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today.
    Troy was in the middle of some long-winded story when Assistant Coach Stashower stuck his head in the door. “Troy? Coach wants to see you in his office.”
    “I’m just finishing up a joke—”
    “Now, Troy.”
    Everyone made a friendly mocking “oooo” sound as Troy headed out. Then the rest of the guys showered and got dressed. I pretended to check my iPhone for important messages. Ten minutes passed. The guys started to file out with back slaps, figuring out who would ride in whose car, figuring a time to meet up at the Heritage Diner and then hang out at whose house.
    I’d thought that the entire team had left when Brandon Foley came around the corner and sat on the bench next to my locker.
    “Tough practice,” Brandon said.
    I shrugged. “No big deal.”
    “Troy isn’t really such a bad guy.”
    “Yeah,” I said, “he’s a real prince.”
    Brandon smiled at that one. I knew that Brandon Foley was one of the most popular kids in the school. He was president of the student council, president of the Key Club, president of the local chapter of the National Honor Society, and as I mentioned before, co-captain (with Troy) of the basketball team.
    You know the type. Good guy, but he wants everyone to like him.
    “You need to understand the situation,” Brandon said.
    “Uh-huh,” I said.
    “It’s mild hazing,” Brandon said. “You’re the only sophomore.”
    It was a lot more than mild hazing, but I didn’t see much point in continuing with this conversation.
    “Mickey?”
    “What?”
    “You know that this team won the county championship last year, right?”
    “Yes,” I said.
    “And that we were within one game of winning the states,” Brandon continued. “Do you know how long it’s been since Kasselton High actually won it?”
    I did. The big win was memorialized all over the walls of the gym in the form of banners and retired jerseys. Twenty-five years ago, Uncle Myron, the school’s all-time leading scorer and rebounder, led the Kasselton Camels to their only state championship. One of his teammates—the
second
leading scorer and
second
leading rebounder on that team—was none other than Edward Taylor, Troy’s father. He was now the town sheriff.
    Bad blood across two generations.
    “What’s your point?” I said.
    “The point is, last year our team started five juniors, so we’re all back. The five of us have all played together since we were Biddy All-Stars in fifth grade. Troy, Buck, Alec, Damien, and me—we grew up together. We’ve been the starting five since we were eleven years old. This may not seem like a big deal to you.”
    But it did seem like a big deal. I never had anything like that. My parents had lived overseas my entire life. We jumped from place to place, country to country, mostly in the Third World. We lived the life of nomads, backpacking, setting up tents, living in small villages. I had no idea what it was like to have friends like that. As I said before, Ema and Spoon were my best friends ever, and I had only known them a few weeks.
    “So now,” Brandon said, in his calm, rational, mature voice, “the five of us are seniors. This will be our last year together. We will go off to college and never be on the same team again. We’ve been waiting for this moment pretty much our whole lives. And now, because of you, one of us won’t be a starter anymore.”
    “You don’t know—”
    Brandon held up a hand. “Please, Mickey, let’s not play humble. You know how good you are. I know how good you are. Troy has always been our leading scorer and best player. Soon it will be you. So he knows it too. You’ve been at this school, what, a few weeks. In that time, you’ve taken his girlfriend and soon you’ll have his spot on the team.”
    He was talking about Rachel. I wanted to correct him—I hadn’t taken her away and she wasn’t my girlfriend—but maybe it was better to just stay quiet.
    Brandon stood. “Give him time to get used to that,