Lupica explores rivalry in his new kids’ book

“I’m happy for both of you,” Danny said. “But, Dad, I know you weren’t the smallest kid in every game you ever played. And I am. Sometimes it gets kind of old.”

“Yeah, like you’re getting old. You just finished the eighth grade, after all. And will be fourteen years old before you know it.”

“And just had a losing record for the first time in my life,” he said to his dad.

“Horrors!” Ali Walker said. “Six wins and seven losses. Shouldn’t we have grounded him for that?”

“Funny, Mom.”

“I don’t suppose it matters that you were an eighth grader basically playing on a ninth grade team, and going up against teams that had all ninth graders,” his dad said.

“You know what your man Coach Parcells always said,” Danny said, loving it when he could turn one of his father’s sayings around on him. “You are what your record says you are.”

“You did fine.”

“And we wouldn’t have won as many games as we did if Ty hadn’t transferred,” Danny said.
Ty Ross was his other best bud. Meaning a guy bud. And Ty was a lot more than that. In Danny’s opinion, he was the best basketball player in town. Of any age. There were a bunch of people who said Ty and Danny were co-best, even though Ty was already a foot taller, but Danny wasn’t buying it. He also didn’t care what people said — he was just happy to have Ty playing Karl (the Mailman) Malone to his John Stockton, all the way through high school.

Ty had switched from his own travel team to Danny’s the year before, mostly so he could play with Danny, and then their team, the Warriors, won the same travel championship Richie Walker’s team had once won. At the time, Ty was still going to the Springs School, the public school in town. But he had talked his parents into letting him move over to St. Patrick’s, just for one year, so he and Danny didn’t have to wait until they got to ninth grade at Middletown High to start playing freshman ball together.

Or maybe they’d even skip freshman ball, now that the new varsity coach at Middletown High, starting next season, was going to be Richie Walker himself. Sometimes Richie hinted that he might have them both go straight to varsity, since most of this year’s team had just graduated.

When his dad would drop those hints, Danny would just go along, try to act excited, even though he wondered how he would be able to go up against high school seniors in a few months after nearly getting swallowed whole by the taller ninth graders this past season.
“Wait till you and Ty are playing for Coach Walker,” Richie said now.

“Yeah, Dad,” Danny said. “It’ll be sick.”

He knew he’d made a mistake the minute he said it. The way he knew when he’d thrown a dumb pass the instant the ball left his hands.

He knew because his mom immediately went into one of her fake coughing fits, saying in a weak voice, “So, so sick.”

“Sorry, Mrs. Walker,” Danny said in a whiny student’s voice.

“You can talk MTV with your friends,” she said. “But in here, we sort of try to keep a lid on sick, right?”

Danny sighed an I-get-it sigh.

“I gotta grow!” he shouted.

“You will!” his parents shouted back.

“When?” A voice so quiet it seemed to be at the bottom of his bowl.

His parents looked at each other, smiling, and shouted again. “Soon!”

“I’m gonna be smaller than ever when I get up to Maine for the stupid camp,” Danny said.

“Seriously, Dad. If I’m as small as I am around Middletown, what’s going to happen up there?”
“What’s happened your whole life,” Richie Walker said. “Every single time you’ve been challenged or gotten knocked down or had to prove yourself all over again, you are sick.”

“I give up,” Ali Walker said.

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