Game Changers--A Benchwarmers Novel

by John Feinstein

  It was the right move. The non-Billy guard missed the front end of the one-and-one. Merion only had one time-out left and Coach C didn’t want to use it. This time, Billy played off of Jeff to keep him from driving the lane. Jeff waited to make sure he had space and then squared up for a three. It dropped cleanly through the basket with twenty-one seconds left.

  Chester Heights called time.

  “Get the ball out of the point guard’s hands,” Coach C said. “And then foul right away.”

  Jeff was stunned. “Coach, the game’s tied,” he said, wondering if somehow Coach C thought they were still behind.

  “I know that, Michaels,” Coach C said. “I don’t want the game ending with that little point guard hitting a shot to beat us at the buzzer. Let’s put them on the line and see if someone other than the point guard can make a free throw. Even if they make both, we’ll have the ball last with a chance to win or tie.

  “When we get the ball,” he added, “do not call time unless you are double-teamed someplace and have no choice. Got it?”

  They all nodded. This was some gamble, Jeff thought. If a college coach did this and it didn’t work, the internet would be full of people second-guessing the coach. This, though, was sixth-grade basketball. The only second guesses would come from parents, only a few of whom were in the stands.

  Billy walked the ball upcourt, clearly intending to run the clock down and start a play. Jeff and Arlow jumped to double-team as soon as he crossed halfcourt, and he quickly swung a pass to his left. As soon as the pass was caught, Diskin raced up to the receiver and fouled him.

  The kid looked stunned. So did Billy. There were ten seconds left.

  The shooter went to the line. It was one-and-one, meaning he had to make the first to shoot the second. Coolly, he swished the first. Uh-oh, Jeff thought, this might backfire. Then the kid made the second.

  There was no time to worry about the gamble not working. Danny inbounded to Jeff and he raced up court. No way was Billy going to give him any space at all. Jeff gave a quick fake as if he were going to go up to shoot and then drove past Billy.

  He could see the clock over the basket was at 0:03. He saw two players coming to stop him. Danny was on his left—open; Arlow was on his right—also open. Arlow was the better shooter, but somewhere in the recesses of his brain, Jeff remembered Danny bragging once about making fifteen in a row from that exact spot in the corner.

  He glanced right, then flicked a pass to Danny, who was in his shooting motion almost as soon as he caught the ball. Jeff was knocked down as he released the ball and he heard the buzzer go off. He looked up from the floor just in time to see the ball swish cleanly through the basket.

  For a split second, he wondered if Danny had gotten the shot off in time, but out of the corner of his eye, he saw one of the officials with his arms up in the air in the touchdown signal, meaning the three-point shot was good.

  If it had been an NBA game or a college game, the officials would have had to go to replay to make sure Danny had released the shot before the buzzer. But this was sixth-grade basketball and there were no replays. As soon as the official on the perimeter indicated that the shot counted, it counted. The game was over. Merion had somehow rallied to win, 56–55. When Danny’s shot went through the basket, it was the first time in the game that Merion had the lead.

  But that was enough.

  The entire Merion team—with two exceptions—swarmed Diskin while Jeff was pulling himself to his feet. Before he could join the celebration, he felt someone grab him by the arm. The only other Merion player who hadn’t made it to the pileup in the corner was Arlow, who had been on the far side of the court when Diskin’s shot went in.

  “I was wide open, why didn’t you get me the ball!” Arlow yelled in his ear.

  Jeff was caught off guard. They’d won the game. How could Arlow be upset?

  Except he was. “Danny was open, too, standing on his favorite spot,” he answered.

  “I’m a better shooter than he is and you know it!” Arlow was now pointing a finger—hard—into Jeff’s chest.

  Jeff angrily swiped his hand away. “He made the shot, Arlow,” he said. “We won. Get over yourself.”

  Coach Benyak stepped in between them. Why he was there and not in the middle of the ongoing celebration, Jeff wasn’t sure, but he was happy to see him.

  “Fellas, fellas, cool it,” he said, pushing them apart. “We just had an amazing win. Let’s enjoy it.”

  Jeff and Arlow glared at one another, with Coach B holding them apart.

  “Great pass, Michaels,” Coach B added. “Now, how about we enjoy this?”

  He gave them each one more look and walked away.

  “This isn’t over, Michaels,” Arlow said as he turned to walk away.

  Jeff sighed. It was never over with Arlow.

  17

  The bus ride back from Chester Heights was almost completely silent.

  The only person who seemed interested in any sort of conversation was Coach Axelson, who walked up and down the aisle while they waited for the driver to get going, speaking softly to everyone, trying to encourage all twelve players.

  Coach Josephson sat in the front row, on the right side of the bus, staring into her phone. That was the pose adopted, or so it seemed to Andi, by almost everyone on the bus.

  Andi had texted her parents to tell them the final score and what time the bus was expected back at school. Five minutes into the ride, she saw a text from Jeff: We won! it said. Came from 15 down to steal it. Danny hit the winner at the buzzer. You?

  Andi smiled wearily and texted back. Lost, badly. More to it than score. She paused for a moment and then added: Want to get a pizza for lunch at Andy’s tomorrow?

  They had talked in the past about how much they both like Andy’s Pizza at the King of Prussia Mall. It wasn’t too far from where they each lived and she hoped the parents might split the driving.

  His answer came back so fast she had to smile. Sure! Let me check with my parents about driving.

  I’ll do the same. Talk tonight.

  The bus was now in traffic and Andi was starting to get a headache. Jeff sent her a thumbs-up emoji in response, and she put the phone down and closed her eyes.

  Coach Josephson’s words in the postgame locker room kept bouncing around her brain: “This isn’t over.”

  That certainly didn’t mean, “Hey, girls, we’ve still got twelve conference games to play, so don’t worry about the first two nonconference games.” Clearly, it meant something like, “I let you five play the second half to keep from getting humiliated, but I’m still angry about what happened.”

  Andi was angry, too. She was pretty convinced her coach was a secret racist who had just revealed her secret.

  She remembered watching a basketball game with her father in which the announcers kept talking about how cerebral JJ Redick—then playing for the Sixers—was. She had finally asked her father what cerebral meant. “They’re saying he’s smart,” her father had answered. “It’s code. They’re trying to tell you the white guy is smart.”

  Their coach wasn’t even using code. She was straight-up saying stupid things, making racist assumptions about people because of the color of their skin.

  She was jolted out of her thoughts when Eleanor suddenly sat down in the empty seat next to her. Andi had been so deep in thought she hadn’t even seen her coming down the aisle.

  “So what do you think she’s going to do?” Eleanor asked. She was speaking just loudly enough for Andi to hear over the engine and the traffic surrounding them on the highway.

  Andi thought for a moment. “She won’t suspend us, she can’t afford to,” she finally answered. “Look at what happened in the first half.”

  “Yeah, but if it had been her call, we wouldn’t have played the second half.”

  “It was still her call,” Andi said. “She didn’t have to let it get to a team vote.”

  “Or maybe she miscalculated. Thought the vote
would go against us.”

  Andi hadn’t thought about that, but it made sense. She had certainly been surprised when Bronson had voted with them; she imagined the coach had been, too.

  “She’s in a tough spot. On the one hand, she’d probably like to throw us all off the team. On the other hand, she probably doesn’t want to go zero and fourteen.”

  “That’s why Bronson voted with us,” Eleanor said, nodding in assent. “She didn’t want to lose the game by fifty.”

  “I think we get a stern lecture on loyalty and have to run a bunch of suicides,” Andi said.

  “I can live with that,” Eleanor said. “I probably went too far. I should have brought it up to her in private. I almost forced her into a corner.”

  Andi had been amazed before at how mature Eleanor was. This was another example.

  “I don’t think you did anything wrong, but you’re pretty sensible for an eleven-year-old,” she said with a smile.

  “Almost twelve,” Eleanor said. “My birthday party is the first Saturday in January. You coming?”

  “Am I invited?”

  “Absolutely,” Eleanor said. “Bring your friend Jeff. I like him.”

  “Yeah,” Andi said. “He’s a good guy.”

  Eleanor laughed. “And cute, too.”

  Andi looked at her in the darkened bus to see if she was joking. Eleanor was at least seven or eight inches taller than Jeff.

  “You’re like a foot taller than he is,” she said.

  “Not that much,” Eleanor said. “And when you’re my height these days, most boys are going to be shorter than you.”

  Andi didn’t have an answer for that one. So she leaned back, closed her eyes and thought about Andy’s Pizza.

  * * *

  Jeff read Andi’s text suggesting they get pizza together the next day three times before starting to respond. Then he hesitated. He didn’t want to appear too eager. So he waited an entire minute before texting his answer.

  He was still in the locker room, dressed and ready to go, but waiting for his mom to come pick him up. She was ten minutes away. His dad was working the Flyers game. The Stanley Cup–champion Blues were in town, so his dad had a rare hockey assignment.

  Danny, carrying the game ball Coach C had presented him with, stopped and sat down on a stool next to Jeff—who was sitting in front of his locker.

  “Let me guess,” he said. “You’re texting with Andi.”

  “How’d you know?” Jeff said, surprised.

  “Because you’ve got a goofy grin on your face. You don’t get that look when you’re texting your parents.”

  Jeff had to tell someone. “She asked me if I wanted to go to the mall tomorrow to get pizza for lunch.”

  Danny’s smile was so wide it took up about three lockers of space.

  “Oh-ho, so the romance builds.”

  “It’s not a romance,” Jeff said, fully aware of the fact that his face had flushed.

  Danny shook his head. “Does she know she’s settling for the passer on the winning shot when she could have the shooter? You know, the guy who actually made the shot?”

  “Should have passed it to Arlow,” Jeff said. “I can see you’re going to be impossible to live with.”

  “As opposed to Arlow, right?” Danny said, and they both laughed. Arlow had been the first guy out of the locker room, not even bothering to shower. After he’d left, Jeff had filled Danny in on what had happened after his shot had gone in.

  “Yeah, well, I can deal with Arlow,” Jeff answered. “I don’t have to be nice to him.”

  “You better be nice to me,” Danny said. “If only because I’m your Arlow-protector. He has no desire to get into it with me—or, for that matter, be around me.”

  “Why not?” Jeff said.

  “Oh, I think we both know the answer to that question.”

  “I think you’re right,” Jeff said.

  Danny’s phone pinged. “My mom’s outside.”

  Jeff’s phone pinged even before Danny stood up. “Mine too,” he said with a laugh.

  They walked out together.

  As they turned the corner and saw their parents’ cars waiting for them on the circle behind the school, Danny said, “Have fun tomorrow, lover boy.”

  “Shut up!” Jeff said, punching him lightly on the arm.

  He was glad it was dark. That way, Danny couldn’t see that he was red-faced … again.

  * * *

  Amy Josephson was the first one off the bus when it pulled up to the back door at Merion. She didn’t say good night to anybody or wish her players a good weekend. She bolted down the steps and began walking rapidly to her car.

  She heard a voice behind her. “Amy, hang on a second.”

  It was Joan Axelson—who was about the last person she wanted to talk to at that moment. But she stopped, turned, and said, “What is it, Joan?” in as cold a voice as she could conjure.

  Joan walked up quickly beside her.

  “Let’s go get a drink,” she said.

  “Can’t it wait till Monday?” Amy said.

  “I don’t think so,” Joan asked. “Come on, there’s a place not far from here that’ll be quiet.”

  “At six o’clock on a Friday night, a bar that’ll be quiet?”

  “Trust me,” Joan said. “It’s an Italian restaurant with a small, quiet bar.”

  The truth was, Amy could use a drink. And, as usual, she had no plans for Friday night.

  “Okay, give me the address and I’ll meet you there.”

  Joan gave her the address. “It’ll take you about five minutes,” she said.

  Amy was skeptical about the whole thing but nodded. “I don’t have that much time,” she said, knowing that Joan probably knew she was lying.

  “No problem,” Joan said.

  Joan wasn’t lying about the drive—four minutes—or the place. The main room was large and filled with families out for Friday-night dinner. But the bar, tucked up front, was nearly empty and a booth in the corner was unoccupied.

  They sat down and Joan asked Amy what she wanted. “White wine,” she said.

  Joan got the attention of the bartender, who smiled when she saw her.

  “Can we have two glasses of Sonoma-Cutrer here, Mary Jane?” she asked.

  Their drinks arrived quickly.

  “To better times,” Joan said, picking up her glass.

  Amy clinked her glass but said nothing. She looked at Joan and said, “You’re up.”

  Joan took a long sip, put her glass down, and nodded her head.

  “What is it they say in sports talk radio? I have a question and a comment.”

  “Fire away.”

  “First, the question. What exactly is your problem with Andrea Carillo? You’ve been on her since tryouts started; you buried her on the end of the bench in our first game when she is—at worst—our third-best player. And you’ve gone out of your way to pick on her whenever you’ve gotten the chance.”

  “I buried Lisa Carmichael in game one, too, didn’t I?”

  “Yeah, you did, but I suspect her crime was being friends with Andi.”

  “The two black girls are friends with her, too, aren’t they? And now their Asian teammate seems to be joining them.”

  Joan picked up her wine and took another long sip before answering.

  “Okay, before you answer the Carillo question, what is it with you and your comments about people of color?”

  “You too with the political correctness?” Amy answered. “Come on, they are different from us.”

  “We’re all different from one another, Amy,” Joan said, getting exasperated. “And we’re all pretty much the same. Biggest problem we have in this country right now is all the labeling going on. Doing it on a sixth-grade basketball team is flat-out horrible.”

  Amy shrugged. “You can quit if you want to. Blacks are different from us. Hispanics—did I say that correctly for you?—are different, too. And Jews. You want me to go on?”

 
; “No, please, please don’t. But before I get out of here, what’s your issue with Carillo? Being Italian American?”

  Amy laughed. “Not at all,” she said. “For one thing, I just agreed with Hal Johnston. Girls shouldn’t be playing with boys. I learned that from my father growing up.”

  “When was that?” Joan said. “The nineteenth century?”

  She stood up and tossed a twenty-dollar bill on the table. She had to get out of there. She had a lot of thinking to do before Monday.

  18

  Working out how to get to and from the King of Prussia Mall turned out to be easier than Jeff had thought it would be. Jeff’s mom was available to pick Andi up and drop the two kids at the mall and Andi’s dad said he’d be able to pick them up a few hours later.

  Jeff thought about suggesting a movie after lunch but decided not to push his luck. They agreed to eat and then spend some time walking around the mall. The drop-off would be at eleven thirty, the pickup at two. Jeff was fine with that. He suspected there was a lot to talk about.

  They walked straight to Andy’s—Jeff had suggested arriving at eleven thirty to avoid the Saturday lunch rush—but found it already crowded. They ordered a small six-slice pizza.

  “You can take home what we don’t finish,” Andi suggested.

  Jeff suspected leftovers wouldn’t be an issue. He had been eating so much lately his parents were convinced he was in a growth spurt. He certainly hoped so.

  They found a table in as quiet a place as possible and Jeff started to eat, in part because he was starving, in part because he knew Andi had a lot to tell him. Michael Roth, whose older brother—an eighth grader—was dating Lisa Carmichael, had texted him the night before to say that Lisa had told his brother that all hell was breaking loose on the girls’ team.

  “This is really good,” Andi said after a couple of tentative bites.

  “You haven’t been here before?”

  “I have, with my brothers, but not in a while. I’d forgotten.”

  Jeff reminded himself to slow down and not wolf his food. Even so, he was reaching for a second slice before Andi was halfway through her first.