The Gladiators were finding their rhythm, closing down on defense and doggedly sticking to their men. Kyle and Kenneth had agreed at halftime to compete for most rebounds, a contest sharpened by Mr. Williams, who said, “Excellent! Ten dollars to the winner! Oh dear, I probably shouldn’t have said that!” Kenneth and Kyle, or K ’n’ K, as Gracie had started calling them as she announced the game, were first to every loose ball.
McGee was getting rattled, Sameer realized. The telltale signs were all there—the forced shots, the dumb fouls, the wild passing, the players bickering with each other, the nervous glances over at their coach. It’s the worst I’ve ever seen McGee play, he marveled. Are we really doing this?
It was the last half of the fourth quarter when Kyle grabbed an offensive rebound and put it back up and into the basket. McGee’s coach quickly called a time-out. Clearly, he needed to have his team a little closer to scream at them properly, even though they were still up by ten points. The score was 35–25.
Sameer body-slammed the guys as they ran back to the bench.
“Yes, yes!” he screamed, his throat raw. “You guys rock!”
The cheer team ran onto the court, covering their ears against the noise in the gym.
In the huddle, Sameer shouted with what was left of his voice, “Just relax now, guys. This is just any other game. We’ve proved we can keep up with McGee! We’ve proved that the Gladiators are almost as good as the best team in the league, with five guys, no subs!”
“Yes, boys,” said Mr. Williams, patting backs. “Relax. You’ve proved a lot. A few of you have four fouls. Don’t kill yourself these last two minutes. Take it easy.”
“Forget that,” said Kyle. He stood up and looked at the scoreboard. His face was brick red, his dark hair soaking wet. “Ten points. Let’s try to win this.”
Kenneth got up, nodding.
Nate looked up with a tired, pale face and grinned. “Sure. Nothing to lose.”
“Yeah,” screamed Nikho, hauling Tom to his feet. “Let’s give it all we got! Throw everything at them! Everything!”
“All right.” Mr. Williams laughed, shaking his head. “Go out and kill yourselves these last few minutes, gladiator style!”
I don’t even care what happens now, Sameer thought, trying to convince himself as he paced behind the bench. We’ve played the game of our lives. He caught his mother’s eye across the court, and she smiled at him as she clapped. Nani would have been so proud of us. I’m so proud of us.
Nikho, fast as a hummingbird, pressed the McGee guard on the inbound and managed to steal the ball. A quick layup, and McGee’s lead shrank to eight points. Galvanized, the team swarmed all over the McGee squad on defense, forcing them to take a shot that clanged short on the rim. Kyle rebounded and flipped it to Nikho, who dribbled the length of the court and fed Nate, who lumbered in for another quick basket, getting fouled on the shot. Six-point difference, and Nate drained the foul shot. Now a five-point spread.
The score was 35–30.
“Run it! Run it!” the McGee coach screamed as the other team scrambled to fast-break.
The crowd grew silent as the last minute ticked away. Everyone was standing, most of them with their hands against their mouths.
“Twenty-four seconds! The clock is draining down,” said Gracie into the mic, her voice hushed. “McGee has to shoot…BLOCKED by Nate!…a scramble for the ball…McGee gets it, no, Kyle snatches it back…eight seconds…Kyle’s shot is blocked…he gets his own rebound, swings it around to Nikho…Nikho to Tom…back to Kyle…” Gracie’s voice was rising as the crowd chanted down the last seconds of the game “Kyle—oh my!—he alley-oops to Kenneth!”
Sameer stood with his mouth open and his eyes wide as he watched the ball arc through the air toward the hoop. He’d seen Kyle and Kenneth goof around in practice with this pass, but it had never worked, and he never dreamed they would use it in a game. Especially against McGee.
“Kenneth jumps freakishly higher than I’ve ever—AAAAAAHHH!” screamed Gracie, jumping to her feet at the buzzer. “Slam dunk! He dunks it! On the buzzer! No way! I’ve never seen anybody dunk in junior high!”
The crowd surged onto the court. Sameer saw Mrs. Lee, glasses askew, thumping a grinning Kenneth on the back. Nate’s blotchy younger sister had him in a bear hug. Vijay had jumped, screaming, onto Tom’s back. A flushed Coach Williams was high-fiving Kyle, and Nikho was jumping wildly all over the place. Gracie stood, fists raised in the Gladiators salute, whoo-hooing into the mic.
“Wait, we won, didn’t we?” Sameer heard a confused McGee player yell to their coach as they fled the gym.
“Yeah, we won. Barely.” The coach shook his head, looking back at the crowd. “Crazy kids don’t seem to realize they lost.”
It doesn’t feel like we lost, thought Sameer as he ran over to the guys, getting jostled and shaken and high-fived and hugged.
Losing by three to first-place McGee! McGee, which dominated the league year after year after year. Almost, almost knocking McGee out of the playoffs didn’t feel like defeat.
It felt like victory.
TWENTY-ONE
Play On
On the intercom the next morning, Mrs. Lee’s voice was hoarse. The announcements were punctuated by throat clearing and tea sipping.
“Huge congratulations to the boys’ basketball team on a wonderful, thrilling end to the season! A heroic fight by Nate, Kenneth, Kyle, Tom and Nikho, who gave 110 percent, barely falling to McGee in a 35–32 epic battle! Special thanks to Coach Williams, Sameer, Vijay, Gracie, Desmond and the cheer squad. Next week we’ll bring the same gladiator spirit to cheer on the girls in their playoff bid. And finally, a reminder that the Dramatic Society’s performance of Henry V is tomorrow night at 7:00 PM in the drama-room theater. Everyone is welcome.”
The school was quiet. Everyone seemed drained and subdued from the frantic excitement of the previous night’s game. Everyone except Mr. Williams, who seemed energized. He hummed as he, Sameer and Vijay set out fold-up chairs to accommodate the audience of twenty or so parents and siblings expected for the performance.
Afterward Vijay dumped a box on top of another box by Sameer’s locker.
“That’s what I got,” he whispered, his hand at his throat.
“Wow, a whole box of them!” Sameer said, riffling through the contents. “Vijay, this is great! Why do you have a whole box?”
“Mom. She clears out the dollar stores. I bust one a game,” Vijay croaked.
Sameer looked anxiously at Vijay. Sameer’s own voice was hoarse, and he hadn’t been a screaming-maniac gladiator for an hour and a half.
“Look, just rest your voice, Vijay. The play’s tomorrow night. Don’t talk all day. And I’m not just saying that to get a break from your yakking, okay?”
“Funny,” Vijay croaked.
“Psssht! No talking.” Sameer rummaged in his backpack and found half a package of lemon lozenges from a long-ago sore throat. “Here, take these.”
“Nah, there are some cherry ones here somewhere.” Vijay groped at the back of the bottom shelf in Sameer’s locker. “Got ’em. So, everything still on?” he said in a strangled whisper.
“Shhh, shhh,” soothed Sameer. “Save the voice. You’re the only King Henry we’ve got. Yeah, just finalizing numbers and stuff. Don’t worry. It’ll be great. Go get some hot chocolate or something.”
When Vijay had gone, Sameer pulled the boxes into the supply closet around the corner.
Then he went to find Elton, who played trumpet in the band.
“We need a brrr-brrr-bRRR!” Sameer explained. “Really loud. We thought of taping it, but it’d be way more realistic live.”
“That’s it? That’s all you need? Then I’m gone?”
“In and out in five minutes.”
“What do I get for it?” Elton asked, crossing his arms.
Sameer remembered that he had never liked Elton very much. “You get the satisfaction of helping out your school.”
>
“Big deal.”
“You’d also be helping out your friends,” Sameer tried halfheartedly. Elton gave him a long, cold stare.
“Nice, Elton. Five bucks. I’ll give you five bucks. A buck a minute.”
“Done.”
On Saturday night, after a last-minute flurry of activity, the performance was finally under way. There hadn’t been enough chairs for the audience streaming in, and Sameer had helped haul more in from the gym. The actors had done an in-costume Friday-afternoon tour of the classrooms to drum up interest in the play, and it had apparently worked. Vijay, resplendent in a gold smock, crown and fun-fur cape, smiled, nodded, looked heroic and did small royalty waves. He saved his voice by letting the others do the talking. His uncharacteristic silence had intrigued everyone.
And now the drama room was dim and quiet. The curtain was dragged open, a spotlight snapped on, and the play began. Sameer stood in the hallway, waiting for the others. Why am I nervous? he wondered. It’s not me onstage in there. He felt a grudging respect for Vijay, whose voice, thankfully, had recovered enough to go on.
Sameer heard the rumble of Mr. Williams’s voice narrating the opening of the play, and scuffling sounds as the actors moved around on the stage. The audience in the big drama room was silent as the story unfolded. Sameer checked his watch nervously. Twenty minutes to go.
The boys’ and girls’ basketball teams arrived down the hallway at the arranged time, stifling giggles and whispering. Sameer put his finger to his lips and pointed to the open boxes on the floor. Everyone slipped on net practice jerseys, which only seemed to come in size extra large, and pulled on duct-tape headbands and arm bracelets.
Elton came down the hall, carrying a long black box.
“Hey, what—” he began in a normal voice before being shhhed by everybody. Sameer grabbed his arm and pointed to the stage door.
“What are you guys supposed to be? Freaks? Goths?” whispered Elton.
“Yeah, that’s right, Elton. Freakish goths,” whispered Sameer wearily. Then he checked his watch and turned to the rest of the people in the hall. “Everybody clear on what we’re doing? Good. Elton, when we hear Vijay yell, ‘For England!’—should be in about five minutes—that’s your trumpet cue. Loud. Got it?”
“Hey, Sameer,” whispered Gracie, pointing with her sword. “What are those?”
Sameer hesitated. He looked over at the “banners” that he and Vijay had made by duct-taping two of Sameer’s grandmother’s vivid saris to two flagpoles. Nani had loved color, especially in clothing, and the long swaths of material they had chosen were two of her brightest—a brilliant red and gold, and a deep blue and purple.
Sameer’s mother had laughed. Of course you can use them! I can just hear your nani cackling at the idea! She’d have loved it.
It had seemed a good idea at the time, but now Sameer wasn’t so sure. The banners looked slightly homemade.
“Well, we thought the two leaders could carry them. That’s how they used to do it. You know, team colors. We don’t have to use them,” he said quickly.
“They’re gorgeous! Of course we use them. Sameer, you and I take this one, and Kyle and Simone, you take that one. Go! We better get to our positions.”
The teams waited. Elton had his trumpet ready. Sameer opened the stage door a crack, listening, listening…
His heart thumped and his hands were sweaty. His ears strained to hear the play. The minutes ticked away, everyone in a clench of anticipation. Sameer heard Vijay give his We few, we happy few, we band of brothers speech, and the audience gave a round of enthusiastic applause.
Soon, Sameer thought, coiled and tense.
“For England!” Vijay screamed in a strangled voice, with a quick glance over to the stage door.
Elton’s trumpet was so loud it made everyone in the hall jump. He performed a complicated call to battle, not just the three notes Sameer and he had arranged.
“CHAAAAAARRRRRGGGGE!” both teams screamed.
Sameer and Gracie held the sari-banner high as tiny Team England swarmed onto the stage behind a grinning King Vijay, and a way bigger Team France roared into the room from the back and up the aisles. The audience startled, shrieked and then clapped as a ferocious plastic-sword battle ensued onstage and in the aisles. Mr. Williams, who had flinched at the loud and unexpected entrance of the teams, clapped and laughed delightedly, his face alight with surprise and wonder.
It was an epic battle, and under the stage lighting, the net practice jerseys looked close enough to chain armor, and the duct-taped headbands and bracelets looked convincingly military. Team France, both girls and boys, duly fell as arranged, one by one. Sameer dispatched Tom, and Gracie slew Nikho, who died a very gargly, twitchy death. Finally, Kyle allowed Vijay to chase him heroically up and down the aisles and at last collapsed at center stage with a loud thump, the last of the French soldiers to fall at the Battle of Agincourt.
“That was great! Awesome!” said Sameer to Vijay. The battle, the audience’s standing ovation, Mr. Williams’s emotional speech of thanks—Sameer couldn’t believe how well it had all gone.
They walked down the long hallway. Sameer had his nani’s battle saris draped over the box of practice jerseys. Vijay was lugging his big box of plastic swords. He was still wearing his crown.
“Yeah, I was pretty spectacular,” Vijay admitted, his voice hoarse again.
“I meant the whole thing. The play, the battle, everything.”
“Kayley said I was amazing. And Williams said I was a natural. Did you hear how the audience clapped loudest for me? When I came back on? You gotta love that kind of appreciation.”
Sameer choked back a cutting remark and said, “You did a great job, Vijay.”
“Hey, you guys did a pretty good job too, coming on for the battle scene!” said Vijay. “It was so much better than me pretending to fight imaginary people and stupidly looking off into the distance like I was supposed to do. It really came to life with all you guys!”
“Yeah, it did, didn’t it?”
“And Nate crashing into that row of people just made it more realistic somehow.”
“Yeah. Nobody got hurt anyway. No blood.”
“You know that Williams is going to rope all you guys in for the next play, right?” Vijay said. “I mean, not for the lead role, obviously, but for all the little ones. The crowd scenes.”
“Yeah, probably,” said Sameer. Somehow, the thought didn’t worry him.
Vijay sighed happily. “Man, it’s been a great few days, hey? First the game, then the play? But now I’m exhausted. Totally gladiated out. I can barely even carry this box.”
“Well, I’m not carrying it, Your Highness, so suck it up.”
“Why do we have to haul this stuff all the way to your locker anyway?”
“The practice jerseys have to go to the gym.”
“Oh, man, that’s even farther than your locker! I’m so hungry. Starving. Like, starving starving.”
“The rest of this is our stuff, Vijay. We can’t just dump it anywhere or leave it for Mr. Williams to deal with. And I’m hungry too. Maybe, if you ever take off that stupid crown, we could convince our moms to go get burgers.”
“Yes to the burgers, but the crown stays on.” Vijay lifted his head regally.
“You’re going to wear that thing all month, aren’t you?”
“One doesn’t stop kinging just because the play ends, my good Sameer.”
“Okay, drop it.”
“Jealous?” Vijay grinned and thumped his box against Sameer’s. “Don’t blame you. I would be if you looked this good.”
“Look, I won’t say another word about that stupid crown, but you have to listen to my plans for next year’s team.”
“What? Next year’s team? Now?”
“Because this was just the beginning, Vijay. These guys showed that they’re a special group. One in a million. Actually, five in a million. Seven, counting Hassan and Mohammed.”
“Uh-huh. Can you just walk a little quicker there, pal?”
“And next year, we’ll be heading to the playoffs again. And not as a wild-card draw. And I’ve figured out that defense really is the key.”
“Absolutely,” Vijay agreed. “You done? Can we talk burgers now?” He dumped his box in front of Sameer’s locker with a big sigh. “Let’s just leave these here and go get some food.”
Sameer dumped his box on top of Vijay’s. “We can’t just leave them here,” he said. “They’re blocking, like, three lockers. And Gary might have to clean the halls. We should put the stuff awa—”
“Sameer!”
“Okay, okay.” Sameer held up his hand. He was hungry and exhausted. Maybe not every little battle needed to be fought. “Vijay, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but you’re right. The boxes can wait until morning. Let’s just go get some burgers. I feel like we deserve them.”
Acknowledgments
Somehow my editor, Sarah “New Nana” Harvey, just keeps getting better at what she does. Thanks to M. and Jen, whose interest in and enthusiasm for each book mean so much to me. Thanks also to all the wonderful players and coaches I’ve known over the years—children and adults, relatives and friends—too many to name or list. Little bits of you and your game have probably worked their way into this book. Finally, thanks to Hank and Joanne Reinbold for making basketball profound and Shakespeare fun all those years ago.
ALISON HUGHES writes for children of all ages, and her books have been nominated for many awards. Shakespeare had a starring role in her degree in English literature. When she’s not writing, she presents at schools, volunteers with family literacy, bikes in the river valley and watches school basketball. She lives with her family in Edmonton. For more information, please visit www.alisonhughesbooks.com.
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