“Okay, Mary Jane,” I said. “But when I actually paid attention in biology, I learned about this thing called the theory of evolution. Animals are born with mutations all the time, and some of those mutations are good, like when one leopard is faster than the others or one wolf has sharper teeth. Those are the animals that live longer and pass the good mutations down to their kids.”

“Jordan, you’ve discovered Darwin!” Maggie exclaimed.

I didn’t want to be annoyed with her, so I plowed ahead. “Radiation could lead to good mutations, right? Isn’t it possible that a dose of radiation could make some of us, I dunno, better—even as it makes some animals completely loco?”

“Jordan,” she said, taking my hand between hers in a way that felt more motherly than romantic, “your genes are your genes, and they didn’t get mutated because of possible exposure to radiation. Are you trying to say that you think the meltdown has made you a better football player?”

“It wasn’t a meltdown. It was a nuclear plant explosion.”

“Answer the question!” She let go of my hand, which was a bummer.

“Honestly?” I said. “I’m better than I used to be, and there’s no good reason for it. I’m faster. I’m stronger. While I was lifting yesterday, I bench-pressed forty more pounds than I ever had. How does that happen?”

“You’re a year older. You’ve got a year’s more muscle. Come on, you’re a college football fan. You can tell the difference between the freshmen and the seniors. You’re a growing boy, Jordan. And you exercised in the sick camp.”

“I also broke lots of bones,” I said. “I jogged as part of my physical therapy, but there wasn’t a weight room. It was a camp with lots of hospital beds for people with radiation sickness.”

“Well,” she said, “maybe radiation could make your tendons tighter or springier or whatever to make you faster, but it didn’t teach you the instincts to play football better. That’s on you.”

“What about the fight?”

“Radiation definitely didn’t teach you mixed martial arts.”

Well, someone did, I thought.

“Did you go to practice today?” she asked, her head tilted back to take in the stars.

“I did.”

“Was that such a good idea with your concussion and all?”

“I know,” I said. “But I felt fine. More than fine. It was weird, like I’ve been saying.”

It was amazing, actually—as if someone had flipped a switch in my head, and I could read the defense like a kids’ board book. I could tell who was coming after me and could see the whole field and calculate each movement. When the offensive line missed a coverage, I found a solution—every time. At first I thought it was because I used to be on the defense and knew their plays already. But this was more than that. It was like I was plugged in and could keep track of what every one of the twenty-one other guys on the field was doing at all times. During drills, I never missed a pass, and when we scrimmaged, I completed eighteen of twenty, with my two misses due to receivers dropping balls.