I was twelve, I think. We had lived in our town for four years. The girls’ basketball team of our junior high was playing exceptionally well for our little town, and had advanced to the regional championships. The school organized buses to carry excited students to the game.

I rarely went out at night. I heard my older sister’s constant fights with my parents about curfews, and wanted no part of that. It did not occur to me that her choice of activity and mine might have different reactions from Mom and Dad. I asked meekly if I could go to the game, and was surprised at my mother’s instant “Yes.”

Basketball. The heart rises with the ball in the shot, and the breath stops when it rolls around the rim. The sounds of basketball are almost comically sharp and emotive: the squeak of rubber soles on the wood floor, the slap of the ball bounced hard against the floor or backboard, an echoing indoor court that broadcasts even the pants and groans of the players.

There were few adults there, and most were mothers of the players. The crowd on our side was almost all girls, cheering, hoping, rooting for our team. We gasped together and clapped together. I was so wrapped up in the game, I shivered.

We lost. In the final minute of the game, by a close score I can’t remember, we lost. At the final buzzer, we spectators - dozens of teenage girls - rushed onto the court, crying, heartbroken together.

We rushed onto the court together, and I was suddenly alone again. I was in the middle of a crowd, but the walls of the junior high caste system had reasserted themselves. The players looked past me. No one made eye contact. I was invisible again.

I don’t remember the bus ride home.