Chapter 1: Fourth Row, End of the Aisle

Ellis Ward got to the activity center at six forty and took the fourth row, end of the aisle, where the concrete steps went up beside the fire door.

They had put a new roof on the place in the fall and resealed the floor at the same time, and the sealer still came up through the vents when the heat kicked on. It smelled like a new car with the windows shut.

The gym was free to use and always had been, which was why the whiteboard by the front desk had court times written out to March in three colors of dry-erase marker, names crossed out and written over each other. At this rate the town was going to need a second gym.

He had until seven thirty—what was left of the game, and none of the chairs afterward.

They were in the third quarter. Winterbourne in navy, Kingsley in gray and white. Winterbourne’s own floor was being replaced, which was why a college team was playing a game in a town gym.

He knew the Winterbourne players by their shoulders and by the way they walked back on defense, and there was one out there he didn’t know.

She was not the tallest one on the floor and she was not the loudest. She was just early. Every ball that came loose, she was already where it was going to land, and by the time anybody else arrived she had it and was going the other way. She did not hurry. That was the part Ellis kept watching. Everybody else on that floor was hurrying.

He counted possessions. Kingsley had it, lost it on the wing, and Winterbourne came back and the new one took it up the middle and didn’t pass, and four seconds later the ball went through and the net moved and none of it had looked difficult.

He counted the clock. Four twelve in the third. Then three forty. Then two.

There was a timeout and the Winterbourne players came to the bench and one of them pulled her jersey up over her face and came back out from under it wet. The patch at the back of her neck had lifted at one corner and gone gray with sweat, and she pressed it flat with two fingers without looking at anybody. A teammate held a bottle out at arm’s length. She took it standing and drank half of it.

Sweat came off them in the first ten minutes and hit the floor and made a noise. After that the floor was too slick for it to make any noise at all.

Ellis was the only one in the bleachers. He had the row to himself in both directions. Somebody’s jacket had been left on the seat two rows down and it stayed there the whole game.

Early in the fourth a ball came off the rim and rolled to the wall under the bleachers and stopped. He sat still. A Kingsley player came and got it and went back without looking up.

In the last minute the new one stopped shooting. She brought the ball up and held it at the top of the key and let the clock run down, and the Kingsley guard came out to her and then stopped four feet away and stood there with her hands down.

The horn went at five past seven.

Kingsley had three baskets. Three, for the whole game. They had come out at the start of the fourth looking like a team that had agreed not to talk about it, and then they had stopped looking like anything.

The Winterbourne bench came off in a line in the same navy warm-ups, crest on the left chest, and the woman with the cooler was already holding out ice bags before the players were off the floor.

Somebody on the Kingsley side said, “Must be nice.”

Somebody else said, “That’s what the tuition buys.”

The Kingsley coach was writing on his clipboard with his back turned and his players walked past him to the water.

Ellis should have gone then. He looked at his watch. Seven oh six. The line was seven thirty. The walk took fifteen minutes if he didn’t stop.

Down at the baseline two of them were still out on the floor. The shorter one nudged the other with an elbow and then raised her chin at the fourth row. She didn’t point.

Ellis didn’t move. His hands were in his jacket pockets and he kept them there.

“Fourth row,” the shorter one said. She wasn’t quiet about it. The gym had emptied out enough that a voice carried, and hers carried. “Don’t look. Okay. You looked.”

“I looked.”

“He hasn’t looked at anything else since halftime.”

“He’s watching the game.”

“He’s watching you play the game. There’s a difference and you know there’s a difference.” She shifted her weight. “That’s the guy who’s here every time. Every single one. One winter there was ice all the way from the lot to the door and he was in the same seat. Two years, three years maybe. Never talks to anybody. Comes alone.”

“Okay.”

“If it’s a bad game he sleeps. Actually sleeps. Head back, mouth open. I’ve seen it. If it’s good, he doesn’t.” She lifted her chin again. “So.”

The other one had her warm-up half on already, one arm in and one arm out. “I don’t need him to think I played well.”

“That’s not what I said.”

“Go shower.” The other one got her second arm in and pulled the zipper to her chin. “My brother’s called three times. I have to go get him.”

“He’s got shoulders, though,” the shorter one said, more or less to herself. “Not an omega. Beta, probably. Hard to tell from here.”

The two of them went through the tunnel and the door banged once behind them and then the gym was just the sound of the chairs.

At seven fifteen the staff started stacking at the far end. Ellis stood up.

He sat back down.

He looked at the free-throw line and the two wet footprints somebody had left on it, and he counted back through the quarter without meaning to.

Then he looked at his watch. Seven nineteen.

He went down the steps two at a time, pushed the bar on the fire door, and came out into air that was cold enough to feel like a wall. The lot was half full. He crossed it without stopping, went around the far side of the building where the light was out, and came out on the street.

At the corner he looked at his watch again and then he ran.