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“Jesus,” Sara says as Branley walks past us. “Too cold to show off cleavage, so instead she goes for jeans so tight I can see her thong.”

“She looks nice,” I say, and she does. Branley always looks put together in a way that tells me she spends hours in front of a mirror before going outside. And while I don’t understand that, I can respect it.

Sara looks at Claire like she’s waiting for her to jump in, but Claire only shrugs. “Whatever,” she says, which earns me a dark look from Sara that I don’t understand.

“So you’re thirty points from the school record, right?” Claire says, and Sara’s face lightens a little bit. They talk on about basketball, which switches over to a party last weekend, and then on to something else that I tune out, their combined voices a pleasant drone.

I watch Claire for a moment. The minimal physical damage she took that night at the church has healed entirely. The emotional damage has left a scar, though, bumpy tissue somewhere deep inside her soul. It’s like her naïveté was excised, caution growing back in its place. It’s a good thing. I watch her now, this girl who was so close to the unthinkable, now able to laugh and talk about inconsequential things. Part of me wants to ask her how she has done this, but another part of me already knows the answer.

She started from a better place than me. Claire’s baseline is closer to normal than mine, her beginning a smooth plane while my life has always been peaks and valleys. Sara has taken me to a valley right now. She knows I don’t belong here; something in her senses the wolf in me and would ban it. So I oblige her as much as possible, sinking down into one of the valleys. These are the places my friends can’t follow, and I let Claire’s voice fade away beside me.

Out on the court Jack is playing a pickup game. Even in jeans he’s fluid, his body doing exactly what he wants when he wants it to. I could watch him and find some reassurance, but behind him something else is happening.

There’s a boy in the corner humping a basketball and pretending to climax, his face going through a complex series of contortions. It’s lewd in its accuracy and I can’t stand that I won’t be able to get it out of my head now, what this stranger looks like in his most intimate moment. And I hate that he’s going back to do it again, egged on by his friends, who seem to find some high cleverness in the fact that now he’s behaving as if the basketball is performing oral sex on him.

The teachers see him, I know it. Hendricks looks away and shakes her head; the others roll their eyes when she points it out, but no one stops him. His impropriety has thrown a wall of disgusting around him that no one wants to walk through. And so he keeps doing it.

A few bleachers down, a group of freshmen notice and explode in a chorus of giggles. I don’t think it’s funny but I can’t tear my eyes away. I find myself memorizing his face, my brain cataloging his name when I hear it being tossed around by the girls below me. I shake my head to clear it, finally breaking my line of sight as he finishes, as if it’s vital that he get to the end of his pretend sexual encounter with sports equipment.

I wonder what would happen if I went down there, took a ball out of the cage, and pretended to have sex with it. I think people would stop and look. I think the whole gym would come to a standstill and teachers would definitely interfere. There would be discussions (again) about what exactly is wrong with me that I would do such a thing. I would definitely log some more hours in the guidance office.

But boys will be boys, our favorite phrase that excuses so many things, while the only thing we have for the opposite gender is women, said with disdain and punctuated with an eye roll.

The announcements come on and let us know that all the buses have come in; we can go to class now, resume our daily lives. I’m going to try. I’m going to do my best to get that boy’s face out of my head, to ban the distinct expression that signified his pleasure from my mind so that I can open my locker, get my books, smile at Jack when he touches my elbow.

I’m trying to be normal.

But it is so very hard.

35. JACK

There’s a dead spot on our gym floor, a place where the padding underneath has fallen away from the wood. When a ball hits a dead spot, it doesn’t bounce back right; physics takes over, and talent can’t fight science. You’re thrown off, the millimeter of pushback you were expecting doesn’t come, and from there it’s a domino effect. You lose control of your dribble; the fast break that looked so promising collapses into a turnover that makes you look like an asshole. Except that doesn’t happen to my team because we know exactly where the dead spot is. It’s the definition of home-court advantage, and we’ve needed every ounce of that tonight.

I’m at the foul line, the entire gym a hurricane of sound as the fans on the visiting bleachers scream at me to fail, while the home side screams equally loud in support, all their words merging into a single wall of sound in which nothing is comprehensible. I glance at the clock even though I know there are only a few seconds left. After I take this shot, there’ll be only a tiny sliver of time for the other team to score, our path to the division title easily paved with the passage of one free throw.

If I make it.

My eyes slide off the scoreboard, and in all the waving signs of the bleachers, spinning noisemakers, and screaming people, I spot my Alex, still as a stone, both hands in fists on either side of her face and eyes locked on mine. Around her is chaos, the gym packed with everyone from the point guard’s great-grandma to the local bar owner as the best team we’ve had in a decade closes the books on the regular season. Alex is silent and intense, the exact opposite of everyone around her, yet the only one who has my attention. We could be alone in this moment, and I know before the ball leaves my hands that it’s good.

I go straight for her at the buzzer, ignoring the fans who pour out of the bleachers, the pats on the back, the cheerleaders’ fingernails sliding off my arms. All I want is Alex, and she stands still, waiting for me to come to her. Her skin soaks up my sweat as I hug her, my jersey as stuck to her as it is to me when we finally separate.

People are still screaming all around me; everyone’s got their phones stuck in the air to capture the moment. Kids I don’t even know cram their faces next to mine for selfies. And I’m stoked that we won and I made the shot that did it, but right now my mind is somewhere else entirely, my hand in Alex’s as I thread through the crowd, leading her over to my mom and dad.

“Alex,” I say, pulling her in front of me. “This is my mom and dad. Mom and Dad, this is Alex.”

“Hello,” she says, nodding at both of them. “It’s nice to meet you.”

My mom goes in for a hug, which kinda makes me cringe but Alex lets it happen, her hand stiffening in mine a little, but she doesn’t drop-kick Mom either so it’s not a failure.

“We’re so glad to finally meet you,” my mom says, her hands still on Alex’s shoulders. She actually takes a piece of Alex’s hair and tucks it behind her ear, which I totally understand the urge to do because I’ve done it myself a hundred times, but I shoot her a warning look anyway.

My dad is smart enough to keep his distance, but he smiles at her. “You’re the girl—”

And I swear to God if he says with the dead sister I will fall right through the dead spot in the floor. But instead he finishes with, “—whose car we pulled out of the ditch, aren’t you?”

Alex asks me, “Do you pull a lot of girls’ cars out of ditches?”

I squeeze her hand. “Nope.”