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There’s already someone inside; I can hear the clang of two poles bumping against each other. I step inside, my eyes adjusting to the darkness…
And then my stomach drops.
I fight the urge to blurt out what are you doing here? There’s no reason he shouldn’t be here. It’s just…
“I didn’t know you were the volunteering type,” I say, then cringe, because that’s equally rude.
Lucas slowly turns around, and there’s the barest flicker of shock in his eyes before his expression dulls into distant politeness. “I’m not,” he says. “I just wanted the opportunity to destroy some kids at volleyball.”
I stare. “You know we’re not going to be playing them.”
“Oh, we aren’t? Darn it.”
In spite of myself, I start to smile and immediately smother it. “Chelsea told me to help set up the nets.” I say.
“Yeah, I’ve got the poles here,” Lucas says, hefting his arms to show me them. He’s wearing a black shirt, and his biceps are swelling with the weight of the poles.
I avert my eyes.
“The nets are over there,” Lucas continues, nodding at the corner. “You can grab two of them.”
So he’s getting me to hold a pile of string while he holds two metal poles? No way.
“I can help with the poles,” I say, starting towards him.
He watches me with a blank expression. It’s strange — it’s like he’s the same as he’s always been. Bored and slightly cool. Like he never got on his knees in the living room of our apartment. Like that wrecked expression never crossed his face.
“Alright,” he says. “Carry that end, we’ll bring them out together.”
Lucas lets me take the lead, and we bring the poles out of the storeroom and into the stadium. I glance over my shoulder, but Lucas isn’t looking at me. His eyes are roaming over the courts, and strangely, that calms me. Things, for the first time in a while, feel normal between us.
By the time all the courts are set up, kids start pouring in, talking loudly and wearing sports clothes and colourful runners. I grin as I spot a girl tie up her shoelaces carefully and dust off the sides. I remember when shoes were the most precious things in the world to me. I had black and green ones, and Lucas’s were blue and orange…
Once all the kids are here, Chelsea claps her hands and calls them all over to the centre of the stadium. She introduces herself, as well as me, Lucas, and the other two volunteers.
The first thing we do is my least favourite part of volleyball, probably because it’s simultaneously the most boring and most painful. We warm up. Chelsea gets everyone to run five laps of the stadium. I pace myself because I am not a runner. Thankfully, I’m not at the very back — there’s a crowd of kids surrounding me. Although, I’m not sure if I should feel exactly reassured that primary school kids are equally as slow as me.
“I can’t wait to go home,” a kid says beside me when we’re on our third lap.
I turn. He’s wearing an oversized shirt that falls halfway down his thighs, which reminds me of when I’d wear Jemima’s too-big hand-me-downs. The kid’s got a round face and chipmunk cheeks that are red and sweaty. I probably look pretty similar.
“Don’t worry,” I tell him. “You just have to get through this and then we get to do the fun stuff.”
“What are we doing after this?”
“Uh, well, stretches —”
He sighs.
“But then we can do drills!” I quickly add.
He gives me a bored look.
“What’s that look for?” I ask him. We finish the third lap and start on the fourth, and the pain in my legs starts to subside. The end is in sight.
“I didn’t even wanna come, my mum made me. I’d rather stay at home.”
The truth is, I can relate. When I was younger, there was nothing I hated more than sports class, or when the whole school day was replaced with the swimming or athletics carnival. That was in high school, though. In primary school, I was a lot more enthusiastic about, well, everything.
