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and said Billy could come to the game if he wanted to, support the team from the bench, be sort of like an assistant coach. Billy thought it might be some kind of Dad test, maybe a way for him to prove that he could somehow be a better team player by not playing.
    Billy didn’t care, not today.
    He knew that as much as it was going to kill him to miss the game, it would be much worse having to sit there at the Y and watch. And he still thought it was wrong that he wasn’t getting to play against the Nuggets, who weren’t one of the better teams in their league but who were good enough to beat the Magic with him out of the lineup.
    He told his dad on the phone that he didn’t feel like it, he was going to stay home and work on some stuff he needed to work on, which was technically true, even though in his mind he was only talking about Xbox 360 and NCAA Live.
    “Your call,” his dad said.
    “Yup.”
    “I’d like to have you there as my assistant coach,” his dad said.
    “Would you?” Billy said, not even caring if it came out sarcastic. Then he said he had to go, that Mom was calling him.
    It was him, Ben, Eliza, Mom and Peg for breakfast. Peg was cooking up one of her specialties, even though she called just about everything she cooked one of her specialties. Today it was waffles. Somehow when Peg made them, they came out of the waffle iron bigger and fatter than anybody else’s.
    Eliza had been talking about some party for the high school basketball team she’d been to the night before, as if anybody else at the table besides Mom cared. Billy stopped listening about the time she said the captain of the team had given her and her friend Maggie rides home. Billy was thinking about his own team, about the gym and the Y on Saturday mornings, how the best part of his whole week was walking through those double doors, usually seeing another game ending when he got inside, hearing the whistles and the cheers of the parents and coaches and the horn sounding when somebody would make a sub.
    He could practically hear all that sitting at his own kitchen table better than he could hear what his own sister was saying.
    He just wanted it to be eleven o’clock, when he knew the game would be over.
    Eliza’s cell phone started playing whatever new annoying song she had on it. The phone, as usual, was on the table next to her plate. She grabbed it right away, checked to see the number that was calling her like she always did, then put it right to her ear and said, “Tell me everything he said after he dropped me off.”
    “Well,” Lynn Raynor said, watching Eliza disappear toward the living room, “this has been more restful than breakfast in bed.”
    Peg was bringing Billy and Ben seconds. As she put the new waffles on their plates, she said, “Don’t worry, boys, you’ll get to talk when Liza’s in college.”
    Billy’s mom smiled. “Are you sure, Peg? I love my daughter to death, but I picture her still talking to us on speaker phone.”
    Not even worrying that Eliza might hear, just because Peg could say pretty much anything she wanted and get away with it, Peg said, “That girl can talk the way birds in the morning can sing.”
    Billy had no idea how old Peg was. She wouldn’t tell and neither would his mom. She had curly hair that seemed to be somewhere between red and brown, a round face, the same round glasses she’d always worn. To Billy, it was like she had stayed the same age from the first time he remembered her being around.
    And he couldn’t remember a time in his life when she wasn’t around.
    “Ben Raynor,” she said now, “you eat up now. You need to get to piano.”
    His mouth full of waffles, Ben said something that Billy was pretty sure was “yes, Peg.”
    Peg said, “Then get busy with that toothbrush of yours, which felt drier than dirt to me this morning .”
    Ben mumbled out an answer that seemed to include “brushed.”
    “We know you brushed, Benjamin Raynor,” Peg said.