Hot Hand (7 page)

And they would still be undefeated.

Lenny made his move with ten seconds left. Jim set his pick on Tim, Lenny took a couple of more dribbles to his right like he was going hard down the baseline.

Only he put the brakes on.

Tony Gilroy, Billy’s man, turned to watch. As he did, Jeff came over and set a pick on
him.

Billy blew past both of them, busting it the way Lenny had told him to, and headed toward the lane.

One small problem: Tim Sullivan was running at him from his right almost at the exact same moment Lenny was getting ready to pass Billy the ball. Billy thought about cutting the other way, toward the basket. But when he gave a quick look behind him, he saw Tony Gilroy scrambling back into the play, coming hard from Billy’s left.

There was still plenty of time to give the ball right back to Lenny, who Billy could see was wide open now.

But Lenny, who usually would take the last shot himself, had wanted Billy to do it this time, or he wouldn’t have drawn up this play in the huddle. And Billy wanted in the worst way to be the kind of guy who had the ball in his hands in moments like this, who wasn’t afraid to take the last shot in a game, no matter how hard a shot it was.

Hero shots, Lenny called them.

Making one against somebody as good as Tim Sullivan was going to make it all that sweeter.

He knew he wasn’t passing the ball now, passing up a chance like this.

Billy squeezed between Tim and Tony instead, leaned in the way he thought only Lenny could for one of his hero-shot moves, took one last dribble and let the ball go.

The shot was still in the air when the horn went off.

Billy had stumbled right after he shot, tripping over Tony Gilroy’s leg, ended up sitting pretty much under the basket as regulation ended between the Magic and the Hornets.

It ended this way:

With his shot hitting nothing but net.

Magic 42, Hornets 40.

The Magic were still the only undefeated team in the league.

Lenny got to Billy first, then Jim, then Jeff, then Danny Timms and the rest of the guys. Mr. D came next, saying, “Okay, you guys are 10-0 but, hey, I’m 1-0.” He grinned at Billy then, looking more like Lenny than ever, and gave him some fist to bump.

It was when Mr. D stepped away to hug Lenny that Billy saw his dad standing in the corner of the gym, almost hidden by the end of the bleachers, arms crossed, not looking happy, not looking sad.

Just there.

Watching everything that was happening around the Magic’s basket.

Billy walked over to him. Maybe somebody else would have gone running after a game like this, jumped right up into his dad’s arms.

But it wasn’t like that with them.

Billy walked.

“You were here?” he said.

“Got here with about eight minutes left to play,” his dad said. “When it still looked like we were going to win easy.”

“How come you didn’t coach?”

“It was Pete’s game to win or lose,” he said. Pete was Mr. DiNardo. “You don’t just show up and tell him to move over. That’s not the way it works in sports.”

Billy wanted to get back with the guys, get back to the celebration. But before he left, he had to ask.

“What did you think of that last shot?” he said.

His dad didn’t even hesitate.

“Lenny didn’t have a guy within ten feet of him,” he said. “You should’ve passed.”

“Yo,” Lenny said at recess on Monday. “I still can’t believe your dad dogged you that way after we won the game.”

“Me, neither,” Billy said.

“Sounded to me like more of that tough love my dad is always joking about,” Lenny said. He used his fingers to put little brackets around
tough love
the way Eliza would sometimes.

“Yeah,” Billy said. “Except the joke was about as funny as the Ratner twins.”

“The Ratner twins are funny,” Lenny said. “Just not the way those two dopes think.”

They were sitting on a couple of swings that had been on the playground at West from the time when it was one of the lower schools in town. The daily four-square game was still going on, but Billy and Lenny had bagged out of it, saying they were giving everybody else a chance today.

“Not only did you make the winning shot,” Lenny said. “You made it against Tim Stinking Sullivan.”

“You noticed, huh?” Billy said. “Least somebody did.”

“He just thinks he’s toughening you up, or whatever, for the play-offs,” Lenny said. He was tossing some small, smooth rocks he’d picked up into a plastic trash can about ten yards away, hardly ever missing. Billy was sure there were probably sports that Lenny didn’t make look easy, he just couldn’t think of any.

Lenny DiNardo made everything he did look easy. Not only that, he made whatever he was doing at a given time look like the most fun thing in the world. It was why Billy had always wanted to be like him, pretty much from the first day they’d met.

“With all the stuff that’s been happening lately,” Billy said, “I’m pretty sure I’m tough enough, LD.”

Lenny gave him one of his no-worries smiles. “I hear you,” he said, and then put out his palm so Billy could give him an old-fashioned low five they’d seen in a basketball game on ESPN Classic, one where you just slid your own hand over the other guy’s, like you were trying to scoop a dollar bill or something off it.

“If my dad is gonna be like this in the regular season, I don’t even want to think about what he’s gonna be like in the play-offs.”

“We’re probably gonna need to wear helmets,” Lenny said, “and that’s just at practice.”

Billy poked Lenny, pointed and said, “Can I put my helmet on now?”

Zeke and the Ratner twins were walking straight at them.

When he was close enough to them, Zeke said, “You guys a little big for swings?”

Neither Billy nor Lenny said anything. Billy had a feeling ignoring Zeke wasn’t going to make him go away.

Unfortunately he was right.

“I’ve been forgetting to ask you something, Raynor,” Zeke the Geek said. “You had a chance to work on your tackling lately?”

“Yeah,” Bruce Ratner said.

“Yeah,” Hank Ratner said.

Billy still didn’t say anything. He’d been instructed by Mrs. Marion—
ordered
by her, was really more like it—to stay away from Zeke when they weren’t in class.

When she had told Billy that he had almost said, Yeah, Mrs. Marion, I have to be told to stay out of Zeke the Geek’s way.

Only now here Zeke was.

Billy couldn’t believe he was looking for more trouble in front of the whole school. But he was Zeke, and trouble was really the only thing he was good at, the way Lenny was good at sports or Ben was good at piano.

Maybe he wasn’t scared of Mrs. Marion any more than he was of the other kids in the school.

“Asked you a question, Raynor.”

Zeke was standing as close as he could be to the swing Billy was sitting on without actually touching it.

“I’ve got nothing to say to you, Zeke,” Billy said, looking up at him.

What happened next happened fast.

The Ratner twins moved in behind Zeke. Suddenly the rest of the playground couldn’t see Billy unless they looked through Bruce and Hank Ratner.

Before Billy could get a better grip on the rope handles attached to his swing, Zeke the Geek leaned down and jerked the seat up so that Billy went flying backward into the dirt.

“Hey,” Lenny said, hopping out of his own seat. “That’s just plain old wrong, dude.”

Zeke turned to him and said, “You want some of this, DiNerdo?”

“Yeah,” Lenny said, stepping toward Zeke, “unfortunately, I guess I do.”

“Lenny, no!” Billy said, getting to his feet, brushing the dirt off him. “You don’t want to get suspended over this loser, too.”

“Why not? It’ll be fun,” Zeke said. “Then we can be losers together.”

“Good point, Zeke, no kidding,” Billy said. “It’s amazing you don’t get better grades with a brain like yours.”

“You really think I’m gonna let you get away with sucker-punching me?” Zeke said.

“I try not to think of you at all, Zeke.”

Billy looked past Zeke. No teachers around, just like the last time.

The only person close to them, he saw, was his brother Ben.

Zeke didn’t know he was there yet, because Ben was behind him. There he was, anyway, wanting to see what was going on at the swings.

Billy put his eyes back on Zeke so that Zeke wouldn’t wonder what he was looking at behind him.

“Just so’s you know,” Zeke said. “This still isn’t over.”

“Boy, there’s pretty great news,” Lenny said.

“Shut up, DiNerdo.”

“Yeah,” the Ratner twins said, at the same time.

The twins turned to go. So did Zeke.

Who saw Ben now.

“Hey,” Zeke said, “it’s little Raynor.”

He walked right up to him, put out his hand, the way people did when they wanted you to shake it.

“How you doing, little Raynor?”

Ben put his hand out.

Zeke took it.

Zeke didn’t have it long. Billy couldn’t hear what he was saying. And knew it didn’t matter. However hard he was squeezing Ben’s right hand, he didn’t let go until Ben yelled, the sound coming out of Billy’s brother and somehow just blending in with all the other yells from recess.

 
Monday night was now the official night of the week when they went out to dinner with their dad.

When their dad had first stopped living with them, their mom had assured them that they would work out some kind of schedule where all the kids would spend regular time with him on weekends. “Quality time,” she called it. When Eliza heard that one, she laughed, saying that if she started doing that, it would be the first time she had ever spent quality time with Dad on weekends in her life.

Billy knew something too:

Their dad had never spent much time with Ben on weekends, if you didn’t count when the two of them would go to a movie together. Billy had always sort of thought that the movies were their best time together, for both Ben and dad, because that was a couple of hours when they didn’t have to try talking to each other.

Joe Raynor would show up at some of Ben’s tennis clinics when Ben was still playing tennis. It was the same with soccer before Ben quit. Sometimes Billy would tag along to Ben’s games when his mom was working on a Saturday, just to keep his dad company. So Billy knew better than anybody in the family that Dad had no interest in tennis, even if one of his sons was playing it, and didn’t even know the names of the positions in soccer.

Billy had gotten the most of what Eliza called “Dad time.”

Lucky me, he thought.

Tonight they were sitting at their favorite table at Bobby Van’s, a restaurant all the Raynor kids liked as much for the desserts as for the burgers and chicken fingers, chicken fingers being the only thing Billy could ever remember his brother Ben ordering when they were out to dinner.

Billy and Ben had gotten into it with Zeke earlier in the day. Afterward, Ben swore that his hand was fine, but Billy wasn’t so sure. When they’d gotten home, he’d asked Ben to prove his hand was okay by playing something on the piano in the living room.

Ben said he had studying to do if they were going out with Dad, and to stop bugging him about his stupid hand.

Now they were waiting for their food and their dad was doing the same thing he did at every one of these dinners so far: going around the table and asking each of his children what they’d been doing since he saw them last.

Billy wondered if their dad wrote out what he wanted to do at dinner, the things he wanted to talk about, the way he wrote out what they were going to do at basketball practice.

Eliza went first, mostly because she always did, pretty much giving a play-by-play of her week, both in and out of school. Sometimes when Billy watched his big sister, he pictured her picturing her
self
in one of those real-life MTV shows she was always watching, just without any cameras around.

Billy knew his dad didn’t give a rip about what Eliza and her girlfriends had been talking about all week. He still tried to act interested, even throwing in a question once in a while when Eliza would actually stop to take a breath.

After Eliza, it was Ben’s turn. Their dad tried to make a joke of it when he explained why they were going out of order, age-wise, saying to Billy, “I know what you’ve been doing since last week’s family dinner—shooting.”

“Good one, Dad,” Billy said.

His old reliable. Like going to his favorite spot on the floor.

“How’s piano?” their dad said to Ben. “Getting ready for the big day?”

“I guess.”

Ben seemed more interested in the chicken fingers and fries on his plate, shoveling them in with his head down like the rest of them were timing him.

“C’mon, guy,” Joe Raynor said. “You gotta be more fired than that. This is what you’ve been working for.”

Still Ben didn’t look up. “Whatever,” he said.

Their dad, being their dad, wouldn’t let it go.

“You should be as fired up about this recital of yours as Billy is about the play-offs.”

Ben, like he was talking to his plate, mumbled, “I’m not Billy.”

“What did you say?”

Ben looked up, like his eyes were on fire all of a sudden. “I said I’m not Billy. Piano isn’t basketball. It’s not a team sport. It’s just something else I do
alone.
”

“But the principles are the same in anything you want to do well,” their dad said. “Hard work pays off in the end. You put the work in at practice—”

Ben tossed down his fork, and it hit an open spot on his plate, hard. And loud.