They Say Love Hides Behind Every Corner. I Must Be Walking In Circles!

Chapter 31

Emily started cracking up when she saw my expression. “You did, didn’t you? Hah! Okay, come on, we have to warm up!”

I nodded and followed her onto the court to practice my shooting. Did I have to do everything exactly as I had before, besides going to Forrest and Paul’s house? I wasn’t sure I could remember every single thing I said the last time I went through today, especially considering I talk a lot and my memory isn’t all that good anyways.

As I casually shot the ball, I felt glad that I had a basketball game that night. The good thing was that the game would distract me from thinking about everything I had lived through after this day.

The ref blew his whistle and I rolled my eyes. I remembered very clearly that he was a total pansy that really didn’t want to be there, and I also remembered the look he had given me. Annoying him was one thing I would definitely not change.

I took my place at the edge of the circle in the middle as Amanda, the tallest girl on our team, stood in the middle of the circle and prepared to jump for the ball. The ref blew his whistle again and she leaped up and tipped the ball over to Emily, who grabbed it and immediately charged for the basket, making a smooth lay-up.

I was more of a supporting player, but I did make some baskets myself.

It was definitely weird recognizing the faces of every single person on the court, since I had attended both schools in the past few months. Ridgeway held mostly bad memories for me, though, so I wasn’t exactly jumping for joy at the sight of them. I didn’t want to remember those things. A part of me wished that the man had just erased my memory, as well. It would have hurt less and I could have gone on with my life. But the other part of me knew that what Forrest and I had was too good to forget, or even to want to forget.

Before I knew it, Coach Briggs had called that all-too-familiar time out and turned her body so she was facing me, saying, “Shay, are you willing to take one for the team, and make a completely fool of yourself?”

I found myself impulsively answering with an “Okay!” before my mind had even processed what had just happened. If I hadn’t already lived through this once, it would have taken me longer to figure out.

I couldn’t stop myself from grinning as she told me the plan. It really was just too awesome, and it served as an amazing distraction for not only our enemies, but for the pain I was feeling deep inside of my soul. Wow. I sound like one of those Emo girls I met at Ridgeway who offered me a smoke once when they were high. Then they started talking about the pain they felt inside of their soul and I got the heck out of there. Now, don’t get me wrong. They were nice; they just came on a tad too strong.

I robotically walked back on the court and glanced around. We were down by two points and had ten seconds left. I had to make my distraction perfect again. The word ‘again’ brought on a rush of memories and I winced, trying to push them away. I couldn’t cry now. I wouldn’t cry now, or ever, if I had anything to do about it.

“Okay, you ready?” Amanda asked me, appearing out of nowhere, but I was too depressed to try to imagine where she came from this time.

I just nodded, still trying to calm myself down internally.

She gave me an odd look. She was probably wondering why I didn’t reply with something completely ridiculous, which would be a normal thing for me, but luckily, the ref blew his whistle and we had to get in our positions.

Everything was so familiar, it almost sickened me. The crowd was going wild. The Falcons were pressing -us. Emily was stationed on a wing so she could shoot her three-pointer. Coach was giving me a You-Better-Not-Mess-This-Up look. Bailey, a small girl on our team, was throwing the ball in. Amanda was stationed in front of her, so Bailey could pass it to her. I was on the side where the ball was being thrown in, a perfect place to perform my distraction. But I couldn’t feel the adrenaline rush I had felt the first time. I just couldn’t.