HE DIDN’T TELL HIS MOM ABOUT HIS SHOULDER IN THE MORNING. HE WASN’T going to tell anybody about his shoulder, as sore as it was. He didn’t like tennis too much, it wasn’t his favorite, but sometimes when one of the big tournaments was on, he liked to listen to John McEnroe. And one time during the U.S. Open, he’d heard McEnroe talking about what some old Australian guy had told him about injuries when McEnroe was a junior player.
“If you’re hurt,” McEnroe said, “you don’t play. If you play, you’re not hurt.”
He was playing, case closed.
Even though he did want to call his dad and ask him if they made junior pain pills, preferably chewable.
He took a longer shower than usual, letting the hot water beat on his shoulder as long as possible. When he came downstairs, his mom was in the living room.
There was a big box in the middle of the floor.
“Whatcha got?” he said.
“Take a look for yourself.”
They were white basketball jerseys, packed in a zipped-up plastic bag. He unzippered the bag, and pulled one out.
“Middletown” was in blue letters on the back, above the numbers.
“From your father’s team,” she said.
“No way!”
“Way.”
“Was this Dad’s idea?”
“Nah,” she said, “this one came from the old point mom.”
The second jersey Danny pulled out of the plastic bag was Richie Walker’s Number 3.
Danny tried it on, careful pulling it over his head, knowing that if his face showed any pain, his mom would pounce; he tried not to even think about the shoulder, worried about her mutant mindreading powers.
His dad’s Number 3 fit him as if he’d special-ordered it out of a little-guy catalogue. He didn’t have to tuck half of it into the sweats he was wearing right now, didn’t lose half of the “3” in the front.
Didn’t feel like Stuart Little.
It fit him like a dream.
He looked at his mom. “How…?”
“From Mrs. Hayes. After Mr. Hayes died.”
There hadn’t been a dad coaching Middletown travel when Richie Walker’s team had won the national championship. Their coach had been a local basketball legend named Morgan Hayes, who’d coached basketball at Middletown High until being forced to retire at the age of seventy.
Danny said, “Dad always said Coach Hayes knew more about basketball than any coach he ever had after that.”
“I think the only reason Coach Hayes ever agreed to come out of retirement,” Ali Walker said, “I mean back then, was because he knew how special your father was, and he was a little sad he wasn’t going to be able to coach him in high school.”
His mom went on to say that after Mr. Hayes died three years ago, his wife found this box in their basement. In those days, his mom said, the kids didn’t get to keep the uniforms when the season was over, they went back to Middletown Basketball. But they’d allowed Morgan Hayes to keep these uniforms because his Vikings had won the title.
“Of course your father had left…town by then,” his mom said. “But somehow I couldn’t bring myself to throw these uniforms away. There wasn’t any Middletown Basketball Hall of Fame I could give them to. So I just kept them in the basement.”
She looked at Danny. “I think you should wear them today,” she said.
He went over and put out his fist. She put on a face that had some attitude in it, like she was saying uh-huh, and tapped it with her own.
“Very cool idea,” he said to his mom. “You think they have any magic in them?”
“The Vikings won’t know what these uniforms mean. But you guys will.”
They took the rest of the uniforms out of the box and folded them neatly. Danny said they could pass them out when everybody was at St. Pat’s. When they finished their folding, the two of them were still kneeling on the floor, facing each other. His mom took his hands.
Don’t pull too hard, he thought. Please.
“What started out with the worst day of your whole life is going to end up with the best,” she said.
“Promise?”
“Cross my heart.”
“Everything’s all right with the league?”
“We sent over the new and improved Daniel Walker Play-off Roster yesterday.”
The doorbell rang then. Danny knew who it was.
More perfect timing between them.
Same as on the court.
He ran over and opened the front door for Ty and Mrs. Ross.
“Wait till you see what my mom has,” Danny said, not even bothering with hello or good morning. “The uniforms my dad’s team wore!” Danny caught himself. “And your dad’s team, too.”
Ty said, “Cool.”
“Well,” Ali Walker said from behind Danny. “Good morning to the newest member of the Warriors.”
“’Morning, Mrs. Walker,” Ty Ross said.
Lily Ross said to Ali, “He wanted to go to the game with Danny.”
Ali said, “Things any better at home?”
Lily Ross shrugged. “I told my husband at breakfast what I’ve been telling him all week: It’s just a basketball game. And it’s a game that was never supposed to be about him in the first place.” She pointed toward Danny and Ty, already moving into the living room, Danny asking Ty what number he wanted to wear. “It’s about them.”
Danny and Ty raced for the uniforms then, Ty telling him he wanted to see if Number 1 would fit him.
The whole thing had been Ty’s idea.
He had IM’d Danny the night after Mr. Ross called him out in front of the gym after the Kirkland game. It was the last message Danny had gotten before he went to bed.
TYBREAK1: I want to play with you guys.
Always a man of few words.
Like Richie Walker.
Danny remembered sitting there at his desk and laughing his head off, just at the craziness of it.
CROSSOVER2: You CANNOT be serious!
Another McEnroe line.
TYBREAK1: I wouldn’t be quitting something. You can’t quit something you never started.
CROSSOVER2: Can you? Play with us, I mean.
TYBREAK1: My mom says yes.
Moms rule, Danny thought.
Trying to slow down his brain from going a hundred miles an hour.
CROSSOVER2: Don’t tell anybody yet.
TYBREAK1: That include Tess?
Danny smiled to himself that night.
Everybody knew who the real boss was.
CROSSOVER2: First I want to talk to my mom. Then have her talk to your mom.
TYBREAK1: Deal.
CROSSOVER2: Dude?
TYBREAK1: Yeah?
CROSSOVER2: We are gonna rock their world.
He’d had to keep it a secret for more than a week, from Will and Tess and everybody, the longest he’d ever kept a secret his whole life. Because once the moms got involved—the conspiracy of moms, is what Ali Walker called it—they wanted Danny and Ty to take some time, think things through.
Danny knew that Ty and Mrs. Ross had finally told Mr. Ross the Tuesday night before the play-offs, while the Warriors were practicing at St. Pat’s. Ty said on the phone that night that his dad had hit the roof, got as mad as he’d ever seen him, which pretty much meant as mad as anybody had ever gotten.
But then, he said, something awesome had happened:
Ty’s mom had sat there across from him at the kitchen table when all the yelling stopped and then—Ty’s words—totally dominated him.
Mrs. Ross hit Mr. Ross with what she called his “little recruiting trip,” the one where he’d tried to get Danny to join the Vikings. She hit him with the scene between Mr. Ross and Ty after the Kirkland game.
Mr. Ross had finally looked at Ty and asked how he could turn his back on his own team?
“It was never my team, Dad,” Ty had told him. “It was always your team. I didn’t feel like I was part of anybody’s team till I helped Danny coach.”
And that, Ty said, was pretty much that.
Danny thinking to himself: Maybe Mrs. Ross was the biggest guy in Middletown now.
The next night, Danny couldn’t have gotten their full squad, plus Ty, together even if he’d wanted to. Though he didn’t mind very much that he couldn’t. Michael Harden had tutoring, the O’Brien twins had to go watch their younger sister’s ballet recital, and Oliver Towne had gone to a Knicks game with his neighbors, even though it was a school night. Danny had everybody else in his driveway, walking Ty through the Warriors’ basic plays with Colby, Will, and Bren.
Tess even came over, pretending she was the center.
When they went inside for ice cream afterward, Mrs. Ross having shown up by then to pick up Ty, they all agreed to keep Ty joining the team a secret for a couple more days, until they made absolutely sure it was all right with the league, a kid switching teams this way, this late in the season. But both Danny’s mom and Ty’s mom were confident it was going to be all right, since Ty had never even played a league game for the Vikings.
Even if his dad coached the team.
That night in the kitchen Lily Ross said, “It’s funny, I was never interested in being a team mom until it was somebody else’s team.”
Ali Walker said, “It’s about time.”
Lily Ross said, “I was watching them from the car before. Our sons should have been together all along.”
It was agreed that Danny would tell the rest of the Warriors on Saturday morning. Telling a couple of blabberfaces like the O’Brien twins any sooner would have been like hiring one of those skywriters you saw flying over the beach in the summer.
Now it was Saturday morning.
Danny wearing Number 3 in white, Ty wearing Number 1.
They looked at each other in the living room, then both of them rolled their eyes.
Ty said, “This is nuts.”
Like, sick, Danny told him.
They went upstairs to send out an instant-message to the rest of the Warriors, telling them that they’d added a pretty decent player for the big game.
Danny took them into his mom’s classroom and passed out the uniforms there, once everybody was done high-fiving Ty and pounding him on the back as if he’d made his first three shots of the game.
The guys thought the old-school uniforms were even cooler than some of the old-school NBA uniforms their parents could order for them online. Tess was the only one frowning, saying she wasn’t thrilled that the blue trim on the jerseys really didn’t match up with the blue of the Warriors’ shorts.
Danny looked at her as if she’d grown another perfect nose.
“I’m just making a fashion statement, is all,” she said.
Danny said, “I’ll take the hit on the blue thing.”
Colby went outside to change into her Number 4. When she came back in, she twirled around and said, “How do I look?”
“Let’s ask Will,” Danny said, feeling good enough about the day to bust his best friend a little on Colby.
Will playfully gave him a slap on the back, catching Danny right where he’d landed on the ice. Danny couldn’t help himself, he bent over as if Will had hit him from behind with an aluminum baseball bat.
They were off to the side from everybody else, so only Will noticed how much pain Danny was in.
“Dude,” Will said, “what’s that about?”
“I fell last night in the driveway,” Danny whispered. “But don’t say anything to anybody, okay?”
“I’d say I’ve got your back,” Will said, “but that doesn’t seem like such a hot idea.” Now he managed a whisper. “Can you really play?”
“I never could go to my left, anyway.”
Will said, “You go to your left better than any right-hander in town.”
“What is this,” Danny said, “a practice debate in Miss Kimmet’s class?”
There was still a lot of loud, excited chatter in the room when Danny tried—in vain—to get their attention, the way he had at practice that first night. When he couldn’t get anybody’s attention, he caught Tess’s eye, shook his head in resignation, and put two fingers to his lips.
She did her whistle thing, and the room quieted like it did when any teacher walked into any classroom. Even Mrs. Ross and Mrs. Stoddard stopped gabbing over in the corner.
Danny said, “They’re gonna want to wipe the floor with us, you all know that, right?”
There were nods all around. “You got that right,” somebody said.
“They would’ve wanted to do that even before Ty joined up with us, because they don’t think we’re even supposed to be on the same floor with them. But now it’s gonna be like the Civil War of Middletown or something.”
He saw Will take a step forward, start to say something, then stop when Tess and Mrs. Stoddard both threatened him with pinching motions at the same time.
Danny said, “You guys all know how much I hate making speeches. So I’m just gonna say this: Let’s do what my dad told us we might be able to do back at the beginning.”
They were all staring at him.
“Even though it’s only the first round of the play-offs,” he said, “let’s see if we can win the championship of all guys like us who ever got told they weren’t good enough.”
They charged out of Mrs. Walker’s classroom and down the hall, running as hard as you did on the last day of school, just running this time toward the first round of the play-offs.
Running, really, at the top of their lungs.
When the Vikings took the court, Danny was positive they’d grown somehow since last Saturday. Da-Rod Rodriguez in particular looked even taller on the court than he had from the top row of the bleachers.
Andy Mayne had his right ankle taped up so high you could see the white bandage above his high-top black Iversons, but that didn’t catch Danny’s eye as much as this:
He seemed to have grown more than the inch that Danny had grown since October.
The Warriors had come through the door next to the stage, so they didn’t have to pass the Vikings to start warming up at the stage end of St. Pat’s. That meant they didn’t have to pass Mr. Ross, either; he was standing under the basket at the opposite end, arms folded, watching the Vikings shoot layups as if that was maybe the most fascinating thing that would ever happen to him.
When the Warriors got into their own layup line, Danny heard the loudest pregame cheer they’d ever gotten, and that’s when he noticed how full the bleachers already were. Down at the corner of them, directly across from the Vikings’ basket, was a television cameraman, and the guy who did the sports on Channel 14, the local all-news channel.
After all the hey-little-guy taunts in his life, he had to admit this was pretty big stuff.
Maybe that’s why his heart was beating as fast as it was.
Tess was standing near the row of folding chairs that served as the Warriors’ bench. She was staring straight at him, and when she started to bring her hand up, Danny was terrified she might blow him a kiss. But she did something even better, something that got him revved a little more.
She made a fist with her right hand and pumped it a couple of times.
He went right back at her with a fist-pump of his own.
Mr. Harden, Danny saw now, was right behind her. Michael said he’d been able to fly back from Florida because it was a weekend, but that he planned to sit in the stands and let Danny and Ali Walker and Tess Hewitt just keep doing what they were doing.
Danny got out of the layup line for a second to run over and shake his hand and thank him for coming.
“Just keep on keepin’ on,” Mr. Harden said to him.
“Huh?”
“Something people used to say—”
“—back in the day?” Danny said.
“One of those,” Mr. Harden said.
Before he went back on the court, Danny asked if his mom was anywhere around and Mr. Harden said he hadn’t seen her. Mrs. Ross had driven Danny and Will to the game, but Ali Walker had said she’d be right behind them.
“I’m sure she’s here somewhere,” Michael’s dad said, before adding, “take it right to these guys from the jump.”
Danny took the Warriors out of the layup line and started the “Carolina” drill they always did before practices and games, two lines under the basket, everybody seeming to move at once, passing, shooting, rebounding, all of them in a pretty neat formation.
When Danny noticed that the clock showed seven minutes and counting until the start of the game, he told the Warriors to get the rest of the balls and just start shooting around.
Will came out near half-court and stood next to him.
“This is, like, ill, dude,” Will said.
Danny said, “I think I’m the one who’s going to be sick.”
“How’s your shoulder?”
“Don’t feel a thing,” Danny lied.
A ball bounced away from Steven O’Brien and Danny went to retrieve it. He reached down, stood up, and before he could pass it back to Steven found himself face-to-face with Teddy Moran.
“If it isn’t Coach Mini-Me,” Teddy said, his face looking, as always, like he’d just smelled some rotten milk.
“Teddy,” Danny said. He whipped the ball toward Steven and started to walk away and Teddy grabbed his right hand, smiling as he did so. To anyone watching, this didn’t look like anything more than a Viking wishing a Warrior luck.
“You didn’t steal enough of our players to win the game,” Teddy said.
“You have a good game, too,” Danny said.
“Tell Ty Ross to watch himself today.”
Danny smiled back at him now. “He’s right there, tough guy. Why don’t you go tell him yourself?”
“Yeah, right,” Teddy said.
“You Morans,” Danny said. “You sure do have a way with words.”
He was walking with his back to the Vikings’ basket when he heard the gym go quiet, except for the bounce of all the balls, as if somebody had found a way to turn down just the crowd noise.
He turned around and saw his mom just inside the middle door to the gym.
Next to her, one crutch under his right arm, the left one up in the air a little bit as he tried to balance on his new cast, was Richie Walker.
Danny knew that most of the people in this crowd knew who his dad was, and knew about the accident. Suddenly, they started to applaud.
Danny wanted to run to his dad, right through the Vikings, but caught himself, and started to walk toward him instead.
Richie Walker saw, shook his head, grinned. Then, looking pretty nimble for a guy on crutches, he picked the left crutch all the way off the ground and pointed it at Danny.
Then he mouthed one word:
Play.
This time Danny understood him without any words at all.