This makes me nervous. I’m standing about six or seven feet from the basket, and sort of throw the ball at the rim—it hits the front end and bounces off the backboard and slips through the net.

“Not like that,” Sam says.

He gets the ball and walks over to me. “Hold it like this,” he says, pushing my wrist back and placing the basketball on my palm. His hands are strong, and he’s got a tattoo on his forearm of an eagle dragging an anchor by the chain. “Point your elbow at the rim.” He shows me by going through the motion himself, bending his elbow and straightening it, while the wrist rolls over, and holding his hand out afterward in that position. “Now you try.”

This time, when I shoot, the ball hits the rim and bangs away.

“Better,” he says.

For the next few minutes, that’s all we do—he watches me shoot and tells me what I’m doing wrong. “No, no, no,” he says, even if the shot goes in. “Not like that. Bend your legs. Jump straight up. Follow through.” He pushes my elbow into place, pointing it at the rim. It feels weird, like walking tip-toe in a line—trying to stay balanced. He makes me practice one-handed, too. “Your left hand’s got no business pushing the ball. It’s just a guide dog.”

“But I’m not strong enough.” Every time I try to shoot it his way, the ball falls short.

“Start close,” he says. “Do it right.”

Sometimes, even when I miss, he tells me, Now we’re getting somewhere.

“All right, kid,” he says at last. “Practice, that’s all it is. Just leave the ball under the bench when you’re finished.”

And he walks back under the trees to the caretaker’s hut.

For a minute, I watch him go, until he disappears around the corner, then I start shooting again. The ball is a little flat, I can hardly bounce it high enough to dribble. And every time I miss, it rolls into the leaves. But that doesn’t matter—I chase after the ball and shoot again. For some reason it calms me down just to do the same thing over and over. The last time I played basketball was in Jake’s kitchen in New York, with a foam ball, when we broke his mom’s mug . . . and afterward my dad marched me downstairs to tell Mrs. Schultz about it.

Eventually the bell rings, far away. I’ve forgotten about school and it takes me a second or two to realize where I am. Then I roll the ball under the bench and pick up my bags—the backpack first, and then the satchel over my shoulder—and walk across the football field to class.

At lunchtime the next day I go back. All the leaves have been swept, and when I finish my sandwiches and look under the bench, I notice that Sam has pumped the ball up, too. Shooting on that court isn’t easy, though. On one side, you can’t shoot at all, because of that tree branch. But even on the other side, a telephone wire has started to sag, and you have to shoot over it.