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ready knew. The season was going to be over before the broken finger could heal, and my parents wanted me to quit, and I didn’t try to talk them out of it, and Mr. Devon didn’t try to talk me out of it, and that was that. It might have been different if I had been a starter. I imagined my self pulling down a game-winning pass with one good hand and the other heavily taped. Of course that didn’t happen. “Put some weight on and study the playbook and we’ll see about next season,” Mr. Devon told me after I had cleared out my locker.
The morning after she had talked to me in the library, Anna was waiting by my locker. At least I like to think that she was waiting there—she might have just been standing near it with some of her friends. They were grouped to gether as they always were, only this time in a different spot. I saw her as I started to open the lock, and gave her a quick nod when she saw me. She left her friends and came over. “Did you finish Kerouac yet?” she said. I laughed. “No.” “You’d better get a move on, we’ve got a lot to accomplish.” “Like what?” “You’ll see,” she said. “Maybe.” I opened my locker and found a note she had left for me. “Dear HP—There’s a whole world all around more inter esting, wonderful, terrifying, mysterious, amazing than any novel ever written. Pay attention. Take a chance. Dare life. Love, craft.”