Rematch

CHAPTER 7

After her heated speech at our room, Athena dropped her friendly act with me altogether. We were civil during the practice though and unlike before, she wasn't the first one to approach me.

"Have you already apologized to Athena? I heard she moved out of the dorms," Gella, our Captain Ball asked when we were on water break.

"Yeah, I did," I said.

"So you're both okay? I noticed she isn't talking to you so much anymore."

I shrugged. Though my ex-roommate's words still had lingering pain, I wasn't going to sell her out. "Maybe she just wanted to focus for the competition." Or maybe she was still pissed afterall.

We both glanced at our subject who was still doing the drills. "Yeah, maybe she is. I'm glad nothing serious happened after that incident. We need her speed and agility the most for the games," she mused, her voice holding great expectations for Athena. Then, she faced me. "As for you, I might be crazy for saying this, but take it easy. The Amazons will need you at your best in the succeeding years."

I gave her a smile and a curt nod. So they were really not expecting me to do anything remarkable for this year's Sports Fest. I didn't know if that was meant to make me feel better or not.

The practice for the whole day was productive. At least for me. I managed to improve my shooting average. Dribbling hadn't been a problem ever since so it wasn't hard for me to keep up. What proved to be challenging were the leg drills. I was almost always the last to finish a lap.

Contrary to what I was expecting, that I was going to disappoint the team, it was surprisingly... okay. For a change, I faded in the background, not catching their attention for every mistake I made. I had to track the errors by myself. I guess it wasn't so bad to be a second stringer.

"Are you going to Echo's?" Darla asked me when we had packed up.

My canned response was to turn down the invite and weave a lie. Maybe everyone was expecting that too. So I went for the unusual. "Yeah, sure. What's up?"

"Cool. It's where the new recruits will gather before going to the BRATs initiation party tonight at the Berkeley Rooftop," she whispered, her eyes gleaming in excitement.

I would never get used to that collective name. How could they agree to that? "Wait, that's tonight?" I asked instead.

Darla bobbed her head. "Only the new members will be at Echo's condo with some sophomores. The Seniors will use the time to prep the Berkeley rooftop for the initiation. They'll just come and get us. I wonder what the test would be," she went on.

Like me, Darla was unable to attend last year's initiation party for the new members of the BRIS Athletics Team. She had a family reunion while I was excused because I was in crutches then. But that didn't keep us from hearing stuff that they did at the gathering.

If I remembered correctly, last year they had asked everyone to suck on a candy that 'had been on another's mouth'. It sounded disgusting, but Geo spilled the beans to me. The new members had to be blindfolded the entire time and it was the Seniors 'feeding' them the slimy candies that had been placed in a glass of egg whites so that the candies would 'feel' like it's been in someone else's mouth. They just used a separate container whenever they asked the new member to spit the candy so 'the others could taste it'. I didn't bother asking if the recruits had been eventually told that what they 'shared' among each other were actually saliva-free candies.

I went back to the dorm to shower. As soon as I got dressed, I decided to drop by Zoey's dorm. Darla was in the same building and we ought to leave together so visiting my best friend was like shooting two birds with one stone.