3 Stepbrothers

Game Day

One word for practice: Brutal.

Coach said we had it easy. That when he was in high school his coach would make him do laps around the whole town. Then we had Sunshine ask how big the town was. His big fat mouth got us running more laps around the field. Sunshine was not appealing to me. I knew his real name is Austin but after the butt grabbing incident and now this. He wasn't making my world very sunny.

"This is your fault." I said to Cole. My hands were on my knees just as everyone else. We were all trying to catch our breath from the sprints. It was chilly outside, the snow had finally subsided. It was one of the rare days we got to play outside instead of the gym. But even with the cool air, my sweating was making me feel hot.

"Mine?" Cole asked taking a sip of whatever drink he had in his plastic bottle.

"You practically forced me into this team." I stood up and started stretching my arms. Coach blew his whistle and we all got up to go to the middle of the field.

Cole smirked at me. "You agreed in the first place."

"Alright." We stood around Coach while he exaggerated the word. "You can all sit down if you want to." As if on cue we all collapsed and fell onto our butts. "Well man, you guys are tired." Coach plucked the whistle into his mouth, "Maybe a few more laps can wake you up?"

"No!" We all shouted in protest.

He grinned, "I was kidding." His clipboard went underneath his arm while he stood with us. Blake was at is side, he wasn't panting like us, but he seemed tired too. "How about a quick game of shirts vs. skins?"

Over the last couple weeks I had gotten a lot more used to hanging out with the team. Sure they were all guys, and at first everything was awkward. But a team is like a family. If I can get the Parris brothers to accept me as a family, I can surely get a bunch of kids on my team to accept me as well. I raised my hand, "Can I be captain Coach?"

"A volunteer!" Coach helped me up. "What team?"

I shrugged, "I'll take skins."

Everyone stared at me with wide eyes. Coach smirked and shook his head like he was sort of proud I had the confidence to do that. In the crowd of kids, Shawn bursted out laughing. He stood up and walked towards me laughing the whole way. Everyone's eyes were trained on him. "Here you go," He said between laughs as he handed me a twenty. I stared at him for a second, this wasn't some bet. I just decided to do it because I wanted to prove I wasn't some stuck up girl that needed to be treated like a princess. Shawn leaned over and whispered something in my ear, "Go with it. I'm saving you humiliation."

I shrugged, grateful for the free money and slipped the bill into my shoe. "So who's the other captain?" I asked.

"I'll be it Coach." Sunshine raised his hand and stood beside me. "Heads." He said to Coach before the coin was flipped.

"Tails." Coach looked towards me and I looked out in the crowd of players.

It was everyone's natural instinct to pick Blake first. He was the best player, so I guess that's why I chose him. I wanted to win, I wanted to beat the shirts team. "Blake." I muttered. He gave me his famous smirk and slipped shirt off before tossing it to the side of the field.

"Cole." Sunshine said. Cole sighed and took a step beside Sunshine.

"Shawn-ator." I said pointing to my brother.

He grinned and jumped up. "Alright! Me and Tor-bo gonna kick butt like real ninjas! Hoowah!" He threw his shirt off and did a karate kick before bouncing beside me.