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tiny cone, walked to the other side of the court, and placed it on the far corner of the baseline.
    Without hesitation, all the kids pushed and shoved their way toward the cone. Before Maya knew what was happening, she was dead last.
    â€œYou need to hit it with a tweener.” Silence. It was like a bomb dropped on the crowd.
    A tweener was a ball you hit between your legs while running away from the net. Maya knew that because every timeshe’d tried one, she’d nailed herself in the kneecaps. Her last tweener bruise had been shaped like Africa.
    â€œHere we go!” The coach fed the first ball, a deep lob that the first kid had to run to the back of the court to catch up with. He swung … and missed. The coach fed a ball to the next girl, who missed, too. More swings, more misses. The longer Maya waited, the more she thought about that money. She could buy a new everything with it. Finally, it was her turn.
    She chased after the ball, swung … and missed.
    The rotation started again. Again, it was one miss after the next. It was hard enough to hit a tweener, but to make it land in just the right spot was impossible. Maya went again. And missed.
    With every miss, the tension increased exponentially. Whoever won was going to have insane bragging rights. They all wanted the kill and they wanted it bad.
    Maya went again. She chased the ball. And hit the tweener! No bruise! But when the ball landed on the other side, it missed the cone by five feet. Maya wanted to scream.
    â€œWhat’s this?”
    Everyone turned.
    Nicole.
    A hush fell.
    â€œKnock the cone over with a tweener,” the coach said, “and get a grand credit at the pro shop.”
    Nicole narrowed her eyes on the cone. “Let me borrow that,” she said to the kid with the three-year-old racket. He handed it to her.
    The coach fed her a deep high ball. Nicole ran for it, hit the tweener … and nailed the cone. One try .
    â€œWe have a winner!” the coach said, retrieving the cone.
    The other kids were both gutted and in total awe.
    â€œI already get my rackets and clothes paid for,” Nicole said. “A store credit is worthless to me. Tell you what, I’ll give it to whoever washes and details my car.”
    A wild offer, made more wild by the kids who all leaped at it. Maya didn’t beg, mostly because if she was going to be friends with Nicole (which clearly had to happen), she couldn’t be spit-shining her wheels. It was a sacrifice she felt in her gut as a lucky girl got the thousand dollars and the privilege of washing Nicole King’s car.
    Still, Maya wanted to hurl herself at Nicole, tell her what an amazing job she did and, oh, PS, profess her love. But there were too many kids between them. In an instant, Nicole was gone. As the other kids went back to their courts to keep practicing, Maya vowed two things: to master that trick shot and to be ready the next time Nicole came her way.
    A quick break, and Maya was back on the court. With no coach to feed her balls, she was forced to bust out the big guns. Well, one big gun. A ball machine.
    Maya had only hit with a ball machine a few times. It was a luxury back home, so it was wheeled out only on special occasions. Even then, it was the guy at the club who set it up. Maya knew somewhere deep down that it wasn’t overly complicated, which made the fact that she couldn’t figure it out that much more maddening.
    Florida was two things: scorching hot and witheringly humid. Maya was already dripping with sweat after ten minutes of trying to turn the stupid machine on. Finally it kicked in, but getting it to launch balls with the right kind of spin, speed, and angle required a PhD.
    As she loaded balls and watched them shoot out everywhere but where she wanted them, she caught sight of something that froze her where she stood.
    Travis Reed.
    Travis was standing by the fence. Out of his football uniform and in an Academy T-shirt and