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already, and graduation is looming so close that my cap and gown are hanging on the closet door.
    “We were just watching TV,” Brandon says.
    When Dad turns toward him, his face softens. “Just keep it down a little, ’kay, bud? Don’t wake your mom.”
    Brandon nods.
    “ Bud ,” I sneer when Dad disappears. “Of course.”
    “Chelse, he just doesn’t—”
    I push play again.
    “You don’t exactly make it easy on him, you know,” Brandon insists.
    “Gimme a break.”
    As we stare each other down, I notice the cowlick that frays out from the crooked part in Brandon’s unruly hair. He tries to gel it into something like order during the day, but by evening, it’s always worked its way loose. Reminds me of the times when he was little, when it always stuck out in about three hundred directions; Mom could never get it to lie down. I think for a minute that if I could just stare long enough, Brandon’s cowlick might actually make him look seven years old again. 14/262
    Which would make me nine—a girl who’d only just begun to peel back her talent. A girl at the beginning of her story. But the scruff on his chin and the silver hoops in his ears, which he wears even when he sleeps, won’t let me play make-believe. Won’t let me fantasize that I’m not a has-been who gets her only exercise at the Springfield YMCA pool, swimming laps in a lane marked by ropes and floaters while the white-haired AARP geezers do water aerobics nearby. That I’m not the girl those geezers bestow their wrinkly smiles upon while they wave, flapping their floppy triceps, like I’m one of them. Part of their fragile group.
    Which I am. Which is why I haven’t stepped onto a basketball court in more than six months. Which is why I’m reduced to watching old footage of myself like a washed-up, middle-aged used-to-be with zero prospects.
    “Forget it,” Brandon says finally, turning away. “You’re hopeless.”
    I turn the volume up just to spite both Brandon and Dad. “Shut the door on your way out,” I call.
    On the TV, Gabe scribbles something in his notebook just as a chant erupts. Hearing it, Gabe flashes that killer smile of his; on cue, my belly turns into a wobbly wad of strawberry preserves. Gabe drops his pen onto the notebook on his lap and starts clapping, his angelic tenor providing harmony to the deep baritone just one row behind. The camera swivels until Brandon zooms in on Dad, whose face is flushed with excitement and happiness and even … the idea is as distant as my first day of kindergarten, but there it is just the same: pride.
    “Take it to the key,” Dad and Gabe and Brandon start to repeat in unison, like they’re singing the chorus of their favorite song. “Take it to the key .” I swear, Dad’s so worked up that the fringe of his pepper-gray hair is even sweaty.
    15/262
    “She decide on Tennessee or UConn yet?” the father of my elementary school best friend shouts, tapping Dad on the shoulder. And Dad—maybe not exactly an All-American himself, but a former ball player who used to put his daughter on his enormous ex-jock shoulders so she could dunk her first basket, who let her stand up in his lap so she could see the court when he took her to watch her first college game, who bought her that first pair of high-tops—turns toward him and grins. “Neither, yet. I’m voting for Tennessee, though. Closer to home.”
    Take it to the key.
    Everyone’s chanting it. Everyone sitting in the home section, anyway. “Take it to the key.” Only that’s not really what they’re saying. They’re not really talking about the tongue formed by the boundaries of the foul lane, the free throw line, the end line. They’re talking about me . Chelsea Keyes. A clever pun.
    “Come on, Chel- sea !” Dad shouts, just before he sticks his fingers in his mouth and whistles.
    Take it to the Keyes. It’s like I’m still in that gym, the way those words knock on my eardrums. And I swear, I can still feel the