HAVING THE NAMES OF STOCKTON AND KIDD ON THE BALL DIDN’T HELP.
“Stockton and Kidd handling the ball, now that would help,” Bren Darcy was saying.
“We need that Kidd, not the kids we’ve got,” Will Stoddard said.
“No kidding,” Danny said. “Get it?”
Will said, “Okay, we have to stop now.”
They tried the new ball in the first game back, against Kirkland, and lost by six points. Tried it again the next day, played well for three quarters against Piping Rock, the best team in the Tri-Valley with a record of 8-0 coming in, but ended up losing by ten.
Colby missed a couple of shots in the last two minutes, and after the second one, Bren made a face. Danny called a time-out, and when they got to the huddle, Will told Bren that he could make faces when people missed as long as he never missed, and Bren said that Will should be worrying more about winning the game than sticking up for Colby. Before Danny knew it, they were nose-to-nose and Danny had to get between them.
“You guys have been buds as long as I’ve been buds with you guys,” he said. “So cut it out.”
Will said, “Tell him to stop making faces.”
Bren said, “Tell him to mind his own freaking business.”
“Hey!” Danny said. “Both of you. Zip it now. We’re getting better, let’s not blow it now.”
They were getting better.
Matt Fitzgerald, in particular, was starting to look like a real center, the private work he’d been doing with Richie finally starting to pay off. Colby got better every game. Will was taking basketball seriously—or as seriously as Will could take anything—for the first time in his life.
No team, no matter how big, wanted Danny and Bren Darcy harassing them in the backcourt.
“It’s like being chased by freaking bees,” one of the Kirkland guards had said the day before.
They just couldn’t win a freaking game to save their lives.
It was the middle weekend in January now, about a month from the start of the play-offs, and their record was 0–9. They were kidding about Jason Kidd in the layup line, getting ready to play Seekonk at St. Pat’s.
Colby showed up a little late, and the minute she walked through the door, everybody spotted her new kicks:
Old-school Converse high-tops, white, yellow toward the heel, some purple in there, too; even guys their age knew these were the ones Magic Johnson used to wear for the Lakers.
Danny had known from the start how cool Colby Danes was, not that he would have admitted that to his buddies. Now it was official.
A girl in Magic’s Cons.
“Girlfriend is stylin’,” Will Stoddard said.
Bren slapped him five on that, their fight at the end of the Piping Rock game already ancient history.
Oliver Towne, their only black kid, said, “Stoddard, you are, like, pathetically white.”
“Oh,” Will said, trying to act hurt, “like you have to rub my pasty face in it.”
Colby, who was now one of the guys on the Warriors, because she was cool and could play, said, “You are all sooooooo jealous that a girl has cooler sneaks than you.”
Will couldn’t let her have the last word. Will would sooner leave town before he’d let somebody have the last word.
“Maybe I can borrow them someday,” he said. “If I ever grow into them, of course. Like, when I’m in college.”
But this time, Colby got him.
“You’re right,” she said. “This is, like, totally messed-up. Isn’t it the boys who’re supposed to have big feet and the girls who are supposed to have big hair?”
The rest of the guys whooped as she took her place in line, casually high-fiving Danny as she passed.
Danny looked around and thought: We act like a team, we have fun like a team.
When do we play all four quarters like a team?
It turned out to be against Seekonk.
The Seekonk Sailors—they were the next town up from Port Madison, on the Sound—were even smaller than the Warriors. And not nearly as well coached. They didn’t have anybody who could get in front of either Danny or Bren, anybody who could stay with Colby, anybody who could keep Matt Fitzgerald off the boards.
When they tried going with a two-one-two zone, Will made five outside shots in a row, an all-time personal best.
The 0–9 Middletown Warriors were ahead 18–4 after the first quarter.
They were ahead 26–10 at halftime.
They were ahead twenty points by the fourth quarter, and Richie had them making ten passes before they were even allowed to look at the basket. By then, he had the O’Brien twins in the backcourt, Michael Harden playing center, Will and Oliver Towne at forward.
Richie had taken Danny out halfway through the third quarter.
“I think your work here is done,” Richie said.
Danny took a seat next to him. “Somebody said these guys have won two games,” he said. “I don’t know how they did that, but they’re not going to win another one the rest of the season.”
“Don’t worry about them,” his dad said. “You were worried we weren’t going to win a game the rest of the season.”
“Excellent point.”
“And when it’s over? You make sure the rest of the guys—and girls—act like they’ve won before.”
“Even though we haven’t?”
“Especially because we haven’t.”
It ended up Middletown 42, Seekonk 22.
Final.
Richie Walker said for the players and parents to meet at Fierro’s about five o’clock, the pizza was on him.
“Is your mom here?” Richie said to Danny.
Danny nodded to the row of folding chairs up on the stage. “She came late with Tess.”
“See you all at Fierro’s,” his dad said.
They tapped clenched fists.
“We’re on the board,” his dad said.
They were on the board.
His dad still wasn’t there at five-thirty.
“See?” his mom said. “The game’s over. He thought it was a soft five.”
The Warriors and their parents had taken up most of the front room at Fierro’s, pushing four tables together. They finally decided to order, a bunch of plain pizzas and a couple of pepperonis, huge greasy paper plates covered with mountains of French fries, pitchers of Coke and Sprite. They were playing oldies on the old-fashioned Fierro’s jukebox as usual, but nobody could hear them over the mega-amped-up noise of the place, and laughter, and excitement, as the kids on the team replayed just about every basket of the game.
In honor of the Warriors’ first win, Al Fierro announced that the ice cream sundaes were on him today.
The waitresses, all of them from Middletown High, were starting to clear away the plates and pizza platters when the pay phone on the wall next to the front door rang.
Al Fierro answered it, called out “Ali,” and motioned for her to come up there.
Danny watched his mom take the receiver.
Watched the smile leave her face.
Saw her free hand come to her mouth.
“Not again,” he heard her say.
She nodded hard a couple of times, placed the receiver back in its cradle, walked over to where Danny was sitting between Will and Tess.
“It’s your father,” she said. “There’s been an accident.”