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the neighbors didn’t need our racket while they were having dinner, getting homework done, or watching the evening news.
    But everything was different tonight. No one came out to tell me anything.
    It was impossible to focus on what lay ahead. Instead, I continued to bounce the ball and wonder what I had been doing when my parents found out it was cancer. Where I’d been when they were getting tests done, seeing doctors, and worrying about what would happen.
    I took a shot, pushing the anger out of me, smacking the ball against the garage just above the hoop. I thought about myself at the game that day. I shot again, missed again, the ball rattling off the rim. I remembered practices where I had joked with my friends. I shot basket after basket, trying not to think about all the times I’d had fun, all the times when I’d cared about nothing but the fight to win, while my parents were fighting to save Mom’s life.
    I slammed my basketball against the side of the garage.
    I hated it. I hated basketball.
    I hated it because I’d loved it. And by loving it, I hadn’t noticed anything else happening around me. Basketball had made me selfish and blind.
    The ball felt solid in my hands. The little bumps in the texture sunk into my palms as I squeezed it.
    â€œI’m done with basketball,” I yelled to the sky, a purple night where wisps of clouds brushed against the moon before moving on to taunt the stars. A night too nice for anyone to hear news like this. It should be raining and storming and awful out when you learn your mom is dying.
    â€œI’m quitting basketball,” I yelled to the windows in the neighborhood, some dark, some full of light, as people went on with their normal routines as if the world hadn’t changed.
    I waited for Dad to join me, to explain what was going on, to promise we weren’t going to lose Mom. Dad always stood up for me. He was the one who sweet-talked Mom into letting me stay up past my bedtime to watch the end of a basketball game or skip a day  of school to  take a trip with him to scout a rival school’s team. Dad was the one who explained the world when I was confused. Dad was always there when I needed him. So I waited for him to come out and be there for me on the night I needed him the most.
    I threw the ball at the garage over and over, waiting for him, the bouncing of the ball his cue to join me.
    Sweat dripped into my eyes and my arms ached, but I kept shooting at the hoop.
    I waited for him until I finally collapsed in a heap of exhaustion, not sure if it was from the news about my mother or from Dad, who for the first time in my life had left me standing in the driveway alone.

Chapter 5
    Ali’s friend Jenna joined us at lunch on the first day. I’d noticed her in my second-period class because she rushed in when the bell rang and took a seat in the back, leaving behind a scent of vanilla and cigarettes. She was tiny with long, thick hair so black the lights reflected in its shine. Her eyes were green like my neighbor’s cat and her face was covered with freckles. I half expected her to say hello to me with an Irish accent.
    â€œJenna and I have been friends since seventh grade, when our parents forced us to take a junior lifesaving course at the pool,” Ali said.
    â€œBut you were more interested in laying out in the sun than learning how to save lives,” Jenna shot back. She sat with her legs tucked under her and a sketchbook on her lap. She doodled flowers all over a blank page.
    â€œA lot of good that did,” Ali muttered. “We had to wear one pieces, and I got awful tan lines.”
    I liked the two of them, and on the second day at lunch I headed to the same table. I didn’t ask if I could sit but dropped my tray on the table as if I belonged there.
    A few other girls joined the three of us. They gossiped about classmates, pointing out some of them, and tried to fill me