I walk around the hut, which is surrounded by trees. Some of them must have been too big to cut down—they seem to lean their branches on the roof. I find a bike rack under one of them, pretty rusty, with a lonely wheel still locked to one of the crossbars. On the other side of the tree I see a basketball court.

It’s just a square of concrete, with a pole stuck in the ground at one end and a dirty backboard and a bent old rim and raggedy net. The court is covered in leaves. One of the tree branches grows so close to the backboard that you can only shoot at it from the side. Maybe that’s why I have never heard of anyone playing there. You can hardly see the basket unless you walk right up to it. The whole thing looks like part of the tree.

But there’s a bench by the side of the court, and that’s where I have lunch.

After that, I start going there every day. As soon as the lunch bell rings, I race to the cafeteria—well, as fast as I can, with my backpack and satchel—and stand in line with all the other kids to buy my carton of chocolate milk. Then I walk out the glass double-doors and lug my stuff over to the basketball court to eat. It’s a relief to put everything down on the bench, and take out my sandwiches, and just have twenty minutes to myself, without having to say anything or look at anyone or pretend like I’m paying attention.

Eleven

MS. KAMINSKI RUNS a homework club after school, and she expects everybody on the Number Sense team to come to it. There are a lot of kids there—it’s really just an after-school thing for kids whose parents don’t get home until later—but she tends to put us in a corner by ourselves, so we can practice. We’ve been doing this for a couple of weeks now, and the tournament is in just a few days. Pete almost never comes, because the basketball season has started, and they’ve got practice, too. But Laura Kirkup is there every day.

Laura is very quiet; she’s one of these girls who kind of hides behind her hair. Her dad is supposed to be rich—I think he runs some IT company—but you’d never know from Laura. Her clothes are from Gap or Old Navy; she also wears a lot of University of Texas gear, like a Texas Science hoodie. Every time she talks outside of class, it’s like a surprise. You can tell she has a lot of private opinions.

Sometimes Ms. Kaminski plays music while we work—she has a CD player on her desk. Mostly she just plays classical music, because it’s not “distracting,” she says, but once she put on the radio, just to see what was playing, and “Yesterday” came on. I never know any songs, but I know this one, so I said to Laura, “The Beatles,” and she said, “Yeah, I know.” I said, “My dad is living right around the corner from where they recorded all their songs. In London.” And she said, “I like the early stuff more. If you’re going to be cheesy, you should just go for it. Like, I want to hold your hand. You know . . .” and she sang the lyrics or sort of hummed them under her breath.