I knew for a fact that I hadn’t done anything to him. Yes, I’d put some pressure on him to come to camp, but he’d had a better time than he expected to. He should have been thanking me. I tried to talk to him in his room, in the cafeteria, and even in the courtyard on Wednesday morning, but he brushed me off every time. Danny and the Hoopsters guys seemed to be busy whenever I ran into them. Half the time, Jackson was with them, which made zero sense. I was a thousand times better at basketball than he was and I couldn’t understand why they wanted to shoot hoops with a kid who wasn’t very good. When Jackson wasn’t with the pranksters, he still hung out with me. I had to admit, it was kind of nice to have someone to talk to in the cafeteria and stuff, but I couldn’t help wishing that the someone was . . . cooler. “Did you try the coleslaw?” Jackson asked when we were having lunch in the cafeteria on Wednesday. “It’s awesome!” I stared at him, wondering how it was possible for a kid to be more fired up about coleslaw than basketball.
