Half the time, they’d do it anyway.

It was kindly meant. And limiting. Both.

The other thing the guys kept insisting was that women had no sense of humor. Where did this idea come from? Over and over in those early weeks, I’d crack jokes that nobody laughed at. Jokes I knew would’ve been funny in Austin.

I guess it makes sense, in a way. Part of thinking something is funny is expecting it to be funny. So if you’ve already decided that women aren’t funny, then it’s a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Firefighters are, on average, very funny people. All the sorrow you absorb in that job makes you funnier. You have to balance out the pain somehow, and joking around is one of the best things about the job. There’s so much death in that world, but laughter is life.

You need it.

It left me thinking a lot about how much what you think you’re going to think matters. If you expect something to be funny, it will seem funnier. And if it seems funnier, it is funnier—by definition.

The only person who laughed at my jokes was the rookie. Of course, he laughed at everything. He was just that kind of guy. Another likable quality that I resented like hell.

So that was my life at the new station. No cursing. No comedy.

And then there was basketball.

In the afternoons, after the dishes were done, and the trucks had been washed, and all the chores were complete, the guys liked to play basketball out back. Shirts versus skins. And they wouldn’t let me play.

“You’ll get hurt,” the captain said.

“You’ll get destroyed,” Tiny said.

I suspected they all assumed I’d be bad at it. Even though I’d told them that my dad was a high school basketball coach and I’d spent my weekends shooting hoops with him since infancy. Even though I stood on the sidelines and explained—loudly—that I’d played varsity basketball in high school for four years and been the captain of the team.

“I am actually really good,” I kept saying.

But I was only five foot five. And a “lady.”

I finally decided to throw some money at the problem.

One afternoon, just as a game was starting up, I planted myself in front of the hoop, held up a fan of cash, and challenged them to a shooting competition.

The guys all laughed. That was funny, I guess.

I lifted the money higher and waved it at them. “I can crush all of you, if you like, or we can save time: You pick your best guy and I’ll just crush him.”

More laughter.

At six foot five—a full foot taller than me—Tiny was a shoo-in. They didn’t even have to nominate him.

He just stepped toward me, bowed a little as he gestured toward the hoop, and said, “Ladies first.”

I shook my head. “Balls before beauty.”

Tiny gave me a little smile and walked to the free-throw line, which was really just a crack in the pavement.

He didn’t even have to try. He made the first ten shots without moving anything but his hand at the wrist, and they swished through the net in perfect arches. The guys counted out loud for him as he went. “Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen.”

Finally, at his fifteenth shot, he pushed just the tiniest bit too hard with his pinkie finger and the ball’s trajectory shifted off to the left. I knew the minute it left his hand that he was going to miss. And he did. The ball hit the rim and bounced off to the side.

The guys all high-fived him, like he was impressive.

Tiny lifted his eyebrows at me, like, Beat that, little girl.

Now it was my turn. I took my place at the free-throw crack, but before I lifted the ball, I said, “When I beat Tiny, you guys have to let me play.”

“Safe bet,” Six-Pack said.

“No one beats Tiny,” Case said.

“What if you don’t beat him?” Six-Pack asked.

I shrugged. “I’ll take bathroom duty for a month.”

The guys all high-fived like this was their lucky day. All except the rookie, who had his arms crossed and was studying me like he suspected they were all getting played.

“Deal?” I confirmed.

“Deal.”

Of course, I knew I was going to beat Tiny. I’d been raised by a lonely, divorced basketball-coach father who had no idea how to talk about his feelings. Shooting hoops in the driveway was our only means of communication. For a while there, my ability to shoot hoops in our driveway was my dad’s only reason to live. Possibly mine, too.

I was fucking fluent in basketball.

I dribbled for a second, which made the guys laugh.

Then I lifted the ball on my middle finger and made it spin, Globetrotter style, and watched them stop laughing.

Then I started shooting, and I just didn’t stop. Perfect arc after perfect arc. Five. Ten. Fifteen.

After a while, I shifted to using the backboard, aiming it smack in the middle of the faded square every time, and hitting the spot in a satisfying ka-swish, ka-swish, ka-swish. Twenty. Twenty-five. Then I busted out some tricks. I stood on one leg and shot. I shot with my left hand. I kneed the ball in. I head-butted it. I was at thirty-seven with no misses—not even near-misses—when the tones went off in the station for a call.

I turned around and threw my last shot backwards, and without even waiting to see if it made it, I walked back toward the station.

The rookie saw me coming and held the door open. As I closed the gap, he shook his head in admiration. “You’re my hero.”

“Did it go in?” I whispered as I passed.

“Nothing but net,” he said.

I high-fived him without even breaking stride, and I never looked back.

* * *

DESTASIO SHOULD HAVE ridden with us to the call, but his back was giving him trouble, so the rookie came instead.

Firefighters don’t talk about “pain.” They don’t admit that things “hurt.” The most you’ll ever hear them admit to is “discomfort.” DeStasio had fallen during a roof collapse and been injured so badly that for a few days it was unclear if he would walk again. But he did walk again—part of his legend. Everybody knew he was in constant pain, but all anybody ever said was that his back was “giving him trouble.”

Basically, DeStasio suffered in silence every day, and the crew admired the hell out of him for it.

And on bad days, he got a pass and snoozed in the Barcalounger by the big-screen TV.

The fire call turned out to be for an “eight-year-old female, not breathing”—which sent us all into extra-high gear.

We were loaded up in forty seconds.

The rookie and I rode in the back as we ran full lights-and-sirens—pushing through intersections, veering around parked cars—to make it to the scene in under eight minutes.

Fast, but probably not fast enough.

Brain damage sets in after one minute without oxygen, and it’s irreversible at five. But “not breathing” could mean more things than you’d think, and with kids especially, you never give up hope until you have to.

Kids always break your heart.

There’s nothing anyone in the service wouldn’t do for a kid.

One of the first runs I’d ever made in Austin had been for a drowned girl about this same age, and I’d never forgotten her. We’d done CPR on her for thirty minutes—all the way from the scene to the hospital—without even thinking of giving up.