Travel Team Read Free

low, only struggling when he tried to get tricky and double up on a crossover move.
    The kid stopping sometimes, breathing hard, going through his little routine before making a couple of free throws. Like it was all some complicated game being played inside the kid’s head.
    He hadn’t heard anybody coming, so he nearly jumped out of his skin when she tapped him on the shoulder, jumping back a little until he saw who it was.
    â€œWhy don’t you go over?” Ali said.
    â€œYou shouldn’t sneak up on people that way.”
    â€œNo,” she said, “ you shouldn’t sneak up on people that way.”
    â€œI was going to call tomorrow,” he said.
    â€œBoy,” she said, “I don’t think I’ve ever heard that one before.”
    Ali said, “You can catch me up later on the fascinating comings and goings of your life. Right now, this is one of those nights in his life when he needs his father, Rich. To go with about a thousand others.”
    Richie Walker noticed she wasn’t looking at him, she was facing across the street the way he was, watching Danny.
    â€œWhy tonight in particular?”
    â€œHe didn’t make travel team,” she said now on the quiet, dark street. “ Your travel team.”
    â€œLook at him play. How could he not make travel?”
    â€œThey told him he was too small.”

2
    J UST LIKE THAT — LIKE ALWAYS , REALLY — IT WAS AS IF HIS DAD HAD APPEARED out of nowhere.
    Danny sometimes thought he should come with one of those popping noises that came with the pop-ups on the videos.
    Pop-Up Richie Walker.
    â€œHey,” his dad said.
    â€œHey.”
    This was one of those times Danny always carried around inside his head, where his dad would get down into a crouch, like one of those TV dads coming home from work, and put his arms out, and Danny would run into them.
    Only it never seemed to happen that way. It happened like this: Both of them keeping their distance and neither one of them knowing exactly what to say.
    Or how to act.
    Richie Walker had never been a hugger. It was actually a joke with them, Richie having taught Danny when he was five or six what he called the “guy hug” from sports, one without any actual physical contact, one where you leaned in one way and the other guy leaned in the other way and then you both backed off almost immediately and did a lot of head nodding.
    â€œIn the perfect guy hug,” his dad had said, “you sort of look like you’re trying to guard somebody, just not too close.”
    Like them: Close, but not too close.
    Neither one of them said anything now. At least that way, Danny thought, they were picking right up where they left off.
    His dad said, “How you doing?”
    â€œI’m okay.” Danny put the ball on his hip. “What’re you doing here?”
    All his dad could do with that one was to give a little shrug.
    â€œYou see Mom?”
    â€œJust now.”
    â€œYou want to go inside?”
    â€œI always liked it out here better.”
    Danny thought about passing him the ball, knowing they’d always been able to at least talk basketball with each other. Instead, he turned and shot it.
    Missed.
    â€œYou call that a jump shot?” his dad said. “Looks more like a sling shot to me.”
    His dad, Danny knew, had always been more comfortable giving him a little dig than having a real conversation with him. His mom once said that the only time Richie Walker had ever been happy was when he was one of the boys. So all he knew how to do was treat Danny like one of the boys.
    Except sometimes Danny didn’t know whether he was being sarcastic when he picked at him. Or just mean.
    â€œNo,” Danny said, retrieving the ball. “On account of, I can’t jump.”
    Richie Walker said, “You need to work on your release. Or you’re gonna get stuffed every time.”
    Danny thinking: Tell me about