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our day to cover soccer. We use this ball for soccer," he said, holding up a volleyball, "and the object is to kick it into that net." He pointed to one of the goals, then seemed suddenly to notice something. "Or that one," he said, nodding toward the opposite goal. "Either one, I guess."
    With that, he blew his whistle and threw the ball in the air. The kids immediately scattered. Half ran toward the ball, the other half for the sidelines.
    There were only a handful of kids emotionally prepared, Max had learned, for team sports. And even some of the seemingly athletic kids were prone to bursts of crying. Wherever there was a ball and a net -- soccer, basketball, tennis -- crying followed. Even in his weekend soccer league, in every practice and every game, there were kids weeping. They cried when they were touched, they cried when they missed the ball, they cried when the other team scored. They cried when faced with any possible doubt or disappointment. They cried as a default, they cried when they didn't know what else to do.
    But Max knew what to do. He was on the soccer field to kick, chase, survey, run, slide-tackle, and score at will. When he was playing, he felt a sense of self-possession and order that was unparalleled anywhere else in his life. He knew where the ball was going; he knew where the other players were and where they were likely to go; at any given moment he knew exactly what had to be done.
    He also had a sense of what needed to be stopped, and when. At that very moment, Dan Cooper was heading down the sidelines, dribbling the ball toward the goal. It would be up to Max to stop this business, so he made himself a torpedo and plugged in Dan's coordinates. Max was quickly upon him, and when he was within striking distance, and Dan was about to score on the open net -- the goalie was hiding behind the goalpost -- Max unleashed unto Dan Cooper a slide-tackle of great ferocity and terrible accuracy.
    Max was heading the opposite direction, careening upfield with the ball and praying that Dan wouldn't cry, when the whistle stopped him.
    "Foul," Mr. Ichythis said.
    The slide-tackle had been legal but the kids on the sidelines were giving Max disapproving looks. "Savage," one girl hissed. Dan was indeed crying, silently, deeply, as if lamenting all the sadness and injustice in the world.
    "What kind of foul?" Max asked.
    "The penalty kind," Mr. Ichythis said.
    "For what?" Max asked.
    "For making Dan fall," Mr. Ichythis said. "Just go to the penalty box and give me a break, okay?"
    There was no such thing as a penalty box in this sport, but Max didn't feel like explaining it all to him. To a chorus of judgmental frowns from the non-participating girls and boys, Max walked off the field and into the school. It was almost lunch anyway.
    In science class, Mr. Wisner had just discussed the sad plight of Pluto, the smallest and most remote planet, which had long languished on the periphery of the universe, and now was a planet no more. It was now just some rock in space.
    Max was staring up at the model universe dangling from the ceiling when something Mr. Wisner was saying caught his attention.
    "Of course," he was saying, "the sun is the center of our solar system. It's why all of the planets are here. It creates day and night and the warmth of its sunlight is what makes our planet inhabitable. Of course, the sun won't always be here to warm us. Like all things, the sun will die. When it does, it'll first expand, and will envelop all the planets around it, including the Earth, which it will consume rapidly ..."
    Max didn't like the sound of any of this. He looked around. None of the other students seemed to be listening closely.
    Mr. Wisner continued: "The sun, after all, is just fuel, burning ferociously, and when our particular star -- a painfully average one, I should say -- runs out of fuel, our solar system will go dark, permanently ..."
    Max had a sick feeling in his stomach. There was something about the