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  When Ben was gone, Billy went into the den, what had been his dad’s room, and started to play NCAA Live, which Lenny had left there the day before, knowing he was coming back over after the game. Peg said she was going downstairs to catch up on her ironing, though Billy wondered how there was ever anything to catch up on. She seemed to be down in the basement, listening to her music and ironing, about half the day.

  Billy got into his video game as much as he could, telling himself that fake basketball would have to do today, until the game at the Y was over and Lenny was calling with the final score, as he’d promised he would.

  He played until the phone rang, knowing he had to get it, that there was no chance of Peg even hearing it from downstairs, not with the way she kept her old-fashioned music cranked up on the speakers they’d all chipped in and got her for Christmas, the ones that went with her new iPod.

  Billy ran into the kitchen, but his mom must have left the receiver somewhere when she was walking around talking on it before, and Billy couldn’t spot it anywhere. And he knew that by the time he got to the phone upstairs it would be too late, the answering machine would already have picked up.

  So he just stood there, feeling helpless, while he heard his mom’s voice on the tape saying they couldn’t come to the phone right now, to please leave a message and they’d get back to whoever it was.

  He looked at the clock over the sink. It was a couple of minutes before eleven. Maybe the game had ended early.

  Only the voice on the machine wasn’t Lenny’s.

  It belonged to a woman.

  “This is Charlotte Grace,” the voice said. “I was wondering why Ben didn’t show up for piano this morning.”

  EIGHT

  Before Billy could even worry about where Ben was or what could have happened to him on the way to Mrs. Grace’s house, whether he should go tell Peg or call his mom at work, his brother came walking into the kitchen with his hoodie on, acting like everything was completely normal, giving Billy his normal greeting.

  “What up?” Ben said.

  “Hey,” Billy said.

  “What’ve you been doing?” Ben said.

  “Playing video.”

  “Cool.”

  Billy said to his brother, “How was piano?”

  Ben grabbed a small bottle of red Gatorade out of the refrigerator, then walked out of the kitchen saying, “The usual.”

  Billy heard Ben go up the stairs, then heard his door shut. He was still standing by the small table that the phone was on, the one with the message machine attached to it.

  The light was blinking because of Mrs. Grace’s message.

  Billy stared at it for what felt to him like an hour and finally hit the button that erased it.

  Then he headed for the stairs, thinking this was one time when his little brother was going to have to talk.

  Ben’s room was neat. Really neat.

  He had his piano trophies lined up in neat rows on the top shelves built into the wall next to his desk. The few trophies he’d gotten in soccer and tennis—Billy knew by now that all you basically had to do was show up in sports to get some kind of trophy—were on one of the bookshelves on the other side of the desk, next to the window looking out over where Billy’s hoop was at the end of the driveway.

  Everything here seemed to have an assigned place, like an assigned seat in class. His bed was made, without Peg or their mom having made it. The top of his desk was clear of everything except his laptop. When Billy opened the door and then closed it behind him, he even noticed that Ben’s hoodie was hanging on a hook.

  Basically his brother’s room always looked as if Peg had just finished cleaning up. Except that when she went in there, she hardly had anything to do.

  Billy’s room was another story.

  When she walked into Billy’s room, with stuff all over his bed and all over the floor, and his desk so messy you almost couldn’t see his laptop, Peg would put her hands on her hips and give him a look and say, “You think whoever got in here found what they were looking for?”

  Billy knew what he was looking for when he came into Ben’s neat bedroom:

  The truth.

  He had never known his brother to lie to him, about anything.

  Until now.

  Ben was on his bed, headphones on, listening to his iPod. He didn’t notice Billy at first, but when he did, he took off his headphones and said, “You need something?”

  “I just wanted to make sure piano went okay,” Billy said, turning around the chair at Ben’s desk and sitting down in it.

  “You already asked me that downstairs.”

  “Just double-checking,” Billy said. “You know how they’re always telling me I’ve got to be the man of the house now.”

  “So,” Ben said, “you’re doing that by double-checking about a piano lesson you’ve never asked me about before?”

  Even though Ben was younger, he always sounded like the older one when they were talking, almost like he was the big brother.

  “Something like that.”

  He didn’t know why it was suddenly so important to him that Ben come out with it on his own, come right out and say that he’d lied about going to Mrs. Grace’s and was lying about it now.

  But it was important.

  He said, “Anything else you want to tell me?”

  “Nope. Like I told you, it was just the usual.”

  He was starting to adjust his headphones when Billy said, “Do you think it’s usual that Mrs. Grace just called and said you didn’t show up for your lesson today?”

  Ben, being neat about things even now, took his headphones off, wrapped the cord around the middle, set them on the headboard of his bed, placing the iPod right next to them. “Mrs. Grace called?” he said.

  “I just said that.”

  Ben looked down at his piano hands, and now he didn’t say anything.

  “You’re busted, dude. You lied, and you never lie.”

  Ben didn’t even try to deny it now, just looked at him, eyes big, and said, “Are you going to tell Mom?”

  “I’m not Eliza,” Billy said. “I don’t tell on people.”

  “Promise?”

  “Yeah,” Billy said. “On one condition.”

  “You want me to clean your room for a week, I’ll do it, I swear,” Ben said. “Just tell me.”

  “No,” Billy said. “You tell me why you blew off piano and didn’t tell anybody.”

  “I didn’t feel like it, is all.”

  “You love piano.”

  “Why? Because I’m supposed to be so good at it?” Ben said, the words sounding loud and mad at the same time.

  He didn’t sound anything like Ben.

  “I just know—”

  “You don’t know!” Ben said. Billy could see the piano hands balled up into fists, like Ben was the one who wanted to punch something now. Or somebody. “You’re like everybody else in our house. The ones who’re still here, anyway. You all just know what you think you know.”

  Billy had come in here thinking he was going to get in Ben’s face. Only now Ben had somehow turned the whole thing around.

  It was Billy who was on the defensive.

  “You—you’ve got your recital coming up,” he said.

  “So what?” Ben said. “It’s just another stupid recital.”

  “But you’ve worked your butt off the whole year,” Billy said.

  “So that means I can take one stupid Saturday off, right?”

  “Is that all it’s been? One day off?”

  There was a look on Ben’s face like he wanted to say something, but then he must have changed his mind. Like in a game, deciding to pass instead of shoot. “Leave me alone,” he said.

  Billy stood up, not knowing what to say to that.

  Ben said, “Are you really not going to tell?”

  “If I say I’m not, I’m not,” Billy said. “I erased the message.”

  “Then could you really, please, leave my room now?” Be
n said.

  “What,” Billy said, “it was all right to have me around when Zeke the Geek was going to beat on you, but now you want to blow me off?”

  It was like everything that was making him mad, including Ben lying, came pouring out of him all at once. Somehow he was as mad at his brother as he’d been at Zeke.

  Before Ben could say another word, Billy shouted at him, “I’ve got enough things to worry about right now without worrying about you, too!”

  Billy left, slamming the door behind him, out of breath like he’d been running, thinking: Things are getting more weird around here by the day.

  NINE

  At basketball practice the next Wednesday, Billy’s dad tried to act as if nothing had happened, as if there’d been no fight with Zeke, as if Billy hadn’t missed the last practice.

  As if he hadn’t missed the last game.

  The Magic, Billy knew by now, had ended up beating the Nuggets by two points. Those points came on a put-back basket by Lenny with what the rest of the players on the team said was one second left and Lenny said was more like three or four, telling Billy it was hard to know because the other team was out of time-outs, and just took the ball in after Lenny’s hoop and threw it down the court.

  Lenny was somebody who really never lied, especially about basketball.

  “Everybody keeps making a big deal out of it,” Lenny said to Billy before practice started. “But my guy didn’t box me out, and then the ball came right to me, dog. If I’d missed a chippy like that, I should be playing hockey or something.”

  Peg had brought them, so they were there early. Peg always got you everywhere early, whether it was school or the movies or basketball practice. Peg time, she called it. Billy’s dad was the same way. He showed up five minutes before five, the way he always did, went and sat in the folding chair the janitor at West School always left for him on Wednesdays and started writing out what he wanted to do at practice today.

  Sometimes Billy wondered if college or pro coaches were as organized with their teams as Joe Raynor was in the Rec League at the Y.

  But other than some of those college coaches he watched on TV, the ones whose heads Billy thought might explode at any second, he believed that most of them probably smiled more than his dad.

  As usual, they worked on one specific thing for the first part of practice, before they got to do what they really wanted to do—scrimmage. Today, Billy’s dad said they were going back to basics on the way he wanted them to start their fast break:

  The big guys making a good outlet pass to one of the guards out on the wing, the ball going to the middle from there, everybody filling a lane after that.

  When they were at the other end of the court, far enough away so Billy’s dad couldn’t hear, Lenny said that he was pretty sure even guys in the Highway Patrol didn’t worry as much about people being in the right lanes as their coach did.

  They ran the fast break drill for about fifteen minutes and Billy didn’t hear a thing from his dad, didn’t hear his name called one time, until he messed up a couple of times right at the end. On the last one he was slow getting to the middle. Lenny whipped the ball to where Billy was supposed to be, and it went bouncing off the court and up into the first row of bleachers.

  Billy’s dad blew his whistle and then they heard the one word they hated to hear when they thought any boring drill was about to be over.

  “Freeze.”

  Like cops yelled at guys on cop shows.

  Billy stayed where he was, nowhere near the middle of the court.

  His dad was in the middle of the court, saying to him now, “Hey, Billy.” Maybe to everybody else it came out sounding nice and friendly. Billy knew better. This was the sarcastic tone of voice he hated from his dad. “Can you guess where I am right now?”

  Looking down, as if he were talking to his sneaks, Billy said, “In the right spot?”

  Smiling but not meaning it, his dad said. “Actually, I’m Billy Raynor doing something the right way. Even if it’s not something as exciting as shooting. If I’m here, that means I’m Billy Raynor and I’m focusing, even though I’m bored.”

  “I’m not bored,” Billy said. “And I have been focusing. I just messed up.”

  “If you were focusing,” his dad said, “you would’ve been here when I froze everybody, and I’d be over there. Isn’t that right?”

  Give it up, Billy told himself.

  It was the only way this stuff ever ended. No matter how stubborn he could get, nobody could beat his dad when it came to being stubborn.

  You had a better chance beating him at arm wrestling.

  “Yes, sir,” he said.

  “I thought so.”

  Billy told himself he wasn’t going to get the Big Whistle, or get singled out, one time while they scrimmaged, and he didn’t. The only shots he took were layups, all but one of them coming on a feed from Lenny.

  Most of the time, he was the one feeding Lenny today. When they would run one of his dad’s beloved plays, Billy would run it all the way through, going from spot to spot like it was one of those connect-the-dots pictures you drew when you were little. Sometimes when they were setting up one of the plays, he’d move one of the other guys if they weren’t in the right place.

  His man, Danny Timms, didn’t score a single point.

  Right after Billy’s dad yelled out that next basket ended it, Billy faked what would have been his first outside shot, pulled the ball down, passed it to a wide-open Jim Sarni, who got one last layup for their team.

  They all got the Big Whistle now, but they knew it just meant practice was over for today.

  Billy thought for sure his dad would at least say something about the pass, since that seemed to be the only thing he cared about these days.

  “Good job today, guys,” he said, before telling them all he’d see them Saturday.

  Good job today, guys.

  Not the guy who was his own son.

  Billy held out some hope, though not a whole lot, that his dad might say something about the way he’d scrimmaged today on the way home, since it was his day to drive.

  But when Joe pulled up in front of the house that used to be his house, and Billy and Lenny both got out because Lenny was staying for dinner, he just said the same thing he’d said at the end of practice.

  “Good job today, guys,” he said. “See you Saturday.”

  Can hardly wait, Billy thought.

  TEN

  The next Saturday Ben skipped piano again.

  He didn’t make anything up this time or act like he was going, when all he planned to do was walk around for an hour. He simply told Peg he was sick to his stomach and was going back to bed.

  It was Peg he told because their mom was up in Boston working. There weren’t any weekends for his mom.

  Peg said, “It can’t be something you ate, since you ate like a bird at dinner last night and you haven’t hardly touched your eggs this morning.”

  Ben made the kind of face you did when you smelled rotten eggs. “I don’t know what it is,” he said. “But even talking about food makes me want to throw up.”

  Eliza, eating her own breakfast with a copy of Lucky magazine in front of her, didn’t even look up. “Gross,” she said.

  “Ben Raynor,” Peg said with hands on her hips, which always meant business. “Are you telling me the truth, or are you looking for a reason to get out of piano today?”

  Ben gave a quick look at Billy, then said to Peg, “I don’t lie.”

  “You never have,” Peg said. “I’ll call Mrs. Grace and tell her.”

  Ben shot up out of his chair and said, “It’s my lesson. I should be the one to call.” He went across the room and took the phone out of its holder and started punching in numbers as he walked through the door that led into the dining room. In a few seconds, they heard him talking in a low voice.

  Peg said to Billy and Eliza, “That boy isn’t himself lately.”

  “No one around here is,” El
iza said. “Except me, of course.” She turned a page in her magazine and said, “I so have to have that purse.”

  Ben came back in, put the phone back in its place and said, “I told her I’d see her next Saturday.”

  To Billy he said, “Good luck with your game,” and then headed up the back stairs to his room.

  The Magic were playing the Hornets, the only other undefeated team in the league, in the last game for both teams before the play-offs started next Saturday. If everything went the way Billy and Lenny thought it would after that, the next time they’d see the Hornets after today would be at the championship game in two weeks.

  Basically, all today’s game was supposed to do was decide which team would be the number-one seed going into the play-offs and which team would be number two, but Billy knew better.

  He knew that this game was going to feel like the championship of something, even if it was just the championship of today.

  When the doorbell rang, Peg looked up at the clock and said to Billy, “I thought Lenny wasn’t coming for another twenty minutes?”

  “He must be operating on Peg time today,” Billy said.

  And he knew why. Lenny couldn’t wait to get to the Y, either.

  When Billy opened the front door, he saw that Lenny wasn’t wearing a jacket or coat or hoodie, just his Magic jersey and shorts, despite the cold. Cold didn’t bother Lenny DiNardo because hardly anything did. “I know I’m early,” he said. “But, well, you know.”

  “I know,” Billy said.

  He started to close the door behind them, then stopped, saying to Lenny, “Give me one sec, I forgot something upstairs.”

  He ran back up the stairs. Ben’s door was shut, as usual. Billy knocked, didn’t wait—as usual—before poking his head in.

  “What up?” Ben said.

  “Just wanted to tell you I’m out of here,” Billy said. “And check you out one more time before I left.”

  Ben said, “I just don’t feel good.”

  “You seemed fine when you got up,” Billy said. “I’m just saying.”

  “I was faking,” Ben said, quickly adding, “when I got up, I mean.”