Chapter 7 - Tryouts

"Why did you do that?!" I smacked Carlos' arm. We were parked in the parking lot of a nearby diner.

"But did you see his reaction?? Best thing ever" Carlos said as he threw his head back and laughed.

I joined in on the laughter, I had to admit Zach's face was pretty priceless.

"Well it won't be me dying" I smirked. Carlos' laughter abruptly stopped and his face went pale.

"I forgot, he's in charge of our soccer practice this week" he groaned.

I stopped laughing too as I realized what we had met up to do in the first place, the project for drama class.

Despite Carlos being a year older, he had taken drama as an elective which put him in the same class as me.

I smacked my forehead "I don't have my laptop or any of my notes, how are we going to do the project now?!"

Carlos grinned, "we still have my notes, let's go to my house!"

~~~~~

"Carls have you seen my lipstick?"

"Calos I miwsed yu!"

"CARLOS BROUGHT A GIRL, THERE'S A GIRL HERE!"

"Are yu hes gurlfrand?" the little girl tugged on my shirt with a teddy bear in one hand.

"W-what?" I asked feeling overwhelmed by all the girls staring at me.

"Stop it, you guys are scaring her" Carlos said "she's just here to do work, and also why would I have your lipstick?!"

All three girls looked identical to Carlos but with more soft features, the eldest looked about 20 and was absolutely stunning. The second one seemed a few years younger than Carlos and had a cheeky grin. The youngest was still gripping on to my shirt with a pout, her hair was pulled into a high ponytail and she had chubby cheeks that I badly wanted to squeeze.

They greeted me and then left, the little one waved her chubby hands at me as she was dragged by her older sisters upstairs.

"Sorry, those were my sisters" Carlos said sheepishly.

"Bella loves kids, she's going to be so jealous" I grinned.

"Maybe I'll invite her over.... to babysit" he smirked.

~~~~~

A whole week had passed by and I hadn't seen Kai at all. We had agreed to lay off on training before the game but it did feel strange to not see him even once, it almost felt like I was being avoided.

I grabbed my duffel bag, today was the big day. I sat on a bench and tied my shoelaces while I looked around. Many girls were doing stretches or lounging around waiting for the coach. I noticed Bella, Angie, Carlos and Josh sitting on the bleachers and I waved.

"SAPPHIE MAKE ME PROUD!" I groaned in embarrassment as my brother called out from the bleachers. He sat down with Kai and a few of the other guys from the team. I looked up to make eye contact with Kai but he looked elsewhere, weird.

A girl with bleach blonde hair came up to me with her matching blonde haired friend.

"Hey" bleach blonde said "you're the girl that didn't make it last year, right?" She looked at me with fake pity.

"I'm not sure why you think bringing a parade is going to help" the other girl said as she snickered.

"Don't be rude to her, I'm sure she's desperate as it is" blondie number one said "just a warning but Zach can be pretty hard to handle"

I was confused, of course I would know that being his sister.

"He's very active, I'm sure for a girl like you that would be very difficult" she continued and I internally gagged "it's not like he'll stay with you long anyways but I just wanted to look out for you" she said with a sickly sweetness to her tone.

I wasn't even able to feel mad because of the embarrassment I felt for her. She walked away swaying her hips before I could correct her mistake. The Coach soon arrived and blew his whistle for everyone to gather.

"Our school is one of the top 5 high schools for soccer, so as you may know this selection process is going to be very difficult and less than half of you will officially make it" I felt like I was going to vomit "we're going to start with some warm up drills and then have a few soccer matches to test your skills"

"Yes Coach" we all responded and began preparing for the drills. I stood in line, waiting for my turn. The warm up drills were to test our endurance while simultaneously allowing us to stretch and prepare for the match. The first warm up drill was the classic running around cones while kicking a ball.

This one was the drill I was most confident with as I had practiced multiple times at Kai's house. The cones were the exact same ones at Kai's house, I wondered if it was just a coincidence. I watched the girls in front of me carefully and smoothly kicking the ball around the cones, everyone knew that even one mistake would mean an automatic fail and were being very cautious.

It was finally my turn and blondie number 2 passed the ball to me and smirked, "good luck". I breathed in and took off as soon as the Coach blew his whistle. The girl beside me began to pick up her pace and I recognized her as one of the members of the team last year.

My heart began to pound and I tried to match her pace, she was fast but not as fast as Kai. I was at the same pace as her and I decided to pick up the pace even more. The adrenaline was pumping throughout me as the cool air whipped against my face.

And then... well let's just say tryouts aren't the best time to test your limits.

I kicked the ball forward with one foot as I attempted to run to the other side of the cone with my other foot and tripped over the cone, spiralling face first into the cold, hard ground.

All I heard was silence as everyone went quiet and then the screeching loud sound of a whistle pierced through.

~~~~~