The threat had occupied so much of the tournament that she had forgotten the word forward could belong to hope as well as fear. “Yes,” she said at last. “I’m scared, but yes. She’s really good. I want to see if we can beat her. We?

We. Denise smiled and turned on the heater. At home, Imani put her shoes beside the bed and checked the old turquoise stitch in the left tongue. She packed a clean uniform, a notebook, a spare pair of socks, and the permission forms she no longer expected to need. Then she slept with a basketball game waiting on the other side of morning.

Not an argument she had to win in a hallway. The finals began long before the opening whistle. It began when South Dock stepped off the bus and found a line of spectators stretching around the Civic Field House. “Don’t do that again.” One of volunteer pointed them toward a side entrance while Mariner bus drew up under the main banner.

And when Ward asked the volunteer to check the same team access list used for every high school, it began when a little boy in South Dock colors shouted that he wanted number 12’s autograph, and Imani nearly turned around to see which number 12 he meant. In the locker room, Zora set her bag down and looked around at her teammates. Mina had a hand on her stomach. Marisol was stretching a pair of socks she had already worn twice. A reserve named Alana sat with her eyes closed, breathing in counts of four.

Nobody looked like a person in a poster. They looked like girls who had played too many games in four days and still wanted one more. Ward shut the door. Outside, this is a story about which school looks like a champion. In here, we have a real basketball game to play.

Mariner can score in transition. Their guards rotate quickly, and Voss turns small mistakes into big ones. Our job is not to prove we’re worthy of standing in the same room. We’re already on the schedule. Our job is to make good choices together.

She distributed folded cards, one to each starter. Imani’s listed three things. Keep the dribble alive against the trap. Watch Brielle’s lead shoulder, not her eyes. Call out defensive assignments before the screen arrives.

They were not secrets. They were skills she had practiced and sometimes forgotten under pressure. A card did not make those things happen. It made them harder to ignore. Denise waited in the public lobby with Tasha and Ada.