The Girl Who Wore Jordans

Prologue

A/N (7.28.14): Hi! Firstly, thank you so much if you're deciding to read this story! Secondly, since you've decided to read this, just be aware that there are typos, plot holes, mechanical errors, and a whole lot of other stuff that I'm currently in the process of editing. That being stated, enjoy:

The Girl Who Wore Jordans

Sophie Anna

Prologue

Boston. October 21, 2008.

The ball continued to circle around the hoop a third time, and all I could do was watch as it missed the basket entirely and plummeted to the ground. I swore under my breath and then heard the much anticipated and dreaded reaction of, “Nice shot, Liz!” from a cynically smug Lance.

      “Right, because Lance, you never miss,” I shot right back, my own words oozing with as much stinging sarcasm as his own. Lately, Lance had been acting like a real jerkhole to me. And only me. Not to Justin. Not to the other guys. Just me. I didn’t know why. Every time we played basketball and I dropped the ball or my knees weren’t bent enough, he had to comment on it. Or like now, my shot was pretty crappy, so he had to be obnoxious about it, instead of letting it go and allowing me to just grab the rebound and move on. I could definitely hold my own against someone like Lance, but it was just annoying that I had to deal with his BS in the first place.

      Justin was next to speak. Like always, he decided to act as the mediator, attempting to subdue the mood considerably: “Guys, stop.”

      “Whatever,” Lance dismissed Justin’s relatively passive request of peace. He then ran over to recover the still rolling ball. It was my shot, so I should’ve been the one to get it, but I didn’t mention it. As a general rule, I tried my hardest to avoid communicating with Lance at all times. It was easiest that way and helped in decreasing plausible and unnecessary arguments.

      I turned to Justin, aware that what I was about to say probably wasn’t the smartest thing on the planet, but I didn’t really care. I was pissed at Lance, and if I weren’t talking to him directly, then indirectly would have to suffice. “Why’s he being such a douche?” I asked Justin with a deep sigh and a shake of my head.

      Justin lifted his bony shoulders towards the sky ever so slightly and said, “Who knows?”

      Lance came back over to us, and without saying a word, he went right under the basket and shot the ball. I held my breath as it circled the rim, and then winced as I witnessed the orange orb swish through the net. “That is how you shoot, Liz,” Lance said, roughly throwing me the ball.

      I caught the ball without a problem and started to dribble in place. From my spot, I aimed the ball at the red outlined square in the middle of the backboard. It went around the hoop once, and despite my best efforts to conjure up some form of telekinesis and force it in, it bounced out. 

      “Nice try, Liz,” Justin assured me genuinely with an equally as sincere smile.

      “No, it wasn’t,” Lance spit harshly, “it sucked.”

      “Really, Lance? And why exactly did it ‘suck’?” I questioned, refraining myself from lunging at him right there and then. I was starting to get pissed at him. Like, majorly. My hands reached for the back of my head, and I pulled at two sections of my ponytail, tightening it so that it wouldn’t come undone.

      “Because you’re a girl,” was his brilliant response. I wanted to punch him.

      “So, ‘because I’m a girl’ means that I can’t shoot a damn basketball?” I assessed dryly, viewing Justin’s worried expression from the corner of my eye. He was just itching to stop the brewing conflict from bubbling over and completely exploding out of proportion.

      “Yeah. But, I mean, you’re not really a girl. You don’t dress like one, and you sure as hell don’t act like one. Hell, guys don’t even want to date you!” he laughed. I clenched my fists together, ready to wreck his face. A firm hand gripped my wrist, and I looked down: Justin.

      “Why are you such a freaking asshole, Lance?” I implored, relaxing my hands as Justin’s grasp loosened.

      “Why aren’t you such a girl?” he fired right back without missing a beat.

      “I am a girl,” I said, my words sopping with anger. I am a girl. I am. Just because I talked to boys, played sports with boys, and hung out with boys didn’t mean that I wasn’t a girl. It didn’t mean anything.

      “Really?”

      “Yes, really!”

      “I bet that you couldn’t become a normal girl even if you wanted to,” Lance scoffed, taking a threatening step towards me.

      “I am a ‘normal’ girl.” I glared at him with all the hatred I had in me.

      “Of course you are.” He rolled his eyes with a pause, and then continued: “I mean, normal girls wear T-shirts and sweats everyday, and normal girls don’t have a single girl friend, oh, and normal girls definitely wear Jordans.”

      “Damn right, they do!” I said, trying to not think too much into his cutting words. He was just saying them to try and hurt me. He wanted me to break. Unfortunately for him, I had absolutely zero intention of breaking.

      His words meant nothing. Though I knew that they were out of some unknown spite aimed at harming me in any way that they could, they still remained in my mind, haunting it like a ghost on Halloween. Normal girls wore T-shirts and sweats, didn’t they? Not having any girl friends didn’t really matter—boys were fine. The first two didn’t affect me, but the last did. He had implied that “normal” girls didn’t wear Jordans. That was a line he should not have crossed. But it was Lance. He was probably just jealous that I had made the All-Star team and he didn’t.

      Lance scowled at me with the nastiest scowl he could summon, and then he declared something that came off as more of a dare to me: “You couldn’t become a normal girl even if you tried!”

      “Wanna bet?” I challenged.

      “Yes, actually, I do,” he said, clearly amused by what I had proposed. If he knew anything about me, though, then he shouldn’t have been as entertained as he was.

      “Fine,” I said, sticking my hand out to him to finalize whatever exactly it was that we had decided. He returned the gesture, our hands touching, as a lethally silent resentment culminated over the edge.

      “Prepare to lose, Turner.”

      “Game on, dickhead.”