A group of friends tries to piece itself back together after losing its glue.
*****
It's a quiet October morning in Palo Alto, California, when the news break out--June Beaumont was...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
XENA
I took great pride in knowing I was doing the best I possibly could as the captain of the volleyball team. Ironically, I had just hit someone in the face and interrupted practice.
After it had happened to me, I vowed to be extra careful on the court, knowing it was my responsibility to be a good example for the rest of the team, but I had failed miserably at that. It hadn't been anyone else's fault but mine, but, as I stood there with shaky fingers and vibrating palms and Lauren Lorenzo tried to cover her bloody mouth, part of me wished she hadn't been in the way.
Sofia, standing next to me, wobbled back and forth in her heels. "That hit hard. I hope you haven't knocked down any of her teeth."
I let out a nervous laugh, rubbing my arms. "Let's hope not."
Lauren's parents just so happened to be two of the most prominent lawyers in Palo Alto, two of the people one would, with reason, reach out to in case they wanted and needed to win a particularly difficult case. They charged ridiculously high sums of money per case and weren't doing that much work pro bono, but their results were obvious, not to mention that the great majority of the Palo Alto residents had the money to afford their services.
Naturally, I wasn't trying to get sued for knocking off their precious daughter's teeth. I hadn't even hit her on purpose, but the fear that things would get twisted was growing exponentially as time went by.
As most of the team gathered around Lauren, grabbing paper tissues, and asking Coach for help, Sofia stood by my side, which didn't surprise me that much. Even though we were supposed to be a team, and being a team implied having plenty of trust in each other, I knew the girls weren't big fans of me being the team captain. They'd much rather have Sofia, but alas, her priorities were far away from the team.
"Are you okay?" she asked, dropping down to one knee to fix the black pad protecting the other one. I looked down at her in incredulity, confused about what she was talking about, and she returned the look, with a bead of sweat running down the side of her neck. "Your hands. Are you hurt?"
"Ah." I stared down at my reddening palms. "They hurt a little bit, but I think I'm fine." Sofia straightened. "We need to get Lauren some help as soon as possible."
"I guess." We watched as Coach marched from her booth and made her way towards Lauren and the commotion surrounding her. "I'll go get you some ice in the meantime, okay? Try to stay calm."
"I don't want to get sued," I stupidly blurted out, as though that was the biggest of all my current concerns, but Sofia didn't laugh. I expected as much, as she'd always been understanding and empathetic, but I still felt like a massive douche. There was a girl—one of my girls—bleeding from a busted lip and I was worrying about the consequences it would bring me. "My moms are going to kill me."
