Ball Boy: An Excerpt
I wrote a novel!
That novel is called Ball Boy; it’s about a kid named Gray Taylor who wants desperately to be the sort of person other people notice. But it’s not until Gray’s mom moves the two of them from Los Angeles to small-town Kansas that Gray gets his chance, through basketball.
Ball Boy is my first (published) work of fiction. Its story is made-up but many of the themes are ones I’ve wrestled with in my own life, especially when it comes to the idea of finding the thing that makes each of us feel special and unique.
What follows below is an excerpt from Ball Boy, specifically the chapter when Gray makes his first real appearance in a game. In this chapter, you’ll meet Gray’s new best friend, the hulking Elmer Niehaus, and Gray’s own manic-pixie-dreamgirl, Cleopatra “Patra” Patterson. You’ll also learn about one of the deeper themes in Ball Boy: the power of community.
Gray’s new home of Beaudelaire doesn’t know how great it can be and Gray has decided to help show them.
I hope you like it! If you do, you can buy Ball Boy here.
Thirty-six hours and eight minutes after Gray’s meeting with the janitor, Bug Biancalana hoisted a poorly conceived jump shot that made Coach Rutherford catch Gray’s eye inside the thrum of the Beaudelaire High gymnasium.
Gray nodded, quick and curt.
Rutherford did, too, and Gray took off toward the scorer’s table in a half-crouched shuffle so he wouldn’t block anyone’s view of the game.
At the scorer’s table, he went through the necessary details for Mr. Hoffman.
“Taylor, 22. For Biancalana, 11.”
“Bravo, Sir Gray,” said Mr. Hoffman, making a mark in the scorebook without taking an eye off the game. “Godspeed.”
Gray dropped onto the bleacher beneath Mr. Hoffman. The scene in front of him — so much color, so much noise — made him think of when the gym teacher had tried to teach them double-dutch in fourth grade. The ropes were spinning so fast and how were you supposed to find your way in? Especially if you were about to make a fool of yourself on purpose.
Under his warm-ups, Gray was wearing one of the uniforms Mr. Edison had dug out of a footlocker marked 1961–4. Gray was going to show the town of Beaudelaire that “old” didn’t necessarily equal “bad.”
Out on the court, the referee blew his whistle after a scrum under the basket. Oskar Haart came out of the tangled mass of bodies with the ball wrapped in his arms. He’d also committed a foul and a referee trotted to a spot at midcourt, where he reported the foul to Mr. Hoffman.
The same referee waved Gray into the game.
Gray pulled one string from around another string. His warm-up pants dropped to his ankles. Then, to make sure the effect was complete, Gray tore off his warm-up top as he stepped out of the warm-up pants. He knew he couldn’t break character — couldn’t let on that anything was different than anyone else on the court.
He jogged out to Bug Biancalana and held out a hand.
“You’ll be defending number 10,” said Bug, with a nod behind him at Santa Fe’s point guard. Then he waved at Gray’s shorts, which had a one-inch inseam. “Don’t hemorrhage anything.”
The referee blew his whistle and handed the ball to a player from Santa Fe — Gray’s man, Number 10.
Gray snapped his rubber band and it began: real basketball, when the game mattered, when the crowd was paying attention, and all of it while wearing the shortest and tightest uniform anyone in the gym had seen.
He shadowed Number 10, sliding left and then right and in the process forgetting about his tiny shorts and the crowd and whether his tiny shorts were affecting that crowd the way he was hoping they would.
The guard — whose dark hair was cropped a half-inch from his head, leaving him looking like an inmate or a Chia pet — had his attention on his team, which was downcourt, awaiting his instructions. Gray could tell number 10 wasn’t thinking about him. And if Number 10 wasn’t thinking about him-
Gray planted his left foot and lunged for the ball. As he did, he could see what was going to happen next: he’d push the ball toward the sideline, scramble after it, and then, once he’d tracked it down, score a basket — his first ever. And that would be the beginning of a surprisingly effective first full game: maybe twelve points, a few assists, and a big win.
But as is often the case in sports and life, theory and reality did not intersect. What actually happened was that Number 10 pulled the ball away from Gray and, when he noticed that Gray’s lunge had left him out of position, accelerated downcourt, leaving Gray stuck like a cat in quicksand.
Gray made a quick recovery and by the time the point guard had gotten to half-court, he was only ten feet behind him. He had a clear view, then, of Elmer helping off the man he was guarding, coming out to meet the point guard. This, though, left Elmer’s man unguarded. Number 10 saw this opening and tossed the ball to Elmer’s man, at which point Gray saw his (second) chance. He accelerated and, as the ball rose from waist to chest to head, he stuck up his hand and jumped.
There were a couple of things working against Gray. One, the shooter was right-handed and Gray was on his left side, meaning Gray would have to get all the way across his body to get to the ball. And two, the shooter was four inches taller than Gray, which meant Gray had to stretch every available ligament to its limit to have a chance. But those same characteristics also worked for Gray. Because the shooter was right-handed, and because Gray was on his left side, Gray had the element of surprise on his side. And because the shooter was four inches taller than Gray, he thought he had time for a slow, easy shot. Gray stretched and, this time, the Fors won out over the Againsts and Gray blocked the shot, launching the ball out of bounds, where it bounced once at the base of the bleachers, and then caromed into the crowd, coming to rest at the feet of Patra Patterson.
Not that Gray noticed whose feet the ball had landed near. He was breathing so hard that his brain wasn’t getting any oxygen. This was far more work than he’d expected. How was he going to manage an entire quarter of this? Let alone an entire game.
“Gray.”
Patra picked up the ball and faked a pass at him.
“Gray!”
Patra threw the ball and this finally got Gray’s attention. He caught the ball just as Elmer appeared at his side.
“Take a breath,” said Elmer.
Gray’s hand went to his wrist and his rubber band. But before he could pull, Elmer clapped his own hand around Gray’s wrist. Then Elmer was pulling, hard enough that Gray was starting to worry that the rubber band would take off some skin.
But Elmer wasn’t snapping the rubber band. He was yanking the rubber band entirely off Gray’s wrist.
He tossed the band to Patra and grabbed the baby blue piping at the edge of Gray’s ancient jersey.
“When you’re out here,” he said. “This is your rubber band. Now, do like I said: take a breath.”
Gray sucked in a breath like he’d once taken after being bowled over by a wave at Dockweiler Beach, when he’d feared that he might never get air again.
“Good,” said Elmer. “Now let’s go have some fun.”
“I’ll hold onto this,” said Patra, twirling the rubber band.
Gray smiled at Patra — the devilish sort of smile that can only come when we’ve relaxed, when we’ve realized that the only way to learn how to double-dutch is to get hit by the ropes a few times.
“You’d better,” he said.
Then Gray Taylor clapped his hands and started playing basketball.
Here’s Ball Boy on Amazon.
