“Now, Carla,” he says. And now he sounds less like a police officer and more like her old man. Buried, yes, in a different city. “This story is something of a sticker.”

“What does that mean exactly?”

Chuck shakes his head, having no idea he’s doing the very thing young Tammy Jones did the day prior; attempting to get rid of an unwanted thought.

“That means it sticks. You know how some songs stay in your head and you can’t get ’em out?”

McGowan doesn’t answer. She only stares, alert, ready, and not a little baffled by what Chuck is saying.

“Well, this is like that,” Chuck says. “Only, there’s no sound to this earworm. This worm doesn’t come with any music at all. Though she liked music quite a bit.”

“She?” McGowan asks.

And as Chuck begins, she thinks of the girls’ basketball team, all seated in the Samhattan gymnasium.

Next to Chuck Larson, McGowan should feel young. But she doesn’t. She thinks of people younger than her, of the girls, the ballers, and the new prism through which the world is seen.

The new prism through which maybe she needs to start seeing the world. And through that prism, color, light, and lines.

Lines she shouldn’t cross.

Kit Lamb’s Journal—We Were Questioned by Police Today

Read the entry title again.

Read it.

We were questioned by police today. The Samhattan police. A big, strong woman whose roots were showing and whose detective pants were all wrinkly and everything about her told me she takes what she does so seriously she doesn’t give a care about anything else. She was sweating with panic.

She scared me, Jolly. So, so much.

Not because we did anything wrong. Not because we could go to jail. But because of how scared SHE was. Does this make sense? The whole team was sitting in the gym, THE SAME GYM WHERE I MADE THE SHOT, and all of us had to listen to the woman and had to respond to the woman and Coach Wanda looked as nervous as the detective. This was no joke, Jolly. This was no lie! This wasn’t some free-floating feeling that frightens you because you can’t pinpoint where it came from. This was right in front of us.

WE WERE QUESTIONED BY THE POLICE TODAY

And you know what I did? You know where I kept looking?

Yep. At the rim.

Eyed it like it was a psychic who could tell me our future.

There were moments I wanted a ball in my hands so I could just ask it, you know? Will this woman catch who did this? Will Tammy’s killer go free?

There were other times, too, where I didn’t want a ball anywhere NEAR me. I fantasized about smashing the rims with hammers so nobody could use them, so nobody could ask them questions ever again.

But then…I started asking questions of things, other things, things that weren’t the rim.