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  Table of Contents

  Epigraph

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  The best part of sports is watching young people try not just to get better, and make their team better, but also to find the best in themselves. From the time I began coaching, I’ve taught the importance of teamwork, and that’s why I rooted so hard for Billy Raynor, the hero of this book. You will, too. Written in the spirit of Mr. Lupica’s Travel Team, this is a book for kids who love basketball, and for anybody who loves cheering for a comeback kid.

  —Larry Brown, Hall of Fame basketball coach

  PHILOMEL BOOKS

  A division of Penguin Young Readers Group

  Published by The Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario,

  Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.).

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England.

  Penguin Ireland, 24 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin

  Books Ltd.)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124,

  Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd).

  Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—

  110 017, India.

  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Mairanji Bay, Auckland 1311, New Zealand (a

  division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd).

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg

  2196, South Africa.

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England.

  Copyright © 2007 by Mike Lupica.

  eISBN : 978-0-399-24714-9

  First Impression

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  This book is for my sister, Susan.

  Acknowledgments

  My thanks, as always, to those who so generously read my books as they are being written: my wife, Taylor; Esther Newberg; William Goldman; Susan Burden; and, of course, Michael Green.

  And, as always, I thank the children whose spirit runs through all these books:

  Chrisopher, Alex, Zach and Hannah.

  ONE

  It had been three days since Billy Raynor’s dad told them that he was going to live in a different house.

  His mom explained that it was something known as a “trial separation.”

  Yeah, Billy thought, a separation of thirteen blocks—he’d counted them up after looking at the map in the phone book—plus the train station, plus the biggest park in town, Waverly Park, where all the ballfields were.

  His parents could call it a “trial separation” all they wanted, try to wrap the whole thing up in grown-up language, the way grown-ups did when they had something bad to tell you. But they weren’t fooling Billy.

  His dad had left them.

  Now his mom was leaving, too.

  She wasn’t leaving for good. It was just another one of her business trips, one Billy had known was coming. She’d told him and his sister and his little brother that she had to go back up to Boston for a few days because of this big case she was working on. A real trial, instead of a dumb trial separation. That was why it was no big surprise to him that her suitcases were in the front hall again, lined up like fat toy soldiers. And why it was no surprise that the car taking her to the airport, one that looked exactly like the other long, black, take-her-to-the-airport cars, was parked in the driveway with the motor running.

  Another getaway car, Billy thought to himself, like in a movie.

  From the time his mom had started to get famous as a lawyer, even going on television sometimes, she always seemed to be going somewhere. Now it was because of a case she’d been working on for a while. She said it was an important one.

  But as far as Billy could tell, they all were.

  So she was going to be up in Boston for a few days. And his dad was now on the other side of town, even though it already felt to Billy like the other side of the whole country. Billy was ten, and both his parents were always telling him how bright he was. But he wasn’t bright enough to figure out what had happened to their family this week.

  He wondered sometimes if he was ever going to figure out grown-ups.

  His best friend, Lenny, said you had a better chance of figuring out girls.

  All he knew for sure, right now, the end of his first official week of living with only one parent in the house, was this: It was about to be no parents in the house. And on this Saturday morning, with his sixteen-year-old sister, Eliza, still at a sleepover and his brother, Ben, already at his piano lesson, pretty soon it would be the quietest house in the world. With their dad gone, at least the arguing between his parents had stopped. Only now Billy couldn’t decide what was worse, the arguing or the quiet.

  Of course, Peg would be around. Peg: the nanny who had always seemed to be so much more to Billy.

  To him, Peg had always been like a mom who came off the bench and into the game every time suitcases were lined up in the hall again and one of the black cars was back in the driveway. It had been that way with Peg even before his dad had up and moved out.

  Billy’s mom had finished up a call on her cell phone while he finished his breakfast. His dad used to make the pancakes on Saturdays. But his mom had done it today, maybe trying to act like things were normal even if they both knew they weren’t.

  His mom, whose first name was Lynn, sat down next to him on one of the high chairs they used when they were eating at the counter in the middle of the kitchen.

  “Hey, pal,” she said.

  “Hey.”

  He speared the last piece of pancake and pushed it through the puddle of syrup on his plate.

  “I’m sorry to be leaving so soon, after. . . .” She hesitated, like she could sometimes when Billy would hear her upstairs in her bedroom, practicing one of her courtroom speeches at night.

  “After Dad left us,” Billy said. “That’s what you were going to say, wasn’t it?”

  “You’re right, I was,” his mom said. “So soon after that. But you understand it can’t be helped, right? I know you don’t think your dad and I did a very good job of explaining what’s happened to us all. But I hope I explained why I had to go back up to Boston today.”

  Billy the bright boy said, “Mom, I know it’s your job.”

  “And,” Lynn Raynor said, “you understand why I’m having you and Ben and Eliza stay here with Peg and not move over to your dad’s place, don’t you?”

  His mom had already gone over this about ten times. Now Billy was afraid she was going to do it all over again. Maybe it was something lawyers did, explained things until you practically knew them by heart.

  “I understand that part, Mom,” he said. “This is our home. And you don’t want us to get in the habit of going back and forth between you and dad until—”

  “Until this whole thing sorts itself out,” his mom said, finishing his thought for him.

  Billy nodded, even though that was the part he really didn’t get, since it seemed to him that things had sorted themse
lves out already.

  They were here.

  His dad was there.

  Case closed, as his mom liked to say.

  “Got it,” he said.

  “Hey,” she said, getting down off her chair. “How about a hug?”

  Billy jumped down and gave her one, harder than he’d planned. What she had always called the Big One.

  “You be the man of the house while I’m away,” she said. “Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  It was the same thing his father had said on Wednesday before he drove away.

  But Billy Raynor didn’t want to be the man of the house.

  He just wanted to be a kid.

  TWO

  At least it was basketball season.

  Billy wasn’t the best player on his ten- and eleven-year-old team in the Rec League at the YMCA. Lenny DiNardo was the best player on the Magic, by a lot, even if Billy would never admit that to him. Lenny was one year and one month older than Billy, and seemed to do almost everything better than Billy.

  For now, Billy’s favorite part about basketball was shooting. His dad was always getting on him to pass more, telling him that there was no law against him passing the ball once in a while, that basketball wasn’t one against five, that the last time he’d checked, it was still five against five. But Billy thought of himself as a shooter, one of the best shooters in their league. It wasn’t like their team had been losing, so even though he would pass up an open shot sometimes and pass to somebody else, he really didn’t think there was anything wrong with the way he played.

  His mom would sometimes joke—at least before his dad moved out—that the first thing Billy had inherited from his father was stubbornness.

  His dad coached their team. When somebody would ask Joe Raynor what his son’s position was, he’d put his hands together like he was getting ready to shoot and say, “This position, pretty much.”

  If Billy was anywhere nearby he’d say, “Funny one there, Dad.”

  Most of the time, of course, there weren’t a lot of laughs around the Magic. His dad was a tough coach, even with Billy. Especially with me, Billy thought. “Hard core” was the way his dad would describe his approach to basketball, even Rec League basketball at the Y. He said that was the way he’d been taught to play basketball, and that was the way he was going to teach it.

  One time Lenny’s dad, a pretty funny guy who didn’t seem to take basketball or anything else too seriously, said that it was tough love around Joe Raynor’s basketball team, but without much love.

  Billy knew his dad loved basketball, and loved him, even though you couldn’t tell either one if you were in the gym with them.

  Sometimes, Billy thought, his dad seemed happy only when when he was talking about how he played basketball back when he was the star of their town’s high school team. Maybe that was why the first box he’d carried when he moved out had been the one with his trophies and plaques and team pictures in it, the pictures he’d taken down off the wall in his study.

  More than anything else, that was what made Billy think his dad was never coming back to live with them. No matter how much “sorting out” both his parents said there was to do.

  At least it was basketball season and at least his dad was still his coach, no matter how tough he could be sometimes. And at least there was a game today.

  His dad had called on the phone about two minutes after his mom had left for the airport, as if he had some kind of weird radar going that let him know Mom was out of the house. He asked if Billy needed a ride to the Y, but Billy told him that Lenny’s mom was picking him up.

  “That’s okay, right?” Billy said. Not sure these days what was okay and what wasn’t.

  “Fine,” his dad said. “Are you okay, bud?”

  “We’ve got a game, don’t we?” Billy said.

  “I meant with all this.”

  Billy, trying to make himself sound older, said, “I guess I’m still kind of sorting this stuff out like everybody else.”

  There was a pause at his dad’s end of the phone, from his house on the other side of town. Then he said, “So how’s Ben?”

  Ben was nine.

  “At piano,” Billy said.

  “No,” his dad said, “I meant how’s he doing with me not being around?”

  “He’s Ben, Dad. You know him. He never says much about anything.”

  The truth was, Billy, even at ten, wondered if his dad knew his little brother at all. Once they didn’t have sports in common, it was as if they didn’t have anything in common, except maybe the same last name.

  Ben had tried soccer for a couple of years and had been one of the fastest guys on his team. But when it came time to try out for travel soccer, he just quit instead. It was the same with tennis. He had started playing in some clinics at the Racquet Club when he was six, and the few times Billy had watched him, he thought he was one of the better kids his age. Then he had quit tennis. He just didn’t care about sports the way their dad did, and the way Billy cared about basketball.

  Ben was a piano prodigy.

  The only reason Billy even knew what that word meant was because of his brother. Because practically from the time Ben started taking lessons when he was in kindergarten, that’s what everybody had been calling him.

  Prodigy. “A highly talented child or youth” was what the dictionary said when Billy had looked it up. That was Ben. Like one of those girl tennis players that started beating older players when she was twelve or something.

  Ben was so good at playing the piano, right away, that it was like he never had any choice about doing it. Billy didn’t know anything about music and never had any interest in playing any instruments himself, but even he knew when he’d go to one of his brother’s piano recitals that what Ben was doing was different from everybody else.

  Billy never said this to anybody, not even Lenny, but he wished he were half as good at basketball as Ben was at playing piano.

  “Well, tell him I said hi,” Joe Raynor said to Billy now on the telephone, “and that maybe I’ll stop by after our game.”

  Billy said he would. When he hung up the phone, he yelled down to where Peg was doing her ironing in the laundry room, told her he was on his way to basketball and that he was going to Lenny’s afterward.

  He liked being at Lenny’s house a lot better these days.

  At Lenny’s, things were still the way they were supposed to be.

  THREE

  Once they got on the court, Billy felt better than he had all week.

  Maybe Ben felt that way playing the piano today, at his regular Saturday lesson with Mrs. Grace. But being on the court again with Lenny DiNardo and the other Magic players, even going through the drills his dad made them do before every game, made him feel happier than he had since his mom and dad had called them together for the “family conference” after everybody had come home from school on Wednesday afternoon.

  From that day on, basketball wasn’t just the sport Billy loved the most.

  It was the most important thing in his world.

  When he was on the court at the Y, catching the ball and feeling the way it settled in his hands right before he put up a shot, that was the only time everything felt right in Billy’s world. Even if it was just for a moment.

  Billy even liked practicing basketball. Sometimes he would hear other guys complaining about having to go to the Magic’s one practice a week, on Wednesday nights at West School, like they were being forced to stay after school or something. Billy never felt that way. Practice wasn’t as good as playing games. But as far as he was concerned, it was close enough.

  The basketball court was Billy Raynor’s real home now.

  The game was fun today, even though Billy felt a little sad every time he looked up at the clock and saw less time on it. Sometimes when they’d finally get the lead in a close game, he’d want the time to run out.

  Not today.

  Today they were winning easily against the Mavericks. Bill
y and Lenny had helped the Magic build a big lead in the first quarter and then sat down in the second quarter and watched their teammates make it even bigger. There were ten players on a team, and the rule at the Y was that every player had to play at least half the game. Some coaches like to split up their very best players, but not Billy’s dad. He said that Billy and Lenny were probably going to play together on the high school team someday and might as well learn to play together now. So he’d usually play them in the first quarter and then either the third or the fourth, depending on how the game was going.

  Today, Billy knew, it wasn’t going to matter when they played in the second half, because the game was going great for them, and nobody on their team seemed to be able to do anything wrong.

  Nobody could stop Lenny, and this was one of those days when Billy couldn’t miss. Couldn’t miss, didn’t want to leave. At halftime they were ahead by twenty points.

  Billy’s dad told Billy and Lenny he was going to play them in the fourth quarter. So they sat and watched in the third quarter as the Mavericks cut the lead a little bit.

  The Magic was still ahead by sixteen when Billy got back in there. And maybe it was because they were winning by so much that he started to goof around a little, try the kind of crazy off-balance shots that only Lenny could make. Billy was shooting even more than he usually did, passing even less than he knew his dad liked, especially with their team ahead by so much.

  Billy wasn’t trying to show the other team up. There were even a couple of his school friends on the Mavericks. He was just having some fun.

  His dad told him to cut it out a couple of times, not yelling or making a big deal out of it. But Billy kept shooting. He’d played about as close to his best as he could today, and after all, he’d just had about the worst week of his whole life.

  He figured his dad, more than anybody else, wouldn’t mind if he took a few extra shots, especially since most of them were going in.

  Only the opposite was happening.

  The more he shot, the madder his dad got.