take me to church -- chapter 1: So Easy (To Fall In Love)
masterlist | ao3
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Word Count: 6,313
i would like to add that all of my volleyball knowledge comes from my brief stint in the haikyuu fandom like 5 years ago so don't kill me if anything's inaccurate. was also originally going to have the other uconn girls be at said catholic school but i needed the vb team to suck for the plot and i didn't have it in my heart to make them bad at their sport. and then i decided to make the story continue through college, so they will just be present in college LOL
TWs: catholicism, cursing, and chris koclanes & cathy englebert as characters
i could be the world to you, the missing piece
that extra sentimental kind of chemistry
some people make it hard, with me, that isn’t the case
‘cause i make it so easy to fall in love
Tuesday, August 6th, 2024 — St. Anne’s Academy, Anderson, SC
“You know, Paige, Catholics are really such interesting people. Especially this brand of ‘em. Their school website looks like it came straight out of 2005. Preaching all like ‘Classical education’ this, ‘Traditional values’ that. My family would love this place,” Nika rambled on, her voice echoing throughout the car’s speakers.
Paige hummed, only half paying attention. She really, really missed Minnesota. She’d only been in the middle of bumfuck nowhere South Carolina for four-and-a-half days and she feels like she’s already sweated more here than she has in the entire rest of her life combined. It was so hot out and there were so, so many bugs. She missed Minnesota. She missed her friends, her old house, her old team, her old coach. She missed Nika. She was trying not to hold it against her dad. Relocating for a job wasn’t his fault. But she wanted to go home.
“They’re definitely scared of gay people. You’re going to have to give your very best straight girl impression,” Nika laughed, continuing on with her monologue. “I wish I could be there to see it,” she lamented, wistfully.
“Hey!” Paige called out mock-offended as she pulled into the school’s parking lot. “I’d be a great straight girl.”
“Be so for real. You haven’t been straight passing a day in your gay ass life.”
Paige let out a dramatic, offended gasp. “Hey-“
“I bet you look like a knockoff Ellen Degeneres right now,” Nika interrupts.
“You take that back!”
“Absolutely not!”
The two continue bickering as Paige sat in her car in the parking lot, waiting for it to be an appropriate time to go in. People were everywhere in the tiny, cramped ass parking lot. The first day of school must’ve been a big deal for these people. God, what was she getting into? On the surface, everything looked normal: parents giving tearful goodbyes to their little kids, friends gathered by cars talking excitedly about the new year, teachers trying (and failing) to direct the carpool line. But, really, it all already felt like a really weird cult to Paige.
The school was the only one her mom was willing to pay tuition for–her only form of child support, by the way–which was already saying something. Her mom was still holding a grudge after Paige told her she wanted to just be a regular Christian instead of Catholic. She would probably throw an even bigger fit if she knew the reason was because Catholics thought being gay was a sin, and Paige was, you know, the world's biggest lesbian. But she was none the wiser and clearly had no idea, considering that she was sending her lesbian daughter to an all-girls school.
Naturally, Paige’s mother found the most Catholic all-girls schools of all Catholic all-girls schools for her to go to. One of those weird cult hybrid schools that lets you do home schooling two days a week. Which is great for Paige, because it meant more time to play volleyball. It was just a little miserable in every other aspect.
“Didn’t you say it started at eight?” Nika asked, pulling her out of her thoughts.
“Eight oh five, actually,” Paige muttered, rummaging around to shove her keys in her bag.
“Well I guess I’ll let you go. Can’t let little miss superstar be late on her first day,” Nika said, getting all melodramatic. Paige scoffed. Nika added, on a more serious note, “Call you later? Send me updates?”
“Always,” Paige responded, mentally preparing herself to cut the engine and face her impending doom.
“Who knows, maybe you’ll meet the love of your life in your little wack Catholic school and this will all be so, so worth it,” Nika said, teasing. Paige was absolutely going to strangle her the next time she saw her. She was about to get subjected to some variation of cult hell for eight hours and Nika was not helping.
Paige scoffed, reaching to crack open her car door a smidge. “Oh, lay off me. Bye now,” she added, not giving Nika the chance to give another witty reply as she turned the car off and ended the call, lugging all of her stuff out of the car and going to shove her phone in her pocket before she realized she doesn’t even have a pocket, because this uniform was awful and the universe hated her.
The parking lot was slightly less filled with random people as Paige made her way to the front door of the school. The further and further she got across the parking lot (not that the parking lot is that big, mind you), the more and more people seemed to stare at her. Which was, you know, fine. Whatever. Paige pretended she didn’t notice all of the Catholic NPCs staring her down as she walked into the building, immediately getting stopped by a patronizing-looking white lady wearing a pantsuit, who quickly held out a hand for her to shake.
Paige shook the woman’s cold hand with what she hoped was the nicest, most convincing smile that she could muster. “Miss Bueckers! So nice to meet you,” the lady said, which seemed genuine enough. “My name is Cathy. I’m the head administrator here.”
“Nice to meet you too, ma’am,” Paige said, quickly adding on the “ma’am” because her dad warned her they’d probably think she was being rude if she didn't include it.
“Welcome to St. Anne’s! Here, let’s put your phone in the phone hotel. It’s over here,” she gestured to a small hallway off to her right. “You can have it back at the end of the day,” the old lady said to her, smiling, like she didn’t just ruin Paige’s entire life. How the hell was she supposed to update Nika now? She knew this school would be Catholic and religious and probably super strict, but a phone hotel? Really?
“Thank you, ma’am,” Paige responded, attempting not to outwardly grovel.
She forced a small smile on her face as she dutifully followed Cathy around the corner, trying to be polite in a valiant effort to prevent her head from being placed on the metaphorical chopping block on day one. They came face-to-face with a rickety cart sporting a stack of small cubbies on it. Cathy gestured to the row sporting the label “Juniors” haphazardly taped to it. There were a solid twelve labelled cubbies at best, each seemingly already containing their phone prisoners for the day. Paige hesitated for just a second before she placed her poor phone into the cubby labelled “Bueckers”.
Once Paige’s phone was safely locked away in purgatory, Cathy babbled on about the school and its rules as Paige half paid attention, following her down the hallway to the classrooms. Not that there would be anywhere else to go, seeing as this school was the size of a two-by-four and there was only one hallway. There were students everywhere, ranging from kindergarteners to kids her age. And by everywhere, she meant everywhere. Her and Cathy just barely squeezed through on their trek to wherever it was they were going. There weren’t even any lockers on the walls, which were instead splattered with random, blurry, two-pixel pictures of Jesus that looked like they were taken straight from Facebook.
Charming.
Paige was led to the end of the hallway and straight to a sweet-looking girl sporting an ugly uniform that was, unfortunately, exactly identical to her own. Paige did not need the reminder of the fact that she was being forced to wear a skirt. An ugly, green, plaid skirt. With blue knee-high socks. And tan boat shoes. And a red sweater vest. With a white button-up underneath.
Really, whoever chose these uniforms needed a new job. Stat. Not that Paige would ever claim to be a fashion expert, because she wasn’t, but even she knew that primary colors did not belong on the same outfit like this in the first place. Despite being a raging lesbian, she was not appreciative of the little Roy-G-Biv moment going on against her will.
Paige was pulled out of her thoughts by Cathy’s vaguely robotic voice.
“Paige, this is Kayla. She’s going to be your buddy for the day.” Kayla took a step forward with a smile, reaching a hand out to Paige.
“Nice to meet you,” Kayla said as Paige shook her hand.
“‘Sup.”
Now that they were introduced, Paige assumed this meant Cathy would be leaving and Kayla and Paige could make their way to their first class. However, there was an awkward silence in the air as Cathy stood there, dead still, staring almost expectantly at them. She just looked at them, robotic customer-service half-smile on her face, eyes almost glazed.
Paige knew she was definitely making a face as Kayla let out a small laugh, side-eyeing the principal.
“Okay, well, our first class is this way,” Kayla said, gesturing to a door on their left.
They approached the classroom, exchanging pleasantries as they crossed the small distance.
When they stepped into the classroom, Paige immediately forgot what she was saying. Because, sitting at a desk in front of her was the most beautiful girl she had ever seen in her entire life. The prettiest dark curls, the most beautiful pouty lips, and the sweetest looking doe eyes. What the fuck. All she could think was that she was so, so screwed.
Paige quickly looked up at the ceiling in a valiant effort to stop her cheeks from heating up any more than they already had. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.
So much for pretending to be a straight girl. Nika was never, ever going to let her live this down. Ever.
Jesus Christ, Paige. Get it together. There were literally only twelve girls in the stupid class, which meant she was going to have to try to be a normal, perfectly straight person who definitely does not feel things for the living embodiment of Aphrodite herself for every single hour of every single day until she finally graduated from this place.
When her mind came back to forming slightly sensible thoughts and she stopped solely hearing the sound of her own heartbeat, Paige looked back at Kayla just in time to see her staring at her like she’d grown two heads. Great. That’s awesome. Cool, cool. Super chill and nonchalant of her, really. She was already doing a great job at covering this whole little gay thing up. Surely no one would ever notice a thing. Surely.
“Sorry, what were you saying?” Paige said, rubbing the back of her neck sheepishly as her face continued to most likely look like it came straight out of winning a ‘supersize tomato’ competition at a local farmer’s market.
“Oh, nothing. Just that you can sit next to me if you’d like,” Kayla said, a small, encouraging smile back on her face.
Paige silently thanked God almighty for Kayla as she said “Sure,” following her across the room, pointedly not looking at the beautiful girl who was leaned over to her side, talking quietly with the blonde sitting next to her. And who was apparently going to also be sitting next to Paige on her other side. Cool, great. Awesome. Paige pointedly chose to believe that this was God’s way of telling her that she and this girl were meant to be, and maybe Nika was actually just a prophet well ahead of her time, and that maybe she should try to talk to her. And definitely not because God wanted to outright torture her by being in this girl’s immediate vicinity all class for the rest of the entire year. Duh. Paige was sure this was exactly what her mother envisioned for her when she insisted this be the only school she was willing to pay tuition money for because it would finally instill traditional Catholic values in her.
“So, you play volleyball, right?” Kayla said, giving Paige a much needed distraction. Bless her. If there’s one thing Paige could do while pretending she hasn’t just met the love of her life (no, she’s not being dramatic, what do you mean), it’s talk about her first love: volleyball.
She launched into an animated conversation about her team from back home, her coaches, her most recent gold medal with the national team this past summer in Honduras. She was generally pretty good at talking, but there was nothing she could talk about quite like she could volleyball.
She learned that Kayla played too. She was a middle and she was on an AAU team in the club division. She was also on the school’s team, which had tryouts later that day because the high school volleyball season started early and they had their first game in just a few short weeks.
She was so excited to finally have someone to talk to about it that she barely noticed the teacher walking in–some bleach blonde lady (not that she’s one to talk, really) that exuded the energy of a PTA mom. The class went quiet once blonde-PTA-mom walked in, which left Paige trailing off mid-conversation, turning back to at least try to give the teacher her attention.
Which meant that Aphrodite was back to being visible in her peripheral vision.
She somehow managed to make the disgusting uniform look actually good. It was the most impressive feat Paige had ever seen. She was also actually taking notes about the syllabus review, underlining important dates and adding extra notes with one of those sparkly pink gel pens Paige remembered fighting over in elementary school.
Once the teacher was done rambling on about her own personal life, the syllabus, when essays would be due, and what books they needed to buy for the class, she passed out place cards for everyone to put on their desks so they could all learn each other’s names (which seemed a bit redundant, considering Paige was the only new student and everyone else in the room had known one another for years). But, Paige wasn’t going to complain, because that meant she got the name of the apparent love of her life: Azzi Fudd.
The first thought that ran through Paige’s mind after learning it was that even her name was pretty. Which, fair. The second thought was slightly less fair, her mind helpfully supplying “I wonder if we would hyphenate last names when we get married or if one of us would take the other’s last name”.
Paige felt her face heat up immediately at the thought as she forced herself to shift her attention back to the teacher in an effort to distract herself.
——
After U.S. History, they were freed for lunch. Which took place in this tiny “cafeteria”, if it could even be called that, since they didn’t actually serve you any food and you just had to bring yourself a lunch. There was a cluster of circular tables, a wall of shelves with the doors all bungee corded shut, and a couple more blurry pictures of Jesus and what she assumed were a few different saints taped to the far wall to serve as decor. And, not that Paige would ever claim to be a master of interior design, but, for a school that charged upwards of five thousand dollars a semester, she thought it was egregious that they wouldn’t even cough up five dollars for picture frames to display their ugly Facebook pictures.
Said lunch also occurred at 10:15 a.m. in the morning. And, in Paige’s humble opinion, that was a truly criminally offensive time to have lunch. But whatever. Clearly nobody had asked her.
She was sitting at a table with most of the girls in her grade–which was insane, that they could all pretty much fit at one table. Azzi and a few other girls had their notebooks open, already working on getting ahead on assignments. Not that they had even really been assigned anything yet. They’d had two classes so far–literally just English and U.S. History–and all that they had to do for them for their homeschool day tomorrow was answer some random questions to introduce themselves to the teacher for English and do one little worksheet for History. And Paige, ever the procrastinator, could safely say that she would be doing that tomorrow.
“So, Paige, are you going to try out for the volleyball team?” one of the girls asked, though Paige could not for the life of her remember her name. The tall-ish blonde one that Azzi seemed to always sit next to. Jamie? Delaney? Rainy? Something like that.
“Oh yeah, definitely,” Paige said, unable to help the smile already forming on her face at the mention of her sport. Tryouts were going to be later that afternoon, and Paige was so excited to finally get to play again. It had only been like five days since she was last on the court, but it’d felt like forever to her.
A few of the other girls at the table started to look up and follow the conversation.
“You’re supposed to be pretty good, right?” One of the other girls asked–Veronica. Which she only remembered because the girl somehow found a way to dramatically mention the fact that she comes from a military family (whatever that means) twice today.
Paige wasn’t really sure how to respond to that. Obviously she knew she was good. Everyone who’d been paying attention to volleyball in the past few years knew that. But you can’t just say yes, because that makes you look extremely cocky. Not that Paige would ever delude herself into thinking she’s not cocky. When it comes to volleyball, she definitely is–but it’d be a piss-poor first impression.
“Oh. Uh, I guess,” is the response she lands with–super eloquent on her part. She could feel the heat forming on her face, and she’s certain her face was red.
That invited a slew of questions. ‘How long have you been playing?’ As long as she could remember. ‘What position do you play?’ Setter. ‘Do people ever stop you for pictures?’ Not very often, but she’d been asked before.
Through all of that, Azzi remained silent. In fact, she seemed to be pointedly ignoring the conversation, pencil gripped in her hand but never really writing anything.
Paige desperately wanted her attention.
Honestly, the force of it was almost scary to her. She’d never felt like that before for anyone. Yes, she’d had a few little crushes. She knew she liked girls–if anything, she’d always known. The sky was blue and Paige Bueckers liked girls. So what.
But it seemed like her entire brain had turned to mush and the only thing left was this girl she’d never even spoken to before. Which was just ridiculous.
After answering a few more volleyball questions, Paige asked, “Any of you play?”
She learned that the blonde one—who she finally learned was named Lainey—was a middle. The really short girl that was always with Lainey and Azzi, Ava, and the shy girl she still didn’t know the name of because she only spoke in mumbles were both on the team too. Along with Kayla, of course.
“Azzi plays too,” Lainey said, playfully nudging the girl with her elbow. Azzi finally looked up from her papers and gave a small, polite smile, pushing Lainey back.
As dramatic as it sounds, Paige felt like her entire universe shifted on its axis. She plays volleyball. Paige already felt a smile forming on her face. Lord help her because she was absolutely never getting over this crush.
Maybe she’d be bad at volleyball or she wore bulky knee pads over her knees and Paige could use that to force herself to get the ‘ick’ and the feelings would go away.
Although, there was surely a fat chance at that. She was definitely built to be an athlete—in a totally objective way, mind you. She meant nothing gay about that statement at all.
“Sick,” Paige said, with probably too much enthusiasm. Whatever. “What position do you play?”
The girl finally met her eyes for the first time that day. She couldn’t really read the expression on her face—all her brain registered was that her eyes were so, so pretty.
Paige felt her face heat up and pointedly chose to pretend it wasn’t happening.
“Outside,” Azzi responded as she set down her pencil.
Her voice was so pretty. Paige had heard it in class during the various icebreakers they’d done, but having it directed at her was a whole other experience. Paige was absolutely besotted. Paige’s heart started beating out of her chest.She wouldn’t be surprised if this exchange actually sent her into cardiac arrest. “Oh cool! I’m a setter.”
“Yeah, you mentioned,” Azzi said before smiling gently at her, picking up her pencil and returning to her work, promptly ending the conversation there. The rest of the girls had already picked up conversations and were chattering amongst themselves around her as Paige decided she would shrivel up and disintegrate into the stupid stick-on tile of the fake cafeteria if she could.
Of course she knows you’re a setter, idiot.
In a courageous attempt to pretend like that didn’t just happen, she turned back to Kayla and started babbling on. “So, what’s your favorite subject?”
Kayla, the angel, took the bait and started rambling about how much she loved physics but hated english and writing. At this rate, Paige was going to have to reach out to the Pope himself and sign the girl up for sainthood.
——
The last class of the day began–the class she’s sure would just be her absolute favorite: religion. It was taught by this short, middle-aged Italian woman who immediately gave Paige “holier-than-thou” vibes.
Paige was fully planning on tuning the lecture out, but the world seemed to have it out for her, because the teacher insisted on doing ice breakers. Which would have been fine, if they hadn’t already done ice breakers in every single class. All day long. Which would also maybe be fine, if there were more than twelve (she wished that was an exaggeration, but it was not) people in your grade and you didn’t have literally every single class with them all day long.
“We’ll go around the room and say our name, one fun thing you did this summer, and, if you could be a saint, who would you be?” The teacher—whose name Paige did not even slightly remember—said.
Paige felt her heart fall out of her ass. What kind of question was that? Who just had an answer to that off of the top of their head? Does everyone here just casually have a predetermined saint-sona? Because Paige definitely did not have a pre-planned saint-sona. In fact, she thought that was pretty weird. And, honestly, a pretty personal question depending on your reasoning? What the hell were you supposed to say, ‘I love the Blessed Virgin Mary because I’m a virgin’? Yeah, right.
She looked around the room, trying to gauge if anyone else was perturbed by the question, but no one else was batting an eye. Just Paige.
Kayla, bless her, seemed to sense Paige’s trepidation. She mouthed something at Paige, but unfortunately for Kayla, she was God-awful at reading lips. “What?” Paige mouthed back.
Kayla tried to mouth whatever it was again, but Paige just continued to gesture at her, confused. She pulled out a piece of paper instead, frantically writing something down as people around the room started saying their icebreaker tidbits.
Once she finished, Kayla passed the note over, looking back up to whoever was talking and pretending like nothing had happened. Paige looked down at the note, which read:
St. Sebastian is the patron saint of sports and athletes.
Paige smiled, looking back up at Kayla and meeting her eyes, bidding her a very dramatic, silent (but sincere) thank you. Thank you, Kayla. Thank you baby Jesus. Words could not describe how glad she was to already have a friend in this hell-hole.
Now that she actually had something to say, she let herself listen to what everyone else had to say. ‘St. Theresa’ this, ‘St. Anne’ that. Veronica said St. Michael the Archangel because he’s the patron saint of the military and, of course, contrary to what one may believe, she comes from a military family. Paige had started keeping tallies of the military family mentions, and that was officially number six. She was honestly impressed with the girl’s ability to mention it in quite literally every single ice breaker so far that day.
Azzi said St. Ignatius but didn’t give a reason behind it, and Paige made a mental note to look him up later, probably unhealthily desperate to learn more about the girl.
When it was Paige’s turn to announce her saint-sona, proudly announcing that “My name is Paige,” and, “the most exciting thing I did this summer was play volleyball,” and, “my favorite saint is St. Sebastian because he’s the patron saint of sports and athletes,” everyone just nodded along like that made sense and was perfectly normal. Which, whatever. She’d take it.
——
Tuesday, August 6th, 2024 — Westview Rec Center, Anderson, SC
Now, the moment Paige had been impatiently waiting for all day was finally upon her: St. Anne’s volleyball tryouts. Well, tryouts may be a strong word. Paige safely assumed that, since the school had a population of next-to-zero, that they couldn’t be too picky about who they let on the volleyball team. Regardless, she was excited. Buzzing-out-of-her-skin excited. AAU didn’t even start until November, and she hadn’t had the chance to play as much as she’d like since they moved in a few days ago.
She knew she’d “make the team”. That was a given. There were like ten people at this school and Paige was a national team starter. They didn’t even have enough people at the school to have a distinction between a junior varsity and varsity team–everyone just got to play. Which meant they probably sucked, and Paige knew she’d probably care quite a lot about their inevitable string of losses later. But, for right now, all she wanted was to be on the court.
The tiny ass school didn’t have a gym, so the volleyball team played at a small local gym down the road that they rented out. Paige was willing to bet her entire collection of mini volleyball keychains that they didn’t even require team members to do mandatory workouts. Practice was also only once a week, which was not conducive towards being actually good at volleyball if that’s all you do. Which, whatever. At least it was something.
She’d just finished lacing up her volleyball shoes when a few other girls walked in, Azzi included. Her knee pads were properly placed and, truthfully, Paige couldn’t believe her luck, because she had on an Elevation Academy Volleyball t-shirt—the AAU team Paige had already all but committed to.
Of course, Paige’s mind instantly started planning out their entire future together. Obviously, this means they were meant to be and that they would fall in love and win AAU Nationals together and get married and have kids and live happily ever after. Right.
Paige had to force herself out of her daydreams, reminding herself that she did not know this girl and she was probably straight, anyways. Nika was actually going to clown her for this for the rest of her life.
She got up and walked over to the group of girls, throwing a volleyball back and forth between her hands to keep herself busy.
“Wassup?” she smiled once she was in a reasonable talking distance, stopping to hold the ball under her arm.
“Hey, Paige,” the short girl—Ava—replied, offering a small wave.
“How late do we think Chrissy is going to be today?” a blonde girl she hadn’t met yet asked, a dry to her voice.
Lainey was rummaging through her gym bag as she wagered “I bet only five.”
“Really?” Ava said, “When has he ever been earlier than ten?”
“It’s the first day, I’m trying to be optimistic.”
Paige finally had to cut in. “Your coach is usually late to practice?”
“Yeah,” Lainey answered, at the same time as Ava said “He’s the worst.”
Paige’s eyebrows knit together. Since when was a coach routinely late for practice? She was used to being crucified if she wasn’t at least ten minutes early, having had the philosophy of ‘if you aren’t five minutes early, you’re ten minutes late’ drilled into her throughout her whole childhood.
During the whole conversation, Azzi just stood off to the side, alternating between fidgeting with the hem of her shirt and picking at the leg sleeve she wore over her right leg. She looked a little uncomfortable, just letting the other girls have their conversation while she spaced out. Paige couldn’t help herself from watching her out of the corner of her eyes. Trying to avoid staring at her like a creep, but definitely keeping note of her every movement regardless.
“Is he a good coach at least?” Paige asked, attempting to keep things positive.
There was an awkward pause as Ava and Lainey made eye contact and clearly tried to contain a laugh. “Eh, not really,” Ava said, as Lainey elbowed her.
“She doesn’t mean that.”
Ava looked back up at the girl dramatically, deadpanning “Yes I do.”
Great. That’s just great.
They continued sitting around waiting for the coach to show up, giggling and making jokes. Apparently they’d have to do their own court setup, but they couldn’t open the storage room that held the net and equipment in it until the coach arrived, leaving them to just sit around uselessly until he chose to show up.
Tryouts were supposed to start at four, and it was at least four fifteen before the coach sauntered in. He was maybe five-foot-seven, sporting a manbun and a petulant look on his face. Despite best efforts to not judge a book by its cover, Paige was definitely already judging.
Everyone continued talking amongst themselves, making no move to acknowledge the man.
He awkwardly walked around, setting up the net by himself and wheeling a cart with volleyballs in. Paige would’ve offered to help, but he exuded the energy of someone who decidedly did not want to be bothered and none of the other girls made a move to help him. Paige tracked him as he set up, trying to figure out what the plan was going to be for the day. So far, she had nothing.
Eventually, manbun walked over and cleared his throat, arms crossed over his chest and exuding awkwardness.
“Let’s go,” he said, gesturing to the court.
They warmed up and then ran some basic drills. And, when she said basic, she meant it. They took turns serving one at a time. Then they took turns setting to a cone in an arbitrary spot on the court. Then they took turns being thrown a ball from the coach and bumping it. Then they took turns spiking it. Then they took turns blocking it. They never once did anything with another player, or combined skills, or did anything at game speed. Which she figured could’ve been passed off to just be strategic to isolate skills during tryouts, but even then, at some point you’d theoretically want to test court chemistry and see how different lineups meshed.
Paige’s attention was split between noticing how terrible of a coach he was, how awful most of these girls were at playing, and how incredible Azzi was.
She knew they would probably be bad. She’d been mentally preparing herself for it all day. But seeing it in person was something else.
And, listen. Paige knew this was just a crappy 1A high school team. It was just for fun. These girls were doing it for a fun afterschool activity with friends. It was not that deep to them. Paige should just use it as a way to make friends and bond over a common interest with the people she was going to be stuck with for the next two years. She told herself over and over to leave the superiority complex at the door and just have fun.
But Paige also lived for this sport. She genuinely could not fathom what it’d be like to not revolve her entire world around it. And, on top of that, she did not want to lose. She thought she’d accepted the fact that she probably would on the school team this year, but thinking it and being slapped in the face with it were two very different things.
Not only was the coach asking them the most basic questions of all time, but also, somehow, almost everyone was awful at them. They were playing Volleyball 101 and they weren’t winning.
One girl, who Paige learned was named Marissa, had to be the least athletically talented person she’d ever seen. And she might feel bad for thinking that if the girl was at least nice, but she’d been snapping at everyone all practice and seemed to be aggressively sucking up to the coach. Why someone would ever go the extra mile to be on the man’s good side was lost on Paige, but Marissa seemed to be bound, set, and determined.
However, despite her best efforts, Marissa could not serve, receive, pass, set, block, or hit. Every time the ball was in her possession, it ended up out of bounds. Her serve would be a safety hazard for the other players on their side of the court (not that she could hit the ball hard enough to cause legitimate damage, but still, someone was going to end up getting hit by her serving attempts). On top of all of that, she stood at an impressive five-foot-nothing, but allegedly was supposed to be a setter.
Lainey, despite being sweet with a happy-go-lucky attitude, was piss-poor at setting, serving, passing, and hitting. And Paige rated her blocking ability a solid 3/10. Which, considering she was a blocker, was probably the preferred skill for her to be solidly sub-par at instead of just straight horrific.
Kayla was alright for a blocker. Paige would ignore the mediocre volleyball skills because Paige definitely would’ve died from embarrassment at some point throughout the day had the girl not been there.
Ava was supposedly their libero, which would make sense considering she probably wasn’t even five feet tall. However, what didn’t make sense was her inability to return the ball to the setter after receiving it. Which is, like, the most important skill for a libero to have.
There were a couple very mediocre hitters. A brunette with a strong southern accent with a reaction time slower than molasses. A super shy girl with curly hair (who was definitely in her class and she just forgot her name) that did not have the strength to hit the ball faster than two miles per hour. And another brunette that kept making surprised noises out loud every single time a ball came to her to receive or pass.
There was also another blonde girl that was supposedly a blocker, although she was better at hitting than blocking. But she still wasn’t very good at hitting either.
The only person that was any good was Azzi. And, wow, was she good. Paige felt herself become increasingly besotted by the girl by the second as she watched her incredibly accurate bumps, powerful jump serve, and her phenomenal footwork. She reeked with athleticism and a level of focused determination that only came from hours in the gym playing the game.
The thing that really did Paige in was watching her hit. It was quite honestly (from a purely unbiased volleyball standpoint, mind you) the best form she’d ever seen.
She had no idea why she hadn’t heard of the girl before, because she was great. Probably (definitely) good enough to give Paige a run for her money—not that she’d ever admit it. She just had this air of confidence and passion about her that was hard to find anywhere else.
Paige couldn’t help her eyes from being glued to the girl’s face as tryouts continued on. She didn’t let any emotions show besides just a base-level of determined focus. She didn’t celebrate a good hit or an aggressive serve or a nasty block. She just moved on like it was an everyday event for her, nothing special to celebrate. Which, rightfully, for someone that good, it probably wasn’t. But it wasn’t like there was much else to move on to in this dreadful tryouts setup anyways, considering they were isolating one skill at a time like pre-schoolers playing in a baby youth summer camp.
Once tryouts were over, the coach basically just told them that everyone’s on the roster and to get out and go home. He also mentioned something about a yoga class at some point? Who knows. Certainly not Paige. His coaching style clearly went over her head.
She tried to catch Azzi on the way out, but she wasn’t quick enough. She did say goodbye to Kayla, giving the girl a quick side hug before heading home herself.
Once she was back in the safety of her car, she immediately picked up her phone and called Nika. She picked up on the second ring.
Paige didn’t even let her get a “Hello” in before she blurted out “Nika help, ‘m so screwed.”
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next chapter ->
