Lost Girl

Chapter Sixteen: The Game

The ball was always hard for Eve to follow, but on this particular day it was worse than usual. A bouncing white sphere that seemed to phase in and out of reality like some inter-dimensional creature whose only purpose was to spite her.

Technically, Eve shouldn't be playing volleyball at all. Her asthma was bad enough that she should have been sitting on the sidelines watching the girls try to kill one another by batting the ball at each other's faces. But like so many things in high school, the concept of "too sick to play" seemed to be lost on the people running the show.

She had shown up with a note from her doctor once, and the women's gym coach – an alleged female named Gina Penbright – had balled it up without looking at it and told her to get dressed. Perhaps if Eve's mother had raised enough of a ruckus Penbright would have changed her mind, but since Eve's mother raised exactly zero ruckus at all, there was no chance for Eve to get out of the organized murder squad euphemistically known as P.E.

Still, usually Eve could at least stay out of the way of the ball, if not manage to be a contributing member of the team. Last night, though, she had awoken in the middle of the night, gripped by another asthma attack and trying to claw her way free of a dream in which someone had been cutting her head off. She knew that wasn't possible – didn't you die in real life if you died in a dream? – but sleep had been a long time coming, and even after it finally returned to her she kept twitching and turning and jerking in her bed until her clock buzzed her awake for school again.

Even after the clock woke her, she felt like she was still dreaming. She couldn't shake the feeling she had had when she woke up: like she had been flying, then something slammed into her, and then that slashing cut that ended her dream... and her life.

Poomp.

The volleyball bounced hollowly off the hardwood floor a few inches from her tennis shoes. The school required white tennis shoes for phys ed, and she had complied with that requirement. But she had also colored in every square centimeter with a black Sharpie marker, so while technically complying with the rule she still managed to maintain a bit of her Goth identity, at least as far as footwear. She also wore a long sleeved sweatshirt that covered her arms, though most of the girls knew about her scars – and a good percentage of them teased her about them at every opportunity.

"Damn, Darlene," said one of her teammates in disgust, somehow managing to make her last name sound like the obscene word in the sentence. "Can't you return anything?"

"Sorry," Eve mumbled. Another sign she was out of it. Normally she would have at least tried to return that girl's verbal attack with a hefty helping of her own attitude. Today she could barely keep her eyes from crossing. Her thoughts were swirling and twirling, twisting in and out and criss-crossing between Rocky and the strange guy on the second floor and her weird dreams. Nightmares.

She didn't notice when the next service went into play. Didn't notice the short rally on her side of the net. Didn't notice the ball soaring over to the other team's territory. And that was a terrible mistake.

The ball was bumped. Then set. It hung in the air for a long moment, and Eve only noticed it because she realized she was standing in blocking position and it was supposedly up to her to make sure that the spiker didn't score on her team.

Who is the spiker, anyway?

She saw who it was the instant the other girl made contact. It was a huge hit, square on the ball.

Ka-POW!

Lilly Edwards hit the ball so hard that by rights it should have just exploded under the force of impact. Instead it slammed over the net, rocketing straight at Eve and hitting her dead center on the nose.

"Fa-cial!" someone screamed in delight as Eve heard a crack and felt a warm, wet jet of blood spurt over her sweatshirt. Her hands clapped to her face and she ran off the volleyball court, heading to the far side of the gym as fast as she could. There were four sets of double doors there and Eve barreled through one of them full-tilt, hitting them so hard that both doors slammed into the walls before settling slowly back into place.

Beyond the doors was a concession area where the school sold stale popcorn and expired candy during home games at prices that would have made the average war profiteer gag. More importantly for Eve, there was a door at either end of the concession area – a boys bathroom and a girls bathroom. Eve beelined for the nearest one. It was the girls bathroom, but she didn't much care which it was at that moment.

She went into the bathroom and headed for a sink. Blood was spurting through her fingers, spotting her shoes and socks and leaving a hemorrhagic trail on the white and blue checkered tile behind her. She turned on the water at the sink with one hand and with the other grabbed a handful of the paper towels. Not surprisingly, the school invested in paper towels that were so cheap they still had pieces of whole tree bark embedded in them. Eve didn't relish the thought of blotting her nose with such rough material, but she didn't have much choice.

The water in the sink quickly turned pink as the blood dyed it, and she tried to staunch the blood with the paper towels in her hand. It hurt, as she had expected. She'd probably be picking splinters out of her shnoz later.

A sound made her look up from the Easter egg pink water. In the reflection of the mirror above the sink, she saw two stalls open behind her. Lilly's two cronies, Martina and Ali, came out of them. Neither was dressed for P.E.

Martina nodded at Ali. "Told you she'd be able to hit the bullseye," she said.

Ali said something under her breath, then slapped a handful of bills into Martina's open palm. Martina tucked them into her bra.

Eve turned to face them as the two girls approached her. She shrank from them, but with the sink at her back there was nowhere to go.

Ali grabbed Eve by the front of her bloody sweatshirt. The other girl's fist cocked. "You just cost me thirty bucks, you stupid dike," she said.

Eve knew she should keep quiet. But she was in pain and tired and something in her brain popped and instead of shutting up she heard herself say, "Dike? I'm not the one who's hiding out in the bathrooms with her girlfriend."

Martina's lips peeled away from her teeth and she let loose with a growl that sounded more animal than human. She sprang at Eve, not seeming to notice Martina in the way, and the only thing that stopped Eve from getting the crap pounded out of her right then and there was the sound of the bathroom door clattering open.

Eve's head whipped over to the sound. Lilly. It was going to be Lilly, had to be Lilly. It was obvious that this was just one more of the homicidal bitch-queen's setups, so –

But it wasn't Lilly's beautiful eyes that Eve saw peering at her. Beautiful eyes, yes. Just not Lilly's.