Swish

two

two

           “And then she was all like, ‘Well, Lisa, you obviously know what you’re talking about, so how about you teach the class!’ So I did.”

           “You taught your history class?” I scoff, my eyes roaming over the watering hole of adolescents required to be here until the age of sixteen when they can legally drop out. I would never stop attending the public institution where teens come to obtain knowledge, but I know of some who had. Education is a pretty epic thing, so it just seems stupid to me for one to reject it.

           “Heck, yeah, I did!” Alisa laughs, paying for her lunch quickly before she joins me. “Like, I live in America, and I’m not an idiot. So I BSed a lesson on, like, the Revolutionary War or whatever.”

           “And what are you supposed to be learning about?” I sigh.

           “The Revolutionary War! Duh. I talked about the dudes with the tea and that taxing thing,” she says as we begin to walk. It’s Alisa’s turn to survey the cafeteria, in an attempt to spot where exactly our other friends have chosen to sit today.

           “You mean the Boston Tea Party?” My eyes zero in on a table, and I begin to walk towards it. Alisa joins me.

           “Yeah, that,” she shrugs. “But seriously, how could it have been a party? They were drinking freaking tea!”

           I know she’s just kidding, but there’s a small part of me that’s filled with doubt. Alisa’s a pretty eccentric type of girl. Most of the time anything that comes out of her mouth is a complete joke, but occasionally pure stupidity slips in there. “Very valid point,” I smile.

           “So, I forgot to ask you, how’d it go with that basketball hottie?” Alisa pries with a suggestive wink.

           “Fine,” I reply, soreness suddenly spurting through my legs as a reminder.

           Yesterday, I had my second practice session (I guess you could call it that, right?) with Ezra. Instead of shooting or dribbling or doing anything that even involved making contact with a basketball, we ran. Again. But instead of nicely paced running like the first time we had met, this time it was solely sprinting. He told me that if I could beat him on any of the drills, then we would be done for the afternoon. Obviously, I hadn’t outrun him, as unfortunate as it was. So I sprinted, and he sprinted, and then my entire body felt like jelly afterwards, and I’m not entirely sure how I even managed to walk to the student parking lot. It was a pretty intense, and now I’m feeling the repercussions of it—those being the difficulty that I now find in doing something as trivial as taking a freaking step. It hurts. My whole body hurts. But it’ll be worth it.

           “Did he take off his shirt?” she questions, abruptly stopping before we can reach where our other friends are seated.

           “Ew, no! And stop being such a perv!” I cringe.

           “Well, stop being such a prude!” she fires back with that maniacal laugh of hers that probably scares anyone within a five-mile radius of us. I crack a small smile at my friend’s absurdity, and silently wonder why we’re not joining our dear friends who have yet to banish us for being, well, us.

           “Lisa, uh, why aren’t we going over to there?” I ask hesitantly, pointing over to a waving girl who for some reason chooses to associate herself with us. Personally, I would probably run as far away as possible after meeting someone like me, but hey, this is America, and it’s a free country. If people want to befriend girls as crazy as Alisa and Sal Berkley, then they can. Revolutionists in the 1700s did not throw tea off of a British boat to be oppressed by another nation, let alone anyone (they actually did it because of the whole taxation without representation thing, but whatever). America. Home of the brave, land of the free, place of the fast food and ability to be friends with anyone. No matter how weird.