CHAPTER 5

“I made the basketball team,” I blurted out at the dinner table that night.

“Hank, you interrupted your sister,” my mom said. “She was just telling us about what happens to reptiles in cold weather.”

“I’m sorry, Emily,” I said, although I didn’t really mean it. “I just couldn’t keep the good news in my body anymore. So it flew off my tongue.”

“Hank, I didn’t know you had an interest in basketball,” my dad said.

“I didn’t know either until Frankie and Ashley said they had been picked for the team.”

“How’s your shooting?” my dad asked.

“Needs work.”

“How’s your dribbling?”

“Needs work.”

“How’s your passing?”

“Never heard of it.”

“It’s when you assist another player by passing the ball so he or she can shoot,” Emily said. “Everyone knows that. Even Katherine.”

Emily’s pet iguana, Katherine, who sits on her shoulder during dinner, whipped her tongue out and hissed at me.

“No one wants to hear from you,” I snapped. “You didn’t make the team.”

“Do not take that tone of voice with Katherine,” Emily said. “She’s very sensitive.”

“Awww . . . what’s going to happen?” I said, faking a nice tone of voice. “Is she going to cry when she’s spitting up lettuce balls?”

“For your information, Katherine digests her lettuce very well,” Emily snapped.

“All right, you two,” my dad said. “That’s enough. Hank, after dinner I’ll take you downstairs to the basement courtyard and give you some basketball pointers.”

“Great idea, Dad, but there’s no basketball hoop in the courtyard.”

“Leave it to your creative dad,” he said.

“Okay,” I said, even though I had no idea what he was talking about.

“I didn’t know you played basketball, Stanley,” my mom said.

My dad kind of puffed up his chest. “I was a pretty fair player in my day. They called me Dr. Dunk.”

“Wow, Dad,” I said. “I didn’t know you were a doctor, too.”

“That was his nickname, you muffin head,” Emily said, “because Dad scored a lot of points.”

“I think you boys will have fun playing basketball together,” my mom said.

I wasn’t sure. My dad can get really impatient when he’s trying to teach me a game. Last week, he was trying to teach me how to play Scrabble, which is not a good game for me since I can’t spell. I tried to explain to him that he could roll his eyes at me all he wanted, but it wasn’t going to help me be a better speller.

My dad suggested we skip dessert and go right downstairs to practice. That was okay with me, since my mom is into making super healthy, semi-disgusting desserts. That night it was tomato soup cupcakes with blueberries.

I grabbed our basketball, and we took the elevator down to the basement. We walked through the laundry room and out the back door to the courtyard. It’s a cement square surrounded on all four sides by our ten-floor apartment building. My dad reached into a grocery bag he was carrying and pulled out two wire hangers. He twisted them together, then bent them into a circle and hung them up on a nail that was sticking out of the brick.

“This is called using your head,” my dad said, pointing to his homemade basket. “Now let’s practice using your hands. Take your first shot.”

I held the ball in my hands and took aim. Just as I was about to let it go, I heard a noise from Mrs. Park’s apartment. It sounded like a teakettle going off. I turned to follow the noise, and the ball went sideways. It never even came close to the basket.

My dad shook his head.

“You need to focus,” he said. “Concentrate. Keep your eyes on where you want the ball to go. Understand?”

“Completely, Dad,” I said.

I picked up the ball and took aim again. This time, I stared as hard as I could at the basket—until a fat gray pigeon swooped down from a windowsill. I saw it from the corner of my eye just as I let go of the ball. Once again—you guessed it— I shot a total air ball.

I could see the frustration building up in my dad.

“Let’s give shooting a rest,” he said with a sigh. “Let me see you dribble.”

I picked up the ball and dribbled around the courtyard. At least, I tried to. It’s a good thing there were four walls around me. Otherwise the ball would have rolled into the Hudson River.

Finally, we got to passing.

“Okay,” my dad said. “I’ll pass to you, and as soon as you catch it, pass it back to me. Step forward to meet the ball.”

He threw me the ball, and it landed on my chest, but I held on to it. Then I threw it back to him, which wasn’t easy, because he was moving all around the courtyard. We must have passed the ball between us five or six times in a row.

“Hey,” I said, stopping to catch my breath. “I’m really good at passing. That makes me feel great.”

“Don’t get overconfident,” my dad said. “What you need is game time. There’s no better way to learn the game.”

“I’ll never get game time,” I explained. “I’m just a substitute. Ms. Adolf doesn’t want to put me in.”

“We’ll see about that,” my dad said. “No son of mine just sits on the bench. Tomorrow, I’m going to school to have a chat with this Ms. Adolf.”

“That’s not such a good idea, Dad. Ms. Adolf is not very chatty.”

“I’m going to ask her to put you in the game,” my dad said. “All you have to do is hustle more and you’ll get better. But you can’t hustle without the opportunity.”

Every muscle in my body froze at the idea of my dad telling Ms. Adolf to put me in the game. Number one: Ms. Adolf doesn’t like to be told what to do. Number two: Did I mention Ms. Adolf doesn’t like to be told what to do? And number three: Ms. Adolf doesn’t like me. And if you put those three things together, it meant only one thing.

Tomorrow was going to be a disaster.