The boy shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans and shook his head. “I’ll see you around,” he threw at Ashna, and started to walk away.

The coach ran after him. “Hold up a minute. I’m Coach Clarence. And you are?”

He looked over the coach’s shoulder and saw Ashna still watching him. How could anyone look away from him?

“Frederico.” He did not add a last name, and he looked straight at her when he said it.

Ashna’s insides did a skipping thing she had never experienced before. His name melted on his tongue and seemed to flow through her blood. A ripple of something too sensitive for comfort ran across her skin. She blushed, and his brows did that curious folding-together thing again.

“I want you to try out for the team tomorrow,” Coach Clarence said.

The tryouts had closed months ago. Coach had never taken on a player midseason. The man barely spared a glance for anyone, and Ashna had never heard him use that tone. Not even with his star players.

“Four P.M. tomorrow. My office, Mr. Frederico.” He held out his hand again and kept it there until the boy took it.

Coach Clarence shook his hand with both of his, the way fans shook the hands of celebrities, and went back to the pitch beaming.

“You’re not going to go to his office tomorrow, are you?” she said.

“Did you want me to go?” Another question.

Why would I care? That was the logical thing to say. I always want you to do what makes you happy. That was what she really wanted to say, but it made no sense to have that thought about a stranger.

In the end she said, “Why don’t you want to play?”

This speaking-in-questions affliction had to be contagious.

Ashna counted her breaths as he looked at her for what felt like the longest moment ever. How had she thought his eyes held nothing? She couldn’t even remember the person who’d had that thought. In the space of ten minutes she had forgotten who she was before he had found her. Before he said his name that way, all those consonants tilting up at the ends, as though the language she had spoken forever had suddenly become poetic, potent, beautiful.

For the first time in Ashna’s life she was aware of the air around her. There was a glow to it, all the particles shimmery glitter. She looked down at her feet to make sure they were still on the ground and wiggled her toes inside her shoes. It felt so much like floating that finding her feet not dangling in the air was bit of a shock.

It wasn’t until he answered her question that she knew her life would never again be the same.

“Maybe I don’t want to play for the same reason that you were hiding beneath those bleachers?”