“What’s going on?” he said.

“This is a championship game,” Cal said. “Don’t you think it’s time for the champions to start playing?”

I glanced up at the scoreboard. We were down by thirteen. Okay. We had the ball.

“Let’s do it!” Paul was shouting. He held up two fingers. I rolled to the right side, ran Tomkins into a pick, and got the ball from Roy. Tomkins had recovered and went up with me. I stuffed over him, and the crowd went crazy.

“I BELIEVE! I BELIEVE!”

Joni was leading the fans on our side of the gym. They had the ball, but all of our guys were alive. Roy knocked a pass away, and Ox scooped it up and flew. He hit a nice reverse lay-up, and the crowd went wild again.

I could feel the game. I could feel everything that was going on. It was as if every player had a string on him and the strings were all tied to me. Anytime anybody moved, I could feel it. I saw everything and knew what everybody was doing. We started coming back. The ball felt good in my hands. When I went up for a shot from the top of the key, it was as if I had never let the ball go, like I was reaching from the top of the key and directing the ball into the hoop.

They put McDade back in, and the first time I went against him he slammed me into the floor. The ball went one way, and I went the other.

Ox ran over to me to grab me before I blew my cool. But I wasn’t blowing nothing. I got up and smiled at McDade. No, fool, you don’t get my game that easy. You don’t get my game and the Spider’s game that easy. Not this time around.

I made my shots, and they went down and scored on a back-door play. We tried a break, but they broke it up, knocking the ball to the backcourt. Ox set a pick at midcourt, and I was trying to use it to get across when McDade got me again. This time he ran alongside of me and drove me into the scorer’s bench with his hip. I wound up halfway under the bench. The ref gave us the ball but no foul. Yeah. I got up, and McDade was bracing himself. He had his hands up, but I just stepped out of bounds and waited for the ball. I shot a glance over at O’Donnel, and he nodded to me.

Later for you, sucker, I thought.

The next time they got the ball they called time-out and brought Tomkins back in. The score was 81 to 75, their favor. Cal told me to look over at Tyrone. I looked at him, and he was glowering.

I was playing the game of my life. But when Tomkins came back in, he came to play. He didn’t have the moves, but he had the shot. It was me against him. If I gave him a half an inch to shoot, he’d make the basket. I was coming down on offense, and he was all over me. I had to go up higher on my jumpers, move faster on my drives, concentrate harder at every step. We got the score down to three points, but that’s where we stopped. They started matching us basket for basket.