Love, Blood and Wilderness | YELLOWJACKETS

Chapter 2

    The next practice everyone was jittering with anticipation for nationals.

    Our flight was leaving tomorrow and this was our last practice before we headed off. Lottie came onto the field with Nat, Tai and Shauna trailing behind her. Nat and Shauna shared the same expression that Lottie did, while Taissa had her brows furrowed and a scowl on her face. I decided to approach Lottie.

    "Hey is everything okay?" I wondered.

    "Yeah it's, uh, it's fine," Lottie said absently.

    "What's going on Matthews?" I replied sternly. "If something wrong I wanna know what it is."

    She looked around the field.

    "Lottie," I repeated.

    "Okay listen," she whispered, "I'm telling you this because I love you, you can't say it to anyone else, especially not Jackie."

    "Okay."

    "Tai wants to freeze Allie out."

    "The freshman?"

    For some reason, Allie was playing on the varsity team. Even though she had hardly any playing time at states and she kind of sucked, she was still invited to join us at Nationals. She was the only freshman asked to join us. None of us were enthused about her joining, and it seemed that she felt the same way.

    "Yes, she talked to me, Nat and Shauna about it."

    "What, so you're doing it?" I questioned.

    "No, no. Nat and I disagreed with the plan. I don't know if Shauna is in on it."

    I knew that Lottie wouldn't do something like that.

    "And Jackie doesn't know?"

    "Nope."

    "Then Shauna's definitely not in on it."

    Lottie's mouth twitched as she held back a smile. "Well anyways, Tai is freezing her out and I'm pretty sure this practice is gonna get messy. Tai's pretty pissed that Allie gets to play with us even though she kind of sucked at states."

    "Yeah we all are but it's just something we need to accept."

    "Tell that to Taissa," Lottie gestured to her. She was warming up a lot more intensely than usual, glaring at Allie.

    "Fuck, okay, whatever. All we can control is our own game, if Tai wants to freeze her out on her own then so be it. Let Jackie deal with it," I mumbled to Lottie.

    She smiled at me her perfect, full lipped smile and kissed my forehead. It was quick and it was unnoticeable to anyone who wasn't watching, but it was everything and more.

    We heard a whistle blow and Ben yelled to circle up. Myself and Lottie ran to the centre of the field, where the girls were all taking a knee in front of Ben.

    "Alright state champs," he begins, grinning. The team clapped and cheered.

   "JV's gonna help us out with a little scrimmage today. Coach Martinez had to take care of a family thing, so grab a pinny from Misty and let's get started."

    Misty held up the pinnies with pride. I've never seen someone so happy to be team manager slash water girl slash stewardess to a whole team before. But she was immensely grateful and was actually good at her job, so no one could give her shit for it.

    "Excuse me, Coach Scott?" Laura Lee interrupted. "Shouldn't we say a prayer first?"

    I turned to Lottie and smirked and she mimicked the reaction. The rest of the girls had similar expressions as well, a few even rolling their eyes.