That doesn’t bother me. I was always better than Jake at shooting a basketball, and sometimes I talk to him in my head. I turn everything into a conversation. There’s this tournament next week. I’m on a kind of math team, and this kid called Pete Miller copied my answers to get in. . . . But then I realize, Jake and Pete would probably get along pretty well. They both like to—not pick fights exactly, but just talk, and get things started, and see what happens. If I hadn’t lived in the same apartment building as Jake, we would never have been friends, because I’m not the kind of person he usually likes. He’d know what to say to Mabley, too, if she sat next to him on the bus. Jake can look after himself. All these kids would probably like him better than they like me.

The bell rings, so faintly that I almost think it’s my imagination—like I sometimes hear my mom’s voice calling me when I’m biking with the wind in my ears. I walk past the hut and knock on Sam’s door, to give him the ball back and say thanks. Really, I hope he isn’t there, I feel shy around him, but he comes out with a sandwich in his hand. I can hear the TV on; there’s some soap opera music in the background.

“Thanks for pumping it up,” I say. He’s a lot taller than me, but I try to look him in the eyes.

“How come you have all those bags?” he asks. “Don’t you have a locker?”

“They gave me one, but I don’t know where it is.”

“Well, we can find that out,” he says.

“That’s all right. I don’t really mind. This way I don’t forget anything.”

He looks at me and shakes his head. “One of those kids, has to do everything his own way. . . .”

“Anyway,” I tell him. “Thanks—for pumping it up, and sweeping the court and everything.”

“It’s my job,” he says. I feel like he’s watching me as I carry my bags back to class.

On the morning of the tournament, I have to take the bus as usual, but after homeroom all the kids who are going to compete meet in the parking lot, where another bus will take us to some high school gym. It’s not just the math nerds, but there are all kinds of nerds hanging around—Latin nerds, social studies nerds, French nerds. There are about twenty kids going. Some of them are two or three kinds of nerd at the same time. That’s what Pete says, getting on to the bus. “Man, what a bunch of weirdos, and I’m one of them.” Ms. Kaminski is coming along, too. She smiles at him.

“There’s nothing wrong with being unusual,” she says.

“I didn’t say unusual, Ms. Kaminski,” Pete says. “I said weird.”

He’s in one of his moods, where he acts like he likes everybody and everybody is having a good time because he’s around. The bus isn’t full. Laura moves over to the window seat and says to Pete, “You can sit here,” as he walks down the aisle. There are rows of two seats each on either side. Pete looks at her and says, “Gracias,” which annoys me, because it’s like, for some reason he thinks it’s funny, or maybe he’s trying to be polite, or pretending to be polite, and that’s the joke. I don’t know, but somehow it’s annoying. Anyway, he doesn’t sit down with her but makes a sorry face and heads toward some boys at the back of the bus.