Leo sat with that for a long moment. Then he stood up, walked to the pond, and pulled his sneaker out of the sludge. It made a sound like a kiss.
Leo stayed.
There was Devon, the shooter who could drain a three-pointer from anywhere—except when it mattered. The moment a crowd clapped, his hands turned to stone. He was already planning to enlist next fall. “At least the army doesn’t have a scoreboard,” he’d joked in the locker room. No one laughed. loossers
He walked to the far end of the field, where the goalpost rusted and the track was cracked. He sat on the grass and watched the lights of the gymnasium flicker off, one by one. The janitor, an old man named Sal who’d worked at the school since before Leo was born, came out with a bucket of soapy water and a mop.
“I’ve been here thirty-two years. You know how many of those trophies were won by kids who went pro?” Leo sat with that for a long moment
“Yeah.”
There was Marcus, the point guard who had the vision of a chess master but the knees of a man twice his age. He’d torn his ACL sophomore year and never quite came back. He sat on the bench now, an ice pack strapped to his left leg, tracing the playbook with a fingertip he’d never get to use. Leo stayed
It was three minutes to midnight when Leo’s sneaker finally punctured the sludge at the bottom of the pond. The water was the color of old tea, and it swallowed his foot up to the ankle with a wet, sucking sigh. He didn’t pull it out. He just stood there, knee-deep in the muck, and stared at the sinking reflection of the scoreboard.