Flying Lessons & Other Stories(42)

“How would I know?” she answered. “I don’t read people’s messages.”

“Probably nothing important,” I said, spinning my chair to head down the hall.

“Just something about you guys going to play Madison in a practice game and they haven’t lost all season,” Sarah said. “From Nicky G.”

“Oh.”

The school has a special bus for wheelchairs and the driver always takes the long way to my house, which is a little irritating when you’ve got a ton of homework that needs to get done, and I had a ton and a half. When I got home, Mom had the entire living room filled with purple lace and flower things she was putting together for a wedding and was lettering nameplates for them. I threw her a quick “Hey” and headed for my room.

“Chris, your coach called,” Mom said.

“Mr. Evans?”

“Yes, he said your father had left a message for him,” Mom answered. She had a big piece of the purple stuff around her neck as she leaned against the doorjamb. “Anything up?”

“I don’t know,” I said with a shrug. My heart sank. I went into my room and started on my homework, trying not to think of why Dad would call Mr. Evans.

With all the wedding stuff in the living room and Mom looking so busy, I was hoping that we’d have pizza again. No such luck. Somewhere in the afternoon she had found time to bake a chicken. Dad didn’t get home until nearly seven-thirty, so we ate late.

While we ate Mom was talking about how some woman was trying to convince all of her bridesmaids to put a pink streak in their hair for her wedding. She asked us what we thought of that. Dad grunted under his breath and went back to his chicken. He didn’t see the face that Mom made at him.

“By the way”—Mom gave me a quick look—“Mr. Evans called. He said he had missed your call earlier.”

“I spoke to him late this afternoon,” Dad said.

“Are the computers down at the school?” Mom asked.

“No, I was just telling him that I didn’t think that the Madison team was all that good,” Dad said. “I heard the kids saying they were great. They’re okay, but they’re not great. I’m going to talk to him again at practice tomorrow.”

“Oh,” Mom said. I could see the surprise in her face and felt it in my stomach.

The next day zoomed by. It was like the bells to change classes were ringing every two minutes. I hadn’t told any of the kids about my father coming to practice. I wasn’t even sure he was going to show up. He had made promises before and then gotten called away to work. This time he had said he was coming to practice, which was at two-thirty, in the middle of his day.

He was there. He sat in the stands and watched us go through our drills and a minigame. I was so nervous, I couldn’t do anything right. I couldn’t catch the ball at all, and the one shot I took was an air ball from just behind the foul line. We finished our regular practice, and Mr. Evans motioned for my father to come down to the court.

“Your dad’s a giant!” Kwame whispered as Dad came onto the court.

“That’s how big Chris is going to be,” Nicky G said.

I couldn’t imagine ever being as tall as my father.

“I was watching the teams play the other day.” Dad had both hands jammed into his pockets. “And I saw that neither of them were running baseline plays and almost all the shots were aimed for the rims. Shots off the backboards are going to go in a lot more than rim shots if you’re shooting from the floor.”

Dad picked up a basketball and threw it casually against the backboard. It rolled around the rim and fell through. He did it again. And again. He didn’t miss once.

“I happen to know that you played pro ball,” Mr. Evans said, “and you’re good. But I think shooting from a wheelchair is a bit harder.”

“You have another chair?” Dad asked.

Mr. Evans pointed to his regular chair sitting by the watercooler. Dad took four long steps over to it, sat down, and wheeled himself back onto the floor. He put his hands up and looked at me. I realized I was holding a ball and tossed it to him. He tried to turn his chair back toward the basket, and it spun all the way around. For a moment he looked absolutely lost, as if he didn’t know what had happened to him. He seemed a little embarrassed as he glanced toward me.

“That happens sometimes,” I said. “No problem.”

He nodded, exhaled slowly, then turned and shot a long, lazy arc that hit the backboard and fell through.

“The backboard takes the energy out of the ball,” he said. “So if it does hit the rim, it won’t be so quick to bounce off. Madison made about twenty percent of its shots the other day. That doesn’t win basketball games, no matter how good they look making them.”

There are six baskets in our gym, and we spread out and practiced shooting against the backboards. At first I wasn’t good at it. I was hitting the underside of the rim.

“That’s because you’re still thinking about the rim,” Dad said when he came over to me. “Start thinking about a spot on the backboard. When you find your spot, really own it, you’ll be knocking down your shots on a regular basis.”

Nicky G got it first, and then Kwame, and then Bobby. I was too nervous to even hit the backboard half the time, but Dad didn’t get mad or anything. He didn’t even mumble. He just said it would come to me after a while.