Hook Shot Hero by Matt Christopher

1
    Y o, Daniels! Think fast!”
    Tim Daniels dropped his sleeping bag and whipped around just in time to catch the basketball. He grinned when he saw who had thrown it.
    “Dick Dunbar! I can’t believe you’re back here at Camp Wickasaukee!” Tim lobbed the ball back.
    Dick, starting center for one of the best college teams in the country, plucked it onehanded out of the air and palmed it by his side. “ ’Course I’m back. Why wouldn’t I be?”
    Tim rolled his eyes. “Uh, gee, I dunno! Because you’re the hottest NBA prospect in the universe? You should be sitting by the phone, waiting for the offers to pour in!”
    Dick tossed the ball over his head and caught it with the other hand. “Maybe I’ll enter the draft after I graduate next year.”
    “ Maybe? ” Tim echoed incredulously.
    Dick gave a short laugh. “Yeah, maybe. Don’t get me wrong, Tim. I love playing basketball, but there’s more to life. I’m not ready to put all my eggs in one basket.” He dribbled twice and added, “Even if the egg is a basketball and the basket is a hoop ten feet above the ground!”
    “Hey, Tim, you gonna get the rest of your stuff or what?” Billy Futterman, Tim’s best friend, called. Billy’s mother had driven them to camp; Tim’s remaining belongings were still in the trunk of her car.
    “Be right there!” Tim called. To Dick, he said, “So, I’ll see you around camp, right?”
    “Just try to avoid me!” Dick replied. He shot Tim with a finger gun and sauntered off. Tim hurried back to the Futtermans’ car.
    “Thanks again for the ride, Mrs. F.,” Tim remembered to say as he pulled out his gear.
    Mrs. Futterman peered anxiously into the empty trunk. “Now, you boys are sure you remembered everything? Maybe we should look over—”
    Billy cut her off. “Mom, we doublechecked everything before we packed up the car this morning. And before you ask, yes, I have plenty of self-addressed stamped postcards, and yes, I promise to write you and Dad every other day! Come on, Tim,” he added, picking up his belongings and heading toward a two-story cabin marked Eagles Nest. “We better hurry if we don’t want a couple of newbies to grab our bunk.”
    Tim hid a smile as he shouldered his bags. To hear Billy talk, you’d think he’d been coming to Camp Wickasaukee his whole life instead of this being his second summer. And what a difference a year made! Last summer, Billy moaned about everything, from mosquito bites and the lack of video games to his sunburn, the rigorous basketball practices, and the pranks the other campers played on him.
    Not that Tim blamed him for that last complaint. A few of the pranks, like running a pair of Billy’s oversized underpants up the flagpole and putting shaving cream on his pillow, were pretty rotten things to do to a homesick guy.
    Tim had been the victim of a few nasty jokes, too. The worst was when he’d gotten a “kiss” from a whoopee cushion instead of the pretty girl he thought he was smooching!
    He and Billy had gotten their revenge, however. In the dead of night, they’d pulled the classic hand-in-warm-water trick on the chief prankster, Mike Gruber. Mike woke up to discover he’d wet his bed, a fact his cabinmates had never let him forget.
    I wonder if Mike’s back this year, Tim thought as he pushed open the door to the Eagles Nest. He got his answer a second later.
    “Oh, jeez, look what the cat dragged in.” Mike was stretched out on a beat-up old couch. Perched on one arm of the couch was another camper from last summer, Brian Kelly. The two exchanged loaded looks and smirked.
    A third boy, Donnie DeGeronimo, rose from a nearby chair. “Dude, let me give you a hand with that,” he said. Donnie was one of the tallest fourteen-year-olds Tim had ever met. Judging by the new low pitch of his voice and the shadow of a mustache above his upper lip, Donnie had matured a lot in the past year. Compared with him, Tim sounded like one of those singing