19

Before they made their way to the dining hall, Red, Peter, and Keanu’s parents insisted that Tim pose for photos with their children.

“We’ll send you copies the minute we get home,” they promised. Then they all went together to share in the refreshments.

Mike was already at the dining hall, helping himself to cookies and juice. A few parents nodded to him, but no one approached him with a camera and none of his kids asked him to sit with them. When Tim looked for him again, Mike was gone.

Tim would never have thought it possible, but he found himself feeling sorry for Mike Gruber.

The feeling didn’t last long. The Eagles Nest campers played a pickup game that afternoon. On the first possession, Tim was bringing the ball down the court when Mike jumped in front of him and tried to swat the ball out of his hands.

He failed miserably because Tim knew from experience that that’s what he’d do. So when Mike came at him at the top of the key, Tim turned his shoulders to the hoop as if setting up for a hook shot.

“Don’t have any other moves, huh, Daniels?” Mike taunted as Tim jumped.

“Oh, don’t I?” Tim responded—and instead of shooting at the top of his arc, he fired an over-the-head pass to Donnie, who converted it into two points.

Mike clamped his mouth shut in a tight line and gave Tim a dirty look. But he didn’t say anything else to him for the rest of the game.

The stony silence between them might have continued indefinitely if Tim hadn’t decided to break it.

“Listen, you don’t like me, and I don’t like you,” he told Mike at a campfire a few nights later, “but it looks like we’re going to be in the starting lineup together for the next inter-camp game. So, for the good of the team, let’s keep our differences off the court. Deal?”

He stuck out his hand, half expecting Mike to snort and push it aside.

After a moment’s hesitation, though, the other boy shook it. “Deal,” Mike said.

Their truce was an uneasy one, but in time, they began to play together better. Their improved communication made the team better as a whole, allowing them to win their third and final inter-camp game by more than ten points.

And as the days passed, a funny thing happened. Their camaraderie on the court spilled into their lives off the court. While Tim knew he and Mike would never have the kind of friendship he and Billy had, they were no longer enemies—at least for this summer.

Whether they would pick up where they left off next summer remained to be seen!

 

Tim and Billy returned home two weeks later. Billy had earned his junior lifeguarding certificate. On the car ride home, he talked about returning to Camp Wickasaukee the next summer so he could go for his senior certification.

Tim had burst out laughing. “Next summer? We haven’t finished this one yet! There’s a whole month left to go, and I’ve got big plans.”

Those plans included plenty of basketball, plus pool time, video games, and going to the movies with Wanda—with other friends along, too, of course. After all, he insisted when Billy teased him, it wasn’t like they were boyfriend and girlfriend!

But before anything of those things, Tim had something important to do when he got home. First, he mounted a wooden shelf he had made at the arts and crafts center on the wall in his room. (Now that Gruber the clown puppet was no longer there, he found he didn’t mind spending time at the center. That Wanda liked to go there had nothing to do with it.)

Then he bought a big picture frame with lots of openings for photos. He filled the smaller openings with the photos his mentees’ parents had sent him. He added a few of his own photos, too, including one of Billy jumping off the end of the dock.

In one of two bigger openings, he put the letter Keanu, Red, and Peter had read at the demonstration. The second big space was for his favorite photo. It showed him kneeling and hugging his mentees. The boys had their capes to the camera, so the message tim we’ll miss you! was clearly visible.

Dick Dunbar was in the shot, too, standing to one side with a huge smile on his face. He had written a note across the bottom of the picture.

To my buddy Tim, his message read, Never forget: Take that pizza one slice at a time! He’d signed it in a big loopy scrawl.

Tim set the frame onto the shelf and stood back to admire it. Then, with a smile playing about his lips, he pretended to shoot a hook shot.

“Swish,” he whispered. Then he posed for a free throw and shot that, too. “And one! Tim Daniels is a hook shot hero!”