Rivals by Tommy Greenwald (the speed reading book txt) 📗

to come here? Like, four, five years ago?”

“Sure, yeah. Why?”

“I don’t know, I just thought of it for some reason.” He points at a bike rack near the restroom area. “We used to park our bikes right over there. And we’d play pickup games for hours. It was so fun, especially that one summer. Remember?”

“Yeah, of course I remember. That was awesome.”

“Yeah.”

We sit quietly for a few minutes.

I wonder if he’s thinking about what I’m thinking about.

How different things were back then.

No parents, no coaches, no leagues.

Just ball.

SUMMER

Four years ago

It’s one of those hot, humid summer days that’s too brutal for everyone except a bunch of kids who just want to play hoops in the park.

The courts are crowded, like always. Some kids know each other, some don’t, but everyone is there for the same reason.

To play basketball.

The old church bell on the corner strikes once, and everyone knows what that means. The adults and older players have to clear the court, and the elementary school kids have it to themselves. It’s called Free Shoot, it’s every Saturday from 1 to 3, and for a lot of them it’s the best two hours of the week.

Free Shoot always starts with twenty minutes of crazy running around, shooting at both baskets, mostly boys, a few girls, everyone crashing into each other, that kind of thing. Two adults are in charge of managing the courts, but as long as no one is bullying and no one gets hurt, they don’t get involved.

Finally, a boy who’s no more than three feet tall holds his hand up. “Yo! We need to choose sides. Who wants to be captains?”

All the kids seem to step back and make a circle around two kids in the middle.

It’s unspoken, but everyone agrees that they’re the two best players.

One boy has intense blue eyes and wears a throwback Allen Iverson jersey. The other boy is a little shorter, with shaggy blond hair and glasses that he keeps pushing up the bridge of his nose.

The two boys nod at each other. “You should get those sports goggles they have,” the boy in the Iverson jersey tells the other boy.

“Yeah, maybe,” says the boy with the glasses.

The captains pick teams. At first they pick their friends. But then the boy in the Iverson Jersey points at an extremely tall boy he’s never seen before. “K, I’ll take you.”

The extremely tall boy glances at the boy with the glasses, who’s his friend. The boy with the glasses nods. The tall boy goes to stand next to his new teammates. He doesn’t know any of them.

From that point on, each captain picks some friends, some strangers. There are seven boys and one girl on one team, six boys and two girls on the other.

The game begins. The teams are even. Substitutions are made when the players on the sidelines just run onto the court and tell another player to take a break. Fouls are called by the person who commits the foul, not by the person who is fouled. There’s the nine- and ten-year-old version of trash talking. There’s laughter. There’s competition.

At one point there is a dispute, when the ball goes out of bounds and no one can agree on who touched it last. “It’s off you!” shouts a boy on one team. “No, it’s off you!” shouts a girl on the other team. Everyone argues for a minute or so, until the boy with the glasses steps up and says, “I have an idea. Let’s just do rock paper scissors to decide. One takes it.”

Everyone agrees that this is a very good idea. The boy shoots it out with the girl. The boy takes paper, the girl takes scissors. The girl wins. Her team gets the ball. Argument over.

After that, everyone agrees—whenever there is a dispute about a foul, or who touched the ball last when it goes out of bounds, the players will resolve it the same way: rock paper scissors. One takes it.

They end up playing four games. The teams are switched around several times.

Finally, after two hours, one of the adults blows a whistle.

Free Shoot is over.

The kids are exhausted and dripping with sweat, but they’re joking around.

By now, they’re all friends.

As the kid with the Allen Iverson shirt and the kid with the glasses walk off the court side by side, they realize two things: one, that they never played on the same team, because they were the captains; and two, they never learned each other’s names.

The blond kid with the glasses sticks out his hand. “Hey,” he says. “I’m Carter.”

The kid in the Allen Iverson shirt squints, his eyes shining in the afternoon sun. “Nice to meet you,” he says. “I’m Austin.”

They nod at each other.

“See you next week.”

They play basketball with each other for the next seven Saturdays.

Then summer ends, and they don’t see each other again for a long time.

AUSTIN

It hits me, all of a sudden—Carter Haswell was the other captain.

The kid with the glasses.

“Hey,” I say to Clay, as we sit there. “Is that kid Haswell still suspended from the team?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “I hope so. We’ll beat them easy if he is.”

I shake my head. “I hope he plays. Both teams should have their best players. And we have ours.”

It takes Clay a second to realize I’m talking about him.

“You’re right,” he says, “I hope he does play.” After a second, he adds, “And thanks.”

It’s amazing how, sometimes, just a day playing ball in the park can make everything cool.

CARTER

I’m walking down the hall at school, trying not to look at all the pep rally posters on the walls for the upcoming game against Walthorne North, when Principal Marshak stops me.

“Mr. Haswell. Nice to see you.”

“It’s nice to see you, too,” I say back, even though it’s never nice to see the principal.

She looks serious, but her eyes are soft, not hard. “I’m sure you know that a petition has been circulating, asking for your reinstatement