At 8:04, a girl came walking down Sumac.
She was maybe twelve, thin, in a puffy purple coat that was too big for her and leggings and sneakers with no socks, and she walked the way kids walk when they are going somewhere they are not sure they are allowed to go, slowly, looking at everything, ready at any moment to turn around and pretend that was where they had been headed all along. She had a folded piece of paper in her hand. Ruel could see from across the courts that it was one of the flyers.
She stopped at the edge of the gravel. She looked at the table. She looked at the big man in the sweatshirt sitting behind it. Ruel saw her see him. He saw her do a kind of arithmetic.
Ferrol saw it too. Ruel watched him see it. And he watched Ferrol, very slowly, not stand up. Stay sitting, so he would be smaller. Put both of his hands flat on the table where anybody could see them.
"Morning," Ferrol said. "You here for tennis?"
The girl did not answer. She looked past him, at the board. At the strip of old white paint with the red capitals, SAT 8-10 CT 4 YOUTH HOLD, and under it, SPONSOR F-217. ASK AT DESK.
"It says ask at desk," she said.
"It does."
"Is that the desk?"
"That's the desk," said Ferrol. "That's what the sign says."
She looked at the poster board, at the shaky red letters. She looked at the box of rackets. She looked at Ruel, standing at the gate with his fat-handled Wilson, a Black kid only a few years older than she was, and something in her face loosened a little. Not all the way.