Hot Hand by Mike Lupica

Author:Mike Lupica [Lupica, Mike]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Publisher: Penguin Group USA, Inc.
Published: 2011-06-17T05:05:17+00:00

TWELVE

“Yo,” Lenny said at recess on Monday. “I still can’t believe your dad dogged you that way after we won the game.”

“Me, neither,” Billy said.

“Sounded to me like more of that tough love my dad is always joking about,” Lenny said. He used his fingers to put little brackets around tough love the way Eliza would sometimes.

“Yeah,” Billy said. “Except the joke was about as funny as the Ratner twins.”

“The Ratner twins are funny,” Lenny said. “Just not the way those two dopes think.”

They were sitting on a couple of swings that had been on the playground at West from the time when it was one of the lower schools in town. The daily four-square game was still going on, but Billy and Lenny had bagged out of it, saying they were giving everybody else a chance today.

“Not only did you make the winning shot,” Lenny said. “You made it against Tim Stinking Sullivan.”

“You noticed, huh?” Billy said. “Least somebody did.”

“He just thinks he’s toughening you up, or whatever, for the play-offs,” Lenny said. He was tossing some small, smooth rocks he’d picked up into a plastic trash can about ten yards away, hardly ever missing. Billy was sure there were probably sports that Lenny didn’t make look easy, he just couldn’t think of any.

Lenny DiNardo made everything he did look easy. Not only that, he made whatever he was doing at a given time look like the most fun thing in the world. It was why Billy had always wanted to be like him, pretty much from the first day they’d met.

“With all the stuff that’s been happening lately,” Billy said, “I’m pretty sure I’m tough enough, LD.”

Lenny gave him one of his no-worries smiles. “I hear you,” he said, and then put out his palm so Billy could give him an old-fashioned low five they’d seen in a basketball game on ESPN Classic, one where you just slid your own hand over the other guy’s, like you were trying to scoop a dollar bill or something off it.

“If my dad is gonna be like this in the regular season, I don’t even want to think about what he’s gonna be like in the play-offs.”

“We’re probably gonna need to wear helmets,” Lenny said, “and that’s just at practice.”

Billy poked Lenny, pointed and said, “Can I put my helmet on now?”

Zeke and the Ratner twins were walking straight at them.

When he was close enough to them, Zeke said, “You guys a little big for swings?”

Neither Billy nor Lenny said anything. Billy had a feeling ignoring Zeke wasn’t going to make him go away.

Unfortunately he was right.

“I’ve been forgetting to ask you something, Raynor,” Zeke the Geek said. “You had a chance to work on your tackling lately?”

“Yeah,” Bruce Ratner said.

“Yeah,” Hank Ratner said.

Billy still didn’t say anything. He’d been instructed by Mrs. Marion—ordered by her, was really more like it—to stay away from Zeke when they weren’t in class.

When she had told Billy that he had almost said, Yeah, Mrs. Marion, I have to be told to stay out of Zeke the Geek’s way.

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