Elliot!” I called out. “I made a foul shot!”

Vlad laid his giant palm on my shoulder.

“It’s way too early to celebrate, kid,” he said. “We still got loads more work to do.”

Vlad blew his whistle and a tall man in mesh shorts and a baseball cap walked through the doors of the gymnasium. He looked familiar, but I couldn’t immediately place him.

“I’ve brought the children you requested,” he announced in a deep, monotone voice. “If you need any more, just let me know.”

“Oh my God,” I said.
“James?”

It was Elliot’s limo driver, the guy who drove us to the gym each day. I had never seen him without his black suit and cap.

James snapped his fingers and a group of boys ran into the gym, wearing matching T-shirts. There were exactly nine of them, I noticed, just enough for a full-court scrimmage. Vlad stared at James for a moment, shocked that he had abducted so many children so effortlessly. Then he cleared his throat, blew his whistle, and went back to work.