At last, a window above crashed open and a red face shouted, “For Chrissakes will you shut up before I dunk you in the canal.”
I thought Wills was going to throw the ball up in an attempt to dunk it through the man’s window, but thank goodness he thought better of it and stuck his tongue out instead. Dad dragged him back inside and gave him a piece of his mind, but nothing dampened Wills’s spirits. By the end of the afternoon Dad was going nuts. He loaded us into the car and drove us home at such a speed that even Wills shut up. We screeched to a halt outside our house. Wills tried to hug Dad goodbye, but Dad wasn’t having any of it and told him to get out before he threw him out. He just nodded goodbye to me, which made me all resentful because I hadn’t done anything wrong. Then he drove off again at high speed.
“Dad’s in a bit of a mood, isn’t he?” said Wills. I couldn’t be bothered to answer. I prepared myself to give Mom a quick hug then dash up to my bedroom before Wills started his kangaroo act with her.
Luckily, he seemed to have bounced himself out and, once he had bragged about being on the team, bad-mouthed me, made sure that Mom would come and watch, he flopped in front of the television. I went up to my room anyway after dinner. I disappeared inside a book to the comforting sound of Muffin on his wheel. Mom came in to check that I was all right about being a reserve, and to ask if Wills had behaved himself. Then she asked if Dad was all right.
“Wills went a bit loopy about being on the team and Dad lost it with him,” I said, hoping I wasn’t being disloyal to Dad.
“I wondered why he went off in such a rush,” Mom sighed.
“He couldn’t wait to get rid of us,” I muttered. And it was true. He couldn’t wait to get rid of us.
In the middle of the night, Wills came into my room and woke me and Muffin up.
“Go away,” I snapped. “Can’t you even give me some peace at night?”
“What if I mess up?” he whispered urgently.
“What do you mean?” I growled.
“Basketball,” he hissed. “What if I mess up?”
I scratched my head, still not sure what he meant by “mess up.”
“It’s all right for you,” he said. “Nobody’s expecting anything from you, but they are from me.”
“Thanks.”
“But what if I play like crap and we lose?” he persisted, and I realized how anxious he was.
“You know what Clingon says, that it’s a team game and everybody’s responsible,” I said.
“Yeah, but nobody else has, well you know what I mean, nobody else gets all sort of excited like I do, and I don’t want to be crap and mess it all up in front of Mom and Dad. I want to make them proud of me, and then they might get back together and we can be a normal family again.”
Sometimes I wondered who was older, me or Wills. When Wills said all that, I wanted to tell him that a game of basketball wasn’t going to make any difference. Even I knew things weren’t going to change in an afternoon, even if we did win and Mom and Dad sat next to each other and cheered.
“If you just do what Clingon tells you, you’ll be fine.” I tried to encourage him. “You’re the best player on the team.”
“Am I?” He looked at me with absolute amazement.” You’re not just saying that.”
“No, I mean it,” I assured him.
“You’re not that bad either, bro,” he grinned.”Except at crossover dribbling. You’re bad at that.”
“Can we go to sleep now?” I said.
“I don’t know how you can sleep with the racket that Muffin makes,” he said.
Chapter Eleven
Wills missed school the next day. He went off on his bike as usual, racing ahead of me like a lunatic as usual, but I saw him stop and talk with his horrible friends, and then I saw them go off together in a different direction from school. I called after Wills. He turned for a moment but then continued on. One of his friends turned and made a rude gesture at me. It made me feel so pathetic and insignificant that I wanted to make the same gesture back, but I knew that would make me look even more pathetic, and anyway the three of them were too far away. Let Wills get on with it, then. Why should I care if he wanted to be a loser for the rest of his stupid life? I just hoped that none of the teachers at school would ask me where he was, because if they did I would say I didn’t know and I didn’t care.
Nobody did ask me, thank goodness. On the way home that afternoon, I stopped in at the library to do my homework. I didn’t want to go straight home in case Wills was there and Mom wasn’t back from work. Penny was busy with a customer when I walked in but she grinned and did a question mark thumbs-up at me. I did a thumbs-down because I felt in a thumbs-down sort of mood. When she did come over she was waving a flyer.
“Cheer up, young man,” she smiled. “Here’s something for you to get your teeth into.”
“Flyers don’t agree with me,” I joked.
“Funny ha ha,” she said. “Look, it’s a national competition for story writing. Why don’t you give it a try?”
“What, you mean everyone
