"They're too small for me," he said. "Those. I already checked. I'm an eleven."
"I know," said Wyn. "I wasn't going to give them to you. You'd ruin them."
"You ruined them."
"I broke them in," Wyn said. "There's a difference."
Torin laughed then, just once, out through his nose, and it was so exactly Coach Pennock's laugh on the bench that first Monday, and so exactly Wyn's laugh at the card table, that Tavo had to look away at the wall for a second.
Then Wyn stood up. He took the ball from under Torin's arm, and walked it out to the chalk mark eighteen yards from the wall, and set it down on the wet asphalt. He stood over it for a moment. He looked back at his brother.
"Okay," Wyn said. "Show me what you got."
Torin sat on the curb and looked at the ball and at the crooked orange square seven feet up the wall, and Tavo saw his jaw work, and saw his hands tighten on the cleats in his lap.
"Top corner?" Torin said.
Wyn shook his head.
"Wherever you want," he said. "It's your shot."
Torin sat there a second longer. Then he bent and started to put his cleats on, and Tuli went and stood under the square with his arms spread wide, and Tavo moved over on the curb to make room, and the sun came up over the almond orchards, and the cannery smell drifted over from across the freeway, and on the curb between them the grocery bag sat folded over twice, with its nineteen red stitches inside, and nobody knew yet what was going to happen to it. Whether Wyn would call Coach Pennock back. Whether he would come to the first game on Friday night and stand at the fence, or park behind the snack bar, or not come at all. Whether the man with the stopwatch would climb to the top of the bleachers and see him there, and what he would say if he did.
Nobody knew any of that. It was six-thirty in the morning. Torin Brackett tied his laces, stood up, stamped once on the asphalt to feel the studs, and walked out to the ball.