Hey, Coach! ch. 18

The next day practice time came around and everybody was there except the 5th grade boys, not counting Scotty.  He looked out over the court waiting to see his teammates pile on from some corner of the gym.  The Girl and The Coach were over on the opposite sideline working dribbling drills and the other girls were shooting around.  Scotty pulled Little Brother over to find out what he knew.  "They were all at school today, none of them were sick," Toby said, checking his phone for any messages.  Just about every plan Scotty had been working on for the past three weeks just disappeared into empty gym space.  The Girl dribbled over to their side of the court. "So, where's our team anyway?  We're ready to go, gotta get them out here."  Unless there was some kind of concert that Scotty didn't know about, or unless every single boy had a dentist appointment after school, there was really only one other spot they could be. Scotty sent Little Brother over the main elementary building to check the two rooms for after school program.  What he found was exactly what Scotty feared. There was Will, Trent, Matt, Tyler, Henry, Randall and Carl, playing on green iPads weird games with animals or with skateboarders. Little Brother had enough.  He had been a part of this team scheme for just as long as Scotty had.  He had made a professional batch of cookies and had coordinated gym time. Enough was enough. He walked over to Trent, the most reasonable of them, and started to describe the great benefits of being on a basketball team. "Someday, they will be playing a video game with you on it. Just think! There's no way to become a pro by sitting in here. The coach is waiting for you." Trent looked at him like he was no-name runt. "Basketball? We thought that was just yesterday, that's all.  We don't want to play anymore." Henry slunked away to another desk and opened up a book as if he were going to study in an after school program! "Yeah, the coach is a girl!" Matt said, although he realized probably the best basketball in the entire school, and then some. "Why doesn't Scotty just coach us?" yelped out Randall. Randall was the tallest of the boys, a true center, but whose shoes were untied permanently and he wore nothing but long shorts year round. "Scotty is a fifth grade kid and he's on the team. He has to play," defended Little Brother. "Who cares who coaches.  We've got a team. We've got gym space. Besides there one other thing that will be there every single practice," he tempted. "What's that?" Will said in between thumb presses for fire on his iPad.  "Cookies!"