“So one of us could have the same thing and not know it.” This was Delia, one of the quieter girls, who never put much effort into the game.

“You wouldn’t,” Celine said. “You so slow, people think you don’t got a working heart anyway.”

I let the insult go unchecked—I wanted them to feel that life was returning to normal, even if normal included getting slammed. I set them on a short course of stretches, and let them go directly to scrimmage, five on four, with all the weakest players on the smaller squad. I joined the weaker girls at point guard, calling my team up, directing traffic, giving a few tips to the opposition, but putting my all into going one-on-one with Celine. After a short time, everyone, even Delia, forgot that their hearts might give out and started playing. I was hotdogging, bouncing the ball between my legs to someone in the corner, jumping up to block shots, sticking to Celine like her underwear, and the girls were laughing and cheering, and running harder than I’d ever seen them go. Celine took her play up a level and began feinting and nailing her shots as if she were Tamika Williams.

When I called a halt at four, three of the girls begged to stay to work on their free throws. I told them I could let them have ten minutes, when one of the girls screamed, “Ooh, Coach, your back. Celine, what you do to Coach?”

I put a hand behind me and realized I was wet with something warmer than sweat: my wound had come open. “I’m fine,” I said. “This is just an injury I got over at the factory, you know, Fly the Flag, when it blew up last week. You guys were great tonight. I have to go to the doctor and get this stitched back together now, but Thursday everyone who played today goes out for pizza with me after practice.”

When they’d showered and I got the gym locked, I drove up to Lotty’s clinic, feeling a happy glow from the workout—the first time I’d left the high school feeling good since—maybe since ever. Since my team won the state championship all those years ago, although even then—my mother had been dying. I had gotten drunk with Sylvia and the rest of them so I didn’t have to think of Gabriella in her hospital bed, draped with tubes and monitors as if she were a mummified fly in the middle of a spiderweb.