First game of the season, or championship game at the end, Claremont vs. Homestead was always a very big deal. And there was another reason why Lucas always loved playing against the Homestead Bulls: Charlie Patten. He wasn’t just a good point guard. Charlie was a great one, even though he was probably the smallest player in the league this season. It always looked like a mismatch, size-wise, when Lucas and Charlie stood next to each other, as if Charlie had gotten caught in a switch. But once the game started it wasn’t a mismatch at all, it was a totally fair fight, even when it was just pickup games in the summer at a park in Claremont, or one in Homestead. Charlie Patten was such a wizard with the ball, so fast and so tricky, that sometimes Lucas called him Harry Potter.

The two of them shook hands at mid court after both teams had finished their warm-ups.

“Here we go again,” Lucas said to him.

They’d been playing against each other in travel ball since the fifth grade.

“We should be sick of each other by now,” Charlie said.

He had a lot of red hair and even more freckles.

“But we’re not,” Lucas said.

“Probably all the way through high school,” Charlie said.

“Fine by me,” Lucas said.

Charlie grinned, then reached out and bumped Lucas some fist.

As small as Charlie was, the rest of his team was tall, and long. The Bulls’ next best player, after Charlie, was the guy Ryan would be guarding, Darrell Zimmer. Zim was built more like a tight end than a small forward. And he was fast. He could handle the ball outside if he had to, and was a bear underneath the basket. Ryan liked to say that when Zim had you boxed out, you felt as if you had to run around a city block trying to get a rebound. But Ryan loved the challenge of going up against him the way Lucas welcomed the challenge of going up against Charlie.

Gramps gathered the Wolves around him, right in front of their bench. As much as his grandfather could talk your ear off about basketball if you let him, he always kept his comments brief once there was a game about to break out. He liked to say that if he’d done a good enough job in practice, once they did get to game day, basketball would be exactly what it was supposed to be: the players’ game.

“Run when you can,” Gramps said. “Run our stuff in the half-court when we have to set up. And you all know what we’re going to do on defense.”

“See the ball,” Lucas said.

Sam Winston smiled then, as happy to be in this gym as they were.

“Where else,” he said to the Wolves, “would any of us rather be right now?”