I’ve just received the latest from the National Weather Service. I’m sorry to say, it doesn’t look good for us getting out of here any time soon.” A collective groan from the passengers of Flight 444 went up, reverberating around the high school gym to which they’d been transported via charter bus nine hours earlier. In that time, Mia Flowers had read every banner hanging from the rafters and viewed all the trophy cases and team photographs that went back to the 1940’s. Apparently this nowheresville dot on the Montana map—Honey Pot, for the love of God—had been a basketball powerhouse about a decade or so back, with four consecutive State Championships. During her high school days, her Chicago-area school had only managed to make it to the district finals once, so that four-year run must have had the tiny town of Honey Pot in an uproar. Then Mia shook her head, her heavy hair threatening to fall out of the haphazard knot she’d tied it in.
