The Sixth Man Read online

  “Well, for what it’s worth, our favorite coach’s son thinks he should be suspended,” Christine said.

  “Matt?” Alex said.

  She nodded, putting a French fry into her mouth as she did.

  “How do you know that?” Alex asked, hoping he didn’t sound accusatory. He suspected he did.

  “He texted me this morning after he saw it on YouTube.”

  Alex managed not to ask her how often the two of them texted. He had been so busy since the start of basketball season—especially with first semester finals coming up next week—that he hadn’t found a time to ask Christine out again. Classes ended on Tuesday, and then exams ran until the end of the week. The holiday break came afterward.

  “I guess the good news is we should still win on Friday with or without him,” Jonas said. “Saint Pius is supposed to be awful.”

  “How do you know they’re awful?” Alex asked.

  Jonas looked a little embarrassed. “Christine told me,” he said.

  Alex didn’t need to ask how Christine knew. He had nicknamed her Hermione long ago, in part because she was petite, dark-haired, and very pretty, much like the Harry Potter character. And, like Hermione, Christine seemed to know everything about everything.

  “They won two games last year, and they were one of our seven wins,” Christine said, authoritative as usual. “They may be worse this year—if that’s possible.”

  “So, fine, we don’t need Coach Archer on Friday. But we probably will need him when we go out to play Main Line after break, right?”

  “You’ll need all the help you can get against Main Line,” all-knowing Christine/Hermione said. “They have two players being recruited by Division I colleges. They’re probably as good as or better than Mercer.”

  “Great,” Jonas said, draining his milk shake. His hamburger was gone. So was Alex’s. Christine had eaten about three bites. Alex was still starving. “At least we’ve got a couple weeks to practice before that game.”

  “There is one downside to Coach Archer not being there Friday if they suspend him,” Christine said.

  “What’s that?” they both asked.

  “Fewer spectators at the game,” she said with a big smile. Seeing the confused look on both their faces, she went on. “Most of the girls think he’s easily the hottest teacher or coach in the school.”

  “Really?” Jonas asked.

  She picked up her hamburger and took a bite, swallowed, and said, “Uh-huh.”

  “So girls come to the games to watch the coach?” Alex asked.

  “Absolutely,” she said.

  “But he’s old,” Jonas said.

  She shrugged. “He’s thirty-six. Cute is cute,” she said.

  Alex just shook his head, and decided to order another hamburger.

  “One game,” Christine said as they walked into French class on Monday. Naturally Christine had found out about Coach Archer’s suspension before Alex did. “He’ll miss the game Friday but can come back for the nonconference games after Christmas break.”

  “Too bad for all you girls,” Alex said.

  She gave him a withering look and walked into the classroom. Alex had resolved to ask Christine on a date this coming weekend—a real date—but, seeing her look after his wisecrack, he decided this wasn’t the time.

  He was vaguely aware of the fact that a lot of people around him were speaking in French, but he wasn’t really listening when he heard Mademoiselle Schiff, his French teacher, saying, “Monsieur Myers, écoutez, s’il vous plaît.”

  Even though she was saying it politely—listen, please—the sharpness in her voice told him that she had been trying to get his attention for a while. The giggling in the room confirmed it.

  “Pardonnez-moi,” he said. “Je suis un peu malade.”

  She looked at him suspiciously. Claiming he was a little sick had probably not been his best idea.

  She switched to English, which she almost never did. “Alex, if you’re sick you should go see the nurse,” she said.

  “Non, non,” he said. “Je suis fatigué, mais je suis ça va maintenant.”

  “Vous allez très bien,” she said, correcting him because he had said “I’m tired, but I’m fine now” incorrectly.

  Fortunately, she decided not to press the issue further.

  Alex saw Christine staring at him from across the room. He buried his head in the vocabulary book they were working from and prayed that class would end without him being caught daydreaming again.

  Maybe Mademoiselle Schiff understood he was a lost cause that day, because she left him alone.

  As they left the classroom, Alex caught up with Christine.

  “Vous êtes malade?” she said, grinning.

  “Yeah, yeah, what else should I have said?”

  “I don’t know. How do you say ‘I was acting like a jerk walking into class with Christine’ in French?”

  “Okay, fine,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Jealous?” she said, her dark eyes dancing as they walked down the crowded hallway.

  He saw an opening. “Yeah,” he said. “Well, no, not really. It’s not like I think you’re going to go out with Coach Archer or anything.”

  “Duh,” she said. “I think Ryan Gosling is good-looking too, but I’m not going to go out with him.”

  “Right,” he said. “But maybe you’ll go to a movie Saturday with me?”

  She kept walking for a moment, saying nothing.

  “Okay,” she said finally. “Maybe after Stark’s?”

  “In the afternoon?”

  “Something wrong with that?”

  “No, not really, but—”

  “Gotta go,” she said. They had reached the turn in the hallway where he headed in the direction of the gym and the locker room and she headed for the office where the student newspaper was located.

  “I’ll pick the movie,” she said, starting to walk away.

  “Nothing with Ryan Gosling,” he called after her.

  She turned back for a split second and gave him a devilish grin. “We’ll see,” she said, and then she was gone.

  Alex pumped his fist and said “Yes!” under his breath.

  Then he headed for practice.

  Steve Holder told everyone in the locker room that the suspension didn’t include practice. “He can’t be in the building on Friday night until the game’s over,” he said. “That’s it.”

  After that, Alex wasn’t surprised to see both coaches—Archer and Birdy—standing at midcourt while the team warmed up. The surprise came when, instead of using his whistle to get their attention, Coach Archer just said, “Hey, fellas, gather round here for a minute.”

  When they all raced over the way they would have if he had blown his whistle, he smiled.

  “Good hustle,” he said softly. “Look, I’m sure you’ve all heard that I’m suspended for Friday night’s game. I think you also know that Coach Birdy is more than capable of filling in.”

  He paused for a second, as if deciding what to say next. “I’ve had a long weekend to think about the kind of coach I want to be. I’ve been pretty hard on everyone since we started practice. This is my first head-coach job and there may be times when I’ve tried too hard. Friday was an example. I’m not saying we would have won the game if I hadn’t gotten tossed, but we would have had a lot better chance.”

  He glanced at Alex. “Fact is, the whole thing happened because Myers made a great play. I got frustrated because the ref was wiping that play out. For the record, he had the call at least half right—which makes me feel worse.

  “So I’m going to try to do a better job going forward, especially with my temper—even more so when we’re on the practice court. That doesn’t mean I won’t get on you for mistakes, and I will get on you if I think you aren’t giving a hundred percent, but I’m going to try to be more patient.”

  He paused again, clearly deciding if there was anything more he needed to say. Apparently there wasn’t.

/>   “Okay, then,” he said. “Let’s run five-man shells. Reds at the north end, whites at the south.”

  Alex and Jonas had walked onto the court wearing white because they had started practice every day with the second team. Alex had wondered if that might change after Friday.

  It didn’t.

  He and Jonas glanced at each other, then headed to the south end of the court.

  They stopped when they heard Coach Archer calling their names. “Myers, Ellington, sorry,” he said. “You guys are in red.”

  He turned to Zane Wakefield and Tony Early, who were headed in the other direction. “Wakefield, Early, my mistake. I need you in white.”

  He walked to the side of the court and stood next to Coach Birdy with his arms crossed. As Alex passed Wakefield and Early heading to the south end, he could almost feel the anger coming off of them. He said nothing, but inside his head he was repeating the same words over and over: deal with it, boys, deal with it.

  Coach Archer had players switching from red to white throughout practice. Even Holder spent some time in white. It was almost as if he was trying to make the point that there were no starters—or that there were ten starters. Alex didn’t mind. All he knew was that he was on the court throughout the practice and that if there had been any doubt about who the team’s best guards were, they should be gone by now.

  On several occasions Coach Archer paired Alex and Jonas in the red team’s backcourt but put the rest of the starters with Wakefield and Early on the white team. The reds consistently held their own during those periods because Wakefield and Early couldn’t guard Alex or Jonas. Alex could almost feel Wakefield’s frustration—which finally bubbled over during the last scrimmage of the day.

  Wakefield was bringing the ball upcourt, with Alex guarding him. Steve Holder came to the top of the key to set a screen and try to set up a pick-and-roll. But Wakefield gave the play away by dribbling almost directly to his right instead of dribbling diagonally around the screen toward the basket. Alex read the move, and instead of staying behind the screener, which he normally would have done, he darted around him—a mistake, technically, since it meant he was now behind the man he was guarding. Except that Wakefield’s dribble was right in front of him and he was able to easily swipe the ball away.

  He chased the ball down and headed in the other direction, aware that Wakefield was trying to run him down from behind. As he went up for a layup, Wakefield piled into him. Alex didn’t see exactly what Wakefield had done, but it was clear—and Jonas confirmed later—that Wakefield had made no play for the ball. He had just jumped on Alex’s back and pushed him to the floor.

  Alex managed to break his fall with his hands, but pain shot through his right arm as he fell with Wakefield on top of him. Wakefield still had his arms locked around him in a wrestling hold, but Alex finally freed his left arm and was trying to push Wakefield away from him when he felt several pairs of hands pulling them apart.

  “Get off me, Ellington!” Wakefield screamed. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  Alex couldn’t hear Jonas’s answer. He had rolled over and was pushing himself up with his left arm, ready to charge Wakefield—who he had decided to kill—as the pain continued to scream through his right arm. But he saw that Coach Birdy had placed himself in front of him, blocking his path to Wakefield. Even though he knew he wouldn’t get to Wakefield, he charged toward Coach Birdy, screaming, “Did you see what he did?” He pointed at Wakefield. “You dirty little— You ever do that again, I’ll kill you!”

  “Come and get me,” Wakefield, still being held back by both Jonas and Steve Holder, sneered.

  Alex tried to take a step around Coach Birdy, but it was futile.

  “Hang on, Myers,” he said. “Let Coach Archer handle this.”

  At that point, Alex remembered how much his arm hurt and grabbed his wrist.

  Coach Archer came up behind Coach Birdy and pointed at the hand.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” Alex said, being honest. “It hurts.”

  Coach Archer turned and waved at J. J. Crowder, the team trainer. “J. J., get over here and take a look at Myers.”

  Alex was now bent over in pain.

  Coach Archer turned to Wakefield. “Wakefield, you’re off the hook tonight because the women have the court now and I can’t make you run suicides until you drop. You be in my office tomorrow morning at 6:00 a.m….”

  “But, Coach, I was just trying to make a play, and—”

  “NO, you weren’t,” Coach Archer said. “You were trying to hurt him and it looks like you may have succeeded. Bad enough to pull something like that in a game against an opponent. But to a teammate? I don’t want to hear another word. Everyone hit the showers. I’ll see you at practice tomorrow. Except for you, Wakefield. I’ll see you at six. We’ll be running some steps.”

  He turned his back on the rest of the team and walked over to where J. J. Crowder was poking gently at Alex’s hand, wrist, and arm. Jonas and Holder lingered, and Coach Archer didn’t shoo them away.

  “How’s it look, J. J.?” he said softly.

  J. J. had been applying pressure to various places on Alex’s arm, saying “Hurt?” each time. So far, the pain had been minimal.

  “Can’t tell yet,” J. J. answered.

  Then he put his thumb on a spot on the inside of Alex’s wrist about an inch above his palm.

  Alex screamed in pain, his knees buckling.

  J. J. nodded. “It’s a tendon,” he said to Coach Archer. “Judging by his reaction, he probably tore something in there. It could just be stretched, but I’m guessing it’s a tear. We need to get it X-rayed to see how bad it is.”

  “Where do we take him?” Coach Archer said.

  “Sinai General,” J. J. said. “It’s a couple miles from here. I’ll call Dr. Taylor and ask him to meet us there so Alex won’t have to wait too long in the emergency room.”

  “I’ll take him,” Coach Archer said. “Give me the address and call the doctor. Come on, Alex.”

  He put his hand gently under Alex’s arm to support it and led him out of the gym.

  Coach Archer tossed Alex’s bicycle into the back of his Jeep Cherokee, and as they climbed into the car, he suggested that Alex call his mom.

  Alex downplayed the injury, but it didn’t work.

  “You’re going to the hospital?” she said. “Is something broken?”

  “The trainer doesn’t think so,” Alex said. “It might just be a stretched ligament. Coach wants me to get an X-ray to be sure.”

  “What hospital?” his mom said. “I’ll meet you there.”

  “You stay home with Molly. I promise to call as soon as we know what the problem is.”

  His mom was replying, but Coach Archer asked for the phone.

  “Mrs. Myers, this is Evan Archer,” he said. “I’m Alex’s basketball coach. I understand your concern, but Alex tells me he has a sister at home, and it’s pretty close to dinnertime. I promise I’ll call you and tell you exactly what we’re dealing with, and then I’ll bring him home.”

  Alex couldn’t hear what his mom was saying, but he figured it out when Coach Archer answered. “Actually, Alex made a terrific play right at the end of practice,” he said. “Took a fall while he was being fouled and broke the fall with his hands. Very smart of him, really. I don’t think anything’s broken, but as he said, we need to be sure.”

  He listened again. “The father of one of our players is a doctor who practices at Sinai General, so we’re hoping he can expedite things when we get there.”

  Alex saw him shake his head. “I understand. No thanks; I’m fine, but thanks for offering.”

  He said goodbye and hung up just as Alex spotted a sign for the hospital.

  He gave Alex a smile. “I tried, but she’s coming anyway,” he said.

  “What about Molly and dinner?” Alex asked.

  “She said she was going to stop at McDonald’s and get something for
Molly and you too. She even offered to bring me something, but I said no.”

  Alex didn’t mind the thought of getting something to eat sooner rather than later, but he wasn’t thrilled at the thought of his mother and sister coming to the hospital.

  Someone was standing on the sidewalk waving at them as they pulled up to the emergency room entrance.

  Coach Archer rolled down his window. “Are you Dr. Taylor?” he asked.

  “That’s right. Nice to meet you, Coach. I can take Alex in while you park.”

  Alex got out gingerly, using his left arm to cushion the right one.

  “Alex, I’m Dean Taylor, Pete’s dad,” the doctor said. Pete was a backup big guy who played rarely. “Under the circumstances, I won’t shake your hand. Let’s get you inside. I’ve got an X-ray room set up already. We can worry about the paperwork once we take the pictures.”

  Dr. Taylor walked Alex straight through the emergency room waiting area into an empty room. A nurse walked in a minute later, and Dr. Taylor carefully took Alex’s right arm and placed it on a table that appeared to have a camera inside it.

  “I’m going to move your arm a few times so we can get several angles,” he said. “I’ll try my best not to hurt you. If what J. J. told me on the phone is accurate, we should be able to tell pretty quickly what’s going on here.”

  They took about six pictures, and then Dr. Taylor told the nurse to tell Coach Archer it was okay to come in. He must have been waiting outside the door, because he walked in seconds later.

  “Give me about ten minutes,” Dr. Taylor said.

  Ten minutes felt like an hour to Alex. Coach Archer asked him how the pain was, and he said it was fine—as long as he could rest his arm on the table and not move it. Dr. Taylor finally came back with two X-rays. He put them up on the wall and told Alex and Coach Archer to come and take a look. Before they could start to look at the pictures, the phone on the wall rang. Dr. Taylor picked it up. “Send them on back here,” he said.

  He turned to Alex. “Your mom and sister just arrived,” he said.