An action-packed basketball series from author LJ Alonge set on the courts of Oakland, CA. Janae works every day at her Granny’s Strange Goods Superstore, selling lucky rabbits’ feet and other useless junk. And every night, after closing up shop, she dominates the courts with her boys.  When the chance comes around to take her game to the next level, she knows she’ll make the cut. It’s all about skill—luck’s got nothing to do with it. Right? LJ Alonge has played pick-up basketball in Oakland, Los Angeles, New York, Kenya, South Africa and Australia. Basketball's always helped him learn about his community, settle conflicts, and make friends from all walks of life. He's never intimidated by the guy wearing a headband and arm sleeve; those guys usually aren't very good. As a kid, he dreamed of dunking from the free throw line. Now, his favorite thing to do is make bank shots. Don't forget to call "bank!" Chapter 1: Black Magic Basketball chooses you. It’s just one of life’s mysteries—like the existence of yawning or gravity—a thing no middle-school science teacher has been able to explain for ten thousand years. But everybody who hoops remembers the exact moment they were chosen. It gets tattooed in capital letters somewhere deep in the animal part of your memory, the same part of your brain that remembers your first crush. You show up to the park on a summer morning planning to put up a few jumpers, just for fun. Maybe practice a little crossover or reverse layup you saw on TV the night before. You make a bunch of shots, you miss a bunch—everything’s good. Except: It’s early, and you’ve got time, so why not put up a few more jumpers? And you do that. And you feel good enough to put up a few more, and a few more after that. And then, without even realizing it, you’ve left the planet. You’re somewhere else.   In this new world, it doesn’t matter that your arms and legs are deadweight, or that the back of your neck’s been on fire for hours, or that your mouth is Sahara-dry, or that your stomach’s rattling around in your abdomen like a pebble in a shoe. Doesn’t matter that your ball’s flat, the court’s cracked, the rim’s crooked. Doesn’t matter that you were supposed to be home three hours ago. Doesn’t matter how many you’ve made, how many you’ve missed. You’ve left Earth, and on your new planet, living means putting the ball through the hoop. A few more times. And a few more times after that.   When you do finally get home, you wash up, you eat, you do chores, you lie down. It should feel normal, but it doesn’t. Your granny asks what’s wrong, but what can you say? You’ve got a roof and a bed and a full stomach—you should be happy. All you know is that something’s off. Home doesn’t feel like home; it just feels like a place to rest, somewhere to wait around, a bus stop. Usually you can fall right to sleep, but on this night, you can’t. Since there’s nothing like a sleepless night for some philosophizing, it hits you that “home” is just where you feel most comfortable, the place that makes you feel the most like yourself. The place that makes you feel the most free. That place, you suddenly realize, is the blacktop. Out there on the blacktop, with the sun beating down on you, and your shot clanking off the rim, and your feet throbbing, you felt free for the first time in your life. Really truly free. That’s how you know you’ve been chosen. And when you’re chosen, there’s no turning back. From then on, forever, the game has you. * * * Granny likes the Strange Goods Superstore to open at sunrise. Of course that doesn’t mean she’s the one doing the opening. Earlier, as the sky went from black to foamy gray, she turned up the TV to ear-splitting volume and shuffled loudly into the bathroom. I was already awake, listening to her run the bathwater, hoping she wouldn’t call out to me.   “Get up, Janae!” she yelled, her voice made deep and monstrous by the steam. “You ain’t here on vacation.”   She hates it when I sleep late, and so I lay there, quiet and defiant. A few minutes later I could feel the air mattress shake as she marched down the hall. When she threw open my door, I only saw her outline. Her squat body filled the doorway like an eclipse, blocking out the light from the hall. I pretended to be asleep, watching her with my eyes barely open.   “You swear you’re the slickest kid in this whole world,” she said, flicking on the lights.   Now I’m sitting behind the register downstairs, trapped in that annoying spot between wakefulness and sleep. Right about now I’d kill for the thin, scratchy sheets on the guest bed, the same sheets my mom used when she was a kid. I put my head on the counter, and the glass holding our Weird Souvenirs collection cools my cheek. The lights are dim (we tell people it’s for the protection of our most delicate items), and suddenly I feel my eyelids getting heavy. I won’t fight it. No one’s coming in any time soon. Between lazy blinks I can make out the idling