"My friend Kwesi might come. I told him."
"Yeah?"
"He doesn't play. He said he wants to see the sign guy."
Ferrol laughed, a short surprised sound, and it changed his whole face, made him look ten years younger and also somehow sadder. "The sign guy. Okay. Tell Kwesi the sign guy has rackets."
"I already told him."
Ferrol nodded. He held the clipboard out. "You want to be first?"
Ruel looked at it. Then he looked at the board.
At seven, by his phone, he took a piece of yellow chalk from the coffee can and wrote R. ABARA in the Court 4 rectangle beside the painted 8, square capitals, the way he always did. Then he went to the table, and took the pen on its string, and on the clipboard under SAT YOUTH he wrote his name and his age, 16. It looked strange on the paper. Official. Like a record of something.
"You don't need a racket," Ferrol said. "You've got a racket."
"I know."
"That handle's fat as a baseball bat."