When we got to the gym, Coach Nunley was sitting at his little bureau lire Sports Illustrated. Nunley was about a million years old, with bifocals and no teeth and a greasy wave of grey hair. He reminded me of the Oracle at Camp Half-Blood – which was a shrivelled-up mummy – except Coach Nunley moved a lot less and he never billowed green smoke. Well, at least no that I’d observed.

Matt Sloan said, ‘Coach, can I be captain?’

‘Eh?’ Coach Nunley looked up from his magazine. ‘Yeah,’ he mumbled. ‘Mm-hmm.’

Sloan grinned and took charge of picking. He made me the other team’s...