Chapter Four

“Your turn, Cooper!”

The coach didn’t need to call my name. The second I got my fingers on the ball, I was off, dribbling down to the other end of the gym. I might not be as tall as some of the other guys, but I’m fast — and scrappy.

We had to dribble past these orange plastic cones the coach and his assistants had set the length of the court. The idea was to get past the cones on our first try, to get past them quickly on the second, then to get past them without looking on the third, and finally, to get past them quickly, without looking. Now that was tough.

I love the sound a basketball makes when it hits the floor—or the pavement. It’s a steady rhythm, kind of like a heartbeat.

“Not bad!” the coach said, slapping my arm when the drills were over.

We were practicing our jump shots when I realized I recognized the tall redheaded guy standing next to me. His jersey was soaked with sweat. “You go to Royal Crest, right?” I asked him.

“Yup,” he answered. He didn’t have the ball, but he was practicing just the same. He jumped in the air, then tossed an invisible ball into the net.

He turned to face me. “I’m Bobby Lambert. You’re Cooper, right?”

“Josh Cooper.”

“How are you liking basketball camp?” he asked me.

I couldn’t help looking to see if anyone was listening. Clay was at home painting, but I definitely wouldn’t have wanted him to hear what I was about to say. “It’s way cool,” I told Bobby.

“What’re you two ladies yakking about?” the coach called out. “We’re working on jump shots here!”

Bobby and I walked out of the community center together at the end of the day. It turned out he lived a couple of blocks over from our place.

It was late afternoon, but the sun was still shining brightly and the air was hot and humid.

“Ever think of trying out for the school team?” he asked me. We’d stopped to take a break on the stairs outside Ben & Jerry’s on Monkland Avenue.

I told him I didn’t think I was good enough to make the school team.

“You might feel different after a month at basketball camp,” Bobby said.

I hoped he was right.

Bobby checked his watch. Then he reached for the sports bag he’d left on the stairs and slung it over his shoulders. “Hey, Josh,” he said as he got up from the stairs, “we’d better get a move on. My folks are going out of town tomorrow. I told them I’d be around tonight. You know—family time.”

I nodded. But what I was really thinking was how I didn’t know the first thing about family time.

I trudged along the sidewalk, my basketball cradled in the crook of my arm. I thought about how my parents had split up so long ago I couldn’t even remember when we’d been a family. Then there were all those years of just me and Mom, and spending weekends with my dad when he wasn’t traveling for work. He was in China now, helping to build a new bridge. At least he’d be back in Canada for the last two weeks of July.

I swatted at a fly buzzing near my head. I thought about how I’d always missed having a real family. A mom and a dad who got along, who lived in the same house, and maybe even a big brother to show me basketball moves — or a younger one to teach them to.

“We’re going to be a real family now,” Mom told me just before Clay moved in with us. But Mom had been wrong.

I was turning the corner to my street when I spotted the key. Because of the way the sun was shining, it glistened. Someone had left it right in the lock of their front door.

The house was a small red-brick cottage that looked a lot like ours. I walked up the front stairs and raised my finger to the doorbell. My plan was to let whoever lived there know they’d forgotten the key.

White lacy curtains hung in the front window. There was no one in the living room, but I thought I heard laughter coming from the back of the house. I didn’t ring the doorbell. I turned the doorknob and let myself in.

The air smelled of tomato sauce. The sharp, tangy smell reminded me that all I’d had for lunch was a ham-and-cheese sandwich and an apple. There was a white pillar just past the front hallway. If I had to, I could duck behind it. And from beside it, I’d get a good view of whatever was going on.

A fluttering sound interrupted my thoughts. Where was it coming from?

“Boid!” a girl’s voice cried out. “Come here this instant!”

The girl — she looked as if she was about seventeen — was sitting at a computer in a sunny room off the kitchen. The family room. Just thinking the words made my shoulders tense up. I watched as a small green and yellow parakeet landed on the girl’s shoulder.

A younger boy — the girl’s brother, probably — was sitting next to her on a colorful rug, building something out of Lego. When I craned my neck, I could see that a man was helping him.

“Hey, Dad, give me that piece!” the boy said.

The dad laughed and rumpled his son’s curly hair. “Come on. We promised Mom we’d set the table,” he said, using one elbow to push himself up from the rug.

I knew I should leave — I could go back outside right then and ring the bell, let them know about the key in the door — but for some reason I couldn’t move from my spot. My legs and feet felt heavy, as if I was in a dream I couldn’t wake up from.

All I could see of the mom was her back. Her hair was as curly as the boy’s was. “The spaghetti will be ready in five minutes!” she called, wiping her hands on her apron. “Didn’t you guys promise to set the table?”

I followed her gaze as she looked toward the dining room, which opened out from the side of the kitchen. Inside was a large round table made of dark wood and surrounded by matching chairs. There were no canvases propped up against the walls like at our house, no paint-splattered sheets on the floor.

Just then, Boid, who’d been perched on the girl’s shoulder, took off and flew across the room. As I ducked behind the pillar, I saw the bird make a poop that landed smack on the middle of the dining room table. I covered my mouth so I wouldn’t laugh.

“Would you put that damned bird back in his cage?” the mother shouted. Her voice had turned shrill and it sounded like she was stomping her feet.

Careful not to make any noise, I tiptoed back to the front door and let myself out of the house. But before I left, I took the key from the lock and left it on the floor in the front hallway.

After all, I didn’t want the home invader to get in.