“Mom,” I say, and she turns around, still smiling.

“Hey, Ben”—like she’s surprised to see me, and everything’s great. “This is my son, Ben,” she tells the woman. “He’s in seventh grade.”

“I’ve heard a lot about you,” the woman says. She’s wearing a sweatshirt that’s too big for her. It says, Kettner’s Cafe, New Braunfels, Texas, on the front, and underneath: “Sprechen Sie Bratwurst?”

“Mom, can I talk to you?”

“Sure, Ben.” She’s still in social mode—like I’m one of her students.

“In private.”

“Excuse us a minute,” Mom tells the woman, and we go into an empty classroom. It’s a biology classroom and there are posters of skeletons all over the walls, diagrams of hearts and lungs, and a big papier-mâché rhinoceros sitting on one of the desks, with a Santa cap on its head.

“That was rude,” Mom says, “and I don’t like being rude.”

“Mr. Tomski told me to come to basketball practice today.”

“I thought that’s what we decided.”

“You decided it! You did! I never said I was going to go.”

Mom says quietly, “Keep your voice down, Ben. This is my place of work. The people here are my colleagues and students. You cannot talk to me this way in front of them.”

“What about me? I’m your son.”

“Then talk to me like my son.”

“That’s what I’m doing.”

“No, you’re talking to me like a spoiled, angry . . .”

“I don’t want to be the basketball manager,” I say.

“Give it a try, Ben. Right now you don’t want to be anything.”

“I don’t want to be here, that’s for sure. I don’t want . . .”

“What do you want me to do then?” and suddenly my mom sounds angry, too. “I can’t make your father come back, I can’t do that. I’m doing what I can. I need your help.”

“You can’t make me go to basketball practice either.”

“No,” she says, sitting on the teacher’s desk. She isn’t shouting anymore—she just sounds tired. “I can’t make anybody do anything, obviously.”

But then the bell rings, and Mom says, “I have to go teach. You have to go learn. You know what I expect of you . . . what I’m asking you to do. Give it a try, Ben, please.” She opens the door again, and all the school sounds come back in; kids in the hallways, everybody talking and in a hurry. Three eighth graders come into the room and look at me, laughing. I pick up my bags and squeeze past them.

After my last class, when the long bell rings, I wait in the hallway until most of the kids have gone, then walk down the empty corridors to the gym. Most of the players are getting changed, but I just sit on one of the bleachers and wait for them to come out of the locker room. Mr. Tomski drags a bag of balls through the office doorway onto the court, but I don’t know what he wants me to do with them.