It’s a pretty close game. The gym is packed; you can feel the heat of the overhead lights; and the Pflugerville kids stamp their feet against the bleachers to make noise—it’s like being at the bottom of a ship. Travis Brown is almost six foot six, but he handles the ball a lot, too, and guards Pete on the other end. Pete’s too short to shoot over him so he has to be tricky. He head fakes and gets Travis in the air; he leans in and forces the ref to blow the whistle. He takes a lot of free throws.

With fifteen seconds left, we’re up by two points, and Pete’s at the foul line, shooting two. If he makes both, the game is over—there’s no way Pflugerville can come back. And I’m sitting on the bench and hoping Pete misses, and feeling miserable and ashamed at the same time. It’s mean, and I feel mean, but it doesn’t matter what I feel because Pete makes them anyway; and when the game is over, and the kids are all shouting in the locker room, laughing and goofing around, it doesn’t matter what I do because nobody notices me.

But this is what I do: I pick up their sweaty jerseys and shorts from the locker room floor. Then I put them back, soaking and stinking, into the bag and drag it to the bus. That’s what I sit with on the ride back to school—a duffel bag full of smelly, wet clothes.

It’s dark now, and we get stuck in traffic coming back into Austin. You can just see the lights of cars coming and going. The countryside around is pretty flat; there are some trees by the side of the road that look yellow in the streetlamps, and gas stations and taco stands and fast-food restaurants. The engine noise, especially at the front, is very loud. If I close my eyes and pretend to sleep, Mr. Tomski won’t try to talk to me, he won’t try to include me in the conversation. So I close my eyes and even fall asleep for real, so when the bus pulls into the school parking lot, Mr. Tomski has to wake me up.

“Come on, Ben, we’re home,” he says, shaking my shoulder. “Your mom is waiting for you.”

The school looks different at night—the white brick walls are lit up like a prison, and you can see arcs of pale light on the dead grass. The parking lot is almost empty, apart from a few other cars, parents picking up their kids. It’s starting to rain a little, but it isn’t cold. I can feel the rain as I get off the bus.

Mom is standing there, holding a sweater over her head. “So, how’d we do?” she says, and Mr. Tomski tells her, “We won.”

“Yay,” she says, and gives me a hug. Then we drive home together, and I have to pretend to be excited about it all.