“At piano,” Billy said.
“No,” his dad said, “I meant how’s he doing with me not being around?”
“He’s Ben, Dad. You know him. He never says much about anything.”
The truth was, Billy, even at ten, wondered if his dad knew his little brother at all. Once they didn’t have sports in common, it was as if they didn’t have anything in common, except maybe the same last name.
Ben had tried soccer for a couple of years and had been one of the fastest guys on his team. But when it came time to try out for travel soccer, he just quit instead. It was the same with tennis. He had started playing in some clinics at the Racquet Club when he was six, and the few times Billy had watched him, he thought he was one of the better kids his age. Then he had quit tennis. He just didn’t care about sports the way their dad did, and the way Billy cared about basketball.
Ben was a piano prodigy.
The only reason Billy even knew what that word meant was because of his brother. Because practically from the time Ben started taking lessons when he was in kindergarten, that’s what everybody had been calling him.
Prodigy. “A highly talented child or youth” was what the dictionary said when Billy had looked it up. That was Ben. Like one of those girl tennis players that started beating older players when she was twelve or something.
Ben was so good at playing the piano, right away, that it was like he never had any choice about doing it. Billy didn’t know anything about music and never had any interest in playing any instruments himself, but even he knew when he’d go to one of his brother’s piano recitals that what Ben was doing was different from everybody else.
Billy never said this to anybody, not even Lenny, but he wished he were half as good at basketball as Ben was at playing piano.
“Well, tell him I said hi,” Joe Raynor said to Billy now on the telephone, “and that maybe I’ll stop by after our game.”
Billy said he would. When he hung up the phone, he yelled down to where Peg was doing her ironing in the laundry room, told her he was on his way to basketball and that he was going to Lenny’s afterward.
He liked being at Lenny’s house a lot better these days.
At Lenny’s, things were still the way they were supposed to be.
THREE
Once they got on the court, Billy felt better than he had all week.
Maybe Ben felt that way playing the piano today, at his regular Saturday lesson with Mrs. Grace. But being on the court again with Lenny DiNardo and the other Magic players, even going through the drills his dad made them do before every game, made him feel happier than he had since his mom and dad had called them together for the “family conference” after everybody had come home from school on Wednesday afternoon.
From that day on, basketball wasn’t just the sport Billy loved the most.
It was the most important thing in his world.
When he was on the court at the Y, catching the ball and feeling the way it settled in his hands right before he put up a shot, that was the only time everything felt right in Billy’s world. Even if it was just for a moment.
Billy even liked
practicing
basketball. Sometimes he would hear other guys complaining about having to go to the Magic’s one practice a week, on Wednesday nights at West School, like they were being forced to stay after school or something. Billy never felt that way. Practice wasn’t as good as playing games. But as far as he was concerned, it was close enough.
The basketball court was Billy Raynor’s real home now.
The game was fun today, even though Billy felt a little sad every time he looked up at the clock and saw less time on it. Sometimes when they’d finally get the lead in a close game, he’d want the time to run out.
Not today.
Today they were winning easily against the Mavericks. Billy and Lenny had helped the Magic build a big lead in the first quarter and then sat down in the second quarter and watched their teammates make it even bigger. There were ten players on a team, and the rule at the Y was that every player had to play at least half the game. Some coaches like to split up their very best players, but not Billy’s dad. He said that Billy and Lenny were probably going to play together on the high school team someday and might as well learn to play together now. So he’d usually play them in the first quarter and then either the third or the fourth, depending on how the game was going.
Today, Billy knew, it wasn’t going to matter when they played in the second half, because the game was going great for them, and nobody on their team seemed to be able to do anything wrong.
Nobody could stop Lenny, and this was one of those days when Billy couldn’t miss. Couldn’t miss, didn’t want to leave. At halftime they were ahead by twenty points.
Billy’s dad told Billy and Lenny he was going to play them in the fourth quarter. So they sat and watched in the third quarter as the Mavericks cut the lead a little bit.
The Magic was still ahead by sixteen when Billy got back in there. And maybe it was because they were winning by so much that he started to goof around a little, try the kind of crazy off-balance shots that only Lenny could make. Billy was shooting even more than he usually did, passing even less than he knew his dad liked, especially with their team ahead by so much.
Billy wasn’t trying to show the other team up. There were even a couple of his school friends on the Mavericks. He was just having some fun.
His dad told him to cut it out a couple of times, not yelling or making a big deal out of it. But Billy kept shooting. He’d played about as close to his best as he could today, and after all, he’d just had about the worst week of his whole life.
He figured his dad, more than anybody else, wouldn’t mind if he took a few extra shots, especially since most of them were going in.
Only the opposite was happening.
The more he shot, the madder his dad got.
And the madder he got, the madder Billy started to get at him for being mad.
With four minutes left in the game and one of the guys on the Mavericks shooting two free throws, Lenny whispered to Billy, “What’s the deal? You just figure out how steamed you are at him?”
“I’m not,” Billy said.
“You sure?” Lenny said.
The next time down the court, Billy came down on a fast break, pulled up and shot from way outside, even though Lenny was wide open, cutting for the basket. The shot missed, but that wasn’t what upset his dad.
His dad stood up, yelled at the ref for a time-out, jerked his thumb over his shoulder like he was an umpire throwing a manager out of a baseball game and said to Billy, “Take a seat.”
“But I haven’t played half the game.” It was the only thing Billy could think of to say.
“The way you’ve been playing the last few minutes,” his dad said in a loud voice, “you’re lucky I left you in this long.”
Billy stood where he was, still a few feet on the court, feeling everybody else in the game and the crowd staring at him, like he was out in the open in paintball.
“We’re waiting,” his dad said.
Billy looked over at Lenny, standing in front of their bench, Lenny somehow begging just with his eyes for Billy to get off the court, not make things worse than they already were.
Finally Billy went and sat down as far away from where his dad sat as he could.
Yet when the game started back up, his dad wouldn’t drop it. His face was red as he yelled down to Billy, “When you’re ready to be part of the group again, you can go back in.”
The next thing just came out of Billy, like a button popping off a shirt, even though it was like he was saying it to the floor, his head down.
“What do you know about being part of the group?” he said.
His dad ran to Billy at superhero speed, standing over him, not seeming to care who could hear what they were saying to each other.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing,” Billy said.
“It didn’t sound like nothing to me,” his dad said. Still not letting this go. “If you’ve got something you want to say to me, go ahead and say it,” Joe Raynor said.
For one quick second, Billy felt that burn you get inside your eyes when you think you might start crying, but he put his head down so nobody could see him, squeezed his eyes shut until the feeling went away.
When he was positive he wasn’t going to cry, he looked up at his dad. Usually when he was in trouble about something, his dad would have to order Billy to look him in the eyes.
Not today.
“I guess I just need to know something,” Billy said. “Are you my coach today or my dad?”
FOUR
They were back at Billy’s house in the late afternoon, shooting baskets in the driveway after playing
2006 FIFA World Cup
on Xbox 360 for a couple of hours at Lenny’s.
It was still the middle of winter and pretty cold, even with the sun out, but Billy and Lenny didn’t care how cold it was. There were times when they came out here and shot around even when it was snowing.
Lenny was like a friend and an older brother all at the same time. Lenny’s brother was a
lot
older than they were, already a sophomore in college. So it worked out great, almost like they’d planned it this way. Billy was like the younger brother Lenny didn’t have. Lenny? He was like the older brother Billy sort of wished he had—more than an older sister from Mars.
Billy loved Ben, who in that quiet way of his was one of the coolest people he knew.
He just had more in common with Lenny.
And more fun.
Lenny was saying now, “I didn’t know whether your dad was going to ground you for life or just make you run laps forever.”
Billy, even with his hands starting to get a little colder now, made another shot from the outside and motioned for Lenny to pass him the ball back.
“Don’t worry,” Billy said. “I’m not letting him mess up my whole day.”
“Just don’t let it mess up your whole
season,
” Lenny said. “You know you wait all year for basketball, just like I do.”
“I won’t, don’t worry,” Billy said. “We made a deal, remember?”
“Deal?” Lenny said. “You did everything except make me take one of those blood oaths.”
Their deal, one they never even talked about with the other guys on the team, was that they were not just going to win the championship of their age division, they were going to go undefeated.
Billy made another one from outside their three-point line, the one they’d drawn in chalk, the ball hitting nothing but net. The
swish
sound of the ball going through the net reminded him of a big gust of wind.
“Least I can still shoot,” Billy said. “Even if somebody acts like I’m the biggest gunner in the world.”
“You and your dad just had a bad day,” Lenny said.
Like every other day this week, Billy thought.
“You played good the last couple of minutes after he let you back in,” Lenny said.
“He must’ve told you that afterward,” Billy said, “because he sure didn’t tell me.”
“Trust me,” Lenny said.
“How do you know?”
“I know things,” Lenny said. Then in one of his deep voices, like the cartoon voice of Batman, he said, “Deep and mysterious things.”
Lenny knocked the ball out of Billy’s hands, dribbled in, made a reverse layup with his left hand, made that look as easy as eating ice cream.
“And now,” Lenny said, “I am going to give you such a good beatdown in one-on-one that you’re going to want to take
yourself
out of the game.”
“In your dreams,” Billy said.
“Shoot for it,” Lenny said, flipping him the ball.
“Play till ten baskets?”
“Till dark!” Lenny said.
“If we play winners, it might take you that long just to get on offense,” Billy said.
“In
your
dreams,” Lenny said.
Billy stepped to their chalk free throw line, drained another shot. “My ball,” he said, then handed it to Lenny and said, “Check.”
They played one-on-one in Billy’s driveway then, played till dark, going after each other the way they always did, shoving and laughing and trash-talking. They hooped it up as hard as they could, so wrapped up in basketball and playing against each other that neither one of them noticed Ben Raynor watching them from his bedroom window, watching them the whole time.
Crying.
FIVE
Once his mom came back from Boston, things started to feel normal.
Not great. Definitely not great.
Just more normal.
It was like a math problem, Billy would think sometimes. The family they used to have, minus one.
One night, after an extra Magic practice, his dad picked up him and Eliza and Ben and took them out for burgers, saying they were going to start doing this at least once a week. Eliza talked even more than she usually did, which was saying something. Even on a slow day she talked so much Billy would stare at her sometimes like she was a science project, waiting to see if she ever actually took a breath.
Sometimes Billy thought that Ben not talking very much made Eliza think that meant more time for her.
Like it was her job to pick up the slack even more.
The weird part of that night came after dinner, when their dad dropped them off at the house without even coming inside.
“Tell your mom I’ll give her a call tomorrow, maybe set something up for the weekend,” Joe Raynor said before they got out of the car.
Billy wanted to tell him to come inside and tell her himself—she was just on the other side of the front door—but he didn’t.
“Love you guys,” his dad said, and Eliza said “love you, too” for all of them. They walked up the front walk and through the door themselves, Ben coming in last, watching the car until it disappeared around the corner.