Hoop Crazy (3 page)

“You don't know Nerd,” I hissed at Kia.

“I don't need to know him. All I need to know is that he's human, our age and can be the fourth member of our team.”

“But I don't want him on our team.”

“It's either him or we don't have a team,” Kia said.

“But he can't play basketball.”

“That's perfect.”

“How can that be perfect?”

“If he doesn't play, then he won't mind being on the bench so much.”

“But he can't play at all!”

“All he has to do is be able to sit on a bench. He can do that, can't he?”

“With Nerd I'm not too sure. He'd probably miss the bench and —”

“Great news!”

I seriously doubted it.

“Ned will be on your team! Isn't that great!”

“Yeah, great,” I mumbled.

“His mother said he doesn't know much about basketball, but she thinks it would be good for him.”

“Good for him?” Kia questioned. “What does that mean?”

“Well … I think he doesn't play many sports.”

“Try no sports,” I said.

“Debbie said he's still rather tall —”

“How tall is he?” Kia asked.

My mother shook her head. “I don't really know … I didn't ask. But she said that because he's always been tall for his age she always thought he could be a good player.”

“It's about more than being tall,” I said.

“But height does matter,” my mother said.

“If that was all that did matter they'd just line us up before the game, measure all the players and give the game to the tallest team.”

My mother shot me a dirty look and I knew it was probably wise to shut up at that point.

“Debbie said that Ned is a very fast study. She thought with the proper teachers he could become quite good, and I told her we had two excellent
teachers for him.”

“Three. There's Mark too,” Kia said. “He's about the best outside shooter I know.”

“He's such a nice boy … very polite … never a problem to have around the house,” my mother said. “Is he always that quiet?”

“Not always,” I said, although he was one of the quietest people I knew. “He's the best outside shooter of anybody.”

“Even better, so Ned will have three teachers. I got all the information from Debbie and I'll fill in Ned's spot on the form,” my mother said, holding it out for me to see. “When does this have to be handed in?”

I looked at my watch. “In three hours.”

“That's cutting it a little close, isn't it?” she asked.

I shrugged. “This isn't the way we planned it.”

“I'll drop it off on my way to get groceries.”

“That would be great,” Kia said.

“Yeah, thanks.”

“It sounds like you were lucky that I could get Debbie. She was just getting ready to drive away to her house when I called and they got her,” my mother said.

“Couldn't you have just called her at home?” Kia asked.

“They don't have a phone.”

“They don't have a phone?” Kia repeated, not
believing her ears. “Why don't they have a phone?”

“It's not that they don't want one, it's that they can't have one. There are no phone lines where they live.”

“Come on, there are phone lines everywhere,” Kia said.

“Not deep in the bush.”

“What about a cell phone?” she asked.

“Too far out. No reception. They're over a three-hour drive from the nearest town. Even their closest neighbor is more than thirty minutes away.”

“Why would anybody live that far away from everything?” Kia asked.

“They don't have any choice in their line of work. You can't be a forest ranger and live in the middle of the city.”

“But if they're that far away from everybody, where does Ned go to school?” Kia asked.

“He doesn't,” I answered.

“Now there's a bonus. No school.”

“He has school,” my mother said. “He just doesn't go out for it.”

Kia looked confused. “You mean the school comes to him?”

“Not exactly. The lessons come to him. He takes school by correspondence.”

“By mail,” I said, not knowing if Kia knew what correspondence meant.

“He gets lessons mailed to him, he fills them out,
sends them back to be marked, and then they send him the next lessons,” my mother explained.

“That's awful,” Kia said. “He still has to do all the work, but he doesn't get to talk to friends, or play games, or have gym classes or anything.”

“He only gets the bad parts,” I agreed.

“His mother is quite proud of him. Apparently he's working well above his grade level,” my mother said.

“That's no surprise,” I said. “What else does he have to do except study?”

“Who does he hang around with?” Kia asked.

“He spends a great deal of time with his parents.”

“No, that isn't what I mean,” she said. “Are there kids for him to spend time with … to play with?”

My mother shook her head. “As I said, the nearest neighbour is pretty far away, and as I recall from one of Debbie's letters, they don't have any children.”

“I'd hate having no other kids to hang with,” Kia said.

“It would be hard. Debbie told me that even though they haven't seen each other in three years, Ned still considers Nick to be one of his best friends.”

“Me?” I asked in shock.

“She said he still talks about the times you two spent together and all the fun you had.”

“I remember the times, I just don't remember the fun.”

What I did remember was Ned always using big words, and talking about things I didn't understand and didn't want to know about.

“You had lots of fun together,” my mother said. “Hold on, I know what will refresh your memory. I'll go and get the photo albums!”

“Mom, please don't get the …”

She was gone before I could finish the sentence.

“Don't worry,” Kia said.

“Worry about what?”

“About me getting in the way of you and your best friend Ned. I'll just come around to play a little basketball and then I'll leave so you and Ned can have fun together!” Kia teased.

“I have a better idea. Maybe
I
should leave
before
he gets here.”

“Here they are,” my mother said, re-entering the kitchen with a stack of albums. “There'll be some pictures in a whole lot of different albums, so we'll just have to browse through them all.”

“Come on, Mom, I really don't want to look at old pictures.”

“I do,” Kia said. “I love photo albums.”

“So do I,” my mother agreed.

I knew there was hardly any point in arguing with one of them, so fighting two of them was definitely
a losing battle.

“Now I'm pretty sure this is the album that contains the last vacation we spent together,” my mother said as she started flipping through the pages. “Here, here they are!”

Kia and I looked over her shoulder at the pictures. There was a whole page.

“Here's one!” she said, pointing with her finger.

It was a picture of Ned and me standing together. I was dressed in a T-shirt and cutoff shorts. He wore long pants, and had on a long-sleeved shirt and a big goofy hat. He was ‘allergic' to the sun. I was holding a baseball bat and he held a large butterfly net.

“One of you is pretty confused about what you were doing,” Kia said.

“No confusion on my part,” I said. “Dad suggested we catch a few flies and Ned went to get his net instead of a glove because he didn't know what Dad meant by ‘flies'.”

Kia started to chuckle.

“I'm glad you find it funny.”

“It is,” my mother said.

“It wasn't. All he wanted to do was collect bugs, or read about bugs, or talk about bugs and —”

“Sounds like you and basketball,” my mother said, cutting me off.

“That's different!”

“How?” she asked.

“For one thing it's basketball.”

“He is tall, isn't he,” Kia said, looking down at the picture.

I looked down. He did have that going for him. He was almost a full head taller than me.

“That was our last vacation together. These pictures were taken almost four years ago. I know I have lots of earlier ones,” my mother said.

She grabbed another album and started to flip through the pages.

“Anybody thirsty?” my mother asked.

“I am,” Kia said.

“Me too.”

“Good. Nick, get us all a drink will you?” my mother asked.

I was going to argue, but getting people a drink was better than the alternative — looking at pictures.

I grabbed three glasses and put them down on the table. Next I pulled out a big container of lemonade. Kia didn't like lemonade that much, but I did, and if she wanted something else she could get it herself.

“Oh, look at this one!” my mother exclaimed. “This is one of Nick and Ned when they were about one year old. Aren't they adorable!” she cooed.

My mother thought every picture of me was adorable — that was part of a mother's job.

“That is a great shot,” Kia agreed. “And they both fit into that bathtub so well.”

“Bathtub!” I gasped, choking on my lemonade as it started to go down the wrong way.

“Yes, when you two were little, you shared a bath a lot of nights.”

“That's so cute!” Kia said.

“Let me have a look at that!” I demanded, grab-bing the album and practically ripping it out of their hands.

It was a picture of Ned and me — little babies — sitting in a little plastic bathtub, having a bubble bath. We were both smiling and I was holding a small, yellow rubber duckie.

“You
must
be good friends to be sharing a bath,” Kia said.

I didn't know what bothered me more, Kia seeing the picture, or my mother thinking it was okay for anybody to see the picture. Thank goodness it was a bubble bath and the suds filled up the whole bottom of the picture, blocking other things from view, or this could have been really embarrassing.

“I've got to get going to drop off the contest application,” my mother said. “Do you want me to put away the albums or do you two want to look at the pictures some more?”

“Put them away!” I said. “Far away.”

“Aaahhh, couldn't we look at them some more?”
Kia said. “Are there any more pictures of baby Nicky?”

“Oh sure, we have albums and albums of them,” my mother said.

“We don't have time for that,” I said. “We have to practice our plays.”

“Maybe another time,” my mother said.

“Maybe,” Kia agreed.

Over my dead body, I thought, but didn't say anything.

I drove the ball deep while Kia broke back setting up a screen to knock off the ‘invisible man' who was covering Mark. He brushed by her and set up just on the edge of the three-point line. I threw out a pass and he quickly put it up — rim, backboard and then into the net.