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letter. I just wanted to slip away away where nobody would be looking at me, but I knew finishing the letter was my only way out. There were just a couple more lines.
    â€œâ€˜We know you’re all great Raptors fans and will continue to support the team. Sincerely, Christina Allison, Director of Community and Public Relations.’ ”
    I slinked back to my desk, eyes down, not wanting to look at anybody. I felt awful. It was the sort of feeling you get when you miss a free throw—an important free throw—and every eye in the gym is on you.
    I was still holding the letter. I wanted to ball it up and throw it in the garbage can—but I’d probably miss. Besides, I couldn’t do that. I slipped it into my binder, where I wouldn’t have to see it.
    â€œThank you for reading the letter, Nick,” Mrs. Orr said. “And that certainly was a successful letter.”
    â€œDid I miss something?” Kia asked. “Just how was that successful?”
    I wanted to know the answer to that question myself. Probably everybody in the class wanted to hear what she was going to say.
    â€œWhile no Raptor is going to come to the school, that doesn’t mean that your letters were unsuccessful,” Mrs. Orr said.
    â€œBut how was it successful?” Kia asked again.
    â€œThe business received your letter, understood your request and replied to your request.”
    â€œBut they said no,” I said.
    â€œThey did say no, but they did reply, and that’s the thing that made your letters successful.”
    I guess anything could be a success if you aimed low enough, and this was pretty well as low as you could aim.

Chapter Four
    Practice was light and fun, and everybody seemed happy. A win could have that effect. We’d won our game by one point. It was a last-minute shot by me. A lucky, desperate shot that had no right to go in but did. Everybody on the team had celebrated like we’d won the championship instead of beating a team that was almost as bad as us. It wasn’t like either team was really good enough to win, but we couldn’t both lose. Still, it was better to beat a bad team than lose to one.
    I put up a shot and it missed everything, even the netting. Major air ball. I just hoped nobody had—
    â€œGlad you didn’t do that in the game yesterday,” Kia suggested.
    Obviously one pair of eyes saw me miss.
    â€œWe both had a pretty good game.”
    â€œWe both had a great game,” she said quietly. She leaned in even closer. “Which is the only reason we won.”
    â€œYeah, I guess we’ll just have to play that way every game and we’ll—”
    â€œStill lose most of our games.”
    â€œWhat?”
    She pulled me into the corner away from everybody.
    â€œDo you really think that was a good team we beat?” she asked.
    â€œNo, of course not. They were bad.”
    â€œAnd we still almost lost to them. Unless we hope that every team is terrible, we’re in trouble.”
    â€œWe’re getting better with each practice,” I suggested.
    â€œWe’re getting better because we were so bad we had no place to go but up.”
    â€œYou two decided to take a mid-practice break?” Mr. Roberts asked as he came up behind us.
    â€œWe were just talking…talking strategy,” Kia lied.
    â€œAnd what did you come up with?”
    Oh good, let’s tell him that our strategy is that we hope all the other teams play worse than we do.
    â€œWe were thinking it would be good to spread the points around more,” Kia said.
    Thank goodness she could always come up with something to say.
    â€œYou two scored forty-seven of our fifty-four points,” Mr. Roberts said.
    â€œYeah,” Kia agreed. “So we need to feed the other players more.”
    â€œI was thinking the opposite,” Mr. Roberts said.
    â€œWhat?” I asked.
    â€œThe rest of the team got seven points on