At the same time, if you ask on a layup, how much can you trust it?

It’s all about intention, Natasha often says. Natasha who knows tons of weird factoids. Like Ouija-board stuff. Urban legends.

Daphne.

Kit takes a few steps closer to the rim. More like a college three-pointer now. Has her thinking of college.

“Am I going to be accepted to Michigan State?”

She shoots. She misses.

“Fuck,” she says. Kit’s grades are okay. She’s no star in the classroom. But she’s also never tried to be.

“Whatever,” Natasha says, taking the rebound in stride as she dribbles out for a twelve-footer. Natasha is the worst shot of the group. For this, Kit knows she asks more gentle questions.

Even irreverent Natasha respects the rim.

“Will I throw up from drinking too much before this year is over?” Natasha asks.

She shoots. The ball hits the backboard and goes in. She didn’t aim for the backboard.

The girls crack up as Natasha runs the baseline, fists to the sky.

“Of course you will!” Melanie says, her dark bangs hiding the top half of her face. “You’re already an alcoholic.”

“Fuck you,” Natasha says, a bit out of breath from the short run. “Am not. Do you have any idea how much you have to drink to be an alcoholic?”

“No,” Melanie says. “I haven’t done that research.”

“It’s like…twenty drinks a morning.”

The girls laugh again, but they also seem to be considering this information.

“Is Natasha an alcoholic?” Melanie asks.

She dribbles to the rim, goes up for a layup, misses.

Triumphant, Natasha raises her fists once more.

“Told you, scumbag.”

Not all questions are created equal. Some are serious, some are not. But up until now, Kit has taken pride in the fact that her streak is intact. She hasn’t been lied to yet. And while that makes for a fun afternoon under the Samhattan sun, it’s also unsettling. A little bit. As if, whenever she gets the ball, the others get quiet. Like they respect her questions more than they do their own.

“Did you ask the rim anything on your game winner?” Dana asks.

Kit was not expecting this. She’s standing at the top of the key, two discolored marks in the pavement. She turns red.

“Me?”

She isn’t sure how to respond. Just like the rim doesn’t lie, neither does Kit. Not any more than a seventeen-year-old Samhattan High School senior-to-be should.

Natasha faces the rim, ball in hand.

“Did Kit have a question planned in case she ever shot a game-winning free throw?”

She shoots. She misses.

Natasha misses a lot, yes, but…see? No lie. It wasn’t planned. That’s the part that unnerved Kit most for the few days following the huge win. In fact, she hasn’t been okay with it at all. That night, Night of the Game Winner, her parents asked if something was bothering her. Both Mom and Dad, at different times. Mom asked at Jenny Will’s Pizza, in the middle of the celebration, long after the girls had signed the Spirit of Samhattan, the giant lone rock in Betsy Lure Field, the rock that has been painted over and signed for decades.