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  That was three guys. I looked around the court, hoping for at least one more. Gerry was a good point guard, but Isaac was a little better. I was thinking how great it would be to grab a really good forward, when I nearly ran into one.

  Joe set a quick screen that I just barely got around. He was sneaky like that. I suddenly realized what a great job he was doing. He had the toughest job on the court, guarding Bibo. No one could shut him down completely, but he’d done a solid job of making him work for every shot and limiting the damage. Meanwhile, he’d been scoring here and there himself, taking advantage of his long arms and good range on his jumper.

  I’d made up my mind about Bibo so early that I’d almost missed the rock-solid guy guarding him. Joe was the fourth guy. My secret-agent work was over. I crashed the glass hard and hauled in a rebound. The next trip up on offense, I slipped into the lane and scored.

  We ended practice with wind sprints. It seemed kind of cruel — we’d been sprinting all day! But it was still easier than what I had to do next. I was the only sixth grader on the team, and now I had to convince four of the best seventh and eighth graders to play with me in a tournament.

  Would they believe me? Would they agree? Would the other players be mad? Was it really a good idea to pass over one of the team captains? There were plenty of questions but not plenty of time. The locker room always cleared out fast.

  I took a deep breath and headed in.

  “Hey, Isaac!” I shouted, and that right there was the problem.

  It was chaos in the locker room, with everyone changing clothes and swapping stories, and everything else. I had to shout to be heard, and I didn’t really want to shout this.

  Isaac was in front of his locker, talking to his friend Deek. I knew Deek pretty well, too. Sometimes we studied together down at the library. And he was a good player, just not quite good enough for the Classic. That was no insult. Nine out of ten good players weren’t up to OT’s standards. But it wasn’t necessarily something you wanted to shout in his face, either.

  “What’s up, Amar’e?” said Isaac.

  “Yeah, what’s up, man?” said Deek.

  I looked at both of them. “Uh, nothing,” was all I could think to say.

  They gave me a weird look. If I could, I probably would’ve given myself a weird look, too. But right then I spotted Bibo on his own. He was a better bet. He was a quiet guy who let his game do the talking. Sometimes he’d go entire practices without saying a word. He was definitely less likely to be talking to someone in the locker room.

  I headed straight for him, but I got cut off halfway. “Hey, Amar’e,” I heard. I turned and there was Gerry, holding up a nickel. “Look what I found.”

  I didn’t want to miss Bibo, but I didn’t want to be rude, either. When I first joined the team, Gerry was the first guy to talk to me. He was a good friend. “A nickel?” I said.

  “Yeah, but check it out,” he said. He pushed the thing closer to my face, but it still looked like a nickel to me. “It’s from 1935!”

  “Whoa!” I said. I’d never seen one that old before. That was before World War II. And now that I looked closer, it did seem different.

  “Think it’s worth anything?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “I’ll give you a dime for it.”

  “You wish,” he said.

  I was about to up my offer to a quarter, but I shot a quick look over at Bibo’s locker. It was closed and he was gone.

  “Aw, man!” I said.

  “Yeah, that’s right,” said Gerry. “This thing’ll cost you a sack of dimes!”

  I gave him an out-of-my-price-range smile and left him standing there, holding his new treasure up to the light. I caught sight of Bibo by the door, and made a quick turn. For the second time that day, I nearly ran into Joe.

  “Joe!” I said.

  “That’s my name,” he said.

  The locker room was starting to clear out around us, and the volume had dropped enough that I could talk at a more normal level. “Ever think about playing in a tournament?” I started.

  “Thought about it,” he said, “but I’ve always just played on the team.”

  “You could do both,” I said. “At least this one time.”

  “What one time?”

  So I told him. I just rattled it off in the center of the room, as players passed by on either side.

  “The Classic, huh?” he said.

  “Yeah, it’s —” I started, but he cut me off.

  “I know what it is,” he said. “It’s Overtime Tanner’s thing.”

  “Yeah!” I said. “I’m kind of helping him out.”

  “Cool,” said Joe. “I’m in.”

  “Great!” I said, and then gave the locker room another quick look. Bibo was gone and Isaac’s locker was closed now. Kelvin was putting his backpack on near the door.

  “Who else?” said Joe. He must’ve read my mind, or at least my eyes.

  “Bibo, Isaac, and Kelvin,” I said.

  He thought about it for a second and nodded. “Yeah, that’s who I’d pick, too.”

  I was happy to hear that, and even happier to hear what he said next. “Yo, Bibo!” he shouted. “Isaac! K-man!”

  His words echoed through the locker room.

  Isaac appeared from somewhere behind us. “What’s up, Joe?” he said.

  Kelvin stopped in his tracks by the door: “Yeah?”

  Those three were all eighth graders and knew one another pretty well.

  A second later, Bibo ducked his head back into the locker room. Being Bibo, he didn’t say anything. Instead, he looked at us and raised one eyebrow higher than the other, the universal expression for What’s up?

  I gave all three of them a big, wide smile, the universal expression for I think you’re going to like this.

  I thought I might have to convince some of them, but they’d all heard of the Classic, or at least had heard of Overtime. OT might have been chilling at the hospital, I thought as I gave them all the details about the first practice, but his name was sure opening a lot of doors.

  * * *

  On Friday, Deuce used his nerd connections to score Mike and me passes to the computer lab during class. “Special project,” he said to our teacher. She really liked Deuce, so she let us have some extra time in there.

  Now that there were some actual players, it was time to think about getting an actual crowd. A fund-raising tournament needed paying customers.

  Our school didn’t exactly have cutting-edge technology when it came to computers. The one we were using kept freezing up, and even Deuce wasn’t sure how to use the graphics program.

  The “technical difficulties” burned a lot of time, and we burned more looking for cool images and artwork to include. Then we spent about ten minutes trying to decide what the flyer should say. Deuce thought we should put The Classic’s Back! in huge type at the top. Mike wanted it to say The One, the Only, the Classic!

  Those were both good, but I had my own idea. “How about 20 Years of Classic Action?” I said.

  Mike and Deuce looked at each other and nodded. “Yeah,” said Mike. “Let’s go with that.”

  We were still trying to figure out how big we could get the type when the warning bell went off.

  “We’ll finish next time,” said Deuce.

  “Yeah, there are still some little details to iron out, anyway,” I said.

  “Like what?” said Deuce.

  “Oh, you know, like if we’ll have a court or enough players or if it will even happen,” I said.

  “And if anyone will show up if it does,” added Mike.

  “Okay,” said Deuce. “As long as it’s nothing major.”

  It was 9:45 on Saturday morning, and I was at the practice space at the sports complex. The court had freshly painted lines and not a crack in sight. It was perfect, but it was also empty.

  Practice was supposed to start in fifteen minutes, and the only people here were the ones I’d come with. Jammer was standing ne
xt to me, dribbling a ball slowly, just warming up. Carl was next to him, his car keys dangling from one finger. Mike and Deuce were walking around checking out the court. I’d asked them to come as a favor. I figured they could fill in if a few people didn’t show up. Now it was starting to look like no one would.

  “You, uh, want me to stick around?” Carl said to Jammer.

  We all knew what he meant: If no one showed, he could just drive us home.

  “Nah,” said Jammer. “They’ll be here. Still got fifteen minutes.”

  He looked over at me for backup. “Yeah,” I said. “The invitations were pretty last-minute. They’re probably just arranging rides and stuff.”

  Carl took one last look around the empty court. “If you say so,” he said. He flipped his keys off his finger and up into the air, then caught them in his hand and headed for the parking lot. “Be back at eleven thirty.”

  I looked over at Jammer. “They’ll be here,” he said. “I got a couple guys who told me they’d definitely show.”

  “Don’t sweat it,” said Mike. He’d made it all the way around the court and back again. “We can just run two-on-two.”

  We heard Carl pull his car out of the lot. As we turned to look, another car pulled in from the other direction.

  “All right!” said Jammer.

  It was a tiny two-door Ford, but when it started unloading people, it was like a clown car at a circus. Four people got out, and most of them looked way too tall to have gotten in that little thing in the first place.

  It was the three players from Jammer’s school, along with one of their moms. The boys stretched out their long limbs, just to make sure everything still worked. Then they headed toward the court with the mom in the lead.

  “Think she plays?” I said to Jammer.

  He was smiling now. His people had shown up, and we had enough to at least run threes.

  The cars started coming one after another then. I recognized Khalid’s folks’ car as soon as it turned off the highway. A blue car with a pizza-delivery sign on the top pulled up next.

  “Someone order a pizza?” said Mike, who was always ready for a meal.

  The passenger-side door opened and Kelvin appeared.

  “No,” I said. “A center.”

  The car rose a good foot on its springs as soon as he stepped out. He was the first Bear. I felt like I’d just drained a big three. Jammer hadn’t seen Kelvin before, and he was impressed. “Nice,” he said.

  Stevie and Braylon showed up in the same car after that. Some people knew one another already, and others were introducing themselves. There were high fives and handshakes going on all over the court.

  “Who’re we still waiting for?” said Khalid after he’d made the rounds and said his hellos.

  I looked around. “That new guy, Benoit,” I said.

  “Oh, he’s not coming,” said Khalid. “I talked to him last night. He can’t make it today.”

  “That’s too bad,” I said. I was pretty curious to see this new “core guy.”

  “So is that it?” said Khalid. I could see him looking around the court, counting with his eyes. It was the same way he sized up the defense on the fly during games.

  “No,” I admitted. “We’re still waiting on three Bears.”

  “Three bears?” said Khalid, his eyes lighting up. “Is Goldilocks going to be here, too?”

  The guys around us all laughed, but not me. It bothered me that the last three guys to show were the ones I’d invited. I was glad that at least Kelvin had made it.

  “Should we just get started?” said Jammer. “We’ve got enough to at least —” But before he could finish his sentence, one last vehicle headed down the road toward the court. It was the Bears, but I couldn’t believe who was driving.

  “Is that your dad?” said Deuce.

  It was. As he turned his old truck into the lot, I could see his familiar outline at the wheel. Bibo and Isaac were in the cab next to him, and Joe was bouncing along in the back, with a big smile on his face. It was pretty fun to ride back there, and it was totally safe since Dad never went much faster than thirty-five.

  I headed straight out to the parking lot. This was a story I had to get firsthand. Dad just shrugged and hooked a thumb toward Isaac. “He called the house to say they were going to be late, waiting on a ride,” he said. “You’d already left, so I told ’em, ‘I can give you a lift.’ ”

  Isaac nodded. “Yep,” he said. “Pretty much.”

  “But you’re going to be late for work,” I said to Dad. Saturdays were always busy for him.

  “I can’t be too late,” he said with a smile. “I’m the boss!”

  He went over and talked a little bit with that one player’s mom. She was sticking around to keep an eye on things, and I think he was just reassuring her that we were okay. Then he headed off to work and we got down to business.

  Picking teams wasn’t an issue. We’d basically arrived in teams. The first was made up of the three guys from Jammer’s school: Lex, Van, and Hector. The Bears were trickier, because there were four of them. Joe solved that. “I’ll play with anyone,” he said. “I already carry these guys on the school team. Let’s see if they can play without me.”

  Even Bibo laughed at that one.

  Mike pointed at Deuce and said, “Come play with us.”

  Joe sized them up and nodded. Mike was a big dude. “Sounds good to me.”

  That left the three other “core guys,” another natural team, with Jammer and me to ref, size up the teams, sub in, and do everything else to make sure we got the most out of the time we had left on the court.

  With the teams set, Jammer leaned over toward me and said, “What do you think, half-court or full?” I thought about it. With half-court, all four teams could play at once. But the Classic would be full court.

  “Definitely full,” I said.

  The teams were already talking strategy.

  Jammer nodded, then yelled, “Full court, winner stays!”

  The first game was Bibo and the Bears versus the guys from Jammer’s school. Jammer tossed the opening tip up in the air, and the Lions and Bears began battling.

  It was a good game. Lex was as fast as Isaac, and Hector was a lock-down defender who did a great job of staying with Bibo. The difference was in the middle: Van just didn’t have the size to handle Kelvin.

  The Bears stayed out. Khalid and crew headed out to try to knock them off. It was another good game, and I should know because I was the ref. I didn’t need a whistle or anything. Every once in a while, I just had to say a few words. “That was too much banging, K-man,” or “You got him on the arm, Khalid.”

  I could tell right away that the Bears were a little tired. It was the first all-day tourney for some of these guys and they’d just learned lesson number one: Pace yourself. The other team was fresher and knew how to recover during the natural rhythms of the game.

  More important, Stevie knew how to defend Kelvin. He wasn’t big enough to muscle him, either. But he was faster and had longer arms. He did a good job of fronting him and denying him the ball, and pestering him with his quick hands when he did get it.

  Isaac and Khalid were more interested in setting things up than scoring. That all led up to one thing: a fireworks display between Bibo and Braylon on the outside. When the smoke cleared, it was the tourney vets who bested the Bears — but not by much.

  Mike, Deuce, and Joe took the court. I wouldn’t say this to them, but my first thought was: I hope they can handle it. Mike and Deuce were just filling in. They weren’t on the school team yet. And Joe was the last guy I’d picked from the Bears. Could be rough.

  Shows what I know. Right from the opening tip, they came out strong. At first I thought, Okay, they’ve got fresh legs. But as the game went on, they hung tough. I joke with Mike a lot about his appetite and all that, but he was the only other guy here who really had the size and strength to play Kelvin straight up.

  And Deuce had always been quick. I
watched him hit Joe with a sweet bounce pass and suddenly I realized: Most of my game came from all the time I’d spent playing hoops with those two. We’d just been playing for fun, but we’d been playing hard. And Joe was another guy like Stevie: He could do it all on the court.

  In fact, they were only down a few points when Stevie took a tumble in the lane. It looked pretty bad, and I held my breath for a second. We didn’t have enough players to start losing them.

  Khalid and I helped Stevie to his feet. I was seriously relieved when he was able to hobble over to the bench under his own power. Jammer came in for Stevie, and his team pulled away after that. Jammer was fresh, and Jammer was, well, Jammer. The guy practically had wings.

  Cars had started arriving to pick people up. The games had been good, and guys were already talking about what they were going to do next time.

  For a few minutes, I felt pretty good about things, but then Jammer brought me back to reality. “These guys look good,” he said. “But we’re still seriously short of teams. We had four today, and the Classic’s always had eight.”

  “What do you think about Mike and Deuce?” I said, feeling a flash of pride for my friends.

  “Yeah,” he agreed. “Let’s bring ’em on. They showed they can hang with anyone…. But we’re still only halfway there.”

  I got up early on Sunday to help Dad out at work. Because I didn’t have enough to do, right? I really didn’t mind that much, though. He’d helped me out yesterday giving the guys a lift to practice. And I was used to it, anyway. Most kids helped out around the house. I just helped out around other people’s houses, specifically out in the yard.

  We loaded up the truck and stopped to pick up Manny on the way to the job. He’d been working with Dad forever and a half, and he wore the same kind of goggles for clipping bushes that I wore for playing hoops.

  There were a few more guys at the work site, and I knew them, too. I sort of felt like one of the guys when I worked with Dad’s crew. Everyone had their own job and it made the whole operation go faster.