Friendly Dating - Kira

Chapter 11 - Spectator Blues

I've stepped into a very uncomfortable parallel universe where I'm wearing a short skirt and am sitting on splintery bleachers, constantly getting stabbed in my behind while I watch my jock boyfriend wrestle other jock boyfriends for a ball.

This is not making sense to me, and I don't just mean the violent game being played on the field a few steps down from where I'm sitting. I mean everything! Especially the part where my boyfriend is Ethan Fletcher, the guy who loves to burp loudly and scratch himself in public.

Whenever we're sharing a blanket while watching a movie, he tends to fart horribly and then shove his sister's and my heads under the blanket to enjoy his masterpiece, which is why I insist on my own blanket. It doesn't really matter, though; he always finds a way to make me part of the fun.

No! Just no!

Maybe it's still Friday, and I fell asleep in class and have been dreaming everything from the first message Ethan sent me straight to this warped scenario I'm stuck in now.

"That was bad, right?" I ask Dell when Ethan gets tackled by about three giants and just manages to pass the ball to a teammate before he disappears under the piling-up bodies.

"No, he sacrificed himself to allow Jet to get through aaaaaaaaand... we have a try! Yay!"

I rise and pump a fist in the air, going yay, with everybody else, but seriously, I have no idea what is going on, and I just want to go home. It's only just gone half past eight... I should still be sleeping! How long is this thing?!

Besides, seeing Ethan being tackled and pounded is not half as much fun as I thought it would be. For some reason, I find it rather upsetting.

Delia and Simon have been educating me on the rules and nuances of rugby, but all I see is violence involving a ball. The guys run in a diagonal line, passing the ball backwards... Yes, backward! Seems strange to me. Why would you pass backwards when the aim is to go forward? That's just looking for trouble.

The forward-moving line stops every few minutes for some rowdy floor action, spitting up bits of grass and mud. We're sitting near the bottom of the bleachers, close enough to the action for me to wonder what kind of organisms I would find if I were to crawl over the rugby field with a magnifying glass.

I think I know what I'll be doing after this match... if there's any rugby field left to explore...

My thoughts are interrupted by Delia and Simon and other Corbin spectators around me jumping to their feet and cheering again. Another try? So quickly? They weren't even running. I admit I was a bit distracted by thoughts of secret rugby field ecosystems.

"Now what?"

"Lurch converted the try," Delia explains, frowning at me. She doesn't care that there are little critters living under that green grass, just waiting to be discovered. My curiosity about it will be lost on her if I tried to explain it.

"It needed conversion? There's more than one religion in play here?"

'What?!"

"Nothing. Yay!"

"Is that really the only level of enthusiasm you're capable of?" she is frowning at me now, and I realise that I should try a bit harder. I'm here to learn something, after all, and I'm always passionate about learning things. I should approach the world of rugby players and their supporters as an ecosystem of its own.

"Sorry, it's just really confusing," I admit to my best friend... my boyfriend's sister...

Oh, my word! That is just too weird!