“I guess.”

He waits for a minute and then he asks, “Why aren’t you saying anything?”

“Because I’m thinking.”

The swimming pool is still drained when we get to the park; the bottom is full of wet leaves. There’s a chain-link fence around the whole thing, and the gate is locked. It’s all a bit sad, like leftover summer. But a couple of kids are playing basketball on the court next door. They look like high school kids. One of them has a Tony Romo Cowboys jersey on, which is too big for him, even though he’s a pretty big kid. The other one is skinnier and dribbles a lot. Dad can’t help himself; he watches from the sideline—our bikes are lying on the curb.

“Do you want to play?” he says to me quietly.

“They’re just hanging out. They don’t want to play with us.”

“Well, we can ask them.” And he steps forward onto the court. “You guys want to play a little two on two? This is my son here.”

“Sure, okay,” the Tony Romo kid says.

So that’s what we do. My dad looks funny when he plays—he moves like a different person. He has all this crazy pent-up energy and his legs and arms seem twice as long as everybody else’s. The skinny kid misses a shot, and Dad gets the rebound and passes the ball to me. “Shoot it,” he says. I’m about fifteen feet away, and when I miss, he gets the rebound again and passes it back again. “Shoot it again,” he says, and this time the shot goes in. That’s what it’s like.

“Dad,” I say quietly, when we get the ball back. “Give them a chance.”

We don’t stay very long, we just play to seven. He lets them score a couple of baskets. He’s very friendly and asks their names and asks them about school, but it’s also kind of weird, and I know they just want us to be gone. On the final shot, my dad steps back and takes a twenty footer, which touches nothing but net. It’s the first shot he’s taken all day—the rest of the time, he’s just been setting me up.

“How about that?” he says afterward. I can tell he’s pleased; this whole thing has put him in a good mood. He takes a handkerchief out of his pocket and wipes his forehead. We get back on our bikes and the two kids just start messing around again like nothing happened—with the skinny kid dribbling around, and the Tony Romo kid trying to catch him. But it’s nice to feel the wind in our face again. Dad is shaking his head. “I shouldn’t have done that,” he says, pedaling beside me. “Sometimes I can’t help myself.”

It’s funny, though. Even though I was embarrassed, I’m glad we won; it feels like something has happened, a story, we were on the same team, and this time the shot went in. I’ll probably tell Granma about it later, and turn it into a joke, because those kids must have thought, What the heck? These two guys show up and kick our butts for five minutes, and then ride off again; but I also feel sad, because I think it probably won’t happen again.