pants. She slid her feet into her shoes and hurried to tie them.
“Exciting.” Her dad rubbed his hands together the same way he did when he watched Wimbledon or the Tour de France on TV. “Show us how it’s done.”
“Don’t get too excited, Dad.” It occurred to Shy that Mr. Streko was only letting her play because her father was there and they were losing the entire match. “I think I kind of suck.”
Beep, beep! Mr. Streko pointed at her and then at the table where Tati, a senior from Berkeley Carroll, was holding her red paddle and shifting impatiently from foot to foot, her hair pulled up in a tight ponytail with a matching red scrunchie. She looked scarily competitive and mean.
“Come on, black and white!” her father yelled like an ardent Premier League soccer fan.
Shy approached the table. She picked up the black paddle and the Berkeley Carroll coach rolled her the ball. She took a deep breath and tried to remember everything she’d learned about serving. She was pretty crap at it, but she’d do her best.
Toc! The ball flew sideways, just skimming the net. Tati assumed it was out, but it hit the table in-bounds, and she lunged for it at the last minute. It ricocheted off the edge of her paddle and flew straight into the air. Tati lay across her side of the table, moaning dramatically. Shy had scored the first point.
“Get up, girl!” Berkeley Carroll’s coach yelled hoarsely. She didn’t seem to know any of her team members’ names; she just called them all “girl.” “Play, play, play!”
Roy had expected Shy to be gangly and clumsy, but she was rather good. Of course the Latin teacher git Streko offered no words of encouragement whatsoever.
Roy had wasted the entire morning searching the bookshelves in the library for a poem he’d read long ago, something about “a new planet.” The poem was by Byron, or Keats, or Shelley. He’d texted Peaches, but she’d yelled at him grumpily, via text, that he was the one who’d read English at Oxford. Then she’d found it for him anyway. It took her about ten seconds to google it. The poem was by Keats.
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken
Now that Roy had it, he had no idea what to do with it. He’d written a paragraph comparing Isabel and Bettina to the women in The Handmaid’s Tale, and then deleted it. He’d read and reread the previous paragraphs he’d written, and then deleted them too. He’d written the bulk of the story—he was in the homestretch. But why this absurd plot and not some other? Why these characters? Why these sentences? Why these words?
Because, he’d told himself. It’s what you do. If Shy could suffer the indignities of high school and Wendy could take a crowded subway to run a magazine in Manhattan every day, then he could stop asking so many stupid questions and just get on with it. But instead of getting on with it, he’d come to the match.
“Go, girl! Pick up your feet!”
Roy stood up. Shy had scored again with her impossible serve. It looked like she was holding the racket completely wrong and the ball was going to hit the floor, but miraculously it landed on the table, just barely in.
“Come on, black and white!” he yelled again, delighted that he’d made the effort to come and cheer her on. Shy’s smarmy Latin teacher refused to even look at him, even though he was the loudest person in the gym.
The girls took a water break. Shy jogged in place as she sipped from a bottle of Poland Spring. She flashed Roy a smile and he winked at her. His other daughters had played field hockey and tennis, but he’d never watched them. Perhaps that’s why they hated him.
The girls in his book could be sporty, he thought as he sat down again. And table tennis would work perfectly on Mars, if they could fit the table in a spacecraft. The girls would request one and be super excited when it came. Ceran would be hopeless, but the girls would play constantly. That’s how they’d keep fit during their pregnancies.
Beep, beep!
Mr. Streko blew his whistle and pointed at Shy, his orange-and-blue neck tattoo bulging. He carried himself differently at table tennis than he did in Latin, she noticed, more upright and bossy. His black Phinney T-shirt stretched tight across his sturdy, muscular chest. It was