But in a cold, clear part of her mind she hadn't known about until right then, she noticed that he had used a word she could pick up and use.
"All right," she said.
Whit blinked. "All right what?"
"All right, I'll fight back." She pointed past the shed, past the wax myrtles, toward the green canvas windscreen of Court One. "Over there. You and me. A real match."
For a second nobody said anything at all. Then Trip laughed so hard he had to bend over with his hands on his knees.
"Oh my God," he said. "Oh my God, Whit. She wants to play you."
"She's serious," Bryce said. "Look at her. She's serious."
Whit lowered the racket. He looked at her the way you'd look at a wasp that had landed on your arm: not scared, exactly, but deciding.
"You know who I am?" he said.
"You're Whit Langford. You won the juniors. Your picture's in the pro shop." She held out her hand for the racket. "And you just dared me."
"I didn't dare you to—"
"You said fight back. I'm fighting back." She kept her hand out. It wasn't shaking. She would think about that later, that it wasn't shaking, and be amazed. "Unless you think I'd beat you."
That got Trip again. Even Bryce snorted. But Whit's face did the thing again, the opening and shutting, and then he put the racket in her hand, handle first, the way you're supposed to hand somebody a knife.
"Fine," he said. "You want to embarrass yourself in front of the whole club, that's your business."
"It's not going to be in front of the whole club," Bryce said. "It's going to be, like, us."