In the end they beat me 6–4. I threw my racquet at the fence and stalked off. I knew what this looked like; it was the kind of behavior that was abhorrent to my parents. Any anger was dealt with swiftly and severely, quarantined immediately, allowed no audience. I expected Grant and Ed to react similarly, to urge me home that instant, remove me from this public place because people were watching. People on the clubhouse veranda, people walking to their cars, people on the courts, and even people on the putting green could hear me swearing and kicking tires in the parking lot. I was surprised by it myself, the anger that came pouring out all because a couple of hacks had beaten me at tennis. But they just sat on the little strip of grass beyond the court with the three racquets zipped back up in the cases and the balls back in the can. After a while I had nothing left in me and they came to where I was by a maple tree near the entrance to the club and we started walking home.

I was too ashamed to speak. They chatted away to each other, as if they weren’t angry with me, as if they weren’t embarrassed for me and humiliated by me. As if I were not, as my mother used to say as she whisked me up to my room, a little beast who needed to change back to a boy.

“Your family belong to a club like that?”

Grant laughed. “No.”

“Look at that guy burrowing into those bushes. What do you think he’s doing?”

“Look at the dog on the porch.”

“He’s waiting for him to fetch the ball!” Ed joked.

And when the man backed out of the bushes with the dog’s filthy ball, they burst into hysterics. They thought everything in our neighborhood was funny.

“Layton with the sheep,” Grant said.

Ed cracked up. “Sometimes I’m lying in bed and I think of that story and I can’t stop laughing.”

“I know. It might be the funniest thing I ever heard.”

“What do you think he’s up to right now? Do you think he made it to Alaska?”

“Yeah. Knowing him.”

“With the girl?”

“That I don’t know. I was never sure about that part of the story.”

“Me neither.”

After a pause, Ed said, “I hope he didn’t take that girl. God, they only fuck you up so bad.” Ed’s face was red and he was staring hard at a stoplight ahead of us while Grant was staring at him just as intently. “Still fucking kills,” Ed said.

I saw Grant’s arm lift slightly then fall back down at his side.

Then Ed nudged me. I thought they’d forgotten all about me. “Ground Round for dinner tonight?”

“Sure,” I said lightly, all the anger gone somehow.