Read Online Summer Ball by Mike Lupica - Free Book Online

of you belong.”
    He had been walking up and down in front of them, a basketball he’d picked up on his hip. Danny was almost positive he could hear him creak as he moved. Suddenly he stopped in front of Rasheed.
    â€œNow, from what I saw this morning, I was lucky enough to end up with the most complete player in this whole camp, young Mr. Hill, here,” he said.
    What , Danny thought, he’s not a fancy player?
    Then he watched as Ed Powers handed Rasheed the ball and said, “This is your ball, son, until somebody shows me they can take it away from you.”
    Danny just stared at the two of them, feeling Will’s eyes on him like they were laser dots.
    Danny just knew Will wanted him to turn around in the worst way, but he wasn’t doing it, mostly because he knew what his friend was thinking:
    His ball.
    Not Danny’s.
    Before they’d even scrimmaged.
    Coach Powers put his arm around Rasheed now, as if they were already one team, and the rest of the guys standing in the line were another.
    â€œI know they call this camp Right Way,” Coach Powers said. “But let’s be real clear about something from the start. From now on, you young men are going to play the game my way.”
    Â 
    Each bunkhouse had a designated night to use the pay phone in the old-fashioned phone booth outside the main building. Jeff LeBow had informed everybody that they were here to play, not do play-by-play for their parents.
    Gampel’s phone night was Monday.
    Danny thought there’d be more kids wanting to use the phone, but the line that Nick organized—he seemed to put the saddest looking kids at the front of it—wasn’t as long as he expected it to be.
    Zach Fox still looked sadder than anybody in the whole bunk, but he’d stayed behind.
    â€œI’m not going to lie to them and tell them I’m having a good time when I’m not,” he said.
    â€œBut you said you liked your coach and some of the guys on your team.”
    Nick said Zach had gotten the youngest coach in Division I, Bill Brennan from Fordham, who was just thirty years old.
    â€œJust because he’s a good guy doesn’t mean I want to spend half my stupid summer with him,” Zach said. He flopped back on his bed and started rifling through the pages of a Hoop magazine.
    Ali Walker answered when Danny finally got the phone. And she immediately started asking a lot of Mom questions about the trip up there, his counselors, the food, if he was showering and brushing every day, how pretty the property was, even asking a joke question about where the nearest girls’ camp was.
    â€œI have no idea,” Danny said.
    Ali said, “I could MapQuest it for you.”
    â€œMom,” Danny said, “if there is a girls’ camp nearby, I guarantee you, Will Stoddard’ll find it.”
    â€œExcellent point.”
    The two of them kept making small talk like that, and as they did, it occurred to Danny that he was making everything sound better than it really was, which meant telling the kind of lies Zach Fox was refusing to tell to his parents.
    He told her about being in the younger kids’ bunk, tried telling her it was no biggie before quickly changing the subject, but his mom was all over him. “Are you sure it’s no biggie?” she said.
    â€œI practically feel like one of the counselors,” Danny said. “It’s kind of fun being the old guy for a change.”
    There was a pause. Mom radar at work, even long-distance.
    â€œYou say it’s fun,” she said. “But you don’t sound that way.”
    â€œIt’s fine, Mom, really,” he said. “Plus this guy I’m with, Zach, could use a friend.”
    â€œWell,” Ali said, “he couldn’t have a better one than you.” Then she said she was going to put his dad on the phone, they probably had big basketball things to talk about.
    â€œOh, wait, I almost