Good, I thought, glad that I didn’t have to worry about Mum getting to The Village and the game. I remembered how pumped I felt after watching the Lightning with Dad, and then I started to dread seeing Trent. It had been two weeks since the incident and I still hadn’t decided yet if I would talk to his mum. I was worried that I might get arrested for walking straight up to him and kicking him in the balls. I wanted to do that so bad. I was wearing my super comfy LeBrons and thinking about how a bit of Trent’s blood would look good on them.

When I got into the stadium and put my things on the bench, I told myself to snap the hell out of it and try to think about good things, like my new basketball uniform. It was purple and yellow, basically almost the same as the LA Lakers strip. The San Antonio Spurs and the Brooklyn Nets are of course my teams because of Patty Mills, but I liked the Lakers strip too, it looks good.

I said hi to my teammates and then put my headphones in. I approached the basket with Kendrick Lamar’s ‘King Kunta’ blaring in my ears. When I was outside of the three-point line, I threw up a shot and it swished. I ran in to get the rebound, throwing the ball back up to score again.

I dribbled the ball along the edge of the court, practising crossovers and then speeding up before running back in to the basket for another lay-up.

Caroline stepped out of the changing room and walked beneath the net as I went back to shoot for threes. I felt the first trickle of sweat roll down my forehead.

After hitting two three-pointers in a row, I heard Caroline call out, ‘Keep ’em coming.’ I saw Jamie walk into the stadium. He smiled at me and I felt good knowing he was there, in case I did lose my shit with Trent and needed back-up.

When I finally missed, I swapped with Caroline to try to score from the free-throw line. After she’d thrown up a couple of shots, Matilda and Ashley rocked up.

When the whole team was on the court, our coach Suzy asked us to do some simple drills where we just needed to dribble around one of our teammates and then throw up a shot as they placed some light pressure on us.

I looked at our opponents down the other end of the court. They were mostly girls from the public school, made-up of kids from all over the region. A couple of them were really huge. I asked Caroline, ‘What are they like?’