Down Ball

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

It's Monday morning at 6 am to be exact. Kail wakes me up. I blink my eyes trying to gain focus. I groan.

"Rylee, we have tryouts. And the boys have practice. Let's go." She says tossing a pillow at me.

"I'm getting up geez," I say tossing the covers off of me and getting out of bed. I go to the bathroom which is connected to Kail's room and wash my face, brush my teeth.

"Hey, that guy from the beach that I saw you talking to. Benji, He's..." Kail trails off like she's trying to find the words to say, "He's bad news, you should stay away."

"What kind of 'bad news'" I say throwing on my grey sweatpants and a purple hoodie.

"Just stay away," Kail says heading out of her room door. I throw my volleyball shorts, a workout shirt, and my Nike volley zoom shoes into my Nike gym bag and head down the stairs. Everybody else is in the foyer waiting.

"Are we always going to be waiting for you all the time," Lucas says when I reach the bottom of the stairs.

"Gosh shut up," I say brushing past Lucas laughing.

I get in the car behind Lucas' seat.

Daniel turns on 105.1 and we listen to the breakfast club the whole ride to the school. Silence.

We pull into the school parking lot. I open the car door and throw my bag over my shoulder. Jogging up the steps behind Daniel and Lucas. We enter the school and see Ashley standing there.

"Hey, Gals and Guys," Ashley says.

"Wassup Ash," Lucas and Daniel say in unison. They hug Ashley and go on about their business.

"Hey Ashley," I say as I approach her.

"Gym's this way." We follow Ashley into the gym and to the locker room where everybody's getting ready. I receive a couple of Hey's and Hi's from the people we've met and the event on the beach. Everybody begins to slowly leave the locker room. I hustle out the locker room bumping into someone on my way out.

"We gotta stop meeting like this." The person says.

I look up and see its the guy from the beach and the airport. I laugh, "We definitely do." I say walking back out towards the gym.

We begin to do workouts, lunges across the court, shoulder stretch, Hamstring stretch, and Calf stretch. We do the ball throws, spike drill, passing drill, hitting lines, and serving. The coach walks in and it sets in. I'm so nervous.

"Okay, girls line up on the serving line." Everybody hustles to the serving line. It's twelve of us. "Okay, so we are going to scrimmage each other. I've already got the teams made up from the sign-in sheets. Team one is going to be, "Kail, Ashley, Jenna, Rylee, Emma, and Alex on one team. The other six across the net. You choose the rotation." Ashley chooses the rotation. I'm in three Kail's two and Ashley is serving. Jenna's in six Emma's in five and Alex is in four. Ashley serves.

"In in in."

"It's up, it's coming!!!!" I scream as the ball is coming straight towards me. Bump Rylee Bump. I begin to get nervous but before I know it, I bump the ball. Jenna sets the ball to Kail and Kail kills it. Ashley serves four times and we gain points. On Ashley's fifth serve, it's a perfect serve It comes over, Jenna passes the ball and I set Alex. It was a perfect set. Alex tries to hit the ball but she hits the net. The score is now 4-1. By the time it's my time to serve the score is 11-5. I bounce the ball a couple of times and toss it up, I hit the ball across the net to the center of the court. ACEEE !!! They roll the ball back to me I serve, another ACE. this becomes repetitive until the score is 17-5. I hit the ball over and they manage to get it back. Jenna sets the ball to Alex, who hits the ball in the net. We end up finishing the scrimmage, We win both sets and Coach Claire makes us line up again on the Serving Line.