“But he brought players to Dubai! The first real players. From England, and Australia.”

“I’m not telling you that you can’t play, Ahmed. I just don’t want to play.”

“But that is not the way it is supposed to go.”

“There is no ‘way it’s supposed to go.’ This is just how it’s going.”

Ben had officially changed sports with the Athletic Office. He had called home and told his dad. His dad didn’t blow up, but instead just said, “I think it would be a shame, but you have to make your own choices.” Ben couldn’t decide whether this was an unforgivable abdication of limits-setting or exactly what a good parent was supposed to do.

And then, inevitably, Price found him in the hallway of the Schoolhouse. He gripped the shoulder strap of Ben’s backpack and pulled him with surprising ease into an empty classroom.

“Sit,” said Price.

Ben stayed standing but let his book bag drop to the floor and leaned carefully against a chalkboard.

“Squash lets you out,” Price said. “Don’t you feel that? Isn’t it a relief?”

Ben stayed quiet, but he had remembered that feeling of going down the stadium steps toward the court, as though all his impediments had forgotten him. He could feel Price pressing him to make eye contact, but Ben kept looking at the end of the closest chair leg, where it met the floor. “I just need time away.”

“Is it about your dad? About the courts?”

Ben shrugged. He wanted to convey how simple wrestling seemed.

“All that stuff about your dad, about money, it’s all incidental. It’s all just tissue paper getting between you and what comes out when you play.”

Ben shrugged again.

“I asked you before whether you could kill. That sounds frightening, but ‘killing’ is just another way of saying ‘getting to the last, indivisible grain of experience and acting there.’ Instead of deferring, instead of postponing, saying ‘maybe next time, maybe I’ll do what I need to do in the next struggle,’ you stay in that moment and do what you have to do. If you avoid that, if you avoid learning how to kill like that, you may as well already be dead.”

“But that’s the reason I want to do something else.” Still Ben kept his eyes to himself. “Something where there’s no history. I’ve been waiting for so long to get to school, but so much has gone wrong that I still feel like I’m not here.”

“Ben,” Price said. “Ben.” Now he looked into those eyes.

“History, the money stuff, that isn’t why you’re hiding. You would have looked for another reason. You’ll always find a reason to stay hidden unless you decide you don’t want to be hidden anymore. You can’t wait for things to be ideal.”

Ben stayed quiet.