The Birthday Party of No Return! (2 page)

Chinnng.
I heard the ball hit the rim of the basket.
Swoosh.
I heard it go through.

Cheers rang out.

I rubbed my eye with the back of my hand. It hurt like crazy. Tears rolled down my cheek.

The game ended with Cory's great shot. Through my watery eyes, I watched one of the tall men come striding toward us across the gym floor. He had a broad smile on his face.

What does he want?
I wondered.

And then as he came closer, I squinted with my one good eye. And I recognized him.

“Oh, wow!” I cried. “I — I don't believe it!”

Franklin Howard. Yes. That was him, all right. Franklin Howard.

He had pulled off his cap, and I could see his shaved head. I recognized his smile. And the tattoo of a Chinese character on the side of his neck.

The
Franklin Howard, center on our city's pro basketball team, the Stampede.

I should have known those three dudes were basketball players. Seven feet tall and hands as big as catchers' mitts? The other two stayed against the wall, jabbering with some kids.

Franklin Howard came charging up to Cory. He raised his fist, and he and Cory bumped knuckles. Cory's little hand looked like a pig's foot next to Howard's huge fist.

“Nice shot,” Howard told Cory. “You totally faked this dude out.” He pointed to me. “Sweet!”

Cory shrugged. “It was a lucky shot.”

“No way,” Howard insisted. “There's a big difference between luck and skill. And you've got skill, man. You've got skill — and you've got style.”

“I … have a bug in my eye,” I muttered. “That's why….”

But the two of them weren't listening to me.

I rubbed the eye.
“Owwww.”
The bug was stuck to my eyeball. It wouldn't budge.

“Would you like to come to a Stampede game?” Howard asked Cory. “I'd like you to come sit on the sidelines. You know. And hang with the team. Maybe you could pick up a few moves.”

“Whoa,” Cory replied. “That's awesome!”

He and Howard bumped knuckles again.

I rubbed my burning eye with the sleeve of my T-shirt. Tears rolled down my face.

“Oh, wow. That's totally sick!” Evan Kreel, one of my teammates, stared at the bug on my eye. “That's
huge
, dude. Like a spider.”

“Let me see it, Lee,” Coach Taylor said. He guided me to his office at the side of the gym.

“It — it's stuck,” I stuttered. “It really hurts.”

Taylor brought his face up to mine. “Yeah. It attached itself to the eyeball. Let me get a tweezer.”

“Oh, wow.” I really didn't want to have my eye tweezed. I squinted out into the gym. My teammates had all gathered around Franklin Howard.

Coach Taylor leaned over me, raising a metal tweezer in one hand. “Hold still,” he said. He was gritting his teeth as he lowered the tweezer to my eye. “Man, that bug doesn't want to let go.”

I held my breath. Finally, on the third try, he lifted the black thing off my eyeball. “Go rinse it with cold water,” he told me.

I hurried to the locker room. I ran cold water over the eye. Then I stared into the mirror. The eye was bright red, but it felt a little better. I ran out into the gym.

At least, maybe I can get Franklin Howard's autograph
, I thought.

That would be totally cool.

But Franklin and the other two players were gone.

“Hey, Lee — you missed it,” Evan called. “Howard signed autographs for all of us.”

Yeah, I missed it. Just my luck. Lucky Duck wins again.

I turned and started to slump back to the locker room. Coach Taylor came walking over. “Eye feel better?”

I nodded. “Yeah. Thanks a lot, Coach.”

“No problem,” he said. “Hey, listen. You'd better get your game up, Lee. I mean, if you want to win the scholarship. Cory wiped the floor with you today.”

“Yeah. I guess,” I muttered.

I stopped at the locker-room door and glanced back into the gym. Cory was showing off to the other players. He was spinning the basketball on one finger. They were clapping and cheering him on.

I sighed. Lucky Cory.
How will I ever beat him?

Mom returned home from the high school a few minutes after I got home. Mom is tall and thin like me. She has straight blond hair that she usually ties behind her head in a ponytail. She wears glasses, but she hates them. She's always taking them off, then putting them back on.

She has been teaching Spanish at the high school for five years. She says someday maybe she'll graduate. My mom is the funny one in the family. Sometimes Dad has to tell her to be serious.

Arfy, our big, shaggy sheepdog, lumbered over to greet her. Arfy likes to jump on Mom and send her staggering back to the wall. He's very sweet. He just doesn't know he's as big as a bear.

Mom nuzzled Arfy for a while. Then she turned to me — and gasped. “Lee? Why is your eye red? Do you have pinkeye?”

“No. A bug flew into it,” I said. “Coach Taylor had to tweeze it out.”

“Ouch. How did your practice go?” she asked, kicking off her shoes.

“The usual,” I said.

At dinner, Dad asked me about practice, too. Dad teaches Chemistry at the high school. Sometimes he wears his white lab coat around the house. He says he's just comfortable in it.

“Franklin Howard came to watch us play,” I said.

“Nice!” Dad exclaimed. Dad is a big basketball fan. “Did he want to sign you up for the Stampede?”

“Not exactly,” I said.

“Did you get his autograph?” Dad asked. He's a big autograph collector. He has all the presidents going back to Carter. He frames them and hangs them on the den wall.

I shook my head. “No. No autograph. But it was cool to see him.”

I didn't say that everyone
else
got an autograph. I didn't want Dad to think I was a loser.

After dinner I was up in my room, in front of my laptop. I was visiting the website for the Summer Sports Camp for the eleven-millionth time.

The lake looked beautiful. They have an Olympic-sized pool, too. With a high-diving board. They have Olympic swimmers to give diving lessons.

And major league baseball players to give batting and fielding lessons. And a Hall of Fame pitcher who will help you work on your fastball. Amazing, right?

If you're into basketball like me, they have that, too. They have experts to help you in every sport you might want to try. And you get to live in these awesome cabins with Wi-Fi and video games and big-screen TVs.

Heaven.

“I
have
to go there,” I muttered at the screen. I gazed at the photo of the sparkling swimming pool. The pool was heated. Everyone got a one-hour free swim every day.

“I have to.
Have
to.”

Sure, I had to worry about Laura winning the scholarship. She was a good athlete and captain of all the girls' teams.

But she wasn't my main problem.

My main problem, of course, was Lucky Duckworth.

“Maybe I can get lucky, too,” I muttered. “Maybe…”

I heard a sound. I spun around to the door.

Only Arfy.

The big dog stepped into my room. His head was down. He looked kind of droopy.

“Arfy, what are you doing in here?” I asked.

Arfy made a few loud coughing sounds. Like he was clearing his throat. He licked his snout furiously.

Then his stomach heaved. He opened his mouth wide and threw up on my carpet.

A big wave of lumpy yellow vomit poured out of his mouth. He made another groaning sound. And dropped another huge pile of vomit beside the first one.

I let out a long sigh.

Even my dog is bad luck!

How can I change my luck? Am I just DOOMED?

Mom came into my room while I was still cleaning up the vomit. She studied the carpet for a moment.

“You missed a spot,” she said, pointing.

I rolled my eyes. “Thanks a lot, Mom.”

She was holding a square brown package. “I forgot,” she said. “This came in the mail for you.”

I glanced up at it. “Who's it from?”

“Doesn't say,” Mom said. The phone rang. She set the package down on my desk and hurried away to answer it.

I finished the cleanup. I washed my hands, but I couldn't get the smell off them.

I picked up the package. It was addressed to me with no return address. What could it be? I didn't remember sending for anything.

The package was very light. I shook it. Nothing rattled inside.

I tore off the brown paper and found a box underneath. In bright red letters, the top of the box read:
INSTANT GOOD LUCK
.

Huh? Had someone read my mind?

In smaller type, the box top said:
This rare good-luck charm never fails.

I lifted the box and let the brown wrapping fall to the floor. “This has to be some kind of stupid joke,” I muttered to Arfy.

The dog was watching me closely. He was hoping there would be food in the box.

Did Cory send this as a joke?

I shoved the box into my bottom desk drawer. I didn't even open it.

“Cory must think I'm a total moron,” I said to Arfy. “Like I'm really going to believe in good-luck charms.”

I slammed the desk drawer shut and forgot about it.

 

A few days later, six or seven kids gathered at the tennis court behind the school. They came for the first event in the Sports Camp competition.

A singles tennis match. Just one match against one opponent. The winners would score points for skill and style, awarded by Ms. Andersen, the school tennis coach.

Ms. Andersen is young and very pretty, with long, wavy brown hair and brown eyes and a great smile.

She doesn't dress like a teacher. She always wears T-shirts and jeans.

She matched up the players. Who did she match me up against? My pal Cory, of course.

Kids took out their rackets and began to take practice swings. We hit balls against the back wall of the school.

The court isn't in great shape. The surface is a little lumpy. Sometimes the ball takes crazy bounces. And the net is a little loose.

But it's the only court we have.

It was a sunny, warm day with a few low clouds drifting past. I did some warm-up exercises, swinging my arms from side to side. Loosening up.

I felt pretty good. Sometimes Cory and I play tennis on weekends, and we are about even. And maybe I beat him a few more times than he beats me.

Laura and a girl in our class named Shara Johnston were the first to play. We stopped our warm-ups to watch them.

Cory stepped up to me with a grin on his face, his dimple flashing. “Check it out,” he said. He raised his racket in front of me.

“Is that new?” I asked.

He nodded. “My dad bought it for me. Look.” He ran his fingers over the strings. “See? It's a new kind of racket. The string bed is suspended inside the frame.”

I squinted at it. “What's that supposed to do?” I asked.

Cory's blue eyes sparkled in the sun. “It increases the sweet spot by eighty percent.”

“The sweet spot?”

I knew what he was trying to do. He was trying to psych me out. He was trying to show me what a loser I was — before we even started to play.

“It cuts handle vibration by fifty percent,” he added.

“Cool,” I said. “Good luck with it, dude. I can still beat you.” I twirled my racket in my hand.

He laughed and walked away. It wasn't a nice laugh.

Shara Johnston isn't a very good tennis player. She has no backhand at all. But Laura had a lot of trouble beating her.

Laura slumped off the court, drenched in sweat. She shook her head. “That was close. What a struggle,” she said to me.

Cory popped up next to us. “You played really well — for a girl,” he told Laura. He laughed.

“Shut up!” she said. She gave him a playful shove in the chest.

“Now watch Lee and me play,” Cory told her. “Maybe you'll pick up some pointers.” He turned and jogged onto the court, waving his fancy new racket in front of him.

“You mean like bad examples?” Laura called after him.

“Lee, get moving!” Ms. Andersen shouted. “Get this match going. Good luck!”

I'll need it
, I thought.
If Cory has eighty percent more of a sweet spot, I'll need good luck.

And as soon as I stepped onto the court, I knew I was in trouble.