“One hour?” Vijay frowned. “Okay, I guess, but that’s not much time. What about Wednesday?”

“Um, listen, Vij, there’s something else I have to tell you about—something else that’s competing for my time. You know I’m trying out for the under-twelve basketball team at the Y on Saturday. With Dave. Sooo… we’ve got to practice before that, and my dad’s going to give us some pointers. Except he’s only free Wednesday and Thursday afternoons between 3:30 and 4:30. Which leaves only about an hour for us those afternoons, too. Sorry.”

Vijay shook his head sadly. “I see,” he said. “And you did not want to tell me.”

“I thought it might hurt your feelings,” Derek admitted. “I guess I wound up doing that anyway. Sorry.”

Vijay heaved a deep sigh. “I know you love basketball,” he said. “And being in a talent show… it’s the first time. You must be nervous about it.”

“No! I’m not nervous—it’s not that. It’s… ” Derek’s voice petered out.

He definitely did not want to go up there onstage and look bad. And he knew Vijay was right—if they wanted to succeed, they had to put in the work.

“Let’s talk tonight over the phone,” Derek suggested. “I can play you the songs, and you can decide. And as soon as the tests are over, we can put time into it almost every day, okay?”

Vijay looked up at Derek, and a smile appeared at the corner of his mouth. “Okay,” he said. “Call me after supper. I sure hope you’ve picked us a winner.”

Derek swallowed hard. He hadn’t picked anything—nothing at all.

“I… don’t know. $6,243?”

Derek shook his head sadly. “No, Sam. It’s B—$62.43. See, you can’t forget the decimal point.”

“Right, right… ” Sam shook his head. “It’s just so hard to get. Why is it there again?”

Derek tried not to show his impatience. They’d been going over math for an hour already, and they were still on the same page they’d started on. Derek had been racking his brain, trying to come up with a way to explain it to Sam, but nothing seemed to work.

And this was stuff Derek had already gone through! He hadn’t devoted one second today to the stuff he still needed to review, much farther on in the booklet.

“Think of it this way,” he said, an idea coming to him. “You’re dribbling the ball across midcourt, and the forward is coming out to set a pick for you, okay?”

“Yeah?” Sam said, nodding.

“So where the forward sets the pick matters, right?”

“Of course! If he sets it too far out, like at the three-point line, I can drive around him and look for an outlet if I’m double-teamed. If he sets it too close to the basket, then back off a step and sink the open jumper.”