Tall Story by Candy Gourlay Read Free Book Online

doing here, Jabs?’
    Jabby put his fingers to his lips. ‘Shh,’ he whispered. And then he winked. He kicked a panel of graffiti and it swung open. A secret door.
    Jabby tossed the basketball through the narrow gap and slipped in after it.
    I hung back. ‘It says trespassers will be—’
    ‘There’s never anybody here. Come on!’
    I had to bend at the waist to get through the door. I followed Jabby into the Arena’s back yard.
    It was a mess. A mountain of gravel listed precariously in one corner and untidy stacks of concrete blocks were dotted haphazardly around the yard.
    Bamboo scaffolding covered everything. What I could see of the dome had been whitewashed – butthe dark grey of concrete showed through the thin paint like a five o’clock shadow.
    ‘There must be a security guard somewhere,’ I muttered.
    ‘There never is. I’ve been here loads of times. This way.’ Jabby had not stopped. There was a door to one side. A fat padlock hung from the latch.
    ‘We shouldn’t be here.’
    ‘Come on!’ Jabs pulled at the padlock and it fell to the ground with a thick clunk. ‘Follow me!’
    I hunched low to enter the doorway into a dark, airless tunnel.
    Jabby stood at the end of the tunnel, one shoe drumming impatiently on the floor. When I was safely through, he turned and marched into the darkness. He bounced the ball once or twice, sending echoes through the tunnel like gunshots.
    ‘Jabby? I can’t see anything.’ I lumbered slowly after him, my fingers tracing a path on the rough concrete walls.
    ‘Wait a minute.’ Jabby’s voice was distant and echoing. It sounded like he was somewhere above me, to the left. ‘I’ll be right back!’
    I waited, staring into the murk.
    The air was choked with construction dust butthere were other smells too – new wood, paint, cardboard and styrofoam.
    Then, high above my head, the lights bloomed on like a hundred little suns.
    I realized I was standing next to a basketball goal. It was made of transparent fibreglass, like the ones you see on TV. Nothing like the ones at the park which had warped badly after only one monsoon.
    The net hanging from the hoop was red, white and blue, and so new the white bits glowed like Old Tibo’s false teeth.
    Beneath my feet, the floor was made of a yellow wood, shiny and smooth.
    Tiers of red seats wound round and round and up and up to the high domed roof.
    All this time I had assumed that the sports centre was nowhere near finished. I was wrong.
    ‘Wow.’ I turned. Jabby was slowly descending from wherever it was he’d switched on the lights, cradling his basketball like a baby, a big grin on his face. ‘I had no idea.’
    He flexed his shoulder muscles and pushed the ball into the sky. It arced high but I reached up at just the right moment and tipped it gently into the basket. It bounced on the yellow floor with a satisfying
thunk
.
    Jabby caught it after the first bounce.
    ‘Ace!’
    It was the one move I could do on the basketball court. Jabby and I spent a lot of time practising variations of it. Under the basket. To the right. To the left. It wasn’t
proper
basketball, but at least it was something we could do together, since with my big feet and my brittle knees, I couldn’t run to save myself.
    Jabby thunked the ball once or twice and released it from the free-throw line.
Swish
. It dropped neatly through the net. ‘Not only is it finished, the Arena is all set to open. In two weeks!’
    ‘Two weeks? But I haven’t seen any posters. Shouldn’t they be advertising?’
    ‘They will – they’re just sorting out some local teams for the exhibition game.’ He stood on the three-point line and attempted another shot. He missed. The ball ricocheted off the hoop with a powerful
crack
.
    Two weeks! I would be in London by then. I bit my lip.
    Jabby grabbed the ball and turned to the backpack he had flung down on the end line.
    ‘I brought you here for a reason.’ His eyes sparkled as he unzipped his