Hey, Coach! ch. 19

"So at five after one we were ready to begin. We had an eater, a biter, and a crier. I also thought my mother was slightly crazy for dreaming up the party in the first place. 'Doesn't Fudge have any normal friends?' I whispered." – Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing








Little Brother's tactics weren't working very well with the disappeared basketball team.  Cookies sounded good and all but let's face it, cookies were on the way at home too, it would just be another hour, maybe a few minutes more, and each of the boys would get picked up and on their way home, where it was safe and quiet, where hamsters, video games and snacks awaited.  But then a pure vision came through the door of the 5th grade Spanish room.  It was an unlikely sight, but none of the disappeared basketball team would have mistaken the sight for anybody else in the world, not at that moment, because somewhere back in the mind it was the very sight they feared more than any other. "Hey, Coach!" Tyler smiled, his teeth blaring out white as a line of long icicles.  The other boys milled around the desks, set back a ways from the entrance, burying their noses in their class iPads.  Who knows, maybe she wouldn't notice.  Little Brother, on the other hand, took right to The Eighth Grade Girl something like a scout might his leader. He contemplated saluting but thought better of it. The Girl didn't look pleased.  She was bigger than everybody else in the room by a foot.  Today she was wearing a headband, her hair pulled back crisp and tight.  No frills, just high tops and strong basketball legs.  "Boys fifth grade basketball team," she yelled out, standing her ground right there at the entrance, scanning the room, a ball inside a locked right arm. "Let's go!" Will bounced up out of his seat as though his very own hamster had been set loose in his pants leg. Henry and Randall had stopped their teasing of Jess Sheindeinst's purple socks and snapped to, like good soldiers, and slinked up to the front of the room. Carl perked up, "well, we just thought that there wasn't practice today, because my mom said so. We don't have practice today, do we?  Only tuesdays and wednesdays.  "Every day," The Girls said, as she handed Carl the ball. "Hold that. The rest of you get your gear, and I'll meet you over in the Dome. Now." The boys didn't feel like this was the way things were usually done.  Nobody talked to them like this.  Not mom, not dad.  Maybe older brothers, maybe.  She meant business, this girl.

The boys were set up in four corners around the lane. They looked every which way around the gym but the right way. Matt asked if he was point guard; Trent wanted to be center, although he was by far the shortest boy on the team.  Henry and Randall started to drift away from their corners of the floor near the gym wall, Henry throwing a ball at the heels of Randall.  Before they could get another throw at one another, there she was, the coach, standing behind them, shaking her head in silence. "Nope. Not a chance." She handed both of them two basketballs.  Dribble both of these for the rest of the practice." "
"We can't even dribble one!" Randall contested.
"You will be able to by the end of practice," she contested back. "You will be." The rest of the boys tightened back to their corners, passed to the next player, then followed their shot to the next slot.  For this, Scotty would soon be considered team hero, or he might be team enemy number one.