Dead Girl Walking ― Aaron Minyard

29. centuries

i could scream forever
we are the poisoned youth
― fall out boy

♦

OCTOBER CAME WITHOUT WARNING. Though, Mara supposed it could have followed a lengthy parade and she still wouldn't be ready to face the Ravens on the court. 

If the Foxes had been having a typical season, the match might have drawn a little less attention, even with Kevin and Mara on their line. This year, however, they were at an unprecedented six-and-one record. The only game they'd lost was their opener against Breckenridge. They'd won three games by the skin of their teeth, but they were still wins. The Foxes were pulling together and getting stronger one week at a time. No one expected them to win against the Ravens, but it was obvious they'd put up a spectacular fight. 

The Foxhole Court didn't have enough seating to accommodate the crowd this game was sure to draw, so the school sold discounted seats in the basketball stadium and promised to broadcast the game live on the scoreboard televisions there.

Palmetto State University spent the entire second week preening and prepping for its day in the spotlight. Groundskeepers trimmed every square inch of the sprawling campus. Cleaning teams drained and scrubbed out the manmade pond in front of the library. Student clubs were invited to design and hang banners wherever they could fit them. Rocky Foxy the mascot walked the campus for hours every day and poked his oversized head into classrooms to get the students worked up. The Vixens set up camp in the amphitheater to pass out temporary tattoos and foam paw prints.

There was an event every night leading up to Friday. The school's choir and jazz band had free concerts on the stadium lawn on Monday. Seventy-percent of the student body wore orange for Tuesday's Orange Day. Wednesday was White Day with a higher turnout. Thursday was the pep rally, which the Foxes were required to attend. Several thousand students stopped by to cheer and party. News cameras were on hand to televise the festivities and take comments from the small team. It was impossible to avoid them entirely, so Mara spent the week plastering on fake smiles and promising the match would be one worthy of watching. 

She just hoped she wasn't full of shit. 

The more excited the students grew, the more uneasy the Foxes felt, and the tension at their practices that week was suffocating. They were sick with nerves by Friday. Andrew was the only one completely unaffected. He bounced off the walls and harassed his teammates endlessly. Kevin, on the other hand, didn't say a single word at Friday morning's practice.

Traffic that day was completely out of control, no matter how much outside help campus security called in. Wymack signed his Foxes out of their afternoon classes and called them to the stadium at three. Serve wasn't for another four hours, but he wanted to shield them from the madness unfolding around the university. Dan turned on the TV and flipped channels until she found a movie to watch. Aaron and Matt went into the foyer to do their homework in peace. Mara, Neil, and Kevin went to the inner court and sat on the Foxes' bench in silence.

At five-thirty Wymack ordered them enough food to feed a small army. The Foxes sat in a circle to eat but didn't speak. Only when they'd thrown their trash away did they finally look at each other. Dan pulled the Ravens' roster out and began going over it, but by now the Foxes knew all of the Ravens' names and numbers by heart. They'd been studying the Raven line for weeks, watching old games and memorizing statistics. They'd watched recordings of past Raven games to get an idea for how their opponents played and looked for any weaknesses they could exploit. They'd come back empty-handed. The only real chink in the Ravens' armor was Kevin's absence.

An hour out from serve, the stadium guards unlocked the gates and started letting people in. Mara could practically feel the stadium shake beneath the weight of tens of thousands of feet.