When Ben was mediocre at hardball, he had always hoped to be part of the Tide but knew that he would be toward the bottom of the ladder, maybe even JV. Kids at tournaments nudged each other when Price showed up, scouting, and some of them played worse under the pressure of his scrutiny.

Then, at the beginning of Teddy’s fifth-form year, the year Ben started seventh grade, a chunk of plaster fell from the ceiling of Court 4 and knocked a player’s racquet out of his hand. St. James’s American courts went overnight from being classic to being embarrassingly out-of-date, and Ben’s dad had found his project. He and a group of other squash alumni promised to raise six million dollars to finally replace the furnace, and to convert the facility to wide International softball courts.

So when the 1994 Junior Championships were at Harvard on International courts, Manley Price came to watch, and after Ben walked off the court after not dropping a game in the semifinals, Price was there at the Poland Spring cooler. Ben nodded in recognition and smiled but he was still too out of breath to say anything, almost thankful that nervousness didn’t have anywhere inside him to reside. He filled a paper cup with water and sipped from it as Price stood right there wearing a small, extremely intense smile.

Ben stepped a bit away from the cooler so that the two of them could have a thin buffer of privacy. Price clearly wanted to say something, and Ben looked at the man’s face, dug through with creases, his wheat-colored sweater with holes at the hem and right forearm, his sticking-up hair like a cropped tassel out of an ear of corn.

Price took two fingers and poked Ben in the chest.

“You,” he said.

Ben pretended to be still too winded to speak. He just smiled as though there had been some good joke and sipped from the water cup again.

“You have it. The Long Streak is going to be a preamble to you.” Ben smelled Price’s breath, like leaves long on the ground. Price hadn’t taken his eyes from Ben’s, and Ben nodded curtly, hoping it looked polite, appreciative of this thing Price had said that Ben was now realizing was extravagant praise, praise almost beyond imagining. It felt like the kind of reality-dream you have just between wakefulness and sleep.

“You can kill, can’t you? Right now they’re just dying for you, so it’s hard for me to tell. You have to answer this for me: If there’s someone just as good as you are, or even a little better, can you go right to the inside with him? Can you go there and kill him?”

Ben nodded because that’s what was being asked of him and Price smiled, all the lines in his face coming together, his eyes gleaming slots.