Admiring the Light

Ep 14

"Y'all probably need to be wrapping it up right now." The teacher sighed, his eyes off in the distance instead of focusing on the game. "Last point, make it count."

"Alrighty y'all! Last point!" Natalie tried to encourage the other seven people that she'd picked for her team, but nobody but her was exactly doing anything. "Come on! Look alive!" She clapped, serving the ball over the net easily. A part of her wished she'd played on the hardcore side, but the others she had picked were probably just tired. She played sports, the goths in the back row probably didn't.

"Ayo- get that, GET THAT-" She watched the bony girl in front squeak a little as her small hands slapped the ball barely into the air.

Forced to dive for it, her fists managed to get under the volleyball, easily sending it flying over, but at the expense of her body. "Good... try!" She offered a quick smile, but her stumble up to her feet wasn't good for her case. "See? The ball doesn't hurt... only the floor does!"

And the whining from the other team let her know that they'd missed, yet another point for Natalie's side. "Y'all have gotta wrap it up! Day's almost over, get outta here!" She called out, even though she wasn't the teacher. "Bell should be ringing soon!"

But nobody other than her seemed interested in staying, as everyone other than her and Alexandra stuck around. Basketball practice conveniently also happened after, but still, some of these juniors could at least have helped clean up.

"Alone again, heh-"

...

Natalie shoved her hands in the pockets of her leather jacket with a sigh as she glanced around the empty room. This was supposed to be basketball tryouts, but how was there supposed to be a team without potential picks? Until she saw the first girl step in the room, someone who had probably been the tallest kid in the class her whole life, same as herself.

And more filtered in, more girls like her, tall and strong, similarly inadequate expressions replaced with excitement as they realized they might actually fit in here. All skin colors, but they were all size giants, all here with one goal. To make the team.

Natalie saw something she'd never seen before as who she assumed was a coach stepped into the room, a *female* coach. "Y'all are here for basketball tryouts, right?" A stocky woman with her red hair back in a messy ponytail sized up the crowd her advertisement had gathered.

"How many of you are freshies, I'd assume most of you?" She asked, and almost all of them raised their hands. "I'm just going to let y'all know now, you sophomores will be at a slight disadvantage, I'm looking for players that will hopefully be Gryphons all four years, not ones that will be easily replaced." She explained quickly, her green eyes scanning through all of her available options again. "But I am looking for merit here, this is your chance to show me what you've got, don't fuck it up." She joked.

"I'd dump your bags around the gym, birds of a feather. Four available walls, so *don't* be knuckleheads and pile everything." The coach laughed, watching half of the potential team go and put their bags in exactly the same area. Natalie chose someplace more sparsely populated for her backpack, a lonely spot, but none of her things would be stolen.

"See? That girl knows what she's doing." She found herself being used as an example, put on the spot for doing something correctly. "And when y'all are done, I'll just take down your name and your grade, and your email so I can sell it to spam companies, procedure because I have to do it."

Natalie actually laughed at the joke, she liked the redhead's attitude as she approached her. "Natalie Perry, ninth grade. Nperry at gmail." She gave all the information she needed to, and snatched the forms back that she needed to fill out. The brightly colored paper was more inviting than the typical bland white, and one was even a simple get to know you. The list of necessary paperwork had pictures accompanying everything, directly showing her what she needed to hand in and how so there was no margin for error, and she only needed one parent signature for the whole thing.