The Final Game of the Season
Admiral Biscuit
That day the entire school had been buzzing with enthusiasm–by luck of the draw their first game of the season was against their biggest rival, Crystal Prep.
Crystal Prep had the best volleyball team they’d ever fielded. Indigo Zap and Sour Sweet were a good combo at the net, spiking, setting, and blocking with equal aplomb. And Sugarcoat was brutal as a server; she could drop the ball wherever she wanted.
Offsetting that advantage, both Sunset and Kerfuffle had graduated from Junior Varsity and the new varsity team had shown what it was capable of during the pre-season; everybody expected this match to be a game for the ages. Anticipation had built through the day, the whole team had had a small pizza party in the cafeteria after school, and then they’d gotten dressed and waited for the game to begin.
They got their first glance of the crowds in the stands as they warmed up on the court, and then the starting whistle blew.
They’d lost their first match but came back with a vengeance in the second, rallied by determination and a few hard-earned lessons. By the third, they’d really gelled as a team and driven the final point home with a beautiful dive by Sunset that led into an accidentally beautiful set for Kerfuffle, who’d leaped from the second row to spike it down with a crushing finality. In hindsight, a fitting swan song.
Nobody wanted to let go of the high of the moment, and after they’d showered and changed, they’d hung out in the locker room, reliving the highlights of the game.
It was a moment that couldn’t last forever, as much as they wanted it to, and finally the rest of the team had departed. Only Kerfuffle and Sunset were left, and the two walked together through the darkened hallways of the school to their lockers, only a few feet apart.
Any thought of her math homework had long since fled her mind, until she was grabbing what she needed to take home for the night. We won the game, that ought to be an excuse to not do homework. Of course, it wasn’t. “Hey, Kerfuffle?”
“Yeah?”
“What did you get for question 6?”
“Ah, twenty-five over the square root of four.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, I rechecked twice, ‘cause that didn’t seem right.”
“That’s what I got, too,” Sunset lied.
“That’s why I remember.”
“Seems odd, the answers are usually . . . nice round numbers.”
“Same thing I was thinking.” Kerfuffle pushed her locker door shut and spun her combo lock. “Figure it was just a way to mess with us, like when there’s a whole string of the same answer on multiple choice tests.”
“Yeah.” Sunset reached into her jeans pocket to make sure her car keys were there. “You ride your bike today?”
Kerfuffle nodded.
I should offer her a ride, it’s late. But then she’d have to figure out a way to fit Kerfuffle’s bike in her car, which would at the very least mean rearranging the stuff in her trunk.
“Why?”
“You have lights on it, don’t you?”
“Yeah, and there’s lots of street lights between here and my house, I’ll be fine.”
“Because I could—”
“It’s fine. Catch ya tomorrow, Sunset.”
“Yeah. Hey, that was a heck of a game, wasn’t it?”
Kerfuffle nodded. “Best I’ve ever played.”
“No question, and that spike at the end—keep that up all season, and we’ll be going to finals.”
Ah, the guilt and weight of "If-only-I-had"...
11785854
Yeah, I've been there before and I'm sure I'm not the only one.
11786220
Definitely not the only one, I still have things from 15+ years ago that haunt me at times, If I was gifted that spell to make a singular visit to my past I'd like to give my past self a firm kick in the pants/shake of the shoulders.
11786839
If I had a time machine, there's a few times I'd give myself a swift kick in the butt, too. Sadly, I don't . . . or maybe it's better that way. Hard to say.
It is dangerous at night. Sunset should have given Kerfuffle a ride. One should always keep an High-Visibility Yellow-&-Orange SafetyVest with RetroReflective strips hoofy.
So it was Sunset who was there in the car. No wonder her guilt is immense. Keeping the details obfuscated until now, to build a non-linear climax, generates even more emotional impact then otherwise. And that doesn't account for the beautiful, exquisite description of their first game win. It's very Shakespearen in a way. Reveling in their sucess despite knowing tragedy is inboubd. If inly one little thing, a sole tiny decision, could be changed. But Sunset can't do that. No one can.
11788752
It's dangerous all the time, and with an inattentive enough driver even flashing lights won't help you. Unfortunately.
11789226
You're not entirely correct (I'll spoiler what happened below), but it's a very close approximation and a way it could have gone.
Ain't that the truth. There's some stuff where you can/could have done something different and affected the outcome, and other stuff where you can't.
To give one example: I'm in a Discord server that has a thread to help people who might be contemplating suicide. Usually the person who's contemplating it doesn't post on the server; they post something else somewhere and it gets brought to the server's attention and then people go to work.
Some time back, there was a situation where the server got involved, and I was watching but could do nothing; none of my skills or people I knew would be of any use, and watching events unfold for hours was agony, especially since I stayed updated just on the off chance that things suddenly fell into a category where I could do something to help.
That story does have a happy ending; the person was found before they could harm themselves, and they got the help they needed. But it doesn't always turn out that way.