Lizzy Legend

by Matthew Ross Smith

  Toby laughed. “Ha! Look at that, folks! She’s on fire! She can’t miss!”

  “Shut up.”

  So instead of shooting, I spent hours circling the ball around my body, working on my ball handling. The freight train kept inching by.

  Finally, in mid-March, they sawed my cast off with what looked like an electric pizza cutter. The skin underneath was wilted and flaky. I had to rub special lotion on it five times a day. Toby’s aunt was a physical therapist, so luckily we didn’t have to pay for that. I went to therapy every day after school. She had me doing all kinds of weird exercises, like putting my foot flat on a sloped block of wood. Every day, my range of motion improved. By early April, I was more or less back to full speed. I had a little soreness at first, but that went away. I resumed my early-morning training. The next thing in front of me, I thought, was summer ball.

  But then one Friday afternoon, something changed. The tree branches in the park had little water crystals on them. It was finally warm enough to shoot outside in short sleeves. Toby—who had gotten a part in the community theater’s spring production of Peter Pan—came squishing down the hill at dusk, still in his costume from rehearsals.

  “What are you?” I said. “A pirate?”

  “I am”—he lifted his chin proudly—“Unnamed Lost Boy Number Four.”

  “Any lines?”

  “Two, in fact. The first is: ‘Gee golly, Peter!’ The second is: ‘Please don’t go, Miss Wendy!’ But I think I can work in a few more. It’s loose.”

  “Wow. Next stop, Hollywood.”

  “I’ve actually got a small part for you, if you’re interested.”

  “In a play? Ha. No thanks.”

  “No. I was thinking we’d do a little one-time performance, like the old days.”

  Toby and I used to make up little one-act plays in his basement. There was only one rule: You could never play the same character twice. It was fun, but those days were long gone. I was a teenager now. I didn’t have free time anymore.

  “When?” I said skeptically.

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Can’t.”

  “It’s Saturday. We don’t have school.”

  “Yeah, but I finally convinced Gulch to give me the key to the gym and—”

  “Stop. For all your crap I’ve put up with over the years you owe me this. It’ll only take a few hours, and you’ll thank me afterward. Trust me, okay? Meet me at the train station at nine a.m. And bring your ball.”

  He skipped off in his Lost Boy costume, fingers plugged in his ears, singing, “La-la-la-la-la-la-la-la.”

  This had better be good,” I told him the next morning, legs dangling from the grimy train platform, ball under my arm. I was wearing my red Ardwyn Middle School basketball sweats and my duct-taped sneakers. The Wite-Out on them had cracked so it sort of looked like they were hatching. Toby wouldn’t sit because he was wearing a pin-striped business suit. His suitcase was monogrammed FSS—his father’s initials. “It’s beyond good,” he said. “It’s my most cunning plan ever.”

  “Are we traveling back in time to when people used the word ‘cunning’?”

  “Just follow my lead, and when the time comes, do your thing.”

  I stared up the track. “What are you, like, a lawyer or something?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Well, whatever,” I said. “But if you think I’m gonna play your secretary, they’ll bury you in that suit.”

  He grinned, the colored braces making him look ever more like a kid playing dress-up with Daddy’s clothes and suitcase.

  I still had no idea where we were going, but to cover myself I’d texted Dad saying I was going to Toby’s house, and he’d no doubt done the same in reverse with his parents.

  “So here’s the deal,” he said as we took our seats on the train. “Bad news. You’ve recently been diagnosed with Helsinki syndrome.”

  “Helsinki—?”

  “It’s a city in northern Europe and also, if anyone asks, a very rare, incurable disease.”

  “You just made up a disease?”

  “I would never do such a thing!”

  “Yeah right.”

  “Google it.”

  I had to laugh.

  He’d made up a fake Wikipedia page for it.

  “Just follow my lead,” he said again. “Whatever happens, go with it.”

  Stop after stop flickered by until, nearly an hour later, the Philly skyline came into view. We got off at Suburban Station and, after winding through some urine-drenched tunnels, we switched onto the subway. We came up aboveground right next to the Mack Center, the famous home of the Philadelphia Bells.

  I’ll admit: I wasn’t feeling good about any of this. I’d have much rather have been back at the gym in Ardwyn, zigzagging between little orange cones. For every hour of practice I missed, I knew I’d have to pay back double.

  We circled the arena until we came to the dark-glassed employees-only entrance. Toby knocked and knocked and knocked—the same way you just keep letting a phone ring and ring—until finally a freckle-faced man in a Bells golf shirt answered. He smelled like Irish Spring soap. “Can I help you?”

  “Hi,” Toby said crisply. “We’re here from the Grant-A-Wish Foundation.”

  “Grant-a-what?”

  “Wish. You know, the charity that grants the final wishes of sick children?”

  Toby clicked open his briefcase and produced the documentation—their logo at the top and everything.

  The guy looked over us, scanning the empty parking lot.

  “Well, can we come in?” Toby said. “Or do you want us to stand out here all day while my friend’s platelets continue to, uh—”

  “Come in! Please! I’m so sorry! What’re your names?”

  “I’m Archimedes,” Toby said—his go-to fake name, his favorite mathematician—“and this is my sister . . . Beatrice.”

  “Come in; please, come in. I’m Mike. I’m over in marketing. You’re lucky it’s a game day or else . . . you know what?” His finger shot up. “Hang here a tick.” He speed-walked down the hallway, taking the extra-long steps of a person trying to dislodge a wedgie without taking their hands out of their pockets.

  I shoved Toby. “Come on, man. This is crazy. Let’s go.”

  “Are you feeling weak?”

  “I’m feeling like I’m going to break your face if we don’t leave this building right—”

  But seconds later, Mike came back with—I couldn’t believe my eyes—the legendary Philadelphia Bells coach. He was wearing a wrinkled black suit, the same one I’d seen him wearing on TV the night before, with a pink flowered tie. The suit he always said he wanted to be buried in. His funeral suit. He famously never slept after losses. The championship ring on his right hand glistened like a single brass knuckle. “Jimmy Mack,” he said, scowling. “Who the heck are you?”

  This is Archimedes,” Mike from Marketing said, “and his sister, Beatrice. Beatrice is”—he whispered behind his hand—“very sick. But she’s a big Bells fan, and it was her wish to come down and, uh . . . what was your wish again?”

  “Tour the building,” Toby said in his lawyer suit. “Full tour.”

  “Right,” Mike said. “Would you, uh, mind showing them around, Coach?” He offered the question like a slab of raw meat to a tiger.

  Coach Mack dipped his hand into his jacket pocket and lifted out his famous cigar. A bubblegum cigar. Bright pink. Still wrapped. He ran it beneath his nose.

  I stared down, ashamed. That was when I noticed he was wearing black dress shoes with no socks. Toby noticed too. He couldn’t help himself. “New socks, Coach?”

  “Yeah,” Coach Mack said, not missing a beat. “They match my gloves. You like ’em?” He sized me up like a draft prospect. I imagined his brain was processing me in black and white, like an X-ray. Seeing right through me.

  Toby started recording with his phone. “You mind, Coach?”

  “What the heck do I care?”

 
; The locker room wasn’t the fancy wonderland I expected, with fake waterfalls and flat-screen TVs in every locker. When Coach Mack flicked on the lights he yelled: “Scram, rodents! Back in your holes!” It was dark and smelled like wet pizza boxes. The carpet squished in the spots where the pipes were dripping overhead. He led us past all the lockers, explaining what was wrong with all his players. “Stiff. Stiff. Gimp. Stiff. No left hand. Prima donna. Stiff. Stiff. Big stiff. Choke artist. Whiner. Crybaby. Has-been. Stiff.”

  “Tough year?” Toby said.

  “Kid, we couldn’t beat the Little Sisters of the Poor.”

  Even though the locker room was a dump, I was still in awe.

  “Come on,” Coach Mack said, running that pink cigar beneath his nose again. “Stinks in here. Let’s go to church.”

  Coach Mack knelt at the edge of the gleaming court, mumbled a silent prayer, made a sign of the cross, and struggled to his feet again. “Don’t be shy,” he said, nodding at my ball. “That’s what they built it for. Let’s see what you got.”

  Toby grinned.

  And now I understood his plan.

  “Coach,” he said. “I gotta tell you something. My name isn’t really Archimed—”

  “Archimedes of Syracuse,” Coach Mack said. “One of the all-time greats. Mathematician. Astronomer. You know how he died? This is good. I love this. Second Punic War. Roman soldier busts into his tent. Soldier says: ‘Yo pops, let’s go!’ Archimedes says, ‘Hold up, I’m finishin’ this equation.’ Soldier says, ‘Let’s go, pops. Now.’ Archimedes lifts his finger like, ‘Just a few more minutes, pal. I’m almost done.’ Soldier unsheathes his sword and stabs Archimedes in the gut. Archimedes bleeds out all over his papers. Now, that’s the way to go out. Play hard till the final horn!”

  Toby and I both stared, dumbfounded.

  “Sister Margaret,” he explained. “St. Ann’s School. Seventh-grade Latin class. Still got my notes written right here.” He showed us his ruler-scarred knuckles.

  Toby said: “That’s, uh . . . amazing. But seriously, Coach, that’s not my name. She’s not sick. I’m really sorry, but it’s the only way we could get you to see.”

  The purple veins in Coach Mack’s face were beginning to glow like lightbulb filaments. “See what?”

  Toby turned to me.

  I closed my eyes and took a deep pull of the cool church air. It’s messed up how you got here, but that doesn’t matter now. Just shoot.

  I shot.

  From half-court.

  The ball sped through the hoop.

  Pure swish.

  “Ha,” Coach Mack said, limping back toward the tunnel, “it would go in. Listen, I’m from Philly. I appreciate a good con much as the next guy . . . but you kids gotta go. Don’t make me call—”

  “Coach,” I said. I’d almost forgotten what my own voice sounded like.

  Coach Mack stopped. Turned.

  “Just watch,” I said. “Please.”

  Toby chased down the ball and heaved it back.

  I pure-swished another.

  Coach Mack stepped forward. He was—I’ll never forget this—biting down on his championship ring. “This one of them reality TV shows?”

  I pure-swished another.

  “Let me see that.” He weighed the ball on the scale of his palm. Satisfied, he snapped me a chest pass.

  I pure-swished another.

  “Okay, kid. You got my attention.”

  “She doesn’t miss,” Toby called from under the far basket, still recording. “Ever.”

  “Shut up!” Coach Mack yelled. Then, to me, calmly: “Shoot at the other basket.”

  I stepped across the half-court line, pivoted, and pure-swished another.

  “You know what we used to call that when I was comin’ up?” he said.

  “A pure swish.”

  He laughed. “How you know that?”

  “My dad taught me.”

  “Who’s your dad?”

  I told him.

  “Well, heck. Now at least this makes a little sense.”

  “You know my dad?”

  “Saw him at a summer camp once. Followed him in the papers, too—we all did. Didn’t need much coachin’, as I recall.”

  While Toby was uploading the video to YouTube, Coach Mack limped toward the tunnel again. I thought he was leaving, but instead he grabbed a chair from the bench and planted it at midcourt, directly beneath the ArenaVision. “Go ahead,” he said. “I’m gonna sit here till you miss.”

  For the first time since we’d arrived—maybe for the first time since my injury—I felt like myself again. I said, “You don’t have that long, Coach.”

  When I got home Dad was asleep on the couch. He was still wearing his Stop-N-Pump shirt and his black sweatpants, the ones with the frayed elastic bands at the ankles. I tiptoed across the living room, hoping not to wake him, but his wizard powers alerted him to my presence. Eyes still closed, he said: “How was it?”

  I froze, midstep, like a burglar in a cartoon. “What?”

  “Did you forget your lie already?”

  “Huh?”

  “Your text said you were going to Toby’s.”

  “I know.”

  “You know how I know you’re lying? I know when I ask you a question and you ask me a question back.”

  “What?” Ugh, his stupid wizard powers. “No I don’t.”

  He laughed. “Yes you do. Now spill it.”

  “Fine. But promise me something?”

  “What?”

  “Promise me that you won’t get mad.”

  Back when I was in second grade, just after Mom died, he used to read me A Wrinkle in Time every night before bed—you know, the story about the girl who goes on an adventure across the universe to save her father from evil space blobs? I didn’t especially love the story, but it was my favorite book by default because it was the only one I could find that had a kick-ass girl as the main character. We had an unspoken system: When Dad finished the last line, he just started immediately on the first again, so it was like this perfect never-ending story loop. That night, in the gap between the last and the first page, I said, “Dad, promise me you’ll never get captured by evil space blobs.” And he said, “Why?” And I said, “So I won’t have to come and rescue you.” And he said, “What, are you too busy?” And I said, “Yeah. Actually, I am.” And, closing the book, holding his place with his finger, he said, “You wouldn’t rescue me?” And I said, “I would, but I’d prefer not to.” And he said: “But wouldn’t that be a fun adventure?” And I said, “No.” I’d never flown in a spaceship, but I assumed it was just like riding a smelly bus across the universe, so it’d be boring and I’d be spacesick. Plus, there was no gravity, so shooting a basketball would be impossible. Tucking me in, he said, “I’m sorry, I can’t promise that.” I remember balling my fists and getting so mad—just promise that you won’t get abducted by evil space blobs!—but, unlike most parents, he wouldn’t promise what he couldn’t control just to appease me. He was stubborn that way—still was, obviously. “Sorry,” he said. “I can’t promise that.”

  A game show was playing on the TV, muted. The contestants, dressed in the greens and browns and oranges of the 1970s, were celebrating.

  I closed my eyes. Just tell him. I sighed. “So, I just met Jimmy Mack.”

  He leaned forward. “The Jimmy Mack?”

  I nodded. “Toby set up this visit down in Philly. We took the train. He”—shame washed over me—“he set up this thing where they thought I had Helsinki syndrome.”

  “Hel-what?”

  I showed him the Wikipedia page on my phone.

  Helsinki syndrome:

  A rare, incurable disease of the upper butt.

  “That’s . . . ,” Dad said, shaking his head, “just brilliant.”

  Back when he was in middle school, Dad and his buddies used to take the train to Philly and sneak into Bells games all the time. Anything went as long as you got inside. “I mean, that’s horribl
e,” he said. “But, you know, kinda brilliant.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “So they brought us through the locker rooms—”

  Dad laughed.

  “And out onto the court.”

  “You were on the court with Jimmy Mack? Today?”

  “Crazy, right?”

  “That’s incredible. Did you shake his hand? Like a vise grip, right? He used to squeeze a squash ball a thousand times a day. A thousand times each hand. You couldn’t pry the ball away from him if you had a pack of horses.”

  “Pack of horses?”

  “It’s an expression.”

  “Is it?”

  He shifted on the couch. “So, what happened?”

  “This is the don’t-get-mad part. I think . . . I think they might try to sign me.”

  “Ha. Good thing you warned me. The Bells want to sign you. I’m furious.”

  “I’m serious, Dad.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  I knew there was only one way to make him believe.

  “Come over to the playground with me,” I said.

  “Now?”

  After I’d made about twenty in a row, including a few full-courters, I told him about the robocall.

  “It’s some kind of . . . miracle?” he said.

  “I don’t know.”

  He understood one thing right away, like I did. Maybe it was being from Ardwyn: If you had a winning lottery ticket you’d better bury it deep in your pocket, keep your head down, and walk a little faster. “You can’t tell anyone,” he said.

  “I know. I told Toby. He’s . . . basically no one. You know what I mean.”

  Out of nervous habit, the way a normal person would’ve chewed their nails, Dad spun the ball on his finger. He rolled the spinning ball up and down his fingers, keeping it going with an occasional slap. “You know what?” he said, steeling his jaw. “Take it.”

  “Huh?”

  “I said, take it. When has anyone ever given us anything? This shot? This power? It’s yours now. Anyone asks, I don’t know . . . just tell them you worked harder than everyone else. You figured out the jump shot, solved it like a math problem.”