Page 3 of The Locker Room

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breath. It didn"t matter that he didn"t have a sweatshirt, or that he hadn"t

eaten since yesterday morning. All that mattered was that the ball—his

only possession, stolen from Walmart in a moment of desperation—felt

right in the palm of his hand, and that he could pound it rhythmically

across the cracked blacktop and hear the regular jangle-swish as it blew

through the chains of the basket.

But it was hard to focus when you were that hungry, and when a

voice tried to get his attention, Xander had to squint and concentrate on

where it came from.

“Oh, come on! Aren"t you going to throw it to me?”

Xander was so surprised that he did.

The boy was shorter than him by a good six inches, but was still his

age. His hair was dark blond and wavy, and he wore trendy jeans and a

blue sweatshirt with a print on the front. His eyes were so brown that

from across the court, they looked black. He had a pointed chin with a

cleft in it, and a pouty mouth, and a smile of such cheerful goodwill that

Xander almost felt like heowedit to the kid to give him the ball. Who

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Amy Lane

could resist that bouncy humor, or that amazing happiness, even as the

sky darkened to twilight?

The kid caught the ball easily, and dribbled with a natural grace

toward the basket. He shot and missed, and then shot and scored, and

then looked up with a grin on his wide, smiling mouth. “Well, aren"t we

going to play?”

Why not?

Xander"s hunger was forgotten, and he started to guard the basket.

The kid was good. Not as good as Xander, maybe because he

hadn"t been forced to use a basketball hoop in a park"s vacant lot as

refuge from too many things to count, but he was quick and agile and he

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