Zach was already coming up the bleachers. But when he heard Crosby call to him, he stopped and appeared to cower.

“You heard me, Wack,” Crosby growled, and pointed at the space in front of him. “I want you here.”

Zach hung his head and climbed up to the spot where Crosby wanted him to sit. Emma felt bad. For as long as she could remember, there had been anti-bullying programs in school. Teachers talked about it in class, and there wasn’t a hall you could walk down without seeing anti-bullying posters. If Crosby didn’t get the message, it was because he didn’t want to.

The gym doors opened again, and Caleb came in. He stopped at the bottom of the bleachers and scanned the crowd. Emma knew he was looking for her. She yearned to wave, but the thought of what Mackenzie might say terrified her. She was certain that if she let Caleb sit next to her, Mackenzie would take a picture and post it along with some malicious comment. So she ducked down and hoped Caleb wouldn’t see her.

Caleb had never seen the gym bleachers so packed. The assembly was about to begin, and when he couldn’t find Emma in the crowd, he sat down in a bleacher aisle. Kids weren’t supposed to sit in the aisles, but no one seemed to care much about rules anymore.

While Principal Summers told the students to quiet down and get ready for “a delightful and inspiring assembly,” Caleb thought back to what had just happened in the hall. When he told Ms. B about Crosby’s plan to cheat on the geometry test, she said she already knew about it. But how? Who could have told her before he had? He gazed at the many red and white football banners that hung on the gym walls: Middle School State champions. Conference Champions. State Runner-Up. It wasn’t easy to feel delighted or inspired about school now that they’d lost their football team.

“Okay, everyone,” Principal Summers shouted enthusiastically, “let’s give it up for one of our most famous Ironville alumni, Harry the Hoopster!”

Out of the boys’ locker room came a skinny, bow-legged, gray-haired guy wearing long white basket shorts and a baggy white jersey. He was dribbling two basketballs at once. The bleachers went silent. Caleb imagined that most of the crowd was thinking: Is this for real?

Caleb had never heard of Harry the Hoopster, who looked old and bony enough to be his grandfather. Scratch that. Harry looked ancient enough to be Caleb’s great-grandfather. His wrinkled and saggy skin was practically the color of milk. He was so pale, it looked like he hadn’t been out in the sun since the invention of Pac-Man. Tufts of hair poked out around the neckline of his jersey like small white weeds.

Caleb understood that the school wanted to keep students engaged now that the football program had been cut. But was hiring an old coot who could barely stand up straight the best way to do that? Just then, one of the basketballs Harry was dribbling bounced away, and he had to chase it. Snickers rippled across the bleachers.