Sophia could see disappointment flash across Willa’s face, but she recovered and turned toward the library as the rest of them walked toward the Athletic Center. Then Claude and Louis both decided they were hungry and headed to the cafeteria.
“You want to shoot around?” Max asked Sophia.
“I’m not dressed for it.” She held out her stockinged leg and Mary Janes.
“The locker room should be open. Come on.”
Sophia followed Max into the Athletic Center.
“Come into the boys’ gym once you get changed.”
The girls’ gym floor had been freshly waxed and smelled like turpentine as she passed through to the locker room and changed into her gym shorts and white tee. When she entered the boys’ gym, Max was at the top of the key, shooting.
“Catch my rebounds. I’ll go around the world first, and then I’ll do the same for you.”
“Okay,” she said, planting herself beneath the basket.
Max shot.Swish.She threw him the ball. He dribbled a few steps to the left. Fired. Nothing but net.
“You aren’t shooting like you were sitting around all break. ’Fess up,” she said, chuckling.
“Well, you know me.” He smiled. “I got a game in here and there with a few of my middle school buddies.” Max lifted his arms, shot, and drained it. “What did you do?”
Sophia let the ball drop into her hand, then hurled it at Max.While he shot baskets, she caught him up on riding to D.C. with Willa and then her visit with Mrs. Gathers. Max shot from the right corner, and when Sophia caught the ball, she gripped it with both hands.
“I found out the truth,” she said, and Max stopped moving.
“What?”
Sophia took the ball and dribbled to the top of the key, leaving Max underneath the basket to catch the ball for her.
“I was right. I am one of those Brown Babies who came over from Germany,” she said, shooting the ball and missing. Then she tossed the ball up in the air over and over while she recounted everything that she had learned.
“Unbelievable,” Max said, joining her at the top of the court. “What if we came over at the same time?”
Sophia flopped down on the gymnasium floor, no longer able to hold herself up. “I’ve been wondering about the fire that I’m haunted by. Mrs. Gathers said that I lived at St. Hildegard’s orphanage before I was brought here. She mentioned that there had been a fire a few weeks before we left.”
Max dropped down on the parquet floor beside her.
“You told me that you remember nuns dressed in long habits and that you had been in a fire too,” she said.
“Yeah, what are the chances?” The ball rolled toward Max and he gripped it with both hands. “Us being in the same orphanage in Mannheim, Germany, then meeting here at Forest.”
“That’s like a Hollywood movie.” The ball slipped from his hands as she blurted, “A crazy love story.”
Max turned and looked her in the eyes with such intensity, she could not will herself to turn away.
“You think this is a love story?” His voice came out husky.
Sophia could feel all her blood rush to her face. “Max, you know how Willa feels about you,” she murmured just as he leaned in, with his face so close she could smell the lemon cookies on his breath.
“But what about how I feel about you?”
The eye contact between them was so intense that the gym faded away, and all Sophia knew in the moment was him.
“How’s that?” she whispered.
Max pushed his lips toward hers until there was only a hair between them and breathed on her. “Like this.”
