Slam Dunk Page 3

  Mike and Deuce took off an hour later. It was Sunday night, and we all had homework to finish up. Before they left, we made some plans.

  “You guys want to hit the court this week?” I said.

  “Thought you couldn’t play until that grumpy doctor said so?” said Deuce.

  “I can’t play a real game: no contact,” I said. “But I think I can do other stuff. And there’s something I want to work on.”

  I’d been thinking about it. I had to miss the practices next weekend, but I was hoping I’d be back in time for the tourney. And I planned to return with a bang — and a dunk!

  I can sum up school on Monday in two words: pirate jokes.

  “How arrrrrrrrrr you?” asked Marcus, before the first bell even rang.

  “You take the bus, or did the pirate ship drop you off?” said Tavoris.

  And those guys were my friends! They dropped it once they heard what happened — and figured out how unfunny I thought it was. I wish I could say that for the rest of my class, or all the people who stared as they passed me in the hallway. Even Ms. Bourne got into the act in history class. She took the opportunity to tell us about all the famous pirates who operated off the coast of Florida back in the day.

  History was my favorite subject, but I was seriously reconsidering that by the time she got to “the state’s most famous pirate, José Gaspar.” She said his pirate name was Gasparilla, and I was starting to wonder what mine would be.

  Anyway, the day finally crept to an end. “Meet me at my place, okay?” I said to Mike and Deuce. “I’ve got an idea.”

  “Sure,” said Mike.

  “No problem,” said Deuce.

  But what they didn’t say was just as important. Neither one made a single joke about my eye patch all day, not even when everyone else was and it would’ve been easy to join in. I can sum them up in two words, too: best friends.

  Half an hour later, we were all assembled in my kitchen.

  “What’s the plan, STAT?” said Deuce.

  Mike had his head in the fridge, as usual, looking to see what he could scrounge. His hands were empty when he closed the door, but he was chewing on something.

  “What?” he said when he saw me looking. “I’m a growing boy!”

  I smiled and shook my head. I wanted to say something about how he was mostly growing around the waist, but it was time to get down to business. “I really want to work on my jumping,” I said. “I can’t play ball, but I figure I can do that. I thought maybe if I added some weights or something and really worked my legs. I want to get to where I can dunk!”

  I thought I’d have to explain some more, but they both knew what I was talking about. “Yeah, I saw this thing on TV,” said Mike. “It was about some wide receiver in the NFL and his crazy off-season workout. He ran sprints with a parachute strapped to his back, flipped over a giant truck tire, and stuff like that.”

  “Yeah, I saw one where a guy ran up and down a sand dune,” said Deuce.

  “Yeah,” I said, “that kind of thing.”

  We all thought about it.

  “Uh, anyone got a parachute?” Mike said after a while.

  “No,” I said, “and we’re too far from the beach for a sand dune.”

  “You’ve got a backpack,” said Deuce. “That’s for sure.”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?” asked Mike, but I’d already figured it out.

  “Awesome idea, D!” I said.

  The two of us headed to my room, with Mike a few steps behind. “What idea?” he said.

  I picked my backpack up off the floor and dumped my school stuff out on my bed. Then I went to my bookshelf. I saw Mike watching, still trying to figure it out.

  I found an old dictionary and a few other big books. I brought them back and stuffed them in my backpack. I put it on.

  “What do you think?” said Deuce.

  I jumped up and down a few times. “Pretty heavy,” I said. “But there’s more room.”

  Mike had figured it out by now. “Good idea,” he said. “I was about to suggest that.”

  Deuce and I waved him off. Then we all looked around for a few more heavy objects. Deuce held up my work boots.

  “Too bulky,” I said.

  Mike held up a bowling ball I got at a yard sale.

  “You trying to kill me?”

  He put it back where he’d found it and picked up my heaviest schoolbook.

  “Might fall apart from all the jumping,” I said.

  Then we opened up the closet and found the mother lode.

  “You keep your old notebooks?” said Deuce. “You’re a bigger nerd than I am!”

  “Well, I’m bigger, anyway,” I said. But it was true. Years’ worth of old school notebooks were stacked on the shelf of the closet. It was enough to fill up two backpacks. And just as I was thinking that, Mike pulled last year’s backpack off the closet floor. He had a wicked smile on his face: “You can wear this one on front.”

  For a second, it seemed crazy, but then I started thinking about all the dunks I’d missed in practice. I remembered that layup, and Monster calling me Pee-wee. “Why not?” I said.

  So we loaded both backpacks up, and I jumped up and down a few more times. It was definitely a good workout, but every time I landed, the notebooks slapped into me. “It kind of feels like there are people on both sides smacking me with books,” I said.

  “Now you know how school feels for me!” said Mike.

  We laughed and then I started looking around the room. Deuce had thought of the first backpack, and Mike had thought of adding the second. It was my turn to come up with an idea. I spotted an old sweatshirt hung up in the closet.

  “I just need some padding!” I said.

  I took a few notebooks out, put the sweatshirt and a few old towels in, and I was good to go.

  “All right, now that we’ve got a plan, you guys need to make sure I put in the work,” I said. “I’m putting you guys in charge of the workouts, so I can’t slack off. You good with that?”

  “Oh, we’re good,” said Deuce.

  “Definitely,” said Mike.

  They both had wicked grins on their faces. I slipped the backpacks off one at a time. “Can you help me carry this stuff to the park?”

  Mike and Deuce looked at each other. “Nope,” said Deuce, shaking his head. “Your training starts now!”

  “Why do I get the feeling I’m going to regret making you guys my personal trainers?”

  “That’s enough lip,” said Mike. “Load up and get moving!”

  I groaned. I put the first backpack on my back and the second one on my front. Then I started walking. It felt like I had a baboon on my back and another one clinging to my front. This kind of thing looked so easy on TV!

  We must’ve been quite a sight as we walked along the sidewalk in our little town: Mike and Deuce chatting and taking turns with the basketball, while I trudged along behind them wearing two backpacks and an eye patch.

  Once we got to the park, I grabbed a seat on an old bench.

  “What are you doing?” said Deuce.

  “Resting,” I said. “This stuff is heavy.”

  “Oh, you have so much to learn,” said Deuce, shaking his head. “See those steps?”

  I looked over at five flat stone steps with beat-up metal railings along each side. Sometimes you’d see older skateboarders on those steps — and sometimes you’d see them picking up their pieces at the bottom after a crash. “Yeah,” I said, “so?”

  “Well, start running,” said Deuce.

  “Oh, yeah,” said Mike. “Running stairs. That was part of that receiver’s workout, too. Course, he did it in a football stadium.”

  “Wish we had one of those,” said Deuce.

  I didn’t!

  “He can just run up and down these ones.”

  They were talking about me like I wasn’t even there, but I guess that’s what I’d asked them to do.

  “How many times?” I asked.

/>   “You let us worry about that,” said Deuce. “Just get started.”

  I dragged myself to my feet. The packs were even heavier than I remembered. I took my first trip up the stairs, and my legs and brain sent screaming signals back and forth with each step.

  Brain to Legs: “Need more power for stairs.”

  Legs to Brain: “You have got to be kidding me!”

  Brain to Legs: “I’m in charge here!”

  Legs to Brain: “Says you?”

  Brain to Legs: “Next step approaching!”

  At first, my eye was a part of the conversation, too. With the patch on, it was harder for me to judge distances. I almost fell on each of the first few steps. But the steps were all the same distance apart, so after a while, I barely had to look at all.

  I was running up the stairs okay — well, apart from all the work it required. But I couldn’t run down. The pack in front felt like it was trying to pull me down the stairs, and the one in back felt like it was trying to push me down them.

  “Uh, guys,” I said. They were still deep in conversation, trying to decide how many sets I should do. I heard the word hundred float through the air. All I could do was hope there wasn’t another number before it.

  “Yeah?” said Mike.

  “Think I need to walk down these things.” I was about to explain why, but right then I stumbled a little and had to catch myself on the railing. They got the point.

  “Okay,” said Deuce. “Run up, walk down.”

  “Yeah,” said Mike. “The eye patch is enough. You don’t need crutches, too.”

  “How many times?” I said again.

  “We’re still working on that,” said Deuce.

  I shouldn’t have been so worried about that. For one thing, I was the only one counting. For another, the next drill was even worse!

  By the time I got home from Day One of Operation Dunk, my legs felt like rubber. Junior gave me a funny look as I walked in the door, but I was too wiped out to even try to explain. I went into my room and stripped off the backpacks. (My “trainers” made me swear to wear them all the way home.) My sweat made them stick to my T-shirt.

  I peeled the first one off: THWUCK!

  The second one dropped to the floor: SHWUNK!

  I gave them my best I-won’t-miss-you look and headed out to the kitchen to drink about four years’ worth of water. But a funny thing happened on the way to the kitchen. Even as dog-tired as I was, I had an extra spring in my step. After lugging those packs around all afternoon, walking without them felt so much easier. I actually felt lighter.

  When I got to the kitchen, Junior already had a big glass of lemonade on the table waiting for me. I drank the whole thing without even looking up — or wondering why my brother was being so nice. Was it because of my eye injury?

  “Looks like you had a killer workout,” he said. That was why: He’d had plenty of long, tough workouts himself. He knew the deal.

  “I put my friends in charge,” I said.

  “Ouch,” he said. “That was brave.”

  “Or dumb!” I said. We both laughed, and I headed to the fridge for some water. I flipped my eye patch up after that. I wasn’t going to get hit by anything in our own kitchen — and I needed to let it dry off underneath. In Florida, everything sweats!

  Dad was still working long hours, and he got home late again that night. He didn’t say much at the dinner table, so I decided to fill the silence by telling him about my crazy practice.

  “You should’ve seen him,” said Junior. “I barely recognized him under the backpacks, eye patch, and twelve gallons of sweat.”

  Dad looked from Junior to me, his fork halfway between his plate and his mouth. He shook his head slowly. “Must be nice,” he said. “Playing around all afternoon.”

  My stomach dropped. It was like he hadn’t even heard us, about the backpacks and all the sweat. “I worked hard!” I said.

  Dad took a slow bite, then said: “Worked at playing, maybe.”

  That made me so mad, I couldn’t figure out how to respond. “But … I … didn’t,” I started. Yep, that definitely wasn’t it.

  “You aren’t even supposed to be playing basketball yet,” he said.

  “I wasn’t playing,” I said. “I was practicing!”

  He gave me a look, like: Come on now.

  But it wasn’t the same thing! No one was going to elbow me in the eye when I was running up stairs. It felt like he was intentionally missing the point. He was doing that Dad thing: Now, son, is that really the smartest decision?

  I looked right at him. He’d washed up for dinner, but he hadn’t had the energy to change out of his work clothes yet. I opened my mouth to say something, but I just closed it again. There was no way I was going to win this argument. It was his house, his table, his rules. And as hard as I’d worked today, he’d worked harder.

  We ate the rest of the meal in silence.

  I headed to my room after dinner to get my homework out of the way. At least Dad couldn’t lecture me about that. It was a little distracting to read with the eye patch on, so I took it off. It felt good to have that elastic band off my head, and I figured it was okay. My eye felt a lot better now. I understood why I still had to protect it, that just because it didn’t hurt didn’t mean it was healed. I made a mental note not to stick my pencil in it and got to work. I’d made it through English and half of math when the phone rang.

  “Hey, STAT,” called Junior. “It’s for you.”

  I got up to head for the house phone in the hall. At the last second, I remembered to grab my eye patch and put it back on. Dad would probably be mad if he saw me without it. He was the one who had to pay the doctor bills.

  “Hello?” I said after Junior handed me the phone.

  “S’up, player?” I heard. It took me a few moments to recognize the voice. We’d exchanged numbers weeks ago, but this was the first time he’d called.

  “Hey, Jammer! Not much. What about you?”

  “Staying out of trouble,” he said.

  “I doubt it.”

  He laughed and said, “How’s the eye, man? Looked like a pretty nasty poke.”

  “Not too bad. Rockin’ an eye patch,” I said. Before he could make a pirate joke, I added the first thing I could think of: “Supposed to get goggles, maybe tomorrow.”

  “For real?” he said. “How long do you have to wear those things?”

  “Not sure. It’s up to the doctor. I hope it’s not too long. In the picture I saw, they were big, bug-eye-looking things. And the dude they had wearing them: not cool.”

  “Yikes, that’s rough,” said Jammer. “But we all know you’ve got more style than that guy. Guess I’ll see on Saturday.”

  “I wish,” I said. “Have to wait till the doctor gives me the go-head, and my appointment’s not until Monday.”

  “Aw, man,” said Jammer. “Not cool.”

  “Seriously.”

  “That’s the last weekend of practice before the tourney,” he said.

  “Believe me, I know. I’ve just got to practice on my own and try to be ready.”

  “Okay, well, good luck, man,” he said. “Guess I’ll see you at the tourney.”

  “Definitely.” I said, even though it wasn’t technically up to me.

  “I’ll let the guys know how you’re doing,” he said.

  “Yeah, say what up to Khalid and them for me,” I said. “And poke Monster in the eye.”

  We had a good laugh at that one. I passed Dad on my way back to the second half of my math homework. “Who was that?” he asked.

  “My teammate,” I said. I was glad to have a teammate like Jammer. I just wished I could get back on the court with him already.

  The pirate jokes were already dying down on Tuesday. There were a few “arrr”s here and there and a few kids acting like they had a peg leg or hook hand or whatever. But I was bigger than most of them, had good friends, and the patch actually looked kind of tough. All in all, the age of piracy was c
oming to a close. I wouldn’t miss it.

  At lunch, Mike and Deuce wanted to talk about Day Two of training. Give your friends a chance to boss you around and you can bet they’ll talk about it at the lunch table! I had to smile as Deuce told Tavoris and Marcus about his “genius idea” with the first backpack and Mike chimed in about his idea to “double-down” with the second.

  “Yeah,” bragged Deuce, “we’ve got something tough in store for him today.”

  “All right, hold up,” I said. “First up, I’m right here, so why are you talking like I’m still in gym? And second, it’ll have to wait. I’ve got something I have to do after school today.”

  The look on Deuce’s face when I told him that: You would’ve thought I’d just taken away his only toy. He tried to hide his disappointment by turning to Mike. “Sounds like our workouts are too extreme for him,” he said.

  “You wish,” I said.

  “Then why are you afraid of a little work?” said Mike.

  “I’m not,” I said. “I’ll be doing plenty of work today.”

  And I would, too. I’d never been afraid of hard work or extra effort. I was just a little surprised that I still had to prove it. I headed home after school to change and get ready. When I got there, I saw something leaning up against the front door. It was a small cardboard box. Looks like the UPS man has been here, I thought as I picked it up. I was surprised to see that it was addressed to me.

  For a split second, I was excited. Who doesn’t like to get a mysterious, gift-size package delivered to them out of the blue? It was like a little piece of Christmas morning. And then I remembered: It’s Tuesday, just like the doctor said. It’s the darn goggles.

  I ripped open the cardboard with my hands like I was mad at the box. They were inside, all packed up in bubble wrap. I lifted them out and looked at them. The goggles seemed to be looking right back at me, like some two-tailed, jumbo-eyed fish. You’ve got to be kidding me, I thought. And then I saw the note: Wear these until our next appointment — including at school!