“No, I mean like we do. Basketball is a team sport. That’s the beauty of it. I want to be a part of that. It’s why I wanted my parents to settle in one place. So I could play on a real team. So I could know what that’s like—being part of a team and all that goes along with it.”

I stopped because the emotion came suddenly. Suppose I hadn’t wanted that. Suppose I had just kept my mouth shut. Would my dad be alive (or with me)? Would my mom have stayed off drugs?

Had my desire to be part of a real team destroyed everything?

“I know that’s what you want, Mickey,” Ema said in the softest voice. “I get that. But helping Troy Taylor—”

“Will show everyone that I’m willing to do anything to be a good teammate.”

Ema shook her head, but she didn’t argue.

We reached the door to Spoon’s hospital room. No one was around, so I knocked lightly and pushed it open. I heard Spoon’s voice:

“Did you know that ants stretch when they wake up in the morning?”

I smiled. Ah, Spoon.

“Oh, and I mean ant like the insect. Not aunts like my aunt Tessie. She never stretches.”

I wondered what nurse or doctor he was regaling with his random facts, but when I saw who it was, I pulled up short.

It was Rachel.

Spoon smiled at us from the bed. “Great,” he said. “We’re all here.”

Rachel greeted Ema with a brief hug but only nodded at me and turned away. Ema looked at me, puzzled. Rachel was usually much friendlier with me, but of course, Ema didn’t know about our last conversation, when I told her the truth about her mother’s death.

“Four of us,” Spoon said. “Do you know that the number four is considered unlucky in many East Asian cultures? That’s because the word for four sounds like the word for death.”

He pushed his glasses up his nose.

“Spooky, right?”

Ema sighed and said, “Did you find anything about Jared Lowell?”

Before he could answer, the door behind us opened. A nurse in pink hospital scrubs stepped into the room. She did not look pleased to see us. “What is this?”

Spoon spread his arms. “My posse.”

“Your what?”

“My posse. These are my peeps, my crew, my homies—”

“Are they immediate family?”

“More than immediate family,” Spoon said. “They’re my posse, my peeps, my crew, my—”

The nurse was having none of it. “You’re only allowed one non-family visitor at a time, Arthur. You know that.”

Spoon frowned. “But I had two here yesterday.”

“Then someone was breaking the rules. I need two of you to leave this room immediately.”

We all looked at one another, not sure what to do. Spoon took care of it.