For an instant, the goon squad was still. Crosby and his friends looked astonished that Emma had raised her voice at them. Now Emma felt anxious. She didn’t know what to expect. Would they laugh and ignore her demand? Or crowd in even closer? But they did neither. Instead, Gavin took a step back. And when he did, Crosby and the rest followed.

“So, uh, what do you think about having permanent sides?” Crosby asked without his previous bluster.

“I’ll ask my squad what they think,” Emma replied.

“I thought you were the captain,” Mackenzie needled. “Why can’t you just decide yourself?”

“That’s not the way we do it on our squad,” Emma answered, trying to stand tall—well, as tall as someone who was five foot two could stand—and looking Mackenzie straight in the eye.

It was raining, so they stayed inside for gym. Ms. Patrick had them all sit on the floor. She was dressed in a blue tracksuit, a whistle hanging around her neck.

“I hear that money is going missing from gym lockers,” she said. “How many times do I have to remind you to lock your lockers after you change into your gym clothes? That’s why they’re called lockers, folks. Because you’re supposed to lock them. Now choose captains for capture the flag.”

There were four captains in capture the flag, and Caleb was one of them. For as long as he could remember, whenever kids chose up teams, Zach was always among the last to be picked. It didn’t matter that he was agile and fast. No one wanted him. It was true that sometimes Zach spaced out and appeared to forget what was going on. But as soon as Ms. Patrick called him out, he’d get right back into whatever game they were playing.

So today, instead of letting Zach be one of the last chosen, Caleb made him one of the first. To his surprise, Zach winced unhappily. Caleb was perplexed. He thought getting picked early would make Zach feel good. Why was the kid acting like he wished he had not been picked at all?

Some girls didn’t like gym because they got sweaty or it messed up their hair and makeup. Emma didn’t care about that, but she did care about being compared to her sister, Sarah, who was six years older. Sarah was now a freshman at college on a soccer scholarship, but she could have excelled at any sport. As a result, Emma had spent most of her school career being compared to her remarkable sister, and not always in a good way.

And Emma had a particular dislike for capture the flag. It was a game in which punchers, trippers, and shovers were on the loose, and Ms. Patrick’s eyes couldn’t be everywhere at once. Emma had seen kids hurt others when the gym teacher wasn’t looking. She anxiously scanned the players, trying to spot the ones she’d need to avoid. Fortunately, Mackenzie, who almost always found an excuse for not dressing for gym, was one of half a dozen kids sitting in the bleachers still wearing their school clothes. So that at least was good news.