Terraball is, at its core, a deeply silly game. You’re trying to run across a court littered with foam cubes and throw the ball into the opposite team’s goal. Except while you’re doing that, the other team is magically changing the size of the foam cubes in your way to mess with you. If you fall while holding the ball, you have to turn it over to the other team. So essentially, terraball is basketball, football, and those gymnastics foam pits fused into one ridiculous, awesome sport.

I pelt after Lex, shrinking the foam cubes in my way as I go. Once she’s about halfway across the court, I wrench at the magic in the red cube in front of her. It explodes outward, growing to be about six feet tall. Lex cuts left to avoid it, and then disappears around the obstacle so I can no longer see her.

“Nice try,” she shouts back at me.

But that’s not the end of my plan. I hurl several small blocks in Lex’s direction, enlarging them once they’re almost out of my sight. I’m rewarded with a small oof from Lex.

“Oh, you’re the worst,” she says as I come around the side of the red cube. She’s on the floor, taken down by my now-giant projectiles.

“Thank you,” I say, holding my hand out toward her. “Ball, please.”

She tosses it to me and shimmies out from under the pile of foam. “Do you want to come over for cultural-dinner night after this?”

Lex’s mom and dad cook Filipino food every Sunday to make Lex feel closer to her heritage. Lex is adopted, so her parents, who are both white, make a big effort to help her connect to her culture. It’s a really sweet tradition. Plus, Filipino food is delicious.

I shake my head. “Not tonight. I’m volunteering, and then my mom and I are going to watch Potion Wars.”

“Oh my god, that show is still running?” Lex says.

“Yeah, but we’re just going to watch reruns.”

“Okay. You have to come over soon, though.”

“I will,” I say, and then I take off running toward her goal. This time I manage to score, even though she pulls off an impressive maneuver where she rapidly shrinks and enlarges all the cubes in my path at random. That point takes the score to six for me, and eight for Lex.

On the next play, she immediately pays me back by side-slamming me with a block and sinking the ball into the goal from the two-point line. Then she flops onto the floor. “Okay, I need a break from kicking your ass,” she announces, splaying her limbs out like a starfish.

“You’re on a roll today,” I say as I come to sit next to her.

She flashes me double victory signs. “You know it.”