Miracle on 49th Street (5 page)

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.

E
ver 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 even 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.”

The Celtics finally ended up with the ball with twenty seconds left, and the game tied. Their coach called what Sam said was their last timeout, even if it seemed both teams had been calling one timeout after another for the last hour or so. Molly checked out the players huddling around the coach, but could see that he wasn't the one doing the talking.

Josh Cameron was.

Molly tried to compare this Josh to the one who seemed so scared of her when he got into his car and drove off, but couldn't do it.

Over all the noise of the crowd, Sam shouted, “He likes to dribble out most of the clock and then do something amazing to win the game.”

They were standing on their chairs because everybody else at the TD Banknorth Garden was standing, getting ready for the last play.

“Just watch,” Sam said.

But she had been watching every move Josh Cameron made all night long.

They passed the ball in to him at half-court. At first, he didn't even dribble. Just stood there in this cool way, like he knew something that no one else in this loud, crazy place knew, looking up at the clock over the Celtics basket.

Twelve seconds.

Ten.

Now six.

He made his move then, beating the man guarding him with his very first dribble, flying past him, looking as if he were on his way to the basket, ready to go up against the 76ers' biggest guys once more, ready to beat them and the clock at the same time.

Only he didn't drive, seeing that the 76ers had cut him off. Instead he stopped about ten feet from the basket, doing that even though he'd been going at full speed. Put the brakes on so hard, Molly half-expected to hear the screech of car tires.

She was sure he was going to make the kind of jump shot he'd been making the whole game every time he pulled up like this.

Three seconds left.

He went up into the air.

He was going to do it!

Somehow Molly had forgotten how mad she was at him. She was as excited as everyone else now.

Josh released the ball then, and Molly's heart sank, because she had a perfect angle to see that his shot wasn't going to be anywhere near the basket. It was off. Off to the left.

Which is where L. J. Brown, one of the Celtics' biggest guys, was already in midair, in perfect position to catch what wasn't a shot at all from Josh Cameron because it was a pass, a perfect pass.

L. J. Brown caught it and dunked it in the same motion as the horn sounded.

The Celtics, even the ones on the bench, came rushing out to mob Brown. Molly kept watching Josh, who was smiling at the scene from where he'd thrown Brown the ball, smiling and nodding his head. Then he turned away from the celebration under the basket and walked past the Celtics bench, right past where Molly and Sam were sitting, and disappeared down the runway that led to the locker room.

Even now, nobody could touch him.

Molly grabbed Sam by the arm and said, “Come on, we've got to go.”

“The game just ended,” Sam said. “You can tell. See all the happy people around us?”

“Come
on
,” Molly said. “Time for Plan C.”

“This is a really bad idea,” Sam said.

“It's a great idea, and you know it. You just don't like it because you didn't come up with it.”

“We're supposed to wait in the press lounge.”

“You'll be back there before you know it.”

“Plan C,” Sam said, shaking his head sadly, even as Molly kept pulling him through the crowd and telling him not to worry. “If I were grading it honestly, I'd actually give it a D or an F.”

Molly knew that where the Celtics players parked their cars for games at the TD Banknorth Garden was next door, where the old Garden had been until they tore it down. Sam said that was the kind of thing
he
was supposed to know and not her. Molly said she'd read it in one of Uncle Adam's columns, even before she'd met Sam. It was when she had first started to read up on Josh Cameron, after her mom had finally told her the truth. Adam Burke had written about standing over there with Josh Cameron—would she ever be able to start thinking of him as her dad?—right before the playoffs the year before, asking him if he ever ran into any Celtics ghosts in the area.

“Only if they're driving Hummers,” Josh Cameron had joked.

Then Adam Burke had written that the new Celtics had Josh Cameron, so they didn't need any ghosts, even if trying to guard him was like trying to catch one.

Molly was the one who really remembered everything, not Sam.
She
was the one who remembered the womb.

“We're never going to find this place in the dark,” Sam said.

“Oh, I bet they have lights for the players and everything,” Molly said.

“One of these days I'm going to have to learn how to say no to you.”

Molly said, “Just follow me and start thinking of what you're going to say to him.”

“I'm getting hungry,” Sam said.

It made her giggle. Even in the middle of an adventure, Sam thought a quick snack could fix everything.

And this was an adventure, even more than yesterday's was. But it just had to work. Had to. It wasn't as if she could keep coming up with new and different ways to run into just about the most famous athlete in America every single day.

“You're absolutely sure you know where we're going?” Sam said.

Molly had let go of him by now and was walking about twenty feet ahead. Without looking back, she windmilled her arm at him. “Just pick up the pace.”

“
Do
you know where you're going?”

“Sort of.”

She was guessing what exit to use, but by now she had no bearings. So when they went out what she was hoping would be a back door, they found themselves in the middle of all the people and all the postgame excitement of Causeway Street.

Molly told herself not to panic, they still had plenty of time. That's why she'd rushed Sam out of the arena as soon as Josh Cameron had made his pass.

“The old Garden had to be this way, right?” she said.

“Left, actually,” Sam said.

“You know what I meant.”

“Right.”

They both laughed, being silly for a moment. It seemed to make Sam less scared. He preferred to have his adventures inside his head. It was different with Molly. Maybe because the worst thing that could happen to her had already happened….

She wasn't scared now, just determined to make this work.

They made their way up the sidewalk, picked an alley, found out it was a dead end. Sam said, “I'm trying to picture the way it used to be here,” and then told her they should keep going. They finally came to a small street that took them back behind Causeway Street and to the protected lot that Sam said was exactly where the old Gah-den had been.

“Has to be it,” Molly said. “Those are the same cars I saw yesterday.”

There was a security guard where the players would probably walk through a small entrance into the fenced-off area, and another guard at a bigger entrance where it looked like they would drive out. Molly also noticed that it was the brightest area back here, as bright as day.

Not good.

“We are never going to get in there,” Sam said.

“Think positively,” she said. “Isn't that what you're always telling me?”

“Yeah,” he said. “In social studies.”

“Are you ready?” Molly said.

“Not really.”

“Start sniffling,” Molly said.

Molly couldn't hear everything he was saying to the guard, but knew basically what he was supposed to say as she was sneaking along the outside of the fence, over by where she assumed the cars would drive out of the lot.

Only when Sam raised his voice did she hear him saying, “I'll never find my sister, never, never,
never
!”

She couldn't hear what the guard said, then she heard Sam say, “This has to be parking lot B. That's where we said we'd meet if we got separated.”

Then he ran—or what passed for running for him—away from the first guard and around the chain-link fence to where the second guard was. The one who was closest to Molly. The first guard chased him, and the second guard came out to stop him, and when he did, Molly, staying low, got through the entrance and behind the first car she came to, which was a Mercedes.

The first guard went back to his post, telling the second guard the “fast showerers” would be showing up any second. Molly could hear the second guard say for Sam to stay right where he was, he'd left his cell phone inside his booth.

Huge break.

As soon as the guard turned around, Sam Bloom made what Molly was sure was the quickest move of his whole life, maybe because he didn't have to go far, and joined Molly behind the Mercedes.

The next thing they heard was the guard saying, “Crazy kids.”

He had that right, she had to admit.

According to Sam's watch, they waited for an hour.

A lot of Celtics players had arrived in the lot by then and driven off. Molly and Sam had slowly moved behind the cars, toward where they could see Josh Cameron's Navigator. It also gave them a better look at the arriving players, Sam announcing their names to Molly in a whisper, as if he were a PA announcer introducing them before the game.

“Terry Thompson.”

“Teddy.”

“Nick.”

“Antonio.”

“L.J.”

Molly said, “I
know
that's L.J. He just won the game.”

“No need to snap at me,” Sam said.

It was past eleven o'clock now.

Sam said, “Uncle Adam's going to be finishing his column soon, and then he's going to come get us in the lounge, only we're not going to be there.”