Play Makers

by Mike Lupica

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Acknowledgments

  Books by Mike Lupica

  Copyright

  Just like that, it was basketball season.

  It was basketball season this fast, so soon after football. Almost too soon for Ben McBain, even though he usually couldn’t wait for the next season in sports to begin.

  When you were eleven like he was, that was the beauty of sports, you didn’t have to wait until next year, not if you played football and basketball and baseball the way he did in Rockwell.

  Sometimes you barely had to wait at all, even if people in Rockwell still hadn’t stopped talking about the way football had ended for Ben and the rest of the Rockwell Rams in the championship game against Parkerville.

  So two weeks from when Ben had hit Sam Brown for a touchdown on the last play of the championship game, Ben and Sam and Cooper (Coop) Manley were on their way to Darby, next town over, for their only preseason scrimmage, one week before the season started for real, Rockwell vs. Darby again, this time in the gym at Rockwell Middle School.

  They were all piled into the backseat of Mrs. Manley’s car for the short ride, knowing that it was only supposed to be a scrimmage, but also knowing Darby was their biggest rival in just about everything.

  Knowing they’d want to beat Darby even if it was just a pie-eating contest.

  “Are we ready for this?” Coop said now. “Because I don’t know if I’m ready for this.”

  He had one window, Sam had the other, Ben was in between them. You could be the biggest star on the field, the way Ben had been against Parkerville, but when you were small, the way Ben was small, you still got stuck with the middle seat.

  “Gotta admit,” Ben said, “this is one time when even I would have been fine with a little more of a break. That way we could have celebrated for a few more days. Like guys do after they win the Stanley Cup and they travel all around with it.”

  “Same,” Sam said. “Even though Coop would still be posing on the field next to our trophy if we didn’t practically drag him away.”

  “He did look awfully darn cute,” Mrs. Manley said from the front.

  “Mom, stop,” Coop said.

  They were passing through Darby’s downtown area, which was even smaller than Rockwell’s.

  “Hey,” Coop said, “I hear you guys on this. It was only the greatest football game in the history of our town, even if it was a bunch of sixth graders. I’m totally not done talking about it yet.”

  “Now there’s a shocker,” Ben said. “You not wanting to stop talking, I mean.”

  “About anything,” Sam said.

  “Some people just have more to say than others,” Coop said. “Isn’t that what you’ve always told me, Mom?”

  Ben looked up at the rearview mirror, could see Mrs. Manley smiling. “Honestly, dear?” she said. “Sometimes I just say that hoping you’ll stop talking.”

  “Mrs. Manley!” Sam said. “From downtown.”

  “Have your fun,” Coop said. “This will all be in my book someday.”

  “Whoa,” Ben said. “You plan to write one before you, like, read one?”

  They all laughed. Happy, as always, to be in one another’s company. Happy to have the usual chirp going on between them. Happy that they had a game to play, even if it did seem as if they were coming straight to the scrimmage against Darby from that amazing football game against Parkerville.

  Sometimes Ben wished his whole world could be Saturdays exactly like this.

  The backseat got quiet for a moment, even Coop. It was Sam who spoke next.

  “Before we do start hoops today,” he said, “anybody besides me wondering how we can possibly top what we just did in football?”

  Ben said, “We’ll just do what we always do.”

  Coop said, “I know I know what we always do … but help me out here.”

  “We’ll show up and hope something great happens,” Ben said.

  “And then make something great happen,” Sam said.

  It had happened during the football season, at least the season that really began about halfway through when Coach O’Brien put Ben in at quarterback and he showed Coach and everybody else that he wasn’t too small to be a quarterback after all. The Rams were losing by three touchdowns to Parkerville in the regular-season game the two teams had played, but somehow Ben — with a lot of help from Sam, the best receiver on the team and in the league — brought them all the way back.

  The Rams never lost another game after that.

  Finally it was the championship game, the rematch with Parkerville, and they were down four points and down to their last play. Only it turned out to be their version of the most famous pass in college football history, at least as far as Ben was concerned: The Doug Flutie pass Ben had always imagined himself making.

  His dad had played with Flutie at Boston College, when Flutie became the quarterback who was supposed to be too small before he proved the whole world wrong. His dad was a defensive back on that BC team, so he was there the day in Miami, after Thanksgiving, when Flutie made his desperate, last-play-of-the-game throw to beat the University of Miami, throwing it half the length of the field to his best friend, Gerard Phelan, when nobody thought BC still had a chance.

  The way nobody thought little Doug Flutie could ever win a Heisman Trophy.

  There had been other Hail Mary passes in football history, never one more famous than that. But Ben made his, to his best friend, against Parkerville, running around in the backfield to buy himself time, to give Sam time to get behind the defense, then throwing it as far as he could and watching Sam catch it like a center fielder catching a fly ball, pressing the ball to the front of his jersey and then falling back into the end zone with the play that gave the Rockwell Rams the championship.

  Even the town paper covered the game, calling Ben “Ben McMiracle” in the headlines.

  Ben leaned back, closed his eyes now, remembered all of it: The crazy celebration on the field that began with his mad dash to get to Sam. All the posing they did with the championship trophy. The party back at Ben’s house that ended up spilling across the street to the field across from the house that all of Ben’s friends called “McBain Field,” Ben and Sam and Coop and Shawn O’Brien out there until dark still throwing a football around, not wanting the season to be over.

  Before Ben had finally gone to bed that night, Sam Brown had called him on the telephone, and said, “It really happened, right?”

  Ben had said, “It happened.”

  “So it wasn’t a dream?” Sam had said, and Ben had laughed and said, “Well, it kind of was.”

  Only then, before they’d even had a chance to catch their breath, it really was basketball season. Tryouts for the town team the next week, the team announced at the end of that week, then a week of practice. And that was why, two weeks after Ben threw it and Sam caught it against Parkerville, they were in Darby, a couple of blocks away from the gym at Da
rby Middle School.

  Shawn O’Brien was meeting them there, his parents having driven him to the game. At first he wasn’t going to go out for basketball, saying he’d never even tried out before. But Ben had seen enough in pickup games at school to know that he’d make a perfect power forward for them, or even a center when Coop sat down. So he talked Shawn into it, and then Shawn had crushed the tryouts, and not only had this year’s Rockwell team gotten bigger because of Shawn, Ben knew it had gotten better.

  Not only had he and Sam and Coop gained a friend because of the way everything had worked out in football, they’d gained a rebounder and low-post shooter.

  Coop poked Ben and said, “You sleeping?”

  “Wide awake,” Ben said.

  “Good,” Coop said. “’Cause when we get out of the car, it is basketball season, dude. And we are playing Darby. Which means that even though it’s just supposed to be a dopey scrimmage, we need to send a message.”

  Somehow Ben knew to look to his right, where he saw Sam grinning at him.

  “And what would that be, exactly?” Sam said. “This message we need to send?”

  “Mrs. Manley?” Ben said, “Could you turn down the radio so we can all hear the message we need to send to Darby today?”

  Ben and Sam stared at Coop now as he stared out the window, frowning like he was trying to solve a math problem in his head.

  “We’re all waiting,” Sam said.

  “I’m thinking,” Coop said.

  “Oh, happy day!” Mrs. Manley said. “My boy, he’s thinking! It’s … it’s like an early Christmas … miracle!”

  “You’re not funny, Mom.”

  “I know, dear. You get that from me.”

  “Now that’s funny,” Sam said.

  “You two back here, shut up and listen,” Coop said. “Here’s the message we need to send: that we’re gonna be the big dogs in our league again this year, same as we were in football.”

  “That’s it, dog?” Sam said. “That’s the message?”

  Ben made a growling noise, the kind you’d hear from a small dog.

  “Make your little jokes,” Coop said. “You know you’re both thinking the exact same thing.”

  “All due respect, Coop?” Ben said. “No one thinks the way you do.”

  Coop acted as if he hadn’t heard. “It doesn’t have to be an actual message,” he said. “When they say on TV that one team is sending a message to the other, it’s not like they spell it out the way you would in a text message.”

  “That’s a good thing,” Sam said. “Because with your texting skills, the message would be even harder to understand.”

  “Like with LOL,” Ben said, grinning.

  “Oh,” Coop said, “like I’m the only person on the planet who thought that meant ‘lots of love.’ Something I never get from you two, by the way.”

  Ben looked at Sam, confused. “Where do you suppose he gets an idea like that?”

  “From you two!” Coop said.

  They all laughed again, starting to get ready now, knowing they had a game to play. Mrs. Manley turned into the parking lot at Darby Middle School. They all could see the double doors to a gym where they’d played plenty of times before.

  In the backseat, Ben put his hand out, something else he’d done plenty of times before. Then Sam’s hand was on top of his, and Coop’s was on top of Sam’s, and it officially wasn’t football season anymore.

  They got out of the car and walked across the lot and into the gym and that was when Ben first saw Darby’s new point guard, Chase Braggs.

  And just like that, his season changed before it had even officially begun. The story of the day, of what was supposed to be just a scrimmage, wasn’t Rockwell going up against its oldest rival.

  It was Ben McBain finding out he had a new one.

  It was Lily Wyatt who first told them about the basketball star their age who’d moved to Darby from someplace in Indiana.

  But then Lily seemed to know about everything first, whether it was a new movie they all had to see or a new singer they all had to hear, or a hot new TV show or app or gadget or game.

  She was an original member of what they all called the Core Four. Coop was the one who’d first started calling them that. He was a Yankee fan, and he knew all about how Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera and Jorge Posada and Andy Pettitte had won a bunch of World Series together and been called the Core Four of those teams. So now Lily, Ben, Sam, Coop were the Core Four, even if they only called themselves that in front of each other.

  And Lily Wyatt, they all knew, was a lot more than just one of the guys, the coolest girl in their grade, and in Rockwell and — Ben was pretty sure — probably the coolest eleven-year-old girl on the planet.

  She was also Ben’s closest friend, even if he would never admit that to Sam or Coop. A girl friend. When he’d describe her that way, he’d always make sure to come to a complete stop between “girl” and “friend.” Like he’d used a Pause button. Of course Sam never said it the same way, just to torture Ben. Always called her Ben’s “girlfriend.” One word. Knowing that Ben liked to have Lily called his girlfriend — one terrible word — about as much as he liked homework.

  His friendship with Lily was just different. Different from what he had with Sam and Coop and Shawn, who really had changed the Core Four into five by the end of football. It was different even though they all went to school together and hung together and felt as if they were members of the world’s most exclusive club for eleven-year-olds.

  The way Lily was different, pretty much from anybody Ben had ever known. She was also the person who knew Ben the best, even better than his mom and dad sometimes.

  The way she found out about Chase Braggs was this:

  She had a good friend in Darby she’d played against in travel soccer. The friend — her name was Molly Arcelus — had a brother on the sixth-grade basketball team, named Jeb, who came home from the first night of Darby’s tryout talking about this new guy who’d blown them all away.

  Since their dad was a stockbroker, Jeb had told his sister: “Dad ought to buy stock in this guy Chase.”

  Lily had called Ben right away, because she always called him right away when she had what she called “intel.”

  “There’s always a new guy we’re supposed to be worrying about in sports,” Ben had said that night. “Or an old guy who grew over the summer. Or somebody who just flat-out got better. Whatever.”

  “No, this could be great, if this guy’s as good as Molly’s brother says he is,” Lily had said. “You and this Chase could be like the Rockwell–Darby version of Kobe and LeBron.”

  She knew as much about sports as any guy he knew.

  “First of all,” Ben had said. “Kobe and LeBron isn’t that big a rivalry, they never even played in the Finals against each other. But I know you know that, because you know everything.”

  “Okay, Bird and Magic, then!” Lily had said. “Who I actually didn’t know all that much about till you made me watch that cool HBO movie about them.”

  “Man,” Ben had said, “it sounds like this Chase guy is the best player you’ve never seen. What’s his last name, again?”

  “Braggs. Chase Braggs. Sounds kind of like a verb, right? Get it? Chase Braggs.”

  “You’re doing a good enough job bragging on him yourself,” Ben had said. “Somebody who’s never even played a game yet around here.”

  “Listen, you know Jeb is good,” Lily had said. “And he says Chase is off the hook.”

  “Who are you — Coop?” Ben had said, both of them knowing “off the hook” was one of Coop’s favorite expressions.

  “Be nice,” Lily had said, “I’m just giving you a heads-up so you’ll bring your A game to the scrimmage next week.”

  “No, Lils,” Ben had said, “even though it’s Darby I was just going to go with B-minus. Maybe a C-plus.”

  “Did I mention to the best point guard in the league that Chase was a point guard, too?” Lily had s
aid.

  “I think right after I said hello. And there’s a lot of good point guards in the league besides me.”

  “Blah blah blah, Big Ben,” she said. “Last year nobody in the league could get in front of you.” Adding: “Like me in soccer.”

  He had known she was smiling at the other end of the phone even though he couldn’t actually see her smiling. It was what she called him. Big Ben. Even though he was small for his age. Smaller than her.

  A big thing with him.

  “Lils,” he had said, “do you really think I need somebody from the other team to fire me up?”

  “Not trying to fire you up, dude. Just giving you a heads-up.” Ben had pictured her still smiling as she said, “You’re welcome.”

  “Seriously?” Ben had said. “How good can he be?”

  He found out at Darby Middle School before the first quarter was over.

  The Rams had the same coach for sixth-grade ball they’d had last season, Keith Wright having moved up to the next level right along with them.

  It was a huge break, as far as all the guys on the team were concerned, most of them having played for Coach Wright in fifth grade.

  They’d all decided last season they’d be perfectly happy playing for Coach Wright until they got to high school. He was still in his twenties, had played college ball at UConn — never a starter, he told them, but always in Coach Jim Calhoun’s rotation, always getting his minutes — and wanted to be a college coach himself someday.

  “Everybody’s got their dreams,” he’d told them last year. “Coaching in March Madness one day is mine.”

  He’d been a point guard at UConn, even though he was only 5-8, and still looked young enough to be playing college ball. Maybe even playing for Rockwell High School. His face always made Ben think of Will Smith. Coach was just shorter.