“That’s just how it works. I get to keep shooting until I miss.”

“Whatever,” she says but passes me the ball, and I shuffle across the lane and shoot again. Again it goes in, and she passes it back to me, and I bend my legs again and shoot.

“But you never miss,” she says.

There’s sweat in my eyes, but I feel like if I look down, or think about what I’m doing, I’m going to fall. Move and shoot, move and shoot, that’s what Sam says. Finally, one of my shots hits the back of the rim and caroms into the grass under the trees.

“What am I doing wrong?” she asks.

So I pick up the ball and show her how to hold it—with your hand held back, resting on the palm. “You use the other hand to guide it, like this.”

That’s how Sam showed me. She tries again but misses anyway.

I chase down the ball and give it to her again. This time I pull her hand back myself, so the ball rests on the middle of her palm. Then I take her other hand (it’s a little sweaty; she’s got very small fingers) and lay it against the side of the ball, to keep it in place. “You want to follow through like this,” I tell her, letting my wrist roll over as my arm straightens. “Just keep it as simple as possible—it’s mostly in the wrist.”

She tries again, and the ball floats up and barely touches the rim. It sort of rests on the edge for a second, then trickles in. “Hey, whaddya know?” she says, clapping her hands. Then the bell rings; lunch is over and she grabs her backpack and tray from the bench.

“You coming, Ben?” she asks me. We walk back across the football field together—Sam has finished mowing, the lawn mower is sitting quietly in the end zone. Cut grass lies loosely on top of old yard markings. “When are you moving to London?” Mabley asks. “I don’t want you to go.”

“I don’t know. My dad . . . it’s just something I talk about with him. He has to get settled in first. They’re . . . his company, he has to work pretty hard.”

“So what’s the point of moving there?”

“It’s not really up to me. My parents just . . . do what they want.”

I feel bad about lying to her, even if it maybe isn’t lying. Maybe I will go to London, and all this, this whole place, and people like Pete, and the school, will just be somewhere else I left behind. But then I’d have to leave Mabley behind, too.

She takes her tray to the cafeteria, and I follow her inside and wait by the door. But after that she has to stop by her locker—she’s got math in the afternoon, and I say goodbye and shoulder my bags again and head over toward French.