by Mike Lupica
“He was cool,” Molly said.
“Cuter in person?”
“Yes,” Molly said. “I thought only contact lenses could make your eyes that blue.”
Do the girl thing.
“I can’t believe you got to meet him before I did.”
“Not in any kind of way you’d ever want to, though,” Molly said.
“You know how much I love the Celtics,” Kimmy said.
“Not the Celtics, Kimmy. Just one particular Celtic. Him.”
Molly suspected that if you pinned Kimmy down, she couldn’t tell you whether a basketball was blown up or stuffed. But it was true that she did have a huge crush on Josh Cameron. That was the weird coincidence here, something Molly had never considered. There were more pictures of Josh Cameron on Kimmy’s walls than of Orlando Bloom. Or the guy from the last Star Wars movie, whose name Molly could never remember.
“If you tell me everything he said, I’ll let you do your homework,” Kimmy said.
Molly made most of it up.
Made him the Josh Cameron she’d hoped to meet.
If only….
CHAPTER 6
Molly and Sam were having lunch in the cafeteria. Macaroni and cheese. Molly thought it was thicker than usual and an orange color she wasn’t all that comfortable with, so her portion had been piled on top of Sam’s even before he said what he said at pretty much any meal they shared.
“You gonna finish that?”
Instead he said, “There’s something I want to show you.”
“Do not open your mouth and play ‘Hey, look!’ when you are eating my macaroni and whatever that is,” Molly said.
“I would never do something like that,” Sam said.
“I’m warning you, Sam Bloom. This time I really will get up and leave this table.”
As usual, they had found a couple of seats at the end of one of the long tables near the window. Just the two of them. Like a secret society of two. More secret than ever, these days.
Sam reached into his pocket, then pressed his hand to his chest so she couldn’t see what he’d brought out.
“Is this another card trick? I know all your card tricks.”
Molly wanted to add, And how you do them.
But she didn’t. If there was one true foundation to their friendship, other than loyalty, it was this: Molly let Sam Bloom think he was smarter than she was.
“You don’t know all of them,” he said. “Or how I do them, even if you think you do.”
Molly said, “Stop that.”
“What?”
“Reading my mind.”
“Can’t,” he said. “It’s like reading one of my all-time favorite books.”
He put his hand on the table between them, and when he took it away, it was a kind of magic trick.
Because there were two tickets to the Celtics opener. At the TD Banknorth Garden. Tonight.
Molly stared at the tickets, back at Sam, then back at the tickets. “No…way,” she said. “No bloody way.”
“Bloody?” Sam said. “I thought we had gotten rid of all the Buckingham Palace in you, milady.”
“You’re the one who keeps telling me I’m a work in progress,” she said. She pointed to the tickets, almost like she was afraid to touch them, like she was afraid if she did they’d disappear. “How come you didn’t tell me last night you had these tickets, you loser?”
“You’re calling me a loo-zar when I have just presented you with two tickets to basketball heaven?”
“Good point,” Molly said. “Okay, how’d you get them?”
“My mom trains the assistant to the president of the team, I forget her name,” he said. “Robin somebody.”
“And she gave your mom these tickets, and she gave them to you, and…we’re going?”
“No, Mols, I just wanted to show you the tickets. I’m actually going to ask Kimmy.”
Then he put up his hand and leaned across the table a little so Molly could give him a high-five.
“Anyway,” he said, “the fact that we’re going is the bad news.”
“The bad news?”
He nodded. She knew he was playing with her now. It was understood that he just had to do that whenever he could and that she just had to go along. Just because it made him so happy.
“Okay, I’ll bite,” she said. “What’s the good news?”
“Well,” Sam said, “I suppose you could look at it as good news. Some people would look at it that way…the news, I mean…that we are also allowed to show up early tonight and go into the Celtics locker room and hang with the players for a few minutes after they’re dressed.”
Now Sam was the one who looked amazed. Looking at her like she wasn’t giving him the reaction he’d expected.
Maybe like the happy winner on one of his dopey game shows.
“Mols, work with me here. Locker room. Is there a problem?”
Molly said, “What am I going to say to him once we’re in there? ‘Hey, Dad, me again. Where should I wait for you after the game?’”
“No,” Sam said, “I don’t think that’s the way I’d go. But we’ve got all day to figure out how we want to play it.”
“This is a bad idea.”
“Now who’s the loo-zar? This is a great idea.”
“And I’m not going to get to go, anyway,” she said. “I happen to be grounded, remember?”
Sam looked at his watch. “We’ve only got a couple of minutes before we have to go to English,” he said. “So do you want to mope about what you’re going to say to Mr. Wonderful once we get into the locker room, or that you don’t think we can get you out of jail?”
“Jail,” she said. “My groundedness.”
Sam said, “Good, on account of that’s the easy one. I’ll have my mom call Barbara. Nobody ever says no to their trainer. They’re afraid they’ll be punished the next time in the gym.”
“Fine,” Molly said.
“Control yourself, girl.”
“Let’s say I do get out of jail for the night. How does it help if I get to see somebody today who didn’t want to see me yesterday?”
“He won’t run away this time.”
“Why not?”
“He just won’t.”
Across the room, Molly noticed Kimmy with some of her bubbleheaded friends, some of whom talked even more than she did. If such a thing was possible.
Kimmy waved.
Molly waved.
Sam said, “You didn’t ask me who’s taking us to the game.”
“Who is taking us to the game?”
“Uncle Adam.”
“Uncle Adam the sportswriter?”
“No,” Sam said, because he couldn’t help himself. “Uncle Adam from the X-Men.”
“And that’s going to help us?”
“Think about it, Mols,” Sam said.
Molly smiled. She imagined a cartoon lightbulb above her head. “Josh Cameron will see me walk into the locker room with a reporter.”
Sam nodded.
Molly said, “And he’ll be afraid I might spill the beans?”
“Boston baked beans, girlfriend.”
“So I get his attention—then what?”
“You ask to talk to him alone. And you tell him again that you’re telling the truth. And if he doesn’t believe you then, well, we may have to go sniffle-sniffle on him and say that if he won’t believe you, maybe Adam Burke from the Boston stinking Globe will.”
“That almost sounds like blackmail,” Molly said.
“Doesn’t sound like,” Sam said. “Is.”
He put his hand across the table for a real handshake now. Molly obliged.
“It’s on,” she said.
Barbara caved.
Said Molly could go to the game. Told how persuasive her dear friend Emma Bloom had been on the phone as she made the case that Molly just had to be allowed to go—how many chances does a person get to go to an opening night game and meet the players? Emma had even said that Barbara wa
s the one who deserved to be grounded if she didn’t let Molly go.
Sam’s mom could apparently lay it on as thick as Sam did when he really wanted something from somebody.
“Anyway,” Barbara said. “Bill’s on his way to Los Angeles today. When he gets there, I’ll just explain my position.”
Barbara’s position: While nothing had changed from the day before, and while this certainly did not mean Molly could even consider pulling a stunt like that ever again, Barbara could not in good conscience prevent Molly from getting a chance like this. The chance, she said, to see her mother’s old friend Josh play in person. And on opening night.
When Molly added it up, it was a tremendous opportunity for Barbara, even if her heart was in the right place. Just because all adults loved to play the part of hero.
It was win-win for everybody, if you thought about it that way.
“Nothing wrong with a little happiness in your life,” Barbara said, and hugged Molly.
Molly hugged back for once.
It was Friday, but Molly said she was going upstairs anyway to do her weekend homework. Before she did, Barbara said, “Maybe next time Sam could find a way to include Kimmy?”
Molly said she’d mention that to Sam for sure.
When she got upstairs, Kimmy was in her room. It happened so often now that Molly was surprised when she walked into her room and Kimmy wasn’t there. But since Molly never considered herself more than a houseguest, no matter how many times Barbara Evans told her she was family now, she never made an issue of it. Even though she wondered constantly what was wrong with Kimmy’s own room. Or what was so fascinating about Molly’s.
“I heard,” Kimmy said. “You are soooo lucky, girl.”
She was doing her best to act happy. Before Molly could say anything, Kimmy said, “Next time I should try to get grounded.”
“I’m still grounded,” Molly said. “Just not tonight.”
That’s all Kimmy had today. One of her shortest room visits on record.
“Say hi to Josh,” she said, then added, “your new best friend.”
Molly knew a lot about the TD Banknorth Garden, which was the new name for the Fleet Center, which was the new Boston Garden really, since the old one had been torn down.
“That was the one known as the Gah-den,” Sam said, exaggerating a Boston accent.
Molly knew that the basketball court here, the one known as the “parquet floor” because of its design, with all the squares in it, looked exactly like the one at the old Gah-den.
Part of all the things she had learned since she had learned that Josh Cameron was her dad.
Or her un-dad.
That was probably more accurate, considering the way things had gone yesterday.
“The old Celtics won all their championships at the old Garden,” she said.
“Thanks,” he said. “I wasn’t aware of that.”
“This isn’t like a spelling bee,” she said. “It’s not me against you for who knows more about the Celtics.”
“Spell parquet,” he said.
“Ha ha.”
“I used to go to the old Garden,” he said. “What a dump.”
“Oh, please,” Molly said. “You’re too young to remember.”
“I’ve told you before,” Sam said. “I remember the womb.”
Which Molly had to admit was probably true.
Adam Burke, Sam’s uncle, looked more like a college kid than some of the sportswriters Sam liked to watch yell at each other on television. Long hair that always seemed to look messy, jeans, blue blazer, white shirt. Penny loafers. He had told them on the ride over that because it was the first game of the season for the Celtics, he was working tonight, which meant he’d have to write after the game. But he’d arranged it with the Celtics public relations people that Molly and Sam could wait for him in the press lounge if they promised to behave.
“Okay,” Sam said. “We promise not to make fun of the other sportswriters.”
“No matter what,” Molly said.
“Even if they try to impress us when they’re not trying to impress each other,” Sam said.
“No matter what,” Molly said.
“How lucky am I,” Adam Burke said, “to get to go to the opener with the two funniest twelve-year-olds in the greater Boston area?”
“At least you appreciate that,” Sam said.
Sam had to get the last word in, even with adults.
They had arrived at the TD Banknorth Garden early. All the gold-colored seats were still empty; some girl singer Molly didn’t recognize was practicing the national anthem. Then Adam Burke took them to the Sports Museum that was inside the new Garden, and to the small television studio where some of the Celtics announcers did their pregame and postgame shows. When they came back to the arena, Adam Burke pointed out the championship banners hanging from the ceiling and all the retired numbers belonging to the great olden-days Celtics players.
“The next one to go up there, once he retires, will be Josh Cameron’s number three,” he said. “But if he retires, that means he’ll have gotten old, which nobody around here expects to happen.”
Then he said he was going to the locker room to interview some of the Celtics players for the column he had to write before they even played the game, just to hold the space in the early edition of the Globe.
“Don’t even try to understand,” Adam said. “It’s never made any sense to me, either.”
He left them in their second-row seats while some of the Celtics showed up on the court in their warm-up clothes and began to shoot around.
Up close, like this, they were the biggest human beings Molly Parker had ever seen in her life.
“I feel like we’re in Jurassic Park,” she whispered to Sam. “We don’t grow them this big in London. Why is that?”
“I don’t know.”
“I thought you knew everything.”
“Not everything,” he said. “Just more than most people.”
Molly squeezed his hand, which always made him blush. “Lucky for me,” she said.
Sam couldn’t play sports to save his life. Couldn’t throw a football or catch one or make a basket in gym. But he knew so much about sports, the Boston sports teams in particular, it was as if all the information stored inside his head did make him some kind of unofficial jock.
Or maybe just the jock he secretly wanted to be.
When he’d stopped telling Molly who the players were and where they went to college, Molly said, “He probably won’t even remember me.”
“He’ll remember you. Trust me.” Sam looked at her. “You bring your mom’s letter?”
“It’s in my pocket. Not that it did me much good yesterday.”
“Good,” he said. “Now we just have to hope he’s in the locker room when we get to go in there and not hiding in the players’ lounge.”
Josh Cameron wasn’t in the locker room. Sam whispered the names of the guys who were there, as if he were taking attendance. Teddy Wright, L. J. Brown, Nick Tutts. The PR man quickly moved Molly and Sam from one guy to the next, then got them out of there.
But no Josh.
“Now what?” Sam said when they were back outside, having met the handful of players who were in front of their lockers. “Plan B was you handing him the letter.”
“I’ve got another plan,” Molly said.
Sam said, “Oh, goody.”
“Plan C,” Molly said.
Then she told him what the C stood for.
CHAPTER 7
Ever since she had learned the truth about Josh Cameron, Molly had taken an interest in basketball.
She would even go into the closet and find Mr. Evans’s basketball sometimes and spin it in her hands while she thought about what her life might be like if Josh knew about her.
But for the most part, basketball was still pretty much a mystery to her.
She had to admit that she knew a lot more about soccer—they called it football in England—and ev
en cricket, just because you had to over there if you cared at all about sports, except for the kids who’d just arrived at the American School of London from the States, chattering about basketball and baseball and football and everything except soccer and cricket.
So most of her first live NBA game was a blur, except for this: Even a total idiot could see that what Josh Cameron was doing on the court was different from what everybody else could do.
Nine other players out there. Three officials. All these people around him, Molly thought, and it’s as if he’s still all by himself, which is the way her mom had said it always was with him.
Josh World, she had called it.
It was exciting when you saw it this close, but it made her sad, too, something she tried to explain to Sam at halftime.
“It really is like he’s in a world of his own,” she said.
“Your point being?”
“I’ve got about as much a chance of breaking into it, getting him to do something he doesn’t want to do, as all those guys trying to guard him.”
“But that’s the thing about basketball,” Sam said. “He needs those other guys.”
He was eating again. Had been eating since the game started. Popcorn. Two hot dogs. Ice cream. Now some nacho thing with cheese the same yucky color as the cheese of the macaroni and cheese at school. Like the Celtics against the 76ers was really just an all-you-can-eat contest.
Sam said, “It’s the kind of player he is. He’s only great when he’s making the people around him great. You get that part, right?”
“I guess so.”
“Nah, Mols. You know so. Those other guys round him out as a player. That’s what Uncle Adam always writes about him. And just about everybody else, too. You’ve got to convince Mr. Wonderful that you can basically do the same thing, just off the court. You and him, a better team.”
Molly grabbed one of his chips, making sure there was no cheese on it. “Are you absolutely sure you’re only twelve years old?” she said.
Sam kept eating. “The guy is going to love you once he gets to know you,” Sam said. “Now he’s got to get to know you.”
“Fat chance.”
Sam ignored her, saying, “And if he gets to know you and doesn’t love you, then he is a total, screaming moron.”
