˗ˏˋOur Differencesˊˎ˗

-6-

It wasn't windy at all after school — which was a huge blessing considering how it's been the past few days.

I had soccer practice, and I was actually pumped since our team won last week because of me. I felt like a star.

I made it to the field where everyone was already crowded together.

It was a combined practice.

I mentally groaned, while throwing my hair up into a ponytail. There was an unfamiliar guy standing next to Coach Thrash — the boy's coach. I soon realized that we were combined with the boys because Coach Minchew wasn't here.

I hate my life.

Thrash blew the whistle to get our attention.
"This is Coach Ben. He's here from England to help coach us. He'll be in charge today, so behave." he said casually before walking away.

"Awesome." Dylan muttered sarcastically, still clearly bitter with Thrash for removing him from midfield last week.

His friends started snickering.

Coach Ben was somewhat attractive, and I personally, was dying to hear his british accent.
He had blonde hair, and kind of looked like a mixture of Luke Hemmings and Nial Horran- curse my weird 5 Seconds Of Summer and One Direction obsessions.

He looked unamused by Dylan's snide commentary.

"You. 5 laps. Go." he ordered him with a stone cold expression.

Dylan's mouth went wide open.
"Dude! We haven't even been here for 2 minutes."

"Make it ten." he added carelessly.

We were all speechless, and Dylan gaped in disbelief.

"Are you serious!?"

Ben let out a sarcastic laugh.
"It looks like you really want to run today. 15 laps. Go."

Dylan was about to say something else but we all yelled at him to stop arguing with the damn coach.

He took off running down the track, and nobody made a peep now that Ben's proven himself to be so strict. We were all scared for our lives.

"Now, would anyone like to join him?" he smiled.

We all shook our heads in unison while Dylan sprinted around the track quickly. He was close to starting his second lap at this point.

I almost felt bad for him, but not after he spent the entire afternoon bitching at me for nothing. So in a way, this was probably his karma for that.

"Alright, for the rest of you, we'll start off with 100 pushups. Line up."

We all sort of hesitated, before slowly heading towards the middle of the field. I wanted to die.

"Today." he yelled at us to hurry up.

Everyone started jogging over, and he blew the whistle sending us into a state of death as we did our given amount of pushups.

Sweat was pouring from my body, and my arms felt like jello, but I was pushing through the pain, humming The Best Song Ever by One Direction under my breath.

Conditioning is the hardest part of soccer for me. I'm not built like an athlete in that way at all. I can run and kick a ball, but I can't lift a weight or do a push-up very well. It's embarrassing sometimes. Especially today.

My arms shook after 25 push-ups and I almost collapsed to the ground, but Ben was nearby so I kept it together.

Instead of doing the push-ups properly, I stayed in the position for a while, occasionally doing one or two, and waited until the person next to me was done.