Team Spirit

10. Lars Always Picks Dare

10. Lars Always Picks Dare

"Remind me why I'm here again?" I ask Casey a question I already know the answer to.

There is a tradition. First week of the volleyball season, the girls team always has a Friday practice and afterward, captain always hosts team bonding. Team bonding always involves drinking.

"You're my co-captain. It's our job to welcome the new team members," Casey insists, drinking white zinfandel straight from the bottle.

The way she says it, welcoming sounds a lot closer to hazing. It's not really like that. It's more like... well, I specifically recall my first season and at the first-Friday-of-the-season bonding experience, Ash McCormick admitted she once made out with her cousin at a house party in Strathmore. It isn't hazing, just a sly way of unearthing deep, dark secrets like that. To what end? It's generally better not to be in a position to find out.

Casey's house is much nicer than mine. Casey's the youngest, her sisters off at university or buying their own houses in Murphy to raise more wheat-haired munchkins. Casey herself is a leggy blonde, hair still in a sporty ponytail. She spikes the ball like a rocket and blocks the net like the Great Wall of bloody China.

And she gets to live in a house with new carpets in the living room, really cozy to sit on. We lean against the couch, a white leather thing free of fruit punch stains and cracking upholstery. It's works out so well that Casey's parents work out of town and work late on a Friday.

"You better hand over that bottle." I make childish grabby hands for the rosé. It's also really convenient that Casey's parents make their own wine in the basement.

What could possibly be classier than drinking wine from the bottle while sitting on the floor in the late afternoon?

Girls trickle in and I resist the urge to drain Casey's bottle. Two things stop me: the fact that I am not capable of acting sober while I am drunk and that distinct memory of Ash spilling her guts about slipping her cousin a little tongue in a closet.

I don't trust myself enough to keep my mouth shut around the team.

Most of the first string shows up. Cassidy slinks in. Hannah. Ash.

Wren.

Wren arrives with green hair. Green hair. Like I fucking told her. She still smells like dye, having changed the colour between practice and the team bonding experience.

I don't know what to do except keep my eyes steel as she catches me staring from across the room. She smirks.

I imagine wine flushing my cheeks, making me look bashful or aroused and I can barely stand to think about it.

The team doesn't show up in its entirety, but enough do that we form a lazy circle on Casey's living room floor.

"How about Truth or Dare?" Cassidy suggests. I think Sam liked her for reasons like this. She wants to play Truth or Dare like we're kids. It wasn't ever an innocent game. It wasn't when I was young and it isn't now.

"Okay, but you have to start with someone new." Casey decrees this rule like a proper team captain.

Cassidy fake-mulls this over. She already knows what she's doing. It's all over her face.

"Wren." Cassidy points. "Truth or Dare?"

There's something dancing in Cassidy's eyes. Ulterior motive.

"Truth," Wren says, like she knows exactly what's coming.

"Are you really a lesbian?"

Not enough wine has gone around the circle for this question to be met with anything but a certain kind of polite, shocked Canadian silence. Everyone wants to act like they're embarrassed the question was even asked, but everyone's waiting for the answer.