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class, will find themselves suddenly aching for a splash of wildness and decide to take a cue from the name of the town’s only pizzeria; they will, in fact, go hilltopping after midnight, cars racing eighty miles an hour down some rolling back road. We’re at a table in the back, me and Gabe and the team, orange smears of grease making abstract art of our empty plates. Everyone has gotten so rowdy at this point that the radio might as well be dead. And Hank, the sweaty-faced owner of the pizzeria, keeps glancing up from 31/262
    the pale circles of dough he smears with blood-red sauce, anxious about what all this screaming and toasting and carrying on will mean for him.
    “Better not be a bottle out there,” he shouts, wiping his wet forehead with the back of a hand. Which makes laughter roar out with the force and volume of a V-8 engine revving to life. At my table, Theresa and Megan, our starting point guard and power forward, are acting out a scene from last season. Lily, our small forward, whose skinny frame has always made her look like a tetherball pole no matter how many all-you-can-eat rib dinners she’s consumed, joins in, shooting an imaginary basketball the same way Brandon plays air bass to his favorite songs on the radio. Hannah, our center, who’s built like a highway billboard, launches into belly laughter so fierce her chestnut hair starts to work loose from its ponytail. While the rest of the team rehashes all the highlights of the season, my eyes zip across the newspaper articles pasted on the Hill Toppers’
    walls. I stop when I find the picture of me, number twenty-three, fists pumping the air victoriously after a game back in the spring of my junior year. As I stare at the bold black print of the title that hangs above my picture (FINAL FOUR, HERE WE COME!) , I swear I can feel my Tin Man metal plate and screws scraping against my hipbone. The team could have gone this year, too, without me. But for all their laughing and joyous recapping tonight, we all know it was the worst season in eighteen years of FGH Lady Eagles basketball. And it didn’t matter how many pep talks Tindell barked out in the locker room; the team ran onto the court defeated. Without their star player, they visualized losses rather than wins. They weren’t even present during the last game of the season; Lily pulled a history study sheet out of her gym bag, and Hannah put an iPod bud in one ear. Theresa and Megan wore glassy, distant looks—the kind of expression that usually fills classrooms during long lectures on osmosis. 32/262
    As I stare at the walls, I realize that my picture is actually starting to yellow a little around the edges.
    On the other side of the pizzeria, Bobby Wilcox, yearbook editor and honor roll president, stands up, swaying on his feet. His face turns about as green as the peppers on Hank’s pies as he raises his cup like he’s about to toast the entire class. But before he can get out a single word, his eyes go all doorknob and he turns to the side, gagging and puking up about six slices of pepperoni.
    The cheerleading squad screams in disgust. Three of them actually climb up onto their chairs, as if Bobby’s vomit has feet and can scurry across the floor and climb their bare legs.
    What I notice—what makes me grimace—is the cup. Bobby’s dropped his cup, and it’s rolled across the floor. The brown bubbly puddle, polka-dotted with crushed ice, makes my skin squirm far more than the sight of his half-digested dinner does. I stare at it, keeping watch, thinking that maybe Hank should get some yellow crime scene tape, mark off the area. After all, anyone who was at my last game should know that spilled soda is just as dangerous as knives or bullets or a car with no brakes.
    Staring at the puddle, my head pulses with the memory of the ref’s frantic whistle. I hear, once again, the shocked gasp that rose from the crowd. And I remember my own terrified shriek, which overwhelmed the scream of