Mr. Wills appeared at the classroom door, holding a large box. He knocked and walked in. Mrs. Orr stopped teaching and we all turned toward him.
“Second delivery for Nick,” he said.
For a split second I had the terrible thought that it was the box we’d sent to the Raptors and they’d just sent it back to us. But I could see it was a different box. It was a little bit smaller and a slightly different color cardboard.
“It’s from the Raptors,” he said as he put it down on my desk.
“What is it?” I gasped.
“Only one way to find out. Open it.”
I stood up and started to try to undo the tape sealing it shut, but it was pretty strong.
“Let me,” Mr. Wills said. He pulled out a box cutter and ran it along the top of the box, splitting the tape in two.
I opened the flaps. It was filled with those little white packing noodles. I pushed some aside and there was a basketball peeking up at me. I pulled it out. It was a beautiful, leather, official NBA ball with the Spalding emblem on it!
I held it up high for the whole class to see.
“And look, it’s signed!”
The class reacted with cheers.
I rotated it slowly to look at all the signatures. I quickly found Wayne’s, and beside his signature he’d written #4, his jersey number.
“Is there a letter?” Mrs. Orr asked.
I looked into the box and rustled around in the noodles. “I don’t see one.”
Mr. Wills tapped the side of the box. “It’s right here.”
I spun the box around. There was an envelope attached to the side. I pulled it off, opened it up and unfolded the page.
“Read it out loud,” Kia suggested.
I took a deep breath. Here we go again with all this reading. I really liked reading but not necessarily out loud and in front of a whole audience.
“‘Hello, Nick and everybody else at Clark Boulevard Public School. Thank you for all the wonderful paintings, poems, posters, drawings and stories, not to mention the great song. In all my years in this job I have never seen a school so committed to the Raptors, and it’s great that your school teams will be called the Raptors next year. We would like you to use this signed basketball as your official school ball and place it in your school’s trophy case.’ ”
That’s right, the ball wasn’t just for me, even though the box was addressed to me—and everybody else really. It was a school ball.
“‘Since you have shown that you are really a one-in-a-million school—well, let’s make that a one-in-a-thousand—I would like to offer a visit by a Raptor—’ ”
Everybody jumped to their feet and burst into screams and cheers before I could read the rest of the sentence. Right now they were all excited and happy, but I knew different. I’d read a few words ahead.
Kia looked at me questioningly. She knew something was wrong.
“‘…by a Raptor sometime in the future!’ ” I yelled out. “Sometime in the future!” I yelled louder, and the cheering suddenly stopped and the room got quieter again—deadly quiet.
“‘I would like to offer a visit by a Raptor sometime in the future. We might even be able to send the mascot this year. I just wish there was a spot available for a Raptors player, but we can’t schedule any more visits this year and we don’t pre-schedule visits for next year. We encourage your school to contact us again in June, when we start to schedule visits for next year. While there are no guarantees, Clark Boulevard will certainly be considered. If we’re able to fit you into the schedule, I’d like you to save me a big piece of pizza! Go Raptors Go! Christina.’ ”
“That is wonderful news!” Mrs. Orr beamed. “It sounds like somebody from the Raptors will be coming next year or even this year!”
“This year would only be the mascot, not a Raptor,” Kia said.
“That’s still exciting,” Mrs. Orr said. “And he is a very good mascot, isn’t he?”
“Yeah, I really like him,” I admitted. “He does lots of cool things…but it’s not like having a Raptor.”
“They did say there was the possibility of a player coming to the school.”
“Next year, when none of us are going to be at this school,” Kia added.
Mrs. Orr looked surprised. “I’m sorry, I didn’t even think about that. You’ll all be in middle school…but it is wonderful news for the rest of the school.”
“But not for us,” Kia added. “We’ll all be gone.”
“Perhaps we can arrange for you all to come back that day to visit,” Mrs. Orr suggested.
“Seventy-five of us?” Kia asked.
“I’m sure we can work it out.”
“That is if they even come,” Greg said. “She was saying maybe, no guarantees.”
He was right.
“Regardless, you all should still be proud of yourselves. You not only wrote to a business but kept on writing and doing things until you achieved your goal,” Mrs. Orr said.
She was right—we had sort of achieved our goal. The Raptors mascot was coming. Maybe.
The whole room was quiet. We’d tried everything, but we’d still lost. Or had we tried everything? Maybe we could…could…I had nothing left. We’d already done everything, and I was out of ideas. I looked over at Kia. She held up her hands and shrugged.