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play of his life—unless this idea flopped, and he’d have to come up with more of this bullshit for next week’s meeting.
    Instinctively knowing that some theatrics were in order to reenergize his pitch, he took the art pad and slowly stood on his chair. He was recalling that movie Norma Rae , the scene that made Hutch and his Poli-Sci classmates giggle because they were sure they could see Sally Field’s nipples under her sweaty T-shirt.
    As his colleagues and superiors looked at him curiously, Hutch looked down upon them like Moses cradling the commandments.
    “Gentlemen, I give you the next generation in music television.”
    He displayed Annie’s work, her heart about to burst from her chest. Those gathered there beheld what she had brought forth, what she would not be credited with for nearly six months.
    There was a respectful silence, maybe an impressed gasp or two. It worked. It simply worked.
    R 2 Rev .
    Rap. Rock. Revolution. Perfectly good words bastardized and rendered totally unintelligible, anchored by what would soon be commonly referred to by the creative team as “that little floaty two thing.” Adweek would eventually proclaim it the new Nike swoosh.
    The precise font would be subjected to months of focus testing. The debate over whether it should be “ Rap, Rock , Revolution” or “ Rock, Rap , Revolution” would trigger ferocious battles, which would ultimately be resolved when black staffers—led by that bastard Jeff Bradley—threatened to call in the NAACP and Al Sharpton unless “Rap” got top billing.
    But still. . .
    It looked cool. It sounded cool. Like a hot new drug.
    R 2 Rev .
    Hutch Posner climbed down from his chair into a whole new world.
    He avoided Annie McCullough’s eyes.

Closed
    T hey kept Joel in the hospital for three days, because the bash to the skull had doctors concerned about the severity of the concussion. Every physician Joel saw seemed to delight in telling him that had he crouched three inches lower, the ball would’ve caught him right in the temple and, well, he could be dead.
    Joel, who got hip to irony in ninth grade English, saw the irony here: if he had lowered his stance, done what every coach since age seven had tried to get him to do, despite the fact that the way he stood in the box—rod straight, coiled for action—worked just fine, thank you very much, he’d be just another dead teen. He’d be consigned to the “Lest We Forget” page of the yearbook, like poor old Dennis Stark, who accidentally sliced open his wrist with a box-cutter and bled to death in a dumpster behind Target, trying to save up for a used Toyota.
    There in the hospital bed, Joel snuggled up with his irony, pleased with himself for having ferreted it out on his own, proud—as he was more and more these days—that despite his jock swagger and his hard-partying rep, he was actually getting smarter.
    He wished there was someone in his vast clique with whom to share this wry observation on the capriciousness of life, but the fact was that his entire gang had to rally merely to be defined as something other than retarded. Any mention of the word “irony” to the likes of Wad Wendell would no doubt lead straight into a discussion of Wheaties, as in “I don’t need no iron-y foods like Wheaties since I started bootin’ the andro, dude!”
    But the fact was he wasn’t going to be sharing much with anyone for a long time, anyway. Maybe three months.
    His jaw had been wired shut.
    In addition to losing two permanent lower teeth, the bone and hinge that drove his mouth had been shattered practically to dust. The only way for the mechanics to heal properly—and the doctors had some doubts even then—was to clamp the thing shut and hope for the best. With any luck, he’d get his mouth back in full working order, although athletics were most definitely out of the question at least until next spring.
    Joel had not taken the news well.
    No more tongue, he realized, administered