You were fucking amazing.

One of their many bonds. When the cat’s away, the mice will swear.

Kit smiled. It felt good, a moment of real pride in a night pocked with more inner turmoil than she would’ve dreamed possible.

Man, if Dad wasn’t right: it was fucking amazing. Kit had just coolly won the biggest game of her life with a single flick of her wrist, a motion she’d practiced two hundred thousand times, the same fingers that held the TV controller now, the same hands she looked down to, imagining, suddenly, much bigger ones, gripping a steering wheel even in death, like in Natasha’s story about the madwoman Daphne.

She doesn’t use a knife, Natasha said. She doesn’t use a chainsaw. Not a hook, not a gun, not a rake.

What does she use? Melanie asked.

When Natasha answered, the ends of her mouth were turned up. Natasha was the kind of person you could hear smiling in the dark.

Her bare fucking hands.

“What up?” Dana asks. She points to the ball in Kit’s hands, the ball she forgot she was holding. The sun is hot and it reminds Kit of that heat at the base of her neck.

The sun glares off the backboard and, from this distance—or maybe from any—Kit doesn’t think she could make a shot right now.

She looks to the rim. Squints.

“Is Melanie in love with someone?”

The others grunt. These girls, they don’t give a shit about crushes.

Kit shoots. Misses. It’s a stupid question. She knows. But maybe it’ll wipe clean the question Dana just asked her. Melanie quietly says, “I told you guys.” But as Dana gets the rebound, she eyes Kit the way close friends do. Like, Really, what’s with you?

Kit and Dana, thick as thieves. Amongst great friends: the best. So, shouldn’t Dana recognize when it’s not the best time to flash Kit that look?

And there’s a lot with Kit right now. Or maybe it’s a little that feels like it could become a lot. It’s not a new feeling (and it’s partly why the ice water she discovered in her veins at the free-throw line should be so thrilling), but its mere presence, in any form, eclipses her inner sun. All the ballers deal with something. Natasha talks about depression like she’s doing stand-up. Dana wishes she looked like someone else. Melanie has insomnia. For Kit, it’s anxiety. Yes. And if there’s one feeling she knows better than all others, it’s the days leading up to an all-out attack. A panic attackula, as Natasha joked, leaving Kit with the vision of a bum cloaked in dark clothes planting his hand at the base of her neck. The Coming Doom, as she once foolishly called it (foolish because it was too good, too right, and there’s nothing fun about it). As if, when she starts to get nervous, a blurry dimension floats toward her, threatens to swallow her, to take her away.

And as far as she knows (and she’s done a lot of looking into this), there’s nothing she can do about her anxiety. Not entirely. Anxiety may be something she battles the rest of her life. Ice water be damned. Samhattan High’s resident hippie, Patricia Maxwell, a classmate who wears tie-dyed shirts and sandals to class, once spoke about anxiety in second-period health. Kit listened close. Patricia said: You would think that, after one anxiety attack, and after surviving it, you would never fall for it again. But that’s the nature of anxiety and depression, isn’t it? They fool you into believing them. Every time. Each episode is the real one. Each episode is the actual one you’ve been fearing the whole time. Kit had never thought she had anything in common with Patricia Maxwell before, but that resonated. Does Patricia know anxiety like Kit does? Or did Patricia just get lucky with what she said? Like how sometimes you shoot the ball just shitty enough to make it?