Travel Team by Lupica Mike

Author:Lupica, Mike [Lupica, Mike]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Children, Young Adult
ISBN: 9781417686506
Amazon: 0142404624
Goodreads: 394841
Publisher: Puffin
Published: 2004-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

18

HIS MOM WAS MEETING WILL’S MOM FOR A GIRLS’ BRUNCH AFTER CHURCH ON

Sunday. She asked if Danny wanted to be dropped at the Stoddards’

so he could hang with Will while she and Molly Stoddard went into town. He said, no, he wanted to meet up with Tess at McFeeley Park.

He changed after church into jeans and sneaks and last year’s shooting shirt from sixth-grade travel, then grabbed his ball, knowing he’d get time to shoot around because Tess was always late.

“Why don’t you show up a few minutes late, then you don’t have to wait for her?”

Danny said, “Me waiting for her, that’s part of our whole deal.”

“Oh,” his mom said. “Sometimes I forget I was a twelve-year-old girl once.”

“Duh.”

“But if you and Tess go into town, you’ll have to carry your ball with you.”

“So?”

“You don’t mind?”

“I like carrying my ball with me.”

She sighed. “And I know nothing of significance about twelve-year-old boys,” she said.

When they drove through the high arch that was the entrance to McFeeley, she said, “You seem to be feeling better today.” “Only ’cause I couldn’t feel any worse.”

“I know we’ve gone over this before,” she said, “but basketball isn’t a matter of life and death.”

He smiled, to let her know he was playing, and said, “No, it’s much more serious than that.”

She said she’d pick him up in front of the Candy Kitchen at four.

Then she called out the window that she loved him. He waved good-bye as if he hadn’t heard.

You never knew who might catch you telling your mom you loved her back.

He heard the bounce of a single basketball as he came up the hill toward the big court at McFeeley. He couldn’t see who was up there right away—he was too short, the hill was way too steep—but as he got near the top he gave a little jump and saw that it was Ty Ross.

Danny had told Tess he’d meet her by the tennis courts. He turned one last time and saw she wasn’t there yet, kept going toward the basketball court. Ty didn’t look up until he heard Danny bouncing the ball at the other end of the court.

Having just come from church, he wasn’t sure whether he should be praying for stuff like this, but he was praying hard now that Ty Ross didn’t really hate his guts.

Maybe there was a way they could talk basketball with each other the way he talked basketball with his dad when neither one of them knew what else to say.

Danny thought: What would guys do if they couldn’t speak sports?

“Hey,” Ty said.

“Hey.”

Danny could see his fingers sticking out of the top of what looked to be a pretty light cast, one that had more writing and graffiti-looking squiggles on it than some of the subway cars he’d see going past Shea Stadium when he’d go to a ball game there.

It was pretty cold out, down to the high forties, his mom had said, but Ty was wearing a Knicks’ orange sweatshirt

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.