Todd yanks Bither’s headrag down over his eyes to shut him up.
Nat goes to the bench to recover and Deb Michaud comes in for her and a moment later the quarter ends.
Greenspark begins the half with a demoralizing run—twelve unanswered points. The girls from Port Rose go to a time-out. Vonda Alley smears tears across her rose-petal cheeks. Hands dropping to her knees, she half-crouches at the edge of the circle around her coach. She cocks her head and blinks up at the ceiling.
As the Whalers trot back onto the floor, Vonda and the Mutant pass each other. Gauthier’s hand falls on Vonda’s bony little hip in a reassuring pat. Vonda stares after the Mutant as Gauthier backs away, and spins toward her teammates, clapping her hands and calling out to them.
Port Rose comes back, with some help from an off-balance pass between the M & M’s. When Melissa loses it to Kelly Alley’s quick hands, Melanie goes rigid with fury at her sister. Melissa bugs her eyes and thrusts out her lower lip, repulsing the blame. While the pair of them are fuming at each other, Kelly is waltzing to the Port Rose net. Gauthier shouts at Melanie, who is supposed to be on Kelly, as she and Deb move to try to fill the gap. In the time it takes the Jandreau twins to get themselves back into the game, Kelly gets the ball to her cousin and Heather shoots it from outside.
That three ignites Port Rose. Their three-shooters come alive, breaking the defense inside the paint simply by blooping in over it. When the third consecutive three goes in for the Whalers, the Mutant calls a time-out. Greenspark readjusts its defense to control the outside shooters. Blocked outside, the Whalers go inside.
The Whaler offense doesn’t go unanswered. The Mutant, Billie Figueroa and Melissa Jandreau rack points steadily. Deb Michaud misses her first two tries for field goals. When she washes out at the foul line, she is visibly upset. Just before the end of the third, the Whalers break into the lead by two points.
Nat Linscott replaces Michaud. She and the Mutant begin to take control of the game. The struggle becomes intense and stays that way. Out of tiredness and desperation, people begin to make mistakes. Sometimes the others are quick enough to take advantage; other times, the fumble is fumbled, the advantage lost before it can be taken. Nat suddenly reels and staggers and bolts from the floor as her coach calls time. The assistant coach follows her. Before Deb goes in for her, the AC comes back to say Nat’s being sick.
Michaud shows her stuff this time. For five minutes she is scary, she and the Mutant, and the whole tenor of play becomes tighter, as if every player had refocused. Nat reappears to sit, pale and sweating, on the bench. When Melissa Jandreau fouls out, Nat comes back in. In a moment, Greenspark spreads its lead to ten again and the Whalers know it is beyond catching up. Still, they have cut it again to six before the buzzer. The Greenspark Indians are the State Class A Schoolgirl Champions, 1991.
Immediately the PA system booms a reminder to the celebrants that another game is going to be played on this floor tonight but that doesn’t keep the stands from emptying almost completely onto it. The only people who stay in their seats are folks from Derry, come early to watch the girls’ game in which they have no stake.
Sam finds Deanie and lifts her out of the mob to give her hugs and kisses. He doesn’t want to let go of her but it happens, they are holding each other by both hands and then one hand and then there’s somebody between them and he’s pushed away, and then Rick Woods is tugging at his shirttails, reminding him it’s past time for them to be changing up.
He sees her again as the girls pass them on the way to the locker rooms, after the ceremonies are over. She sees him, too, but it’s just for a fraction of a second, like she’s in a jet climbing at two hundred miles an hour and he’s on the ground, five thousand feet below. It’s a very new, scary sensation, being shrunk into a miniature of himself, who has always been the giant. He passes her the borrowed headrag and she is caught in the slipstream of whooping, shrieking girls.
At the locker door, she pivots and calls back, “ ‘god, you’re looking monstrous.”
He grins shyly and touches his hair. Before they left the house in the morning, she plaited it into a triple spine of knobs that begins at the front and bumps down the back of his head to the base of his neck.
At the unveiling in the locker room, Rick’s reaction is typical of his teammates. “Check out the Slammer’s ‘do! It’s bad!”
“ ‘spose you’ll be shaving yourself bald next,” Coach glooms.
“Dreads,” Sam teases him. “Going for dreadlocks next.”
Rick is even more delighted. “Rasta! Rasta Sam!”
“Dreadlocks? What the hell is dreadlocks?” Coach is totally mystified.
Sam lopes onto the floor, the boards gone gold beneath his big and educated feet. Above him the roof of light, to either side the walls of people, the hoops beckoning in their eager stances, the raucous bands in his ears, he knows he is not dreaming—and yet, living out the dream of countless boys and girls, he is.
Because East is home this year, Greenspark wears green and silver and the Ferrymen wear home whites, trimmed with Derry’s silver and orange. The Derry team is a tall one, with four starters six feet or over. Three starters are seniors. All of them were part of the previous season’s team that nearly took the whole shebang. Cleanshaven to a man, they all have their hair shaved up the sides to a cropped tussock. They could be cadets at some
