She heard only three words of their conversation through the noisy crowd. “Check her transfer.” Lily looked up too quickly. Brielle closed the screen and shifted it into her pocket. Imani did not know what they meant.

She had transferred to South Dock after her mother moved across the river to a smaller apartment. Her name was on the roster. Her grades were good. She had attended every practice she could. All the same, she remembered the way Brielle had looked at the painted patch on her old bag.

Rumors could be shaped into accusations, even when they had very little to hold them up. Outside the field house, the rain had stopped. Denise was leaning against the bus shelter with two paper cups of hot chocolate, having traded her evening shift to another worker so she could watch South Dock’s game. She had made it in time for the final quarter. Imani told her about the win and the conversation in the hallway.

Her mother listened without interrupting. “People can ask a school to check records. That doesn’t mean they get to invent what the records say. I wish I didn’t have to think about any of it. I know you came to play, but being prepared for a problem isn’t surrendering to it.”

They boarded the bus together. Imani sat beside Zora, who was studying a photo of the bracket on her phone. One more group game would decide the semi-final seed. Beyond that was a blank space marked final, waiting for two teams nobody could name yet. Imani traced the edge of the photograph with her thumb and heard Coach Ward call from the front.

“Everybody home safe. Tomorrow we take care of the next game, Not the one after it. Imani, put the phone away. The tournament had started with somebody trying to move her off the court. Now other people were talking about moving her off a roster.

She could not yet see how the second threat would reach her. Only that the girls who had pushed her had stopped treating the shove as enough. On the third morning of the Metro Civic Classic, Harbor Ridge woke under a low gray sky and the South Dock gym opened an hour before sunrise. Coach Ward had not ordered anyone to come. She had posted a voluntary shooting time on the team chat and warned that nobody should miss breakfast or the bus just to prove determination.