Christopher - The Basket Counts

Copyright 1968, 1991 by Matt Christopher Royalties, Inc.

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

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First eBook Edition: December 2009

The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

Matt Christopher is a registered trademark of Matt Christopher Royalties, Inc.

ISBN: 978-0-316-09590-7

To
Patrick

H ere! Mel Jensen shouted from the corner of the court.

Earl Stone glanced at him, then passed the ball quickly to Caskie Bennett running up behind him. Earl, or Stoney as the kids called him, screened for Caskie. Caskie shot. The ball arced toward the basket, hit the far side of the rim, and bounced off.

Mel fumed as he rushed in for the rebound. That was the second time he was in the clear and Stoney didnt pass to him.

Mel leaped. Several other pairs of arms stretched up, too. Dutch Fullmer, Quincys tall center, reached higher than the others, pulled down the ball, whipped it out of Titan hands, then passed to a Quint in the corner. The Quint dribbled to the center line, passed to another Quint beelining toward the Titans basket. All five Titans rushed after him but he was too far in the lead. He leaped and laid the ball up against the boards. The big orange sphere wobbled through the net for two more points.

Mel glanced at the scoreboard. VISITORS 6; HOME - 7. It could have been VISITORS 4 and HOME - 9 if Stoney had thrown him the ball.

Mel looked at Coach Tom Thorpe sitting next to the other Hillcrest Titans. Didnt Coach see Stoney purposely ignoring him? Or didnt he care?

Mr. Corbin, Hillcrests junior varsity coach, was refereeing this practice game between the Hillcrest Titans and the Quincy Quints. He handed the ball to Rick Longfoot, the Titans right guard, gave a blast on his whistle, and the game resumed.

Rick tossed to Caskie. Caskie dribbled the ball up to the center line, crossed it, then bounced a pass to Skeet Robinson. Skeet feinted out a Quint guard, dribbled toward the keyhole, then stopped and took a quick look over his shoulder.

Here! shouted Mel as he ran up behind him.

Skeet passed to him and Mel dribbled to the corner. He started to take a set shot, but a Quint popped up in front of him. Mel pivoted so that his back was to the guard and passed to Rick. Rick drove in, leaped. A Quint leaped at the same time, pressed his hand on the ball, and the whistle shrilled.

Jump ball! yelled Mr. Corbin.

Rick tapped to Caskie. Caskie passed to Skeet, Skeet to Stoney. Mel ran down along the sideline, his right arm raised. He was in the clear. Stoney could pass him the ball if he wanted to. The nearest Quint to Mel was at least twenty feet away.

But again Stoney didnt pass to him. He passed to Caskie instead. Caskie stopped abruptly some ten feet from the basket and shot. The ball struck the far side of the ring, bounced high, then came down again, struck the front side of the ring, and bounced off toward the keyhole.

A flock of green uniforms, the Titans, and black-striped gold uniforms, the Quints, scrambled after the ball. A Titan got it. Mel Jensen.

He yanked the ball away from stubborn hands, drove in hard, laid it up. The ball arced, brushed against the boards, slipped through the net.

Way to go, Mel! yelled a high-pitched voice from the bench.

Mel grinned and waved to his buddy, Darryl Brady, sitting on the bench. Hed recognize Darryls voice anywhere. Both Mel and Darryl were new in the Hillcrest School this year. Their families had moved this past summer into a section of Trexton where only one other black family lived. Mels father was a dentist and Darryls father was an electronics engineer.

Some neighbors had welcomed the new families warmly. Others had not.

Dont worry, Dad had said after the first few days. Theyll get used to us and well get used to them. We sleep the same way, eat the same food, breathe the same air. Theyll learn that nothing is different between us, black or white.

It isnt all the whites, Dad, Mel said. Its just a few.

He was thinking of Stoney and Caskie, although he knew there were others, too.

I know, said Dad.

A horn sounded. Darryl and Pedro Dorigez ran onto the court. Darryl took Stoneys place, Pedro took Mels.

The quarter soon ended and the game went into the second period. Coach Thorpe put in Andy Head and Kim Nemeth, giving the whole team almost equal time on the court.

Resentment flashed through Mel when he saw that both Stoney and Caskie were ignoring Darryl, too. More than twice they could have passed the ball to Darryl. He had been in the clear, in a good spot to shoot. But they had ignored him, just as they had ignored Mel.

Darryl intercepted a pass from a Quint and dribbled the ball as hard as he could down the length of the court. Then he leaped, laid the ball up, and sank it for two points!

All right! yelled Darryl. You dont have to pass it, Cas! Ill get that ball one way or another!

That Darryl. He didnt care what he said or to whom he said it. Mel glanced at the coach. Coach Thorpe had cracked a grin. Mel was sure that there was very little that went unnoticed by the coachs alert eyes, and wondered if he would say anything to Caskie and Stoney about not passing to Mel and Darryl. Guess Ill just have to wait, Mel thought.

The game went through the third and fourth quarters with the two coaches putting in all their players and playing both man-to-man and zone defense. The Quints won by a narrow margin, 3835. Its lucky, thought Mel, that it wasnt a league game.

The Titans and the Quints went to the locker rooms and showered. Mel was already under a shower, enjoying the cool, needlelike spray, when Darryl showed up and took another stall. Behind him came Caskie and the other members of the team.

Nice game, Mel! yelled Rick Longfoot.

You, too, Rick! said Mel with a laugh.

Stoney and Caskie looked at him and Darryl briefly as they went by to another shower stall. Neither said anything.

Mel was glad when he and Darryl were dressed and out of there. It was cold and wintry outside but more comfortable than being around Caskie Bennett and Stoney.

T he next day was Thanksgiving. Mel thought he had never seen so much food on the table in his life. Right in the middle of it was a large, crisply cooked turkey. Mom and Dad sat at opposite ends of the table with Mel and Robby on one side and Cindy and their big sister Ruth on the other.

As was the Jensen tradition, each family member took a turn to say what he or she was thankful for. Everyone laughed when Cindy said she was thankful not to be sharing a bedroom with her big sister anymore. When it was his turn, Mel hesitated a bit. It didnt make sense to be thankful for the way Caskie and Stoney treated him.

But there were a lot of other things he was thankful for. Top of the list was having a place on the Titans.

All four children climbed into the bus Monday morning after the long Thanksgiving weekend. Cindy got off at the elementary school, Robby and Mel at the middle school, and Ruth, a sophomore, continued on to the high school.