I start dribbling, and he crouches down low and slaps the ground. When I shoot, he blocks it, and I scramble for the ball and get there first. His boots are really too heavy to play in, and I guess he’s not trying anyway, because the next time, he lets me drive past him and I lay the ball in.

“Point to you,” he says, and passes the ball back to me. “You make it, you take it.”

The next time I shoot, the tree branch gets in the way, a few leaves flutter down, and Sam ends up with the ball under the basket. He jumps and slaps the backboard and lays it in.

“Home court advantage,” he calls it.

We play like this for a while; nobody keeps score. Sometimes he lets me shoot and sometimes he doesn’t—all he has to do is stick out an arm to block my shot. But I’m quicker than he is and “keep getting under his feet,” that’s what he says. He tries to push me off with his elbow, but I sneak under that, too. When the bell rings, he’s sweating and breathing heavily; he wipes his forehead with the end of his shirt.

“I’ve got to go,” I say. “That was the bell.”

“Pass me the rock then,” he tells me, and I throw him the ball. He shoots a jump shot and watches it go in—the net is ragged, but it flicks like a tail when the ball slips through. “You made an old man happy,” he says.

As I walk back to class across the field, I turn around—he’s still out there, shooting by himself, and when he misses, running in his sore-hipped way to get the ball and shoot again.

It’s getting warmer every day. Over the weekend, I start playing out in the garden again—sitting in my den in the bamboo hedge. Granma’s house is small; the hedge is the only place I can be alone.

I keep hoping Mabley will come out to use the trampoline. I think, if she comes, I’ll ask her if she wants to hang out. I guess I could just go around and ring her doorbell, but if she wants to see me, she knows where I live. I don’t want to bother her. That’s what it was like with Jake—he never came up to my apartment unless I called him or something. It was always me who took the elevator down, to knock on his door. I don’t know why, that’s just how it worked. But I didn’t mind with Jake, because I knew he liked me.

For a while, it’s sunny, then it’s not. I get cold, sitting between the bamboo stalks, reading a book; the leaves are still damp. Around four o’clock, Mom brings out a bowl of trail mix and a mug of hot chocolate. I’ve made a little table out of a plank of wood. But Mabley doesn’t come, and eventually it gets too dark for me to read.