It’s too late, Reuben knows, with a glance at the clock. There’s no way to close the gap.
The driving Weaver center reaches the paint at the other end of the court, dips to pump into his shot. Suddenly, with only four seconds remaining, Sammy is rising with him, his hands closing around the ball in the shooter’s hand. Heart in his throat, Reuben is on his feet without conscious volition. The stunned Weaver is suddenly empty-handed. Swiveling as he descends, Sammy hurls the ball toward the other end of the court. It cannot change the outcome of the game but he makes the shot anyway.
Reuben sees in Sammy’s face the knowledge that the shot is true. For an instant it sounds as if it is shrieking, and then Reuben realizes it is a girl—Gauthier, the razorhead—pealing with Amazon glee. Her voice blends into the buzzer and the heart-in-its-mouth roar of the crowd. The game is over at 64—61, and the Dyer’s Mills fans are on their feet, laughing and applauding Sammy. For them it has been the sweetest of victories, the defeat of a much more powerful team in the face of the extraordinary performance of the best of the opponents.
On the floor, Sammy stands alone, eyes searching the bleachers. Smiling, Reuben thrusts a clenched fist and Sammy tips his chin slightly in acknowledgment. Then Skouros lopes up to shake Sammy’s hand and pound his back, and after him, the other three who were on the floor. Coach comes from the bench to pat his jaw affectionately. Rick rises from the bench, hangdog and silent, along with the other miscreants.
“What happened?” Pearl asks Reuben. “I’ve never seen them play like that.”
“I’m not sure.” He takes the baby from her. “There’s been some squabbling. Sometimes winning spoils a team. Maybe this will wake them up and get them working together again.”
She is already fixed on Indy, cooing to her, snapping her into her snowsuit.
These things happen, Reuben assures himself. They’re all just kids. At least Sammy did his best. He’ll still be bummed about it; he won’t be able to help it. A sudden fierce welling of his love for his son surprises him. That shot! And those dinks—Rick, for heaven’s sake, who’s supposed to be Sammy’s best friend!—let Sammy down after all he’s done for them. And there’s nothing he can do but hope that his son is now strong enough to withstand the betrayal.
Windows blind with freezing condensate, the bus is running when Sam, the last player out of the showers and Dyer’s Mills High School, lopes through the cold night and pounds on the closed door for entry. The doors fold inward and Sam dives on board.
Coach rises to his feet.
“Think about it, boys,” he says, catching the back of the nearest seat as the bus lurches into motion, “think about it good and hard and make up your mind how bad you want to wear this uniform.”
Like his subdued teammates, Sam retreats to his headphones to consider the question. For once, it’s an easy one. Though he is consciously preparing himself to give it up in a few weeks, he still wants to wear the Greenspark uniform. The more fundamental question for him is, if he continues to wear it, will the final weeks be more of tonight?
How long will it be before Coach winkles out what the real source of trouble is between the team and him? What happens if—maybe when is the right word—someone in authority gets even a hint of the New Year’s Eve’s follies? If Rick’s heard, then doubtless there are rumors all over school—exaggerating Deanie Gauthier’s participation, unless she’s lying to him about it, which is more than likely. The thought nauseates him. The whole business is like a vulture circling overhead, sniffing for rancid meat. He has ominous feelings—aside from what suspicion and resentment and anger about it are doing to his team—but maybe it’s just a conversion of his own guilt about her.
Rubbing a little frost from the bus window, he tries to see the girls’ bus just ahead of them. The glow of the one taillight he can see is a red coal in the dark. Like a distant cigarette. Little spark.
The Mutant is waiting, crouched, shivering, beside his truck in the parking lot after the buses unload. The truck’s cab seems chillier than the out-of-doors, as if sitting in the parking lot all day it had stored up cold like an electrical charge. Drawing up the collar around her ears, she hunches inside her coat until only her eyes and the little cross-stitch of frown between the delicate arches of her eyebrows are visible underneath her headrag. Her teeth are gritted against the cold.
“That was an awesome shot. I know you’re not speaking to me but I have to say something about it, you know?”
Starting the truck, Sam does his own jaw-clenching against the cold. Once the engine turns over, he idles down and gropes for the windshield scraper under the seat. It takes a couple of minutes to debride the windows of the thin skin of ice that has formed. Respiration fogs the interior, blotting the Mutant into a vague deformed human shape within.
Behind the wheel again, Sam wipes his nose and hunches forward. The vents trip open and the fog on the windshield begins to shrink magically away. He helps the process along, rubbing himself a larger viewing port with the hem of his jacket sleeve.
“It won’t help anything. They’re more pissed at me than ever,” he says, picking up where she left off.
“What were you supposed to do? You played the best game you could. If they looked bad, it was their own frigging fault.”
He changes the subject. “You blew those babes away, you girls. You were great.”
“I heard somebody put a rat in your gym locker.”
“Yeah.”
“Heard it stank something wicked.”
He wrinkles his nose. “Did.”
“What’s gonna
